As you all know, I am the official PB note counter. Here is a rough breakdown of how they play, for you mere mortals who think pB plays too fast to count. This is also an archival post from March 2002 on the old group.
PB plays quite a few notes a night! Take a guess based on 3 hours of
playing before you read the answer......
....Okay here we go....
Adrian can play pretty damn fast, as we all know. During a typical
120 beats-per-minute rock beat he plays roughly 8 notes a second.
Then there are jams and drum solos where he plays much faster,
including flamadiddles and the like where one hand makes 3 or more
hits very rapidly. There are also parts where he plays less. Ad averages about 10 notes per second in the average show.
There are 10,800 seconds in a 3 hour show, meaning that Ad plays
108,000 notes a show. HOLY MOLY!!!
Tim can play about 12 notes per second at his fastest while soloing.
Then we must also bear in mind that if he strums a 5 note chord 2
times in a second that\'s 10 notes. Sometimes he holds out a note for
a few seconds which brings down the average. Lots of melodies also
do not require too many notes. Overall, Tim is around 8
notes per second on average. 8 X 10,800 equals 86,400. Not too
shabby.
Jordan in the composed part of a tune typically lays down 1 or 2 6-8
note chords a second, or about 10 notes on average . During a jam
this can go up or down, but probably averages out to about the same.
During a solo the right hand does roughly 5-10 notes while the left
either does the same or plays a 3-5 note chord. A lot of the time
one chord might get held out or there might just be less playing
going on. Jordan around 8 notes per second, good for
another 86,400 notes per show.
Ron doens\'t play as many notes as the rest. He\'s not supposed to.
He gets up to 6 a second when ripping a jam, and about 1-4
per second during a typical rock beat. Overall, about 2 per second
all night for 21,600 per show.
Let us not forget vocals! This is tough to estimate, but figure
there will be about 20 songs played in a 3 hour show, 18 will have
vox. The average melody has about 30 notes, the chorus has about 20,
and on the average half of all that is harmonized by 1 guy.
Sometimes it\'s 2 or 3 guys, but sometimes harmonies consist of one
long ooh or ahh or the like also. There are 3 run throughs of each
verse and the chorus. That\'s 50 verse and chorus notes done 3 times
through all harmonized half the time for 18 songs a show. 50 X 3 X 2
X 18 = 5400 vocal nights a show.
GRAND TOTAL: 108,000 + 86,400 + 86,400 + 21,600 + 5400 = 307,800!!!
307,800 notes per night! WOWZERS!!! That\'s just about a million
notes every three shows! Try to find another 4-piece band that\'s
anywhere near that! Multiply that by about 400 shows that have
averaged 2.5 hours a pop (due to about 4 2-setters to every 1-setter)
and you get 102,600,000 notes played!!!
PSYCHEDELIC BREAKFAST: OVER 102 MILLION SERVED.
And to think that note 1 was a mere 3.5 years ago.
peace and vibes,
Wolfman
