How difficult is it to find like minded bods?

Kell

Heres a question for anyone in or joning or just left a band. I have been through the mill with a few bands over the last ten years and have recently given up playing (drums). Sold my kit. Worst decision of my life. Anyway, I hasten on.

Why the flock is it that at some stage in a bands progression, you'll take a direction and one musician says- "Fúck that, I'd rather be home makin cheese"? Also, why do we as musicians (or ex ones for that matter), not give respect to eachothers notions?

I never understood why people look at eachother and ask them to play differently. For example, I like to play odd rhythm patterns and people that I have played with in the past have gone- "err, your timing is fúcking me up" even though it is played correctly. Does no-one else understand that music is not confined to 4/4? Is it a reflection that the guitarist/bassist/singer is not as adept as they would like to think? I think if the musician is good enough, he or she should only have to worry about the part they are playing in the song and not what everyone else is doing unless it is WRONG. My whole take has always been "if you keep to the markers and parameters of the song, who gives a flock what your playing". NOTE: Drummers are particularly prone to being asked to play differently. Ask any drummer and they will agree. We're not supposed to have any input ye see. Just sit and hold a beat.

I'd like to hear everyone elses opinions on this to see what your perceptions are on creating music and why there is so much disparity of notions between musicians. Maybe then I might just buy another kit and give it a whirl if some of us share the same ideas. Like one of those new Pearl Masters Retrospec kits............mmmmnnnnnnn.......

Cheers.

K-

feylya

I think it's the same as people getting stuck in certain genres and styles of music. They don't want to change. They want to play what they know in a way they know. Some just don't want to be challenged or be different. They fear change.

Giblet

Some people get bored of the same routine, while others like to stick to a given genre because they like it too much, or its all they know.
I think taking breaks from bands that are going nowhere fast is the only way to keep them alive, if it's even worth staying in the band.

You need to be constantly active in the band, playing gigs, hopefully getting good money from them (not getting paid for a gig is the biggest cause of tension in a band, because you get sick of going through all the effort for nothing)
And you need to keep writing songs and making demos.

Thats all hard work, which is why many bands fail in the opening year.

The best thing to do would be to start with a bunch of mates you know will stick with it, as these bands seem to be the most successful.
Write a few songs, play some gigs, and make a demo as soon as possible, no matter what quality. If the songs are good, you could send them to venues and actually get paid for the gigs!

This will allow you to get more studio time, and better demos, which can be sent to record companys and radio stations and the like.

Well thats the plan anyway, but it never works out like that unless you stick with the band, and write good songs.

Jaicster

I think all bands even the real famous ones go through a rocky patch and in all areas of life people will conflict due to many reasons. Remember a band is only part of someone's life, but for some people the band is their life and heres where problems start. In short i think finding likeminded people is easy, but not all of them are musicians.

(Story Part)
The funny'st case of this i hear of was a band paid for studio time, they set/tuned up their gear in double time, the guitarist arrived 20mins late and spent ages tuning. They praccy'd a song and it went well enough, the singer wanted to try the song with a different tempo in a certain part, the guitarist sat there oblivious "noodling" purple haze on the guitar and when asked did you hear that, he "mmm'd" and continued to mess around on guitar. The singer jumped across the room and punched him in the face, with blood now flowing down his face the guitarist fired his guitar up into the singers crotch.
At this point the other band members broke it up, Then they got thrown out of the studio.
The result was
2 hospital trips (1 broken nose and 1 crushed nut)
and 1 broken up band

I'm sure lots of factors lead up to what happened.

Personally, i would let a drummer/ other musician do what ever the fork they want to do, so long as they let me do what ever i want to do on guitar.
Of course there are exceptions, i'd voice my opinions if i thought a bit didn't suit the song if or if it was simply bad and i'd want that back from the others too.

(My Final Thought)
Sure it would be great to have everyone in the band, likeminded and focused on the same thing, but i think its peoples contrasting tastes/styles that produce new original music. If every1 was heading in the same direction you might get a generic sound, thats not to say that would be bad, i just think there are advantages/disadvantages to everything.

Take care of your self ... and each other

juno75

Man dont give up.

I got seriously sidetracked in life /music and ended up just stopping playig guitar, got rid of the instruments.

roll on 2 years of sh!t which looking back was becase the little thing inside you just wont stop saying 'i wanna play ,i wanna play, i wanna play'

If your heart is truely in music then you just cant deny that side of your self.

Last year I bough my fave guitar.Practiced like a loon for this last
year. Now I got a little 3 piece going that the best thing I ve ever been involved in.
Being only 3 makes life soo easy - no clashing egos like the nut/nose incident.
I have found that working with the KISS principle (keep it sweet and simple) is really working. We are going to devolop surely
but just cut of all the fat from where ever you can with FX/gadgets/people/egos and its really paying off for us.

early days I suppose but DONT GIVE UP!!!!!!!!!

Fusion251

Man get yourself a new kit, and you've got yourself a guitarist!

I play a lot of odd metre stuff now, transposing some Steve Coleman solo's at the minute. I think that a lot of people in bands just aren't into it enough to go out and play gigs with odd feels and things that aren't the norm, it takes guts to go to a pub or club and play some crazy odd metre stuff, because it's unlikley you'll get a crowd to understand what you're doin. A lot of people just stick to what they know.

Unfortunatly I am not one of them and have to go and find things I don't know in order to develop....

I think you should get the drums again man, get some odd grooves goin!!

Oh yeah in case anyone doesen't know this, there is a great website that has loads of Steve Colemans Mp3's, check it out!!

www.m-base.com

ferdi

so its like..."hmm, i've been playing and loving this music for years but have found it some what boring over the last while...oh my god, i'd better sell my instrument quick!!!"

buy that sh!t back

Specky

I think it's probably a common story of dissillusionment that happens to many people.

I was originally a trumpet player, played lots of classical stuff then drifted into jazz by which time I started composing, all sorts of stuff from small orchestral things to rock to atonal "banging things off each other" type music.

Taught myself the guitar more as a compositional tool than anything else then ditto for piano.

Never had a lot of interest in playing covers or "copying" what anyone else was doing and as a result I never really learned any of the "standards" when I was younger but concentrated on making the instruments do what I wanted them to do.

Unfortunately there's not a lot of call for that sort of thing, even when you're just jamming with people, they always want to play stuff you hear on the radio instead of just improvising and seeing what comes out. OK so you have to have some sort of frame of reference that you can all relate to but in my mind that should come from ideas you can express not from "who's your favourite band" stuff.

You also have to play covers if you want to get gigs.

As a result I ended up packing in a lot of the improvisational stuff and learning all the usual stuff just so I could play in a band with people who didn't look at me like I had ten heads...as a result I think I've lost a lot of the freedom to express things that I used to have. But if I'd carried on banging bits of metal off each other I'd have been in creative bliss.....on my own!

When you play music you have to decide for yourself where you want to make the balance between what you do for yourself and what you do for the audience/other band members.

If you're just doing what you want to do then it is possible to lapse into musical masturbation (that's not to say that there aren't people around who would like to watch you masturbate by the way!). If you're just doing what the audience want to hear then it's creative sterility....

On your question of playing around with the music I basically agree with you that you should be able to play pretty much what you want to play as long as it's within context. With each piece of music you decide on a "style" or a "context" you're going to play in and it's important that everyone stays to the same context most of the time. In a good band where people are listening to each other while they play you can change the context while you are playing but in bands where members don't listen or don't have any respect for each other's ideas you can just end up sounding out of place if you try to do something different.

Getting a bunch of people together to form a band isn't like finding a wife...it's harder than that! It's about respect for each other's ideas and abilities. The band is the instrument, the players make it work. It can't just be a collection of soloists who just happen to be all playing at the same time in the same place.

There is an audience for more 'off the wall' music, but it's not a large audience and as a result you're unlikely to get gigs anywhere where the landlord is looking to boost his takings over the bar when there's a band playing.

The bottom line is that you can't give up playing just because you don't play like everyone else or because you like to play stuff nobody else likes. If we all give up then Louis Walsh will have won, and we cannot let that happen