I am not "The Bicycling SINGER"

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Besides playing guitar as I ride my bicycle, the past few weeks I've been occasionally sitting for an hour or two in various public places of business performing impromptu concerts. I have been very well-received. Today though, when I was auditioning for the owner of a bar, he said he really liked my guitar playing, and I could come in anytime to bust out guitar chops, as long as I didn't sing!

That hurt my feelings a bit, although I admit I am not the best singer. I do sing better than I did twenty years ago, but that's not saying much! I've written hundreds of original songs the past thirty years. Most of them don't have any lyrics, at least not yet. Some have lyrics I no longer agree with, because my perspective has broadened since I wrote them. Some though have EXCELLENT lyrics, and how am I supposed to communicate those except by singing them, even if I'm not as good at singing as I am at guitar playing?

Sure, some might say find a singer. But singers usually have egos at least as big as guitar players. Anyone with talent enough to do my songs justice would probably be impossible for me to work with! Part of the problem today was the whole context of its being an audition. My other public performances lately have been spontaneous affairs, hanging out with people who appreciated what I was doing, not there to criticize. I was a bit more self-conscious of my singing today, and it was not as good as it has been lately.

Still, I am at the point now in my musical career where instead of being asked to stop, people ask me to play more, stay longer, play louder! So this was a slap in the face, maybe a wake up call. I suppose I'll take some singing lessons or study tutorials on YouTube. What I could have told the guy when he asked for an audition was if he hadn't heard of me, he didn't deserve to have me play there!

I just put together a song list of twelve of my better completed songs, all with lyrics, to hopefully be recorded this year and released as an album. I have at least that many good songs that don't have any words yet. I suppose I should add them in as instrumentals if words don't come. Except for some novelty songs about my pets, I haven't written any new lyrics since 1995. I have come up with several good rocking tunes since then though.

Forgive the rant. If I can't share here, then where? Peace

I say if the music doesn't need it, why add it?

Explosions in the Sky does pretty damn well and they don't have a vocalist.

Thanks for your input, Jonsi. In my case, there may be two problems with what you suggest.

First, what about the songs I've written that already have words? Some of those lyrics are awesome. I need to practice my singing more so I can effectively share them without hurting people's ears.

Second, I am but one guitar player without a band. No bass, no drums, no keyboard, no other instruments. Unless one is incredibly totally awesome on guitar and can play multiple parts or one part exceedingly well, one guitar by itself sounds lame compared to listening to a band. When there are words sung along as well as the guitar parts, it adds another level of melody and harmony to the song, besides adding meaning.

I used to be in a three-piece rock band (guitar, bass, drums, plus drummer sang backup vocals and occasional lead vocals on lyrics he wrote) and that would probably be my ideal setup if I were to be in a band again. However, finding compatible people is difficult for anyone, and more so for me than for most people. On the death certificate for R Band on my web site I put probable cause of death as "lack of shared vision."

On the other hand, I do have several complete songs that are instrumentals or only have a few words. Perhaps I will throw them into the mix as is, or release them as a separate album called I am not "The Bicycling SINGER."

This would be consistent in nomenclature style to the proposed title of my next album of songs that do have words, that is titled
When you ride over sharps, you get flats!, the title being a complete sentence. I am undecided as to whether or not to include some of my better instrumentals on this first new album. Right now I have twelve of my better songs (that have lyrics) planned for this album, already arranged in a particular order after hours of contemplation and playing them in that order on guitar and in my mind several times to see how it sounds. The album is currently about forty minutes long.

Oh, you can totally keep those, I'm just sayin' if you don't think a song needs vocals, it probably doesn't. If you've written some lyrics for those songs though, you can either use those for the song or use the lyrics in an entirely new song.

You face the same problem I do, I am but a single multi-instrumentalist. I can play every part, but I certainly can't play it all at once. I also find it hard to search for compatible people, people that actually like the music I like (Folk, Post-Rock, Ambient). I live in a small town full of country lovers and metalheads. Not many of them are willing to sit down and create something that takes as much patience as the genres I wanna do.

In my opinion, you should include both instrumentals and vocal'd songs. Gives a bit o' variety. But you should do what you think you should do.

That's a clever album name, btw.

It's been nearly three months since I started this thread. Here's an update.

Since the beginning of August, I have played regularly at open mike nights every week. I've also played at coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and the city park. I've handed out dozens of "The Bicycling Guitarist" business cards too. My web site traffic has nearly doubled since the beginning of August (from about a thousand visitors a week to nearly two thousand). At one local bar, I'm getting a following. The past few weeks, the house band there has let me play a solo set for twenty or thirty minutes after they open but before other jammers get a turn on stage. The audience members and the other musicians like my songs. My singing has become much more confident and sounds better than before I started these recent regular public performances.

On my web site, I have new song pages for the new album, even though half the songs were originally from older albums. Those older pages are still also at their original URLs. I've started recording (and in some cases, re-recording) the material because I sing a lot better now than I did twenty years ago (I still consider singing my weakest point). I have a lot of technical difficulties recording my own stuff. I'm using an adapter to plug my guitar directly into the computer's input jack, but the jack is bad and sometimes I lose signal in the middle of a recording if I wriggle too much while playing. I have a cruddy microphone too, and have trouble adjusting the levels properly for each track and mixing the tracks afterwards.

I was hoping to find someone local who loves recording music as much as I love writing songs and playing them, but for now, it looks like I'll have to figure out what I can if I want new recordings of my songs anytime soon. A few weeks ago I did a major redesign of my web site's home page too, and I added links to my YouTube and Twitter accounts.

Visit the web site of The Bicycling Guitarist and let me know what you think of the new look. As I said in earlier posts, the new album is called When you ride over sharps, you get flats! That page has links to the new song pages (including two instrumental songs). So far the first three songs have new recordings from the past few days. I will keep plugging away until I have new recordings of all the songs. When I finish, I'll go back and possibly re-record any I think I can do better. Peace

Have you considered ditching trying to hit the notes, and going after it talking-blues style? Works well for Tom Waits...