Irritating Band Mates

[Destrio]

To start it off, some background information, all of our band mates are in the 14-16 age range, we started about a year and a half ago (juneish last year) with me (bass) and my friend on lead guitar, our other friend who played guitar (rhythm) joined with us very soon afterwards (maybe a week or so). When we started talking about it at school, another one of our friends said "hey, i played the drums a while back, I'll get into it again and start taking lessons again"

within a month everyone was doing reasonably good and we had 2-3 songs we jammed too when we practiced. As months progressed we noticed some jam sessions consisted of us (namely our rhythm guitarist and drummer) just playing our own stuff and almost *practicing* their instrument there, when they shoujld have done that at home, obviously. This got progressively worse when we got to the begininning of summer. By then we had ditched a bunch of our songs, and really only had one song we could play all the way through (an original).. When talking about the band early that summer, one of my friends mentioned that he used to sing in choir or something a year or so ago, we said "come sing for us" maybe jokingly, maybe not, im not really sure, but I kept saying to him, "you really shud atleast try it out, see how you sound," cause he was really unsure of himself. We decided to cover a song (Fade to black by metallica), after playing it a few times it sounded very good. that was about all we accomplished during the summer, aside from our drummer forgetting his beat for our one original...
in the beginning of september we have started to work on another original which we havent gotten much more progress with since, me and the lead guitar player have all the parts we need and we are working on a meledy with the vocalist, its a little hard to progress though when your drummer isnt doing anything while we play it and our rhythm guitar player doesnt help...

Do you think we have a problem?? or is this normal?

Basically, our last practice went like this (not to different from the majority of recent practices): we play fade to black, we try to play a new cover but it gets **** up by our r-guitarist or durmmer going off beat completely, we try to work on an original or get something done but r-guitarist and drummer just paly random **** and we cant even converse, we will usually have to go outside and talk to get more done, and often, they will just walk out and leave, which is totally unacceptable...

Also, we have another guitarist friend who is a BETTER drum player than our drummer, unfortunately he is quite busy and is in 5 bands ATM, so he can only jam with us sometimes, but we have almost written more snogs with him than with our real drummes :s

IF you actually read all this please comment, we are stuck of what to do, the guitarist and drummer are good friends, yet they are holding us back, our guitarist seems serious about it, and the drummer says that he is always practicing and serious about it (it is obvious he doesnt practice ofter, if at all, as he has gotten worse at drumming since he got his new computer... he can barely keep a steady beat half the time).

Thanks

 

[Deliverance666]

A band I was in a while ago was just like that. Everyone just played what they wanted to and no one could actually hear me when I wanted to try to play a song or something. It kinda sucked. It stopped being fun and just got annoying.
I'd have to say that the main thing about being in a band at your age is having fun. Are you having fun? If so, then it should be fine. If you're not and you just get irritated all the time, then that's not fine. Chances are, being only 14-16 years old, you probably won't get famous anytime soon. In the meantime, just try to have fun.
I hope I helped you. I'm not some stereotypical old person either lol. I'm 15 and I've been in the situation before. What I did? I quit with my friend Leah (and we ended up going out. We're still going out now, like 8 months later [I'm sure you don't care lol]).

Bottom line: Have fun.

I hope it works out for ya.

 

[The Grimace]

Don't let your age be an excuse to not take music seriously. By the time I was 16, I had recorded in a studio, had my music on the radio, and played shows out of town.

Steps for a functioning band:

1. Figure out who the least talented/least contributing people are, and don't let them have any input on the songs. Generic players have to know their place, or else you end up stumbling over them.
2. Buy a recorder and borrow a drum machine or synth and demo all your songs yourself. Then bring them to the others and say 'this is how it goes, learn it'.
3. Don't wait around to write/jam because someone else can't come. Fuck them.
4. Always be talking to and jamming with other musicians. You may end up finding a good combination that you never expected. But don't start firing people because someone else seems better. Your band should never be making more enemies than friends.
5. If any of your bandmates bitch about the way they are being treated, then tell them to give you a reason to not be that way. If they continue to suck and not care, then fuck them.

 

[Enmity]

Getting along with your band members is absolutely essential to a band's success. If there is conflict in a band it'll put extra stress on everyone in the band. I've quit bands because of unresolvable personal conflicts. I've also had to remove members of bands because they couldn't play songs or they just didn't practice enough. At your age you'll notice a lot of people want to be in bands, but they don't want to dedicate the time needed to better themselves as musicians or to the band. A drummer that can keep and is consistant time is absolutely essential to metal and nothing is more annoying than a drummer who changes tempos or drops beats with every pattern change.

Have a face to face conversation with the troublesome / nonproductice members and just tell him that you would really like it if they started working a lot more with the songs on their own time. They might get angry or defensive but just stand your ground. Remind them at your practices about practicing on their own time (you can even do it by saying how you practice a lot on the songs, they might think "Oh I should do that too"). If a month goes by and you're seeing no improvement then just assume that they're not interested and either let them go or start looking for a new drummer / guitarist.

I've found that writing sessions with productive / writing members of the band work out really well. Then you both can go to practice and show the stuff you guys came up with to the other members and then really work on making the song click together. Practice is saved for working on already written material and getting it rep'd unless all the members of the band participate in the writing process. Otherwise you have to deal with half the band working on new stuff and the other half sitting around playing on their instruments (this is especially troublesome with drummers since they make lots of noise being an acoustic instrument and all). I find it best to just have a 'everyone stop' gesture to talk during practice, otherwise it is impossible to communicate.

If the troublesome members don't improve, its probably best to get rid of them and find people interested in being a part of a band and willing to dedicate time to their instrument.

(sorry about the long post)

edit- I agree with a lot of what The Grimace said in his post. That's a great way to deal with troublesome members, though usually that will lead to them wanting to quit the band (sometimes that's a good thing).

 

[slaesh]

been in the same situation dude,... ther are just 2 answers:

1. tell who annoys you to fuck off
2. quit!

i chose nr. 2.

remember that sometimes the most talented musician is not always
the best for YOUR band.. chemistry and a goal that everyone is striving towards
is the key a bandsuccess (not fucking mtv success but successful rehearsals, gigs etc.)..

 

[Hexer]

we had a similar situation some months ago when we still had our ex-singer and a different drummer.
at first we were a band of 3 (me: guitar+vocals, a friend: bass, a friend: guitar/drums). we were after something pretty much in the Black/Death area. then someday we had the idea of also using female vocals and as our bassist knew a girl who can sing really good, she was in and she even knew a drummer for us, so we were complete now. we got one song done that was quite good, but more like gothic-style than anything else. we didn't have a problem with that, but also wanted to do heavier stuff. soon we noticed, that our singer and drummer didnt seem to really want to get any heavier (or even made problems when the singer was supposed to sing lyrics she hadn't written herself). also, the drummer was VERY hard to get in contact with. our bassist ended up with writing him letters and giving them to the drummers girlfriend at school (fuck, if the guy had died suddenly we wouldn't even have noticed....). also those 2 did not seem to take band-rehearsals as serious as we did and we didn't get anything new done.
it ended up with the singer leaving because of the musical differences and we never heard anything from the drummer again....
so I went back to doing the vocals in addition to my guitar job, we got a new drummer (our other guitarrist knew one) and a 3rd guitarrist and now everything works much better. we have some 8 songs ready (including 2 covers) and a lot of material for new songs and our style is much closer to the original idea (though we DO have melodies *g*). we even managed to play 2 gigs and got very good responce from the people.

what I want to say: if the band doesn't work like it is, maybe you really have to change the lineup or have some serious talk with the members you have problems with.

what I also did during that period: as I wanted to play heavier stuff, I just started to use the stuff I wrote for my own little side-project while staying in the band, but I dont think that this is what you want.

 

[Leper_/-\ffinity]

Yeah, if you're not a bunch of professional musicians, it's almost impossible to write quality music at a band rehearsal, which is why I make demos all by myself of songs (program drums, record bass/guitars), let them listen to it, and we go from there in terms of adding/changing stuff. That way everyone knows the original thought.

 

[Nefarious_]

You all got to find your place in the band. I'm a composer, but I'm a bass player, so my duties consist of making lead riffs sound better by choosing which root notes to play underneath, and therefore which implied chords we use. I can alter pretty much the whole tonality of song should I choose to. I'm very good at fitting with and around other parts. The other band members know that they don't need to write any bass parts for me.

Basically in my band, the guitarists write most of the stuff and it starts out just as a collection of lead riffs, we all then have an input on the song and it all gets changed around until everyone is happy with it. Compromise will weaken the material, but try out everyone's ideas first to see how they sound before you say no to them. The drummer writes all his own parts, but he also acts as an arranger and is at least partly responsible for the end structure of every song, and everyone else is ok with this because we know he has a good ear for how a song should flow. Aside from musical stuff, people have other roles in the band, I'm peacemaker in my band I make sure no one (particularly the guitarists) gets their oversized ego bruised.

 

[Hexer]

when it comes to actuall song-writing we also don't really do very much during rehearsals. most stuff is written at home with GuitarPro. some songs are written by a single person, others are written partly and then completed by other band-members. during rehearsals we mostly only do small improvements and stuff like that

 

[Enmity]

The two bands I'm in currently have two very different writing styles.

The one I play guitar in usually involves me and the other guitar player meeting on a different day of the week and going through ideas we have and trying to formulate them into songs. We get a basic structure down and then one of us sits down and records the riffs to a click track (sometimes with harmonies, sometimes without) and then we pass them around to the other band members or show them at practice and have them start coming up with their parts on the spot.

For the band I play bass in almost all of our material is written on the spot. The drummer has a good array of different beats so he's able to drum out the main song writers ideas (they've been jamming for a while together so they communicate really well). The main song writer will start playing a part, I'll pick it up and figure out a bassline (unless he has something in mind which is usually 50% of the time). And then we'll play the passage combined with the other sections we have. Then we'll figure out what needs to be changed and play it again with the altered parts. This takes a lot more time, but it really helps with tightening up the music and getting used to the other parts (especially since the two guitars and bass are all doing different parts).

 

[Infinity Cubed]

It's worse when your bandmates are all older than you and are not content with the style of music the frontman wants to play, thus they attempt to take control of the band. I recently had to kick my old guitar player out because he tried to turn my kick-ass prog metal band into a retro 80's hair band. I asked him for distorted, melodic, evil-sounding guitar solos and he wrote high-pitched, blindingly fast arpeggiated solos like in Zeppelin, which was not the sound I was going for. Eventually he pissed everybody else in the band off and we kicked him the fuck out. But we have a new, more talented guitar player who is more in tune with what we want to accomplish as a band, soundwise.

The moral of the story: Controlling retards who don't listen = not bandworthy

 

[slaesh]

i don't think it matters if you use guitarpro to write songs cause when you taught the band the song it won't sound as you have had in mind anyway..

in my band we have a kind of situation..
our music is basically Metallica a Kill em all to master..
and whil most of us want's to get more "technical" if you know what i mean
the frontman leans more towards motörhead kind of stuff...

don't know how to solve this, was thinking about just quitting at first but decided to se what is happening..

anyway, i think the most important thing is that the guitarist's (if two) have the same kind of music in mind when writing since metal is pretty guitar dominating.. that way the only way to get dirty is if someone tries to fuck it up, which is exactly what our bass/vocalist is trying to do..

 

[slaesh]

and fuck the "solo rule" man.. i tell you that it can maske a song worse instead of better sometimes..

don't be afraid of trying the other's ideas, even if it's your song, a band should be a democracy or else you'll end up like yngwie.. (not playing like him unfortunately)

 

[AARRGGHHH]

Luckily I haven't had too much of a problem with this kind of stuff in bands.

I feel really fortunate to be in a band with these people. We are all good friends and get along really well in a practise situation. No major ego's here.

In terms of how we tend to write the music. Sometimes one of us, mainly me or the singer, comes up with a whole song and bring it in. We listen to it and then discuss what we could do with it. Change any bits that need changing and do a proper arrangement of it with everyone there. I tend to insist that we do that, even if its a song I wrote all of. It's a band after all.
Although what we mostly do is someof us will write sections, like a complete section or just a couple of riffs that fit together well and sound good. We bring these in the practice and decide what we want to work with. This will then tend to be either the intro or a section near the begining of the song.
Then we will think about something to go next, and how we can structure it for some vocals and motifs. After this we tend to go off on one and end up extending the song quite a bit until we descide it's time to bring a motif back in or maybe another section that was written before. After we make our way back to that we play about with a couple more ideas, write an intro/outro if it needs it and arrange it.
It's a great way to work imo, but when we set out for writing a certain type of song it tends to come out differently.
The last time we set out to write a "Short fast song" it ended up having a really cool chilled out middle section. If I remember correctly its about 7 or 8 minutes long.

 

[ShadowOfDeath]

I'm also in this situation. It's been 3 years and the band has gone NO WHERE! At first the band went pretty well...then we decided for a second guitarist. It went down hill from there. First off, our drummer was close friends with a stoner that would come to his house everyday and do nothing but ruin practice. He'd flip out and all the other band members think of it as funny. That new guitarist did nothing but play fucking metallica solos...which triggered the drummer to play insane/shit drums that have no musical connection going around.

People would sit in to watch and annoy the fuck out of us trying to play thus we sounded like shit. I was the only one to get distracted.

I would quit but this is MY BAND! I've done everything to make the band happen. If I quit the band is dead. I wrote EVERYTHING, and I'm in love with the band name and if I quit, I lose the name. I made logos. I bought recording equipment, and everyone fucked things up. I spent a lot of time working on material and will probably say fuck it. I've been asked to try a new band with the bassist, a new drummer, and new vocalist. Hopefully this band will be more serious and I won't be the only one who does anything to make the band happen. As for my current band, I'll probably tell the other members to let's just quit the band altogether and keep the name for safe keeping if I find other musicians to work with or decide to record everything alone with a drum machine.

My advice from the story is be a solo musician. Bands fuck everything up. If you have a vision of your own don't let people fuck it up. Just write your music. Record a demo. Send it to a few labels and do everything yourself. Unless you want to play live or something don't let anyone in. My band apocalypse has a live drummer and bassist who will do exactly what I tell them to play because they know I wrote it all myself and there is no fucking with my vision. If they want to write music they can put their own visions into that. My friends and I get along well though.

 

[Erik]

^ Heed this advice, someone with the artistic vision to write "Upon the Crimson Rivers" obviously knows what he's talking about

 

[Ayeka]

Have a face to face conversation with the troublesome / nonproductice members and just tell him that you would really like it if they started working a lot more with the songs on their own time. They might get angry or defensive but just stand your ground. Remind them at your practices about practicing on their own time (you can even do it by saying how you practice a lot on the songs, they might think "Oh I should do that too"). If a month goes by and you're seeing no improvement then just assume that they're not interested and either let them go or start looking for a new drummer / guitarist.

I completely agree with this stance. If those guys are holding you back, then you've got no reason to keep them. Guitarists are two a penny, and you can use a drum machine if desperately necessary. Give them a chance to sort themselves out, if they don't, turf them out immediately.

Problematic bandmates have been the bane of my life. My last proper band never left the bedroom after 18 months because of lazy, selfish pricks. We had...

• A singer/guitarist who attended two practises in four months. He later claimed he'd been depressed, me and the other guy figured he was just getting stoned. Probably both. Watch out for stoners in your band, the lazy two-faced types shouldn't be tolerated
• A lead guitarist who started off very enthusiastic but rapidly lost it when I wouldn't let him wrest creative control from me. I taught him a short, simple original and he started complaining, saying it should be longer, more complicated, more solos. I told him he'd missed the point and should just play the goddamn songs. When it came to other, unfinished originals, suddenly he couldn't deliver the goods. Couldn't write a thing. He later said he wanted to do more blues/funk style stuff. I laughed in his face and told him to fuck off. He had his chance to contribute to songwriting, he blew it. No way was I gonna have him turn us into a Red Hot Chilli Peppers cover band
• A singer who left to join the circus. Not actually a problem, still one of my best mates, but looking back on it still cracks me up
• Another stoner guitarist who missed a month's worth of practises, then flaked when I told him we had a gig coming up
• Drummers were the best. Our first spent a month dithering about whether he should actually join, our second missed a practise getting his clothes from the police station, our third flaked out three or four times over the time we were together, after that it becomes a mess...one was depressed and on medication and never turned up to practise, another was having charges pressed against him by police, the rest were just flaking bullshitters
• There was also a singer who never turned up to practise despite repeated phone calls all the way up to the night before our first gig...
• ...and finally, on the night before said gig, my rhythm guitarist and only consistant band member had his arm broken by a friend whose band was also making their live debut the next day
• I perservered, but split the band up two months later

End of the day, if someone don't pull their weight, get rid of them.