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Comment by throwaway290 | Hacker News Reader

Bass is a guitar in 99% rock bands.

I have not seen a good band with more than 4 people on stage simultaneously.

"Music for 18 Musicians" by Steve Reich is probably one of the masterworks of the second half of the 20th century.

Any vaguely disco-adjacent band will have more than 4 people on stage because there will be at least keyboards and horns in addition to drums, bass, guitar and vocals. Even a band that simply adds an additional person player percussion to a typical 4 piece exceeds your limit yet can wonderfully enhance the music.

If you haven't seen any of those bands, then that's your loss, but provides no reason to try to generalize about the right size for a live band.

It's anecdotal and subjective but I go see many rock bands and good ones always have 4, 3 or 2 people :shrug:

Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, Journey, Radiohead, Guns and Roses, Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC, The Eagles

Have not seen them either.

You pick really popular names but in most regular bands when there is more people there is worse link between them...

>> I have not seen a good band with more than 4 people on stage simultaneously

Glenn Branca Orchestra.

what does it have to do with the point

> I have not met a religious programmer

> Donald Knuth

Yes but parent poster was almost certainly talking about lead guitar and rhythm guitar.

Vocals are often a person who is also playing an instrument. So in a 4-person band you can have up to four voices, lead and rhythm guitar (or maybe keyboard), drums, and bass.

AC/DC. Foo Fighters. Guns 'n Roses. Queens of the Stone Age...

well I have not seen them in particular ^^

There are good bands like that but not most.

Let's not forget the synthesists

You've never seen a big band or an orchestra? Sir please.

I saw an orchestra once or twice. We're talking about rock music here.

I've seen bigger bands but they suck in comparison.

Guessing from your response, you might not know of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_band, which is fine. But now you do :)

Edit: I thought you linked to yet another famous band. People keep doing that... 99% of bands a normal person would see in normal life don't even have a wikipedia page.

However your link looks about jazz.

A common rock band is rarely good with more than 4 members because people lose unity and it's just technically harder and people are rarely professionally trained.

Honestly I wouldn't know anything about rock bands because I don't listen to it at all so you could be very right. I just responded because this thread was talking about string/barbershop quartets, which are almost definitely 4 parts because that is the minimum number of people required to make a 7th chord, and then again because you didn't know what a Big Band was, which I suppose is very understandable, but as somebody that grew up around and playing on them it's super foreign to me.

Ah. I was replying to "Most rock bands have more than one guitar". I don't listen to barbershop quartets, not even sure what it is

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