TShirtSlayer Heavy Metal Merch Gallery
  • Bands (0)
  • Groups (0)
  • Members (0)
  • (X)

World's largest community of heavy metal tshirt and battlejacket collectors.

Forums > All other metal related talk..

Band advice

lambofgodfan00
Wed, 08/07/2020 - 01:54

Anybody know how to keep bandmates? I know it sounds really dumb to ask, but how do you do it?

I'll be jamming with friends or people I've met, we click and agree to really get going, but then they either ghost, move or suddenly have another band going. I understand already being in a few different bands before we jammed, but still. I'm also the one who is always trying to get practice set and going.

Been trying to get a band together for so long. Finally have a drummer, but since Covid hit he's been self-isolating as well as doing some other work.

I'm very frustrated, since I always feel on the edge of really moving the project forward, but then it stalls or goes back to square one. Probably doesn't help that I live an hour away from my state's major city.

Delete topic if needed.


bad_american1992's picture

Being in a band is tough dude. Getting people away from Netflix to show up and practice takes serious effort. My advice would be make sure you and your band mates are doing stuff outside of practicing like going to shows, hikes, etc. The Beastie Boys said in an interview "A band that cooks together stays together" and I think it's great advice. Drugs and booze are a blast but can make people lazy and unproductive so maybe and keep those on the sidelines for now. Maybe start learning drums yourself? Every drummer I know in Seattle seems to be in 3-4 different bands so you may not get to be Sir Shredsalot but it could also open more doors. Just my two cents!

MorticiA's picture

I've been stewing to try and think of some advice for a few days now, but Bad American 92 summed things up quite well.

Yea, being in a band is tough. Speaking as a jack of all trades in the art world, it's easily the hardest to maintain. It would seem that life truly gets in the way for bands and presents the most road blocks. The advice from the Beastie Boys seems pretty good though, if I do say so myself.

Also, from what I've seen most drummers that I've ran into are in multiple bands, it's just the way the world works because they're always in demand. For every one drummer there's like 5+ guitarists (hell the ratio might be bigger than that.) Heck my bassist and drummer were in a band together prior to mine, and still continued on after my Band had to halt because I had attained a new job that literally sucked up ALL my time; no joke, ALL of it, no time for a lover, no time for fun, no time for friends, and it very nearly killed off the artist inside of me in all artistic fields. LITERALLY... Life's a stern unforgiving bitch...

I guess it comes down to something to what Wayne from Waynes World said: "it wasn't meant to be." Ask your drummer if he'd be interesting jamming online, believe it or not there are websites that allow for online jamming and make great use of latency between both people, if you're interested I can try digging them up from my old emails. You may have to get a 1/4in input to USB for this, and there's all kinds of different manufacturers out there so read reviews before you buy; often times you get what you pay for. Though, I had really good results with the old M-Audio Jamlab, especially on my MAC, but stuff like Audacity for PC it just created more headaches with latency (it may work like a charm with another audio program that's geared towards music production.

NuclearAbuse's picture

I've been a band for 2-3 years.

Do fun things outside the band with them, connect with them to the point where it's not just, "oh me and my bandmates", "This is my guitar player", I can't stand people who say that, terms like that are for people who pay others to play for them. A band is a brotherhood.

Laugh, joke, with them,every conversation does not have to be about music. Most importantly be super comfortable with calling them out on there shit, have reasonable points to disagree amongst eachother without it causing some mass uproar.

To sum this up, building personal connections, will in some way help your music/friend circle

Thane's picture

What state are you in? I'm hoping to pick up either guitar or bass again soon and I'm a dedicated individual haha

NuclearAbuse's picture

California.

Thane's picture

Damn haha I'm in Idaho

UnsafeAtAnySpeed's picture

What do you want out of this band? If you truly want to be succesfull then the sad reality is that you are going to have to cut some people off. Time doesn't wait for anyone, and if your drummer is so afraid that he'll catch corona by stepping into a room with 3-4 other people, then he's going to be ill-prepared for playing gigs when the pandemic ends. You are going to waste precious time trying to get him up to speed.

What others have said about hanging out as friends outside band practice is all well and good, but remember to keep your eye on the ball too. If people start to just associate the band with "hanging out with my homies"-time, then things are going to get very unprofessional fast.

Make sure you have plenty of prepared material to work with. Jamming is all well and good, but only if there is a point to it. For example you can tell the band that you have a riff written, and that you want to have expanded it to an entire section at the end of todays practice. Then you have new material to work with next time.

Establish goals and deadlines. Have at least one song written every month, go in to the studio at the end of the year, aim to be featured in this website/fanzine, etc.

Lastly the most important tip i can give you: It's not a level playing field. Some bands make it, some never make it out of the garage. The only thing you can do is to keep trying, keep trying, keep trying and always learn from both your mistakes and achievements.

Comella77's picture

Totally agree with you UnsafeAtAnySpeed !!!

nameless_rites's picture

Learn how to identify and avoid unreliable people. In my experience, most projects come to nothing because musicians are either flaky, incompetent, drug/alcohol dysfunctional, or in 4-5 different bands at once. If they don’t have their shit together, don’t have musical ideas/inspiration, can’t budget their time, are willing to settle for subpar performances, can’t get off the couch etc - don’t bother. At all. After the second or third lame excuse you should already be packing up the gear. You ever wonder why terrible bands like Nickelback make it? Because all the guys in the band bothered to show up and pull weight. Serious people make things happen quickly, and will typically have a “portfolio” of previous projects or at least some recording samples. If they don’t have anything to their name, there’s a good chance they just want to “hang out and jam” for eternity, and should not be bothered with.

Learn to play multiple instruments and do home recordings.

lambofgodfan00's picture

Thanks for the replies everybody. I know I'm responding way later, but the advice has been helpful and I'm actively following on it.

I wrote this at a time when I was not only frustrated but in a bad place mentally as well. I realized that the people I've jammed with were in one or two of the situations listed by both nameless_rites and UnsafeAtAnySpeed. I also realized in hindsight that "let's jam" is not the best way to say you want to form a serious band to people.

Cases have gone down significantly in my area to where people are starting to get back to practicing with their bands or others are trying to form them/find one and I'll be open and looking. I'm also downloading cakewalk and will be making full demos from guitar material I've already recorded on my phone as something to put out there and link up to. I can play drums, but it's been a while.

Thanks again you guys.

568,383 items in the gallery, 881,020 comments, and 554 items have changed hands in the last month.

Guess this TShirt!

Can you guess which metal tshirt this is from?

Can you guess which metal TShirt this is from? Click here for all previous tshirt guesses

Recent Comments