Tips on starting a Band........

It has to be with friends. I've been told by people that it doesn't have to be but honestly, if you all aren't friends and hate eachother, it's going to suck. I've gone through this. Introduce music to your friends, I bought a friend of mine who played acoustic guitar ten years ago a Fender half stack and a strat and he's falling in love with playing. Our bassist hasn't been playing a whole year yet and he's doing amazing. These guys I've known forever and had marching band with them, we just fit. Maybe even go to your local guitar shop and make a few buddies. You'll never know what you'll find unless you ask around. We JUST got a drummer at a party I was at because a coworker old her played the drums and was interested in jamming with us. We all just click. I wish you the best of luck

i like matt.c wrote:

Just to add on to what you said, from my experience, everyone in the band should want to go in the same direction musically, so you are all on the same page. Just because you're friends doesn't mean you wanna play the same style. Hope that helps Jam10.

Very true.

Good advice from people here, i'd probably only add a little bit to whats already said.

How serious everyone is about starting the band, is prolly the biggest thing to consider. You can have the best people on the instruments, but if they are not on the same page as you as to the level of committment needed, you might get let down. You're going to want everyone in the band to be on the same page. Decide if you just wanna rock out in the basement and drink beers mmm or become regulars in the local club circuit!

Are you gonna do originals or covers? Combinations? Remember, there's some legal crap you need to be aware of if you are gonna do covers.

Also, unless you are totally against it, don't make gender an issue. Girls can rock too. I've heard people say they'd never have a girl in the band because they don't want any added tensions that a girl/boy relationship could add. I was younger when i first heard that, and i just though 'whatever dude, i just wanna play guitar you know.'

Choosing the name can be fun . Seriously though, don't rush in and do that straight away. You need to hang out and get a good feel of your band before you commit to something, because what might sound cool before you all get together, may not necessarily be right for you when you work out where you are heading and what style and image you are going to go with.

I wish you all the best with it.

Pj_Gurl wrote:

Good advice from people here, i'd probably only add a little bit to whats already said.

How serious everyone is about starting the band, is prolly the biggest thing to consider. You can have the best people on the instruments, but if they are not on the same page as you as to the level of committment needed, you might get let down. You're going to want everyone in the band to be on the same page. Decide if you just wanna rock out in the basement and drink beers mmm or become regulars in the local club circuit!

Are you gonna do originals or covers? Combinations? Remember, there's some legal crap you need to be aware of if you are gonna do covers.

Also, unless you are totally against it, don't make gender an issue. Girls can rock too. I've heard people say they'd never have a girl in the band because they don't want any added tensions that a girl/boy relationship could add. I was younger when i first heard that, and i just though 'whatever dude, i just wanna play guitar you know.'

Choosing the name can be fun . Seriously though, don't rush in and do that straight away. You need to hang out and get a good feel of your band before you commit to something, because what might sound cool before you all get together, may not necessarily be right for you when you work out where you are heading and what style and image you are going to go with.

I wish you all the best with it.

What kind of legal stuff?

I played in a very successful Rolling Stones tribute band for about 6 years. I left the band when we had our second child and the free time just wasn't there. Here is my bits of advice.

1. Play with people you enjoy spending time with, but keep in mind that playing in a band is almost like dating someone, you will, and I stress, will at some point see things in a different direction. Be prepared to keep the band separate from the friendship.

2. Make sure everyone in the band has the same type of commitment and expectations. It will lead to a major conflict if half of the band wants to jam on weekends and the other half wants to play 5-10 shows per month and try to take it to the next level. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have a fun band that plays once a month live or so, but make sure that is what everyone in the band is committed to.

3. Make sure everyone is committed to the time/expenses of rehearsal. If you are planning on becoming a prominent member of the local music scene and beyond, you will quickly get to the point where you need to rent rehearsal space. I find it works best if all members of the band have a pre arranged day/time to rehearse each week, preferably 2-3 times per week.

4. Keep a very open mind, but offer help to your band. If some one is playing a song not quite right, be political enough to point out what they could do different and not what they are doing wrong.

5. Stick up for your bandmates. Our drummer was a very good drummer, but wasn't the best in Chicago by anymeans, but anytime any other band/fan would ask me "how's your Charlie Watts?". I'd always say that our Charlie is the best I've played with and really holds the sound together when we are playing.

6. Use decent equipment. If you are trying to play multiple shows with underpowere amps, cheap microphones, Squire guitars, etc....it will show. Save up some money and get some decent equipment. It never hurts to have two guitars on stage if you are not using any alternative tunings. Stopping to change a string in the middle of a set will kill your crowd, keep the string changes/repairs to between sets.

7. Work on vocals. Our shows used to run 4+ hours and I would never practice singing all out during our rehearsals, and it showed. I quickly came to realize that backing vocals not in harmony or lead vocals out of key will kill a song that is played behind you perfectly. Spend serious time working out harmonies and vocals.

8. When practicing, focus on a few songs at a time....get those real tight. A band who takes a few opening band slots and plays 7-10 very tight and well rehearsed songs gets rebookings more than a band who plays 40 songs but only a handful of them well....again, I had to learn this the hard way. As a Stones tribute show, people expected to hear "Start Me UP", "Satisfaction", "Brown SUgar", etc. and that is what we gave them, but we also would rehearse a few lesser known stones tunes and would have them so tight that we ended up getting multiple requests to hear our versions of songs like "Dead Flowers", "She's So Cold", and "Stray Cat Blues".

9. HAVE FUN! Only a VERY small percentage of people will make any type of money playing music. Play what you like with people you like and that makes it all worth it. Our band never made top dollar, but I enjoyed working with the musicians in my band, and we were playing the music that we loved.

Go to guitar center and look on the bulletin boards. Call some numbers on flyers. There are some cool people out there.

Learn to sing.
Also, having an other instrument has to help. Bass players and drummers are like gold, guitarists are like bumholes.
I'm not in a band, but I'm doing both the above, drums and singing.

Pj_Gurl wrote:

It's all good though, when you have a bad show, just take note of what went wrong, and what you weren't happy with and learn by it. That's all you can do. Good for the improvising skills No one has an awesome night their first night. And always remember, the people watching will more than likely not have even known all the mistakes you heard

That's what I'm finding out! A lot of people said we sounded great which is a HUGE surprise to me. I'm excited to practice and be ready for the next show. We sucked really bad but I'm gonna keep positive because I KNOW we can do better and we will! I'll send out demos when we get the full band recordings but I'm paranoid about stealing the songs so I'm getting them copywritten (thanks Ian for the links). We did, however, get a HUGE ovation for covering Ledbetter (I love that song). I broke a string on "Don't Gimme No Lip" and Army Reserve was a great cover (for my friend BJ in Iraq). The rest was pretty much originals and it was cool to see someone singing along to something I wrote...it's a big feeling. Apparently, she wants to walk down the aisle with that song at her wedding in a couple years. I learned though that with starting this band, ya gotta go through some people in order to find the right people and the more people you jam with, the more you learn.

xtremehardy388 wrote:

That's what I'm finding out! A lot of people said we sounded great which is a HUGE surprise to me. I'm excited to practice and be ready for the next show. We sucked really bad but I'm gonna keep positive because I KNOW we can do better and we will! I'll send out demos when we get the full band recordings but I'm paranoid about stealing the songs so I'm getting them copywritten (thanks Ian for the links). We did, however, get a HUGE ovation for covering Ledbetter (I love that song). I broke a string on "Don't Gimme No Lip" and Army Reserve was a great cover (for my friend BJ in Iraq). The rest was pretty much originals and it was cool to see someone singing along to something I wrote...it's a big feeling. Apparently, she wants to walk down the aisle with that song at her wedding in a couple years. I learned though that with starting this band, ya gotta go through some people in order to find the right people and the more people you jam with, the more you learn.

Hey that's great. If you are playing YellowLedbetter and AR, with originals, you are playing some complex stuff right there---. As I am sure you have heard, playing one gig is worth like 10x basement practice. Have no fear, cause as you aleady have discovered, what you as a musician hears, and what the crowd hears, can be two different things.