"not very nice, but necessary"

So let's begin at the very beginning. Let's say you have a straightforward jazz/blues combo onstage. Drummer starts with a backbeat. Kick, snare,kick,snare... (can you hear this? bump, CRACK, bump, CRACK... maybe some hi-hat eighth notes or whatever...) No Problems with Clarity or Punch so far. (I'm going to abbreviate that last sentence as NPCP from here on-- with me?)

So the string bass comes in (or P-bass, whatever), with a walking line that hits the backbeat accents. The bass player is in the groove, the bass notes are just giving tonality to the drum hits. The bass player, onstage with the drummer, is playing just loud enough to complement the drums. NPCP. With me?

Singer starts in, alto, let's say. She's singing, nice and mellow melodic lines over the punchy backbeat and the mellow bass sustain and tonality. NPCP. Any questions?

Singer breaks for the pre-chorus. Guitar player comes in with a little melodic fill, echoing the vocal line, then switches to a spanky backbeat pattern that reinforces the snare drum as the singer delivers the chorus. With me so far? NPCP, right?

Second verse. Singer. Guitar now continuing the backbeat pattern, just muted chord stabs over the snare. Tenor Sax comes in low and mellow, an octave below the singer, fattening up the melody and providing a tonal bed. NPCP, right?

Second chorus. Singer delivers full-throated, lots of harmonics, sounding almost an octave higher as the tenor sax continues and as a Hammond organ jumps in, reinforcing the tenor sax part an octave lower with the left hand, and playing some fat upper-register echoes of the guitar part with the right hand. Band now sounds huge, but everything still has its own space. NPCP, right.

Third verse. Guitar now switches to a funky chunka-chunka part that hits the chords on the backbeat but also chugs the hit-hat. Singer picks up her tambourine and the whole band starts to shimmer and shake with the jingle-jingle-THWACK-jingle-jingle-jingle-THWACK-THWACK! Organ still jabbing the right-hand chords and echoing the sax on the lows, sax now playing fills between the vocal lines (there is a reason why they are called "fills"), bass and drums still pounding out the backbeat, singer still in full control of the alto range with full-throated harmonics competing with the organ jabs for the soprano range.

NPCP like a motherfucker, and this is just the first song of the set. Nothing to do but put up a mic and step out for a smoke. Even if you don't smoke. The band mixes itself.


Un:


Now let's contrast the above with a typical amateur garage band.

For one thing, the drummer is never playing bump, CRACK, bump, CRACK-- he's playing a drum solo the whole time, whether he's any good at it or not-- cymbals crashing, toms rolling, kick and snare playing all around the beat but never on it, with no attention paid or the decay of the drums or how the drum sustain fits with the tempo...

Next, the bass player is not reinforcing the drum beat (there is none), the bass player is playing her own lead part, complete with loosey-goosey timing, an overloaded, clackety, stringy, midrangery sound that can barely keep up with the steady atonal crush of overloaded mud in the lows as she strives to prove that she's really just another guitar player...

The guitar player(s), meanwhile, are stomping all over the vocal range, thoroughly convinced that the only reason anyone listens to music is to hear guitar riffs and "solos," which are of course guitar parts played in the presence range whenever the guitar player feels like playing them, without regard to whether any other instrument including the singer have actually dropped out...

Meanwhile the singer is probably also cluelessly strumming chords on an overdriven electric guitar, with little sense of punch or clarity, just trying to be heard above the cacophony, often as not playing the wrong chords for the key of the song, but determined to strum them on EVERY VOCAL NOTE and somehow you are supposed to make that fit into the rhythm and tempo of the rest of the band (which has no rhythm or tempo to begin with). On top of that, concepts such as "range" and "melody" are lost on this singer who switches octaves constantly (badly) and who makes up for inability to create melodic tension by howling tunelessly (which you are somehow supposed to make sound "soulful" or "passionate")...

Meanwhile the keyboard player is in her own little world (and who can blame her), playing some kind of late-80's rearrangement of the whole song that is completely disconnected from the rest of the band (and also totally saturating the upper mids)...

Our poor soon-to-be fired horn player is left trying to play fills in no particular key (cue sad horns wah-WAHHHH)....