not sure about the spelling but i'm sure ya'll know what i mean. our drummer sings about 80% of our tunes. me and the other guitarists sing the rest. our drummer is a seasoned vet and very good at "banter". i use banter time to correct tuning, grab a drink and so on. here's what annoys me. our bass player feels the need to banter sometimes. sometimes it's while the drummer is bantering. it reminds me of a saturday night live skit or something but not funny at all. i don't like it.
how do you gals and guys feel about "banter"? just one band member or what? does anyone get as annoyed as i do? i have not said anything because he catches enough flak as it is. i guess maybe i'm just trying to get yall's take before i bring it up.
i value the opinion of the fender forum.

Love it. Got a few faves too. Thanks for the CLAP, remember folks the more you drink the better we sound.

It's got to be done right though. Your bassist doesn't mean any harm, he's just trying to have the craick.

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No no and no

+1

Maybe if your bassist and drummer tried to coordinate their efforts it wouldn't seem so irritating and amateurish. They might rehearse some "pat" material so the banter is more seamless and coherent -- much like The Smothers Brothers or Rowan & Martin did "back in the day".

HTH

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Only in small quantities and only if it's funny or relevant. Otherwise, do like Bernard Allison, and just say hello, rip the guitar up for the entire show, introduce the band and go home...he barely pauses between songs, unless he's changing guitars.

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Good Vibes To Y'all!



Screamin' Armadillos
Texas Roadhouse Music
Guitar/Slide Guitar/Harp/Vocals

Banter is crucial to creating a good rapport with the audience as long as it doesn't turn into a prolonged dissertation between each song.Banter between two band members can be great if funny but if it's just one competing with the other to be noticed by the audience it becomes annoying and boring.

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'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

thanx mr. Nik and retro. i understand what ya'll are saying. i also agree with armadillo. it needs to be done right. looking at it as a patron, it is annoying and not all entertaining.
i prefer to just play. let the music do the talkin'. the drummer is extremely good at thanking the venue, the patrons and the employees of the venue. the bass player just talks to be talking.
i should have never brought this up. i am one extremely selfish beastard. i get attention when i really just wanna lay low and i'm really not good at all. i can see where he might want his "spotlight".
i'll let the other guys deal with this and keep my mouth shut.
i need to change my user name to selfish beastard.
woe is me

I absolutely hate doing it.. The other 2 singers in the band do a great job at it, so I'm really content with not saying anything. Sometimes they ask me to talk a little, but I just don't like it.

Funny part about it is, because I don't say anything, people are really surprised when they hear me sing. We like to surprise the audience with it. We'll start my song, the audience has THEIR attention, they'll even step up to the mic like they're gonna sing, then I just belt out the beginning of Jah Soldier, and they back off the mics. It catches people completely off guard. It's a lot of fun doing that. But then at the end I give a quick "Thank you". Wave to the crowd, and it's on to the next song.

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HaleAmano- House Of Sharks (Now On iTunes)
http://www.reverbnation.com/haleamano
http://www.haleamano.com

Jeebus I think you have it all wrong and should be calling yourself Shellfish Bar steward.
As in

Four fork snakes, what a shellfish bar steward.

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No no and no

Does your bassist sing backups? If not, tell him he has to do so if he's gonna be talking to the audience at all. That should stop him. haha

I liked this answer the best. My band really preferred just to play the songs, I would say a few things and get a few laughs.

People would come up to me and thank me for telling them something about the artist while the other guitarist in the band would tell me "we don't need a DJ"

Actually, I get his point. We were supposed to play well and let the music speak for itself.

I saw a local band one time and the drummer who has a deep gravelly voice wanted to talk about something between each song....trouble is he dang near swallowed the mic and you couldn't understand anything he was saying....sounded like a bullfrog.
All anyone wanted him to do was shut up.

I don't think you're being selfish at all. We've had to talk to our keyboard player about this kind of thing. That kind of in-between song talking should involve the crowd, venue, the bands playing that night, etc.. If it's just banter about the musician just talking about himself or to a friend in the crowd or just saying goofy things, then it really isn't good to do a lot of that.

But what we had to talk to our keyboard player about was how he wanted to come out from behind his Keys and talk on our mics about all of our websites and upcoming shows.

First of all, not all venues like you directing the patrons to another venue. And we don't mind mentioning our haleamano.com site. But he was spouting off this huge list very quickly. It would sound like this:

"heyeverybody, we'llbeplayingatthehouseofbluesonwednesdaynight thursdaynightwe'llbeatthedistrictatgreenvalleyranch saturdaynightatthegreenvalleyranchpondbythepool. Youcancheckoutourwebsiteathaleamanodotcom myspacedotcomslashhouseofthesharks facebookdotcomslashlasvegasreggae and reverb nation."

After a while, our band had to tell him, "dude, nobody can take in that much information at once." By the end of all of that, people might have retained "reverb nation" and that's about it. So what good does all of that do? We'll mention just the .com website, and all of the links to all of the other info are on there.

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HaleAmano- House Of Sharks (Now On iTunes)
http://www.reverbnation.com/haleamano
http://www.haleamano.com

Our bass player used to talk like that and I did to a certain extent. Talking too quickly with effects for singing makes the words almost impossible to understand. We've learned to talk slowly and loudly and my wife, who runs our sound board, cuts the effects on the voices between songs. We have some songs that we take a little time to transition between and some songs where we transition right into the next song.

Some people can banter naturally and sometimes you have to grow into it.

I would recommend video taping a performance or 2 just so you get an audience perspective. Some times when you are on stage and feel the audience watching, seconds can feel like minutes.

It would also give you evidence for the bass player if he does need to keep quiet.

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