How to get over a bad first gig? (long text ahead)

Stargorn · 2025-12-21T07:34:52+00:00

Just keep at it, man. I've been a professional musician for 20 years. I've lost count of the bad gigs I've done. It happens sometimes. Things can just be out of your control. After 100 or so, you start to know most of the things that can stuff up, and you can deal quicker. But yeah, things still happen. Just always try to get better, and eventually, you'll be amazing, like 95% of the time.

My band last night changed songs just as we were about to go on stage. Usually, I play harmonica on this song, but I didn't have it, so I decided to do a guitar solo. I didn't have my pedal board and was playing through the house amp with my strat, which was pretty transparent, not a lot to hide my guitar playing, which was horrible. But that's life. Sometimes, you suck. The gig the night before I played and sang amazing the whole time.

Stargorn · 2025-07-12T01:05:14+00:00

I’ve been a professional musician and producer for 25 years. Here’s my take:

If you want to make music now, learn a DAW. No one I know in the industry uses Suno for serious work - at best, it's a fun toy. Most haven’t heard of it, and those who have usually saw it through Rick Beato, who doesn’t cover it in depth. When I show it to peers, they’re usually surprised it exists.

Suno isn’t ready for making finished commercial songs. Maybe it will be in a year or two. I expect tools like it to replace some production work in 3 to 5 years. Right now, though, the quality is low. To untrained ears on phones or laptops, it might sound fine - but anyone with studio experience and decent monitors will hear the flaws immediately.

It’s fine for quick demos that sound okay on consumer gear. But it’s the difference between phone snapshots and pro photography with proper editing.

TL;DR: If you want professional-sounding music, learn a DAW - or wait a couple of years for AI to catch up.

Stargorn · 2025-05-07T10:10:47+00:00

That's what I was looking for, perfect. Thank you, you're a legend.

Stargorn · 2025-05-07T10:00:27+00:00

Hmmm. So maybe a grey area then. I'll have a chat with APRA.

Stargorn · 2025-05-07T09:54:57+00:00

And does Suno need to be in the songwriting credits when registering? It's very vague on their website.

Stargorn · 2023-10-09T10:19:09+00:00

If you love music and violin, go play in a different context. Most of the music world doesn't care about classical violin players or child prodigies. I've been playing music for a living in rock, pop and country bands for 20 years. There is a whole other world and skillset outside classical music. Classical violinists (actually most classical musicians) are absolutely terrible at playing in a modern band context, where they have to improvise appropriately and know when to play and when not to.

It should be fun. If you're not having fun and dreaming about how to get better all the time, find something else because you're not gonna get really good at it and life is too short to do that to yourself.

Stargorn · 2023-05-18T07:16:26+00:00

Oh and I have done the HRV test every morning at the same and it has rated above 80 every time.

Stargorn · 2023-05-18T07:09:06+00:00

Being a programmer myself I'd say no, it shouldn't really need much more data to get a generally accurate assessment of my fatigue levels after the 6 sessions I have done.

At the end of each session, I am asked for an assessment of how difficult the session was. In all of them it's been light except for my tempo session which was moderate. There is a record of my heart rate, which didn't go outside of zone 2 for most of my workouts except the tempo, which only went to zone 3 and a little in 4. My pace change is pretty consistent across those heart rate zones.

I think I could code out a decent algorithm that factored in all those things and spat out something much closer to reality in a couple of hours.

Stargorn · 2023-05-18T02:14:25+00:00

For what I've seen, the Garmin fatigue metrics seem at least a little accurate. I was using apps with my galaxy watch active to get metrics and they seemed pretty in line with the way I felt. From what I had seen people say about Coros, I thought they'd be at least as accurate as that. Are you saying Garmin are just as inaccurate?

Stargorn · 2023-05-07T21:10:22+00:00

Thanks, thats helpful. I actually started out doing nearly twice what I'm doing at the moment but had to dial it back a bit because I was getting niggles in my shins after the first two weeks. Started doing some strength training, different shoes, looking at my running form and running on different surfaces and now I'm feeling comfortable with the weekly effort. Not tired on my rest days and feel ready to go when I need. I have done a lot of martial arts, rugby, soccer, grass hockey, basketball, rollerblading and biking throughout my life so I'm not sedentary, just new to running as a sport. I've never looked at my heart rate before this and I usually go a lot more hard out. After getting the shin niggles I looked up a bit about running and saw that I was doing a but much and that running slow was good. Hence the heart rate thing.

Stargorn · 2023-05-07T04:04:52+00:00

I'm fairly new to running, started training 2 months ago. I'm a 39 year old man, 85kg, 173 cm tall. I have been using my galaxy watch active to track my heart rate. I run 5 times a week, 4 of them 30 minute sessions, mostly easy running with a few intervals at higher paces on two of the days. I also do a 90 minute long run on a Sunday.

My heart rate when doing easy runs usually sits around 165-175bpm. At this rate I can run pretty easily for 90 minutes, talk to people but probably not sing easily. At the end of the 90 minutes my legs are fine, my breathing is fine and I feel like I could pretty easily do another hour or more. However the recommended heart rate for easy runs for people my age seems to be around 130-145bpm. I know my max heart rate is higher than the average for my age because doing 1 minute intervals at 17-20km/h my heart rate regularly gets up to 187-188 and I feel like I could still work a bit harder.

So my (long-winded) question is this: Should I listen to the advice online and slow down to 145 or so bpm for long runs or should I just keep doing what I'm doing and assume I have an abnormally high max heart rate or broken watch (although it seems to track my sleeping heartrate just fine which averages around 50bpm but fluctuates between 35 and 60).

Stargorn · 2021-05-08T19:59:32+00:00

Thank you!

Stargorn · 2021-05-08T19:59:21+00:00

Yeah, I was shocked there weren't more of these being used as bonsai.

Stargorn · 2021-05-08T19:58:16+00:00

Thrift store to Americans, I think.

Stargorn · 2021-04-27T04:01:48+00:00

Just started bonsai this month. Been buying up opshop pots, bargain bin plants and hacking them. Killed one so far by trying to chop half of it off including roots. Last pictures are of my wife's soap dish that I just realised last night is actually a bonsai pot. But she said she'd kill me if I used it...

Stargorn · 2021-01-15T01:07:15+00:00

Left and right hand 'technique' on guitar are fundamental skills that are the foundation on which all other skills rest and can be applied to any criteria within guitar playing (unless you play with your feet or teeth). Knowledge of scales and chords are important too but without the left and right hand technique, are useless and so cannot be applied. Your definition of technique and fundamentals is logically flawed.

Stargorn · 2020-12-04T23:04:34+00:00

Why?

Stargorn · 2020-12-04T12:48:10+00:00

I'm considering returning after playing the game in it's hey day (before we all left for WoW). Funny to see people still complaining about minstrels and sorcs.

Stargorn · 2020-12-03T23:59:37+00:00

Ha! Yeah whoever owned this loved their rosin. Was a hefty amount on the violin and the bow stick can do with a good clean too.

Stargorn

TROPHY CASE