I am amazed, that there are too many guitarists and bass players who don’t bother to cut their strings after changing them. You know, the type of guitarists that will just leave their guitar strings hanging way out of the tuning pegs. They walk around on stage with their guitars, the end of the strings that hang out will bounce around as you move around, not good. I understand why some of them don’t cut strings, because at a gig, if they trim the end of the string to make it shorter, it ruins the tuning, and it takes them even longer to tune if they trim the string.

Why is it a bad idea to leave your strings hanging out at the headstock of your guitar?

1) It looks silly as hell with the strings moving around, and bouncing back & forth 2) It’s very dangerous, the end of your strings can be pretty sharp, as they can easily poke someone in the eye or cut someone, or you could hurt yourself.

They don’t trim the strings ’cause they’re too lazy to tune. It is also evidence that they are not good at tuning their guitars if they don’t trim.  That’s why you should bring a pair of wire cutters to your gigs. It only takes a few minutes to cut the end of your strings off so they won’t be hanging out. This is also the reason why you need to get good at tuning your guitars, so that you don’t waste so much time tuning.

I always trim the strings. It’s a good thing to do.

Tuning the guitar is not so hard and it can be quick to do with a lot of practice. These days, I’ve been learning to tune the guitar standard tuning by ear, without an electronic tuner. It’s a good thing to do to train your ear.

Kev

Over the years, I’ve got some pretty hateful feedback and criticism toward myself as a person and as a musician online, through various local music forums and social networking sites. I still get negative criticism even to this day, but I just learn to get used to it and ignore it. Although, I will admit though, that I wish I had gotten a better response and wish people treated me better, but what are you gonna do ya know? This is the world wide web, when you put yourself out there, you can’t expect everyone to treat you so kind.

People will think they have the right to be honest about other people, whenever they want because the internet gives them that freedom. That’s the problem. There’s two different type of critics: 1) The honest critics 2) The bullying critics.  There are some people that will think they are honest about you, and some will just bully you for their own amusement. That’s one of the only reasons why there are too many negative people online. There are too many childish people on here, with terrible communication skills on the internet. When one person sees this person bullying some musician, picking on them and making fun of them, other people will join in on the fun, even if they don’t know anything about me.

That’s why bullying me online, has become pretty popular and it’s all over the net. It inspires people to join in because they think it’s fun and they have nothing else better to do with their time. People become addicted and obsessed with the same musician, that they won’t stop until they get old and their fingers start to fall off. They’re like little kids being told to stop by their Mommy and Daddy, but they won’t listen, ya know? People mostly do the internet bullying under anonymous accounts, so I won’t be able to find out who they really are, but I’m usually good at finding out who they really are ’cause their writing style is so recognizable and easy. Of course, there are those bullying people who are not anonymous, they come out and do it, upfront.

I will be a target of internet bullying for the rest of my life. No matter how good of a guy I am, no matter how nice I will be. Sad, but that’s the way it is. I’m a human being and I have feelings too. I don’t mean to talk about the topic of internet bullying and haters, but since “bullying” is so huge in the news lately, that’s what makes me want to be more open about this stuff. I guess this is my way of joining in on the “anti-bullying” campaign. Hoping it will inspire the critics to think what they’re doing is wrong and they should shut their mouths and think how they treat people. I don’t only get bullying from people on the internet, I even get it from other musicians around the local music scene. I’m sure you’ve seen it.

I’m not just trying to defend myself. This is for other people or musicians who have been victims of bullying too. You gotta learn to be tough and don’t feed the haters. Learn to stay above and don’t let other people think they have the right to say what they want about you. They don’t have the right.

Kev

EDIT TO ADD: I’ve written a few original songs in the past about bullying. “Mr. Tough Guy” is one of them, and “Backstabbers” is another one.

At gigs, I’ve seen bands and musicians talk in between songs the right way and some of them do it the wrong way. Keep in mind, that live audiences are human beings. They can hear every word you say on the stage and they aren’t stupid. If they don’t like what you say, they’ll let you know. If you don’t want to get boo’ed or get heckled by someone from the audience, here are some rules on how to play a successful gig that’ll make the audience walk out with a great night.

Things you should do, talking in between songs:

• Name the song title, and tell a little story behind it. What the song is about, how you wrote it and how you inspired it. Audiences like this kind of stuff.
  
• Try to be entertaining, funny, and smile a lot.
  
• Eye contact at the crowd, when talking in between songs.
  
• Talk to the crowd as if you’re in an actual conversation. I’ve seen plenty of local bands ignore the crowd when they try to talk to them on stage. If you want to win an audience respect, respond back to them.
• Try to teach them lyrics for sing alongs. This is hard to do but it can be done if done right. Give it a try.
  

Things you shouldn’t do, talking in between songs:

• Don’t be a jackass or an egomaniac.
  
• Don’t talk too long. I’ve seen musicians where they go on and on about stuff for about 10 minutes straight, just shut up and play the damn song already!
• Don’t be too negative and offensive. Swearing is okay but it depends on the gig and the venue.
• Don’t be confrontational toward the audience, if they don’t respond to your songs or they walk away from your set. I’ve seen it happen before. Big turn off.
  
• Don’t respond to the hecklers. If you are getting heckled, if someone shouts out,  “You suck”, just ignore it and play.
  

Talking in between songs is important, in my opinion. There are a lot of bands that don’t talk at all, some of them just play one song after another, but that’s okay. If you don’t want to talk to the crowd, that’s your decision, but you could get more fans if you interact with the crowd more.

If you’ve seen my gigs in the past, you’ve probably seen me talk to the crowd, check out some of my youtube videos of my live performances for proof on that.

Kev