80% of digital modellers & c buyers are bedroom players according to marketing researches

We're not talking about semantic but statistcs.
The label "home player" is choosed by the resercher and applied to a subject following some criteria or self applied by the responder.

it just means "a player that moslly use the device at home for whatever reasons"

You're putting too much into this. ;)
What? Jay being hyper literal? No way.
 
There's a bit of a chicken and egg situation with this though. All cover bands ever seem to do is play these old chod songs, and so people expect them to, and that's what they want.

But I reckon if you had a cover band playing exclusively late 90's and early 2000's rock, people would enjoy it much much more. Chuck in a doom metal version of Spice Up Your Life, and you're golden.
I have a couple of friends in a cover band and outside of a couple of songs they pretty much don’t touch anything recorded before 1990. People love it. No Brown Eyed Girl necessary.
 
I still think the 80% number is low. For most of human civilization across time, music was a thing distributed widely. There was instrument playing and singing in many, many homes. That started to decline around the industrial revolution, for reasons that get complex and would inevitably touch on non-TGF topics. I certainly appreciate people who do public performances, especially those who really work on their craft to put on a great show. I don't diminish people who are "just" in cover bands (again, particularly if they put in the effort to put on great shows). I don't consider "weekend warriors" to be lesser, either. But in the music gear world, there's a certain valorization (and resulting cosplaying) of being a "pro." Which I do understand at one level, but it goes way, way too far some places (like TOP).

The overwhelming majority of every kind of musical equipment, from fuzz pedals to grand pianos, is never used for a public performance. Call them "bedroom," "hobbyist," or "casual" all you like, they're the main market for all kinds of musical instruments and associated gear, because they have to be. The number of people making a significant living off of music is vanishingly small compared to the number of musical instruments sold. It's not a waste, because music being made in people's homes is, by weight of time and geography, the primary focal point of music.

Apple didn't include Garage Band for free and allow people to bundle Logic Pro (ironic) with any Mac purchase for an extra couple hundred bucks to draw in professionals.
 
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It's a rite of passage for anyone that has played in a cover band over the past sixty years or so. Something about people when they drink alcohol, their brains default to a very narrow and specific song list of requests. Mustang Sally, Sweet Home Alabama, Brown Eyed Girl, Free Bird, I could go on.

Yep, even 50 yrs from now some jokester will scream "Free Bird!" from the audience. Count on it. :ROFLMAO:

My old band did Free Bird exactly once, and it was an off-the-cuff, unrehearsed jam on the song. I think we stretched it out to 18 or twenty minutes. The guy who requested it bribed us with a tray full of double Cuervos to play the song, so we obliged him.
Can someone explain the Freebird thing to me? How/why is it (apparently), "funny" to request it, and how did we get here?

I just ignore people at this point, when they request it, even so, it's hard sometimes when someone is holding up their phone with Freebird typed on it, for 3 songs straight.
 
I have a couple of friends in a cover band and outside of a couple of songs they pretty much don’t touch anything recorded before 1990. People love it. No Brown Eyed Girl necessary.
We do this. Ironically, I, am the one who sings Sweet Caroline and Jessie's Girl, but most everything else we do is no older than 1990. I think we could expand a little.
 
Oddly enough, bedroom rockers are about the last remaining people still playing real gear and at real volume. :banana

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Can someone explain the Freebird thing to me? How/why is it (apparently), "funny" to request it, and how did we get here?

I just ignore people at this point, when they request it, even so, it's hard sometimes when someone is holding up their phone with Freebird typed on it, for 3 songs straight.

AFAIK is a joke, just like requesting whippihg, that developed itself like a meme. There's no reason behind it it just happened.

Frank Zappa ended up adding whipping post to his setlis after a fan, in the 70s, yelled "whipping post!" as joke.

 
Idk if it’s me but lately I sense a sort of attitude towards bedroom players like they’re inferior or something, or their opinion doesn’t hold as much weight regarding quality of gear. I don’t take offense to it, even being a bedroom player (because fuck you lol), but I find it pretty ridiculous.

I don’t see this mentality in fishing circles, or car circles, or anything else. I think the gigging rock star musician has been put on a pedestal (in a lot of cases justifiably so) so much that it’s difficult for some of y’all to grasp that some of us don’t want to gig. I’d way rather jam with my buddies in a garage with zero audience than go play local shitty bar gigs, or deal with the hassle of larger venues. Idk, my 2 cents.

Guitarists in forums have always been weirdly fixated on class and hierarchy. From condensation towards “bedroom” players to gatekeeping who is allowed to be called a “pro”.

It doesn’t really exist in the real world, just in forums, and I’ve always thought it was a dumb obsession.


I just ask them every once and awhile what it feels like to give up on your dreams for money.

Being a rockstar or writing original music isn’t everyone’s dream
 
Can someone explain the Freebird thing to me? How/why is it (apparently), "funny" to request it, and how did we get here?

I just ignore people at this point, when they request it, even so, it's hard sometimes when someone is holding up their phone with Freebird typed on it, for 3 songs straight.

It started in the early 70's with the live Fillmore East album from the Alman brothers where someone can be clearly heard yelling out Whipping Post. For whatever reason people thought it was funny and it became a meme before memes were a thing. With Skynard, it became Freebird and it was and is a joke thing where people started screaming "Freebird" or "Whipping Post" at all sorts of concerts and events. See the movie Cars.
 
So I was working at a large fair for the last week. On the free stage there were probably a good dozen different bands at various times throughout the week. These were regional touring groups for the most part. I observed exactly 3 of those bands using real guitar amps. The rest were all modelers. So much for bedroom players.

Of the groups that used modelers, the guitar tone was good. Even for a venue like this. Pretty large band shell. Seating for 500 under cover, but slightly more than that outside. Total around 1000 with bystanders and passers by. Good PA. Half decent sound guy.

Of the 3 bands using real amps, I noted:
  • Marshall plexi full stack - I bet it sounded good to him. In line with him in the audience it was shrill and beaming directly in my face (about a 4 foot stage height). Off axis it was blanketed. In the PA it was non-existent.
  • Deluxe Reverb normal channel with pedals - Blanketed mess on most of his tones. All low end, no highs. Clearly user error. Also not in the PA.
  • Deluxe Reverb vibrato channel with pedals - Country act. Kinda mid honky with not a lot of top end. Not the best tone. Kind of in the PA but not to any great extent.
So the pattern I observed here is that even on a larger stage like this, anyone using amps didn't get put in the mix. Could be the sound guy for sure, but the mix was FAR better when modelers were being used. Outside of the bedroom.

If we’re gonna play the personal anecdote game:

I’m playing a run of shows right now where I’m using a tube amp and the other two guitarists are using Fractal. All anyone can talk about is how much better my amp sounds than the direct guitars. Even the sound engineer running FOH.

Also, many years ago I switched from an amp to a digital modeler and my first gig with the modeler another guitarist (who had heard me play many times) came up and told me my guitar tone had never sounded so good.
 
The label "home player" is choosed by the resercher and applied to a subject following some criteria or self applied by the responder.

it just means "a player that moslly use the device at home for whatever reasons"
It means a player who does not use the device to perform for audiences, more specifically to generate revenue. The economic/marketing conclusion is that most music gear purchases are discretionary, as opposed to, say, purchases of chain motors, road cases, lighting trusses and similar.
 
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