What the hell does having played metal parts in one orchestra have to to do with playing sessions for a living? Absoluetly stupid....

MOST radio stations are playing pop music (everything from Britany Spears to Kelly Clarksen). Most pop music uses session players. Most session players have a jazz background. I've already given you a long list of them. I know of not one guy who's known for playing metal that is also known as a regular studio musician. And no, a drummer is not a musician.

Why is the drummer not a musician...Funny, when I played in the high school band, or marched with the Northern Virginia Patriots drum corps, I was reading charts along with everyone else... most session players have a "reading" background which includes languages like "jazz", "big band", "orchestral", etc... We were playing tunes from Chicago, Blood Sweat and tears, hell we even covered Jeff Beck tunes like "Situation" off of "Rough And Ready"....in high school....not just "jazz standards"

and I have met many jazz guys that absolutely cannot play rock, metal, etc.. with any kind of realism
the same as the other way around!!! schooled or unschooled!!!

I resent remarks about drummers not being musicians!!!!

Stick to the post!!!

I think the bottom line is the op is a chicken s--t...he doesn't believe in himself or he would have posted some material, oh, about 5 pages ago....I doubt he is ready for the cut throat business of full time music.....

No disrespect to you, Joe, but wow!!!! There are cats out there who are/were metal doing session work!!!!
I know of many locally...they aren't rich or necessarily famous, but....

They probably aren't happy about it but glad that they are working given the fact that metal is a dying breed in the US!!

But, in Europe, thats a different story!!!!

Phil B.

Regarding the fans that I have, I have noticed over the years that fans of rock music often had a broader appreciation of music in other styles than some jazz fans have had. Rock fans have been incredibly supportive of my music and therefore I would like to say Thank You for all you have done and said about my bass playing. This does not go unnoticed.

I will keep you posted about gigs and new projects that I am involved in. To those people who have supported me and my playing, I send you my love and thanks.
Best to all, Jeff

Quote from "Jeff Berlin"

I never realized that this was true, but I do now!!!

It's amazing when one doesn't respect the others endeavors!!! You don't have to like it, but just accept that its there!!!

I think we can set up a boxing match and you and arrowhead can duke it out!!!! I have a huge back yard!!!

You seem as though you two would like to go at it for some reason!!!!

ORIGINAL: PBLOXAM

And no, a drummer is not a musician.

Why is the drummer not a musician...

Oooh, I missed that one... Them's fightin' words... Who are the real musicians then? The bass player? He only plays one note at a time!

ORIGINAL: keith
...The bass player? He only plays one note at a time!

Bad ones sometimes try to play more...

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: PBLOXAM

Why is the drummer not a musician...Funny, when I played in the high school band, or marched with the Northern Virginia Patriots drum corps, I was reading charts along with everyone else... most session players have a "reading" background which includes languages like "jazz", "big band", "orchestral", etc... We were playing tunes from Chicago, Blood Sweat and tears, hell we even covered Jeff Beck tunes like "Situation" off of "Rough And Ready"....in high school....not just "jazz standards"

and I have met many jazz guys that absolutely cannot play rock, metal, etc.. with any kind of realism
the same as the other way around!!! schooled or unschooled!!!

I resent remarks about drummers not being musicians!!!!

Stick to the post!!!

I think the bottom line is the op is a chicken s--t...he doesn't believe in himself or he would have posted some material, oh, about 5 pages ago....I doubt he is ready for the cut throat business of full time music.....

No disrespect to you, Joe, but wow!!!! There are cats out there who are/were metal doing session work!!!!
I know of many locally...they aren't rich or necessarily famous, but....

They probably aren't happy about it but glad that they are working given the fact that metal is a dying breed in the US!!

But, in Europe, thats a different story!!!!

Phil B.

Sorry, no disrespect intended toward drummers. I just mean that they aren't playing or reading musical notes. They're reading timing notes. I wouldn't call that playing music, but playing percussion. I rather enjoy a good drummer. But I've never thought of them as being musicians (unless they play another instrument too).

And I never said that a metal musician couldn't get work playing on other metal projects. I said they wouldn't get calls as session players. A studio musican is typically employed by a record label, a producer, or a studio. Thus RCA, Sony, EMI etc. have all had their own "go-to" guys over the years. It's always been not only common, but the norm for the big studios to employ the same session players regularly. But the bottom line is that a session player will play on hundreds to even thousands of projects throughout their lives. Carol Kaye said she's played on more than 10,000 recordings, and I believe her. She used to be on everything. Here's something from Jay Graydon's website:

Between the late 60s and the late 70s Jay played on practically every "A" list session in Los Angeles, acquiring a glowing reputation as an ace studio guitarist/ solo specialist on numerous albums with Barbara Streisand, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, The Jackson Five, Cheap Trick, Christopher Cross, Ray Charles, Cher, Joe Cocker, Marvin Gaye, Hall & Oates, Olivia Newton-John, and Albert King just to name a few. It is almost easier to enumerate those artists he hasn't played with or produced or written songs for, than those artists whose career he has participated in.

His discography is massive and includes both fairly unknown artists as well as mega stars like Air Supply, George Benson, Al Jarreau, DeBarge, El DeBarge, Sheena Easton, Art Garfunkel, Manhattan Transfer, Johnny Mathis, Patti LaBelle, Lou Rawls, Kenny Rogers and Dionne Warwick, just to name a few.

And believe me, that just touches the rim of what all he's played on. But he wasn't even the big gun around town back then guitar-wise. Larry Carlton and Tommy Tedesco were getting the bulk of the calls back in the 70's. I don't know if it's even possible to count all the sessions that Tedesco has done. They certainly number well into the thousands.

Here's a blurb from Wiki on Tedesco:

Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Tedesco made his way to the U.S. West Coast where he became one of the most-sought-after studio guitarists between the 1960s and 1980s. Although Tedesco was primarily a guitar player, he was also qualified on the mandolin, ukulele, and the sitar as well as 28 other stringed instruments (though he played all of them in guitar tuning).

He was described by "Guitar Player" magazine as the most recorded guitarist in history, having played on thousands of recordings. He recorded with most of the top musicians working in the Los Angeles area including the Beach Boys, Everly Brothers, The Association, Barbra Streisand, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, Sam Cooke, Cher, and Nancy and Frank Sinatra.

Tedesco's credits, to name a few, include the themes to television's Bonanza, The Twilight Zone, Green Acres, M*A*S*H, Batman, and Elvis Presley's '68 Comeback Special. He also performed for film soundtracks such as The French Connection, The Godfather, Jaws, The Deer Hunter, Field of Dreams, plus several Elvis Presley films.

Here's a blurb from Lee Ritenour's website:

Starting at the age of 16, Ritenour played his first session with The Mama's and the Papa's. Two years later he was backing Tony Bennett and Lena Horne at L.A.'s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Know as "Captain Fingers," Ritenour became a sought-after session player in the mid-70's. Starting in 1976, at the age of 24, he began his own solo career which now includes over 30 albums and collaborations. Although heavily influenced in his early days by the relaxed styles of Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass and Barney Kessel, he now has his own distinctive sound and fluid style. His list of session work is awesome (some 3,000 sessions), but some of his notable performances were with Herbie Hancock, Steely Dan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Pink Floyd. Since the mid-80's Ritenour has been strongly influenced by Brazilian music.

Larry Carlton estimated that he played on around 500 sessions per year while also playing at least 50 gigs a year. He's literally played on thousands of recordings and more than 100 of them were gold records.

Playing on a few records here and there (especially if they're all the same kind of music) does not a session musician make. If we're regularly employed by a studio, producer, or label to play every week (more like every day) on a diversity of recordings then, and only then, can we hold our heads up as a studio musicians.

ORIGINAL: yep

ORIGINAL: Gamergirl
...Do you have the "Holy Diver Live," set? I have the CD and the video. It's effin awesome!

I'm writing a song that's a tribute to RJD right now... I'll tell you what inspired me, was the "Tenacious D" movie. Dude, you should watch that... if that doesn't inspire you to finish a song, I don't know what will...

The most perfect image in the history of Rock music is the centerpiece from the "Beast of Dio" compilation where he's onstage in front of a big Demon statue holding a lightsaber up in the air.

Not only is Dio totally awesome, but he's also totally earnest about what he does and never blows the joke.

Yep... I love Dio.

Y'know, I played with a Christian Rock band, right after I played with a bar/dance/classic rock band for a few years, and some things in the music business started p'ing me off... all the travel and playig for drunks just got old, and I was burned out. I didn't touch the guitar for a long time.

Then I watched "Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny", and all of it, but particularily Dio's appearance in that film, inspired me to pick up the guitar and Rock again. I'm now engaged in self-producing my own album (Songs of Earth and Power). I was so impressed by Dio in the TD film that I went out and bought some of the CDs that had been missing from my collection since '96 when Hurricane Fran flooded my apartment and destroyed my CD collection... including Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell, The Mob Rules, and of course, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, and Long Live Rock and Roll. I also bought Holy Diver Live, both the CD and the video. Dio still has got it!!!

This Best of Dio compilation, though, is it available on DVD?
GG

ORIGINAL: Joe Bravo

ORIGINAL: droddey

Radio being what it is, a corporate endeavor, I wouldn't expect to find anything other than pretty tame stuff there for the most part, as your list above pretty much proves.

Uh, yeah, that was kind of the point. That metal doesn't sell like it did way back when for these guys who are living in the 80's. If it did then there'd be a ton of radio stations playing it. Radio stations are simply looking to make money. If metal sold they'd be on it.

Also, in the 80's and earlier, many radio (and TV) stations were independently owned and operated. Nowadays, most stations, paritcularly those across the Frequency Mod band, are owned by one of two (or maybe it's three, I don't remember) huge Media conglomerates in the US, which are geared towards making money as you pointed out. So airplay music has become far less diverse and risk-taking is a thing of the past. Now would be a good time for me to lay down a soapbox and start ranting about conspiracies, but something tells me I'd be preaching to the choir.

ORIGINAL: OldGeezer

No pressure there! Posting an example means possibly being told "Don't quit your day job" and knowing it's a totally serious suggestion. Could you tell him if that's what you thought? I have no problem telling someone his/her song bites, but I don't think I have it in me to tell someone that he or she bites. And what if I tell him "Yeah! You rock!", and he does, but his carreer never even gets off the ground. I'm not sure how comfortable the situation would be for anyone if he posts examples in this thread. And I'm not sure how accurate the results would be either. It could be he gets 5 posts saying "go for it" when, for the reason mentioned above, there could be 50 who think he's not good enough but don't post, leaving him falsely thinking it's a unanimous: "Quit your job!"

Xfusion, I think the only deciding factor is wether or not your music rules or sucks to the general population. If I were you, I wouldn't post anything in this thread...I'd upload a couple of good tunes onto several popular sites, point to them in as many relevant forums I could, and monitor comments and ratings. I doubt you'll sell much music if you can't give it away. If you notice you're suddenly in the top 20 on one of those sites, then you might see that as a good indicator. If you get few downloads and poor or no ratings, then you might wanna rethink the whole idea.

Several of mine have appeared in the top 10 in their subgenre on soundclick... but I'm not giving that fact more weight than it deserves. It's not the compliments, or successes that help you become a better musician. It's the criticism, especially the well-meaning criticism... however, it's always easier to take if there's a little positive "atta girl" in there with it.... For example, others have told me that I need to work on my mastering skills, but that my guitar skills are coming along rather nicely. THIS IS USEFUL. Other musicians are going to be your biggest critics, so if you can please them, you usually will do OK with all the civvies out there. In fact, some of my music is avant and highbrow, and it goes right over the heads of many non-musicians, and, since they have no concept of what it is I'm trying to accomplish, when one of them says "That's lame," it doesn't mean much- or it can even be a good thing. Most non-musicians these days have inadvertently been subjected to this sort of corporate-sponsored Pavolovian conditioning, so that they only respond to commercialized, processed, what Frank Zappa calls "plastic" music on the radio- like my ex-fiancee, for example, I played my "Holy Diver Live" album for him and he screwed up his nose and says "That stinks," because the vocals were raw and unprocessed... no Reverb, chorus, or pitch correction that most civilians out there are used to hearing applied to vocal work. Remember, nearly all media in the US is owned by one of 3 big corproate giants. So if a civvie doesn't like my music, sometimes that's a good thing.

So, Xfusion, you need to post your music. I did so, and I haven't regretted it... yet, anyway. Further, if you WERE to enter the realm of commercial music, just remember, you may not enjoy the type of creative freedom that you do now, and that's something that's such an inherent part of my existence, I don't think I could give it up, even for the proverbial Millions.
GG

ORIGINAL: ArrowHead


ORIGINAL: kennywtelejazz


just take the high road
it takes 2 to have an argument

but it only takes one douchebag to make a leisure activity unpleasant.

And I'm too used to being the only douchebag.


Funny, as I recall, you left before because you couldn't get along with people then either. Take your childish attitude and shove it hard and fast.

WTF is that?!?!?! Are you ****ed? My name is right there, click it and look at my whooooole post history. Do you pull everything out of your ass? I left the board when my band released our album, and went to go tour. Would you like to see the amazon link with release date? Really, I'm curious to find where you get this notion from, as it never happened.

"You named a drummer, not a musician. And you still haven't named a single metal musician who went on to become an in demand studio musician"

Look at a few of your trans-siberian orchestra albums. Google a few of the names. There's your single example. That's after already mentioning many others in this thread. You just don't want to listen. Why would you, you have no clue what any metal is beyond "basic major and minor chords".

"Liar. Oh but we're still waiting to hear yours aren't we? Tell you what kiddo. Let's both put up our best jazz oriented tune at garageband.com and see who gets the highest ratings. How bout it?"

are you kidding? WTF is wrong with you? Did you miss the part where I play metal? I'm recording and releasing albums, doing tours, and you want to compare garageband demos?

I'm not trying to have a contest, Joe. We could always play "Link the last album you released worldwide", but how does that prove whether or not a metal musician can earn money and find work? You dance around points, and I keep following you.

Geez, I'm going to step back before I get drenched in the resultant spray of testosterone :D.

GG