Starting a Band
 

Hello everyone. I am a beginner guitarist, and I'm trying to become good enough to start a band with my 2 best friends, one of which is going to play bass and the other will be on drums.

We're all in different high schools right now, so I think we're all going to spend our time honing our individual skills up till graduation and then all go to the same college. There we'll spend time learning to synchronize our instruments and voices and hopefully come up with at least a few good original songs.

If anyone who reads this is an experienced band member, tips would be apprciated (things to watch out for, best way to advertise yourselves, etc.)

The following are our main positions in the band, although we will probably change things around occasionally:

Me: Lead Guitarist, Primary Song Writer, Primary Lead Singer
Friend A: Drummer, Co-song Writer, Backing Vocals, Co-lead Singer
Friend B: Bassist, Co-song Writer, Backing Vocals

Just learn to play three chords really really fast. The drummer can learn one beat. And the bassist doesn't really have to play since he can be drowned out by your vocals, guitar and drums. You'll be number 1 on the charts in no time.

my advice would be to join someone else's band first.....so you'll know how things work.....

Here's some advice. Don't qualify songwriting duties with 'primary' and 'secondary'. The songwriting process shouldn't be so contrived.

Haha, aint that the truth!

Cover Ramones songs to start off. They're both easy and catchy.

Oh lol, but I want to be good. I'm not sure I'd even want to be on TV, I'm more interested in live performance.

Don't piss off admins on a music forum for starting two threads on what your band name should be.

Sorry dude, don't know how else to say it. The fact is, I write songs a lot and send my best material to my friends for their judgement. The drummer almost never writes songs and the bassist's occasional lyrical content, though good, we both consider too pheminen and emo most of the time.

Thanks, I do plan to go for it. I've been wanting to make music for a long time. I don't plan to kick out the current "members" since we're long time best friends and we all share a passion for music. Even if one of us has a really slow learning curb with our instrument the others will be patient and supportive until he finds his niche. Additional members who come along we might be willing to kick out though.

Isn't it hard composing music for 3 guitars?

If you want to focus on the live performance then my personal preference is this: If you're the main vocalist give up the guitar and focus on singing. My personal thought is that a singer that can run around with a mic in hand going from one end of the stage to the other and somone that is just mobile can bring more energy to the stage than somone stuck behind a mic stand with a guitar. Don't get me wrong, I've seen it done, just the majority of the time it's better when the singer can be mobile. Also since you're just now learning you would be so focused on getting chords right you would probably look awkward standing behind the stand staring at the neck of the guitar. That is painful to watch...

Lol yeah dude, it'll be a few years before I do anything in public. I'd rather give up lead vocals thn guitar though. I'm a good singer, so if I can train to the point where the notes come naturally to me and I don't have to stare at my guitar, I'll do both. It is a very real possibility that I might have to consider forfeiting one role for the other.

Thank you all for the advice.

If you do have a singer who only has a mic in his hand he better be a badass and full of energy. Otherwise it's just a waste.

Then I'm better off with a guitar, singing or not. I'm mellow, and wouldn't bring much energy to a stage singing alone.

An additional question: How hard is it to sing while drumming?

Depends on if you're wanting a simple beat for drums or some insane playing.

make the drummer learn jazz and heavy metal drums
make the basist learn jazz and classical bass
and you urself learn blues and rock guitar...possibly jazz

why jazz so much?
cuz good jazz players are friggin gnar
good rock players are typically....eh.....
and for bass...he's gotta know some classical stuff. i mean...lookit the bassist for The Who!

Or, you could practice until you become solid at everything so you can acctually be a good player. Jazz, metal, blues and rock aren't the only genres there is, so don't limit yourself.

Personally I'd want a steady beat with the occasional touch like the stylized drumroll, however it is not my instrument. I'll have to ask our drummer-to-be what sound he's going for next time I get to talk with him.

Actually... I once made a list of every style I'd like to be able to play. I came up with stuff like light rock, funk rock, punk rock, grunge rock... something I noticed is every genre I came up with ends with "rock". However metal seems difficult so I should eventually try to learn that for technical purposes, and of course I'm trying my hand at jazz right now since its not as hard to play. Country's supposed to be fairly easy but I dislike most country songs.

i was just talking in terms of a general starting point. what ur talking about is what i'm trying to do right now, but you probably wanna start somewhere and have a point of focus as to what you try to learn. if you spread urself too thin too fast it'll take a lot longer to learn everything.

One of the most difficult aspects of it for me is just remembering all the notes. I have to keep going over the same guitar sections to drill them into my head. Something cool I noticed though is that now when I hear guitar on the radio I can sorta pick up on what they're doing to create a riff. Most of you can probaly do this easily, but for me its improvement.

lol as a classically trained musician (as in classical piano, trumpet, and french horn) i tend to like to learn a whole solo by someone else note for note

btu there is a LOT of fun to be had in improvising.


and what ur talking about there is relative pitch
the fact that ur developing it is really good for playing and comes in handy in almost all areas of music
and just because u're just figuring it out doesnt make you any less. every musician has to figure it out at some point if they wanna play. On top of that, it also means ur not tone deaf, which is also a plus.

Well thank you for the encouragement man.

Just go for it...listen and transcribe ...

Go find the Pick of Destiny

or learn beatles songs.
and van morrison songs.
as far as i can tell those are the BEST songs to start off with a group...because they're easy to simplify and still make sound good, they're acessable....or something along that spelling, and they're just plain fun. Use those songs to tighten up and ur good to go!