A Certain Way of Seeing - David Bazan, Tuning, and a Great Show

A Certain Way of Seeing - David Bazan, Tuning, and a Great Show

I went to a great David Bazanshow last night with a good friend and his wife. This friend and I have been to a Bazan show (so far as we could remember) at least once every year since 2001. We do not miss Bazan, or, from 2001-2005ish, we did not missPedro the Lion. Thanks to my friend for the picture:



About 1/3 of the way into the show, Bazan started a song and then stopped just a few bars in because he couldn't abide being out of tune throughout the whole song. When he started playing again, he began a new song and abandoned the one he had been playing when he stopped to tune. He did eventually circle back to the first song later in the show.

In the moment he picked back up with a different song, I wondered why. I think it was one of those things that only an experienced and seasoned musician like Bazan could probably explain. There's a certain way of seeing the performance as a whole and in the moment. I have the feeling that if I were to explain the situation to another veteran performer, she/he would say something like, "Oh yeah, you can't go back to the same song there." I don't quite understand why, and maybe I'm wrong. But there's some insider knowledge that can only be gained through experience.

This same way of seeing can apply to anything, I think. When you are so intimately familiar with a thing, all of the unwritten and written rules become second nature. Maybe you can't always articulate these rules and reasons, but you know, as Bazan did, that you just don't start back up playing the same song you cut short in order to tune your guitar. Why? You just don't do that.