Striving To Be The Best One Man Band

When you are striving to be the best one man band, you need to build on each performance. (This is also referring to the best one woman band)

one man band
Not exactly what we had in mind…

First you have to research just what a one man band is or what are people looking for when they hire a one man band.

Are they looking for ambiant music? Music to party? or some variation there of?

You will need the right gear to go it alone.

PA (sound system)- If you are just doing ambiant style, a smaller pa will probably do. If you are doing the party/dance style gig a bigger efficiently powerful enough amp will be required.

Music Amplifier – If you are using a guitar, keyboard and/or drum machine you may not want to put everything through your PA. I prefer this as I can adjust the volume and crunch of my Chapman Stick without effecting the vocal sound.

Microphone – A good unidirectional or cardiode mic is best… you get less feed back.

Your instrumnet(s) – I use a Chapman Stick, some percussion and a drum machine. I like to have easy to get to volume control for each instrument.

Optional Looper – I use a looper, not to layer several instruments, but to create a drum/percussion groove to play over.

Now once you have all the gear it is time to get to work…

Repertoire, song lists, learning the songs, rehearse with the gear and making useful arrangements.

But that will be the next time.

Looping Live For The First Time

The Barfly in MontrealI played the Barfly on March 21 along with 3 other music acts.

As usual I was the opener. I used an EHX 720 2 channel looper pedal. When I played “I’m A Man” I decided to loop a kind of ambient chord like Robert Fripps looping method from the late 70’s, in other words it was just a loop with a series of swelling notes that are not set to a fixed time meter.

Once I created the loop, I proceeded to do a bluesy improv over the loop.

Also I brought back the loop during my solo.

Here is a short segment from that performance giving you an idea of the loop section.