Joining a band

Hey Axe -

Glad to hear there is still hope on getting your gear back. Hopefully these guys slipped up and they can track them down.

Sure, there is no substitute for playing in a band. With the technology today and the quality of backing tracks you can find on the internet, it surprised me how satisfying it is to play and record over backing tracks.

I had to laugh at your comment on throwing picks into the crowd! They've recorded video of other performances and put them on the store's website. If they do that with our performance, I'll definitely put a link here.

Assuming the weather holds out, our first practice is tomorrow night. I'm nervous and anxious at the same time :-).

We just bring our instruments and leave our amp at home. That's fine because I don't need to be lugging my amp - too heavy! I'm hoping they have decent amps for us to use.

I'm still torn as to which guitar to bring. I think I'll bring my strat for the first practice session and go from there.

Cheers!
Rich

For those that might be following my saga...

Tonight is our second practice. It was pretty amazing how much progress we were able to make in just 1 hour with "Wild Night". Even though I didn't touch the song for almost a week, I now have the song committed to memory. We never got to the solo part. We'll see how that goes. I wasn't totally happy with what I came up with improvising...we'll see what they think.

Our next song that we will start practicing tonight is the Black Crowes version of "Hard to Handle". I could only start working on that last night so I haven't been able to get a handle on the solo. It's a fun song to play with some rhythmic goodness! It will be interesting to see how we can pull it off as a band.

An unexpected frustration is not being able to hear what I'm playing. I had the same problem when I played acoustic guitar in the church choir, but that was understandable. Hopefully tonight we can get that sorted out. I understand the guitars shouldn't be overwhelming, but I should be able to hear what I'm playing. I either need to turn my volume up or have a stage monitor.

Also, we didn't have time to just jam. To me, that's a great way to have fun and get to know eachother musically. Our mentor didn't seem to have any interest in having us jam for a bit.

Our mentor is doing a great job of helping us work through the song as a band, helping us work out everything section by section. It's good to have a 3rd party to do that. He was using a cowbell to help us keep time together. The "this song needs more cowbell" reference was lost on all but me...:-(.

One dissapointment is that there is very little intersection on the songs we know. Nobody is interested in playing any Beatles songs :-(. I could understand if they were younger than me, but they are all older! This makes the band feel disjointed...but this may change as time goes on. I'm still holding out hope for either "China Grove", "Listen to the Music", or "I Shot the Sheriff".

I solved the tuning problems on my Les Paul with some pencil lead dust on the nut, so tonight it's humbuckers. I have a better reach on this guitar, so it should be better all around.

Sounds like its going well Rich! I guess not jamming, not getting to play exactly what you want is a trade off in that the mentor wants to keep you moving forward... "Hard to Handle" would end if for me... that song got so much airplay in my home town when it came it out, it strongly resides in the "dear lord, not again" category. China Grove is great tune! Actually, all three of the songs you mention I think would be better choices, but that's just me. At least for now you can just see if you can tap into your skill set, play your part, and see if it comes together.

I feel ya on the not being able to hear yourself thing. I remember long ago our band had a drummer who said "dude, I like to POUND!" drowning me out. That is, until I showed up with ear plugs and a JCM 100w Marshall half-stack. "Sure I'll turn down, if you'll play quieter.... " muahahaha!

Keep us posted!

Thanks for the laugh!! What I need is an amp that goes to 11 :-). I could bring a small model of stonehenge, but that reference would probably be lost too :-(.

Despite the tradeoffs, it's fun so far. "Hard to Handle" got beaten to death here on the radio too back in the early 90's. I haven't heard it in 20 years or so, so I can tolerate it again.

The other guitar players are fixated on playing these songs from the score and getting the parts down as written. My approach has been more to get the general idea down and work out what I/we want to do with it to make it our own. It made me think of you and the frustration you have at times learning covers.

These songs really lend themselves to "making them your own" and exploring. I would bet money that the atists themselves would play different versions in concert from the album versions. I may have more creativity than I thought :-).

Here's a little something that happened that may make you laugh: somebody suggested a blues jam, but the mentor said they try to avoid that. I understand and agree with that. However, when I suggested "I Shot the Sheriff", our mentor thought it was a good idea. I though "oh yeah!..." However, the other guitar players' response was "that song is boring". What!?!?! That could easily be the blues jam you just asked for!!!

So I'm done with song suggestions :-). It's all good...

Hi Maggior - Your having a good time with this - I envy you. Despite the little speedbumps it still sounds like a lot of fun. Slip's story bout the loud drummer is probably the most universal issue in live music. The guy who finally comes up with a way to control the volume on acoustic drums will be a billionaire.

Would this work for you?: When your setting levels prior to actually playing (I assume the mentor is monitoring this process?) ...have the volume on your guitar at half-way. Then, while your actually playing adjust the volume up to where you can hear it. As long as the amp your using has plenty of headroom the added breakup will be minimal. If you get the volume down signal from the mentor ... oh well, you tried.

I started doing this years ago because at jams you usually set amp levels relative to the snare drum. I learned quickly that once your actually playing - the drummer is going to "pound" considerably harder than the reference level he gave you to start. Usually, by the end of the night EVERYONE is playing louder than anyone originally intended. Oy vey. The birthplace of "too damn loud".

Hope it's OK I chimed in ... I'm following your adventure with interest because I'd love to be doing it myself. Anxious to hear your performance recording - it doesn't have to be perfect to be good listening - so relax and (continue to) have fun. Keep us posted.

Hey Fretsmith -

Please, chime in all you want!!

You have a good idea about giving myself some headroom to play with from my guitar. We'll see how it works out. He had asked me to turn it down once we got started and for the dummer to play harder and the bass player to turn it up. Perhaps he was trying to tell me somthing...:-).

It was actually the bass player that was overwhelming the sound. Ironically, he complained he couldn't here us!

Tonight hopefully level setting is more of a priority.

We are performing for an open mic in a couple of weeks and are performing as a "headliner act" 6 weeks from now. I'll definitely plant a recorder somewhere and post the results here.

The adventure continues...

Cheers!

Sounds like you're having fun with this group, even if you don't get to play the songs you suggested. I'm just as envious as Fretsmith. I'd love to play with a band too, though nobody around here seems to be interested in playing 80's-style rock'n'roll, aside from myself, that is.

Please do keep us posted. And try and see if you can get some kind of recording of that Open Mic session you'll be playing too :)

So, yes, an update already.

Tonight brought back that awesome feeling of playing in a band. "Wild Nights" is nailed down. I just need to smooth out my ideas for my improvised solo. While I'm soling, I'm anticipating the turn around too soon. At least you can tell that from what I'm playing :-). We went through the solo part 5 times. I was happy with my last 2. The last one got messed up because I started getting "too into it". Lesson learned - keep the body language in check :-).

"Hard to Handle" was fun to play. It's got a really fun groove and the drummer had it down.

There's nothing like that feeling of getting caught up and lost in the groove! THAT is what it's about!

Level issues weren't a problem today, so that worked out. I thought I was behind on the songs, but it turns out I was ahead. I think the other members are catching onto the idea of incorporating the main ideas of the song rather than trying to capture every single nuance of the studio version. Any of that gets lost anyway and the audience isn't going to care.

A note to lead players - learn the chords and rhythm too. When it came time for me to take a solo in "Wild Night", the other guitar player was at a complete loss because he was totally focused on the lead parts. I ended up teaching "Hard to Handle" to everybody because they were concentrating on the lead parts only.

So, if you only know the lead parts, you may find yourself caught out. You should also know what it is that you are playing over :-).

The facility plans on recording video and posting it on their website. Assuming I don't completely embarrass myself, I'll post a link here once it's up. We've got a couple of months before we get there...

Until next week...

A new band is like a family, some of them you will get along with better than others. While others will change more after a couple of good gigs. This sounds like a great adventure it will be interesting to hear how things are going after a couple more sessions.

I have to agree with the mentor, jam sessions are really a waist of time when so much needs to be done in such a short amount of time. I can see the reason for people wanting to, finally together with a group of musicians, Jam Time. Like a family there will be give and take by all to come together as one.

So in looking up the lesson for "Long Train Running", I saw that there is a lesson here for "Hard to Handle". Doh, I should have looked before!!

At least it will come in handy for learning the solo(s). And I can see how far off I was with the rhythm parts...

I'm sure you've at least peeked at the tutorial by now .... pretty nice huh? That was one of the first songs I tried on GT. I think it was an excellent song choice for your ensemble. Straight-forward technique wise but it's got a quirky swagger to it that makes it a blast to play.

I got the rhythm parts and first solo pretty much down but I need to go back and work on that 2nd lead section. Are you going to be doing one (or both) leads or is your other guitar playing going to do them?

Haven't really nailed the tone yet either. It's real easy to fall "too" clean or "too" dirty on that one. Kind of like cooking scallops: there's only about a 10 sec window between "raw" and "burned". ( sorry bout that, just came over from my cooking forum:) ).

Good luck. I'd be glad Olekshy was in my corner on this one.

Hey fretsmith -

Yeah, it's awesome just like many of the other song tutorials. Yep, Mike's got my back on this one!!!

As luck would have it, the other guitar player is subscribed here too. I'm taking guitar 2 and he is taking guitar 1. I love the sliding up into the E and B chords in the interlude. I've learned both rhythm parts just in case. I'm taking the first solo. Tomorrow night I'm going to start tackling that. That will be a bit of a challenge since I'm not used to playing solos that are a mix of minor and major pentatonic.

I'm so glad I found this tutorial - it makes it SOOOO much easier to learn the song.

Your food analogy for setting your amp gain cracked me up :-).

3 hours on the opening lick for the first solo in "hard to handle". I knew it was going to be tough...but it's such a cool lick!! Well worth the trouble I think.

That's 3 hours on 1/4 of the solo. The rest seems more straight forward...so hopefully I'll be good.

Oh, and also get it up to speed :-).

So another practice session is in the books! It went well, though it wasn't quite the rush it was the last time. The next rush will be performing in front of an audience!

We pretty much have "Wild Night" down. "Hard to Handle" came together nicely. That song has a really funky groove that is so much fun to play. One of the vocal instructors sang for us and totally got into it. That was tons of fun!!! She seemed to enjoy it too.

I recorded our session which sounded really good. I didn't nail the "Hard to Handle" solo, which I fully expected. However, it didn't sound like the trainwreck I though it would listening to the playback. Knowing that takes some pressure off for that song. Overall, our sound is really blending together nicely. The recording is really helpful for me to evaluate what is working and not working with my rhythm parts. I thought I was playing too loud and it turned out it was just right. And that's great because I could hear myself playing!!

We still need a singer, one of the guitar players is still playing bass. Needless to say, he doesn't want to play bass any more :-). It's going to become a problem... Me being the nice guy that I am will probably relent, though I really don't want to and am not sure if me playing bass is the best route for the band. I have to remember though that this is more about the experience of playing in a band, not making the best band we can so people will pay us. Our mentor made it clear today that he's staying out of this one...:-). Can't say I blame him.

Our other 2 songs will be "Long Train Running" and Gladys Knight's version "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". Both of those songs are so fun to play and I hate to give up my guitar part :-).

I seem to have a knack for playing funky rhythm guitar. Who would have thunk it!! :-).

I seem to be the most experienced guitar player of the group. I guess I know more than I think because they look to me at times for what to play. I just wish my soloing was at the same level as my rhythm playing. I'm managing... By the end of this, I'm sure I will have improved in that area.

Now that I know all of the songs we are doing, I know what I have to work on. I'll be playing that "hard to handle" solo over and over again until I can play it standing on my head!!!

Until next time...

Oh, I forgot one other thing. My Zoom G5 pedal was an epic failure :-(. I was afraid this was going to be the case. The sound was harsh with way too much high freqs despite the fact that I set the amp to a flat eq. It also sucked out the characteristic tone of my strat. After I got it set up and it sounded OK, I unplugged my pedal and plugged my guitar straight in and it sounded WAY better.

I'll have to do some research and futz around more. I'm hoping I just don't have something setup correctly.

As a tool for practicing and recording it's still excellent, so it's not a total failure :-).

The amp I was playing through was a Fender Frontman with 2 speakers. I forget the specific model name. Even though it's not a tube amp, I was very pleased with how it sounded.

Hey Rich,
Thanks for posting your band story, it's really interesting to hear of your progress 'cos one day I'd love to join band too. But can I ask - how does it happen that you have a mentor? Is this someone you guys pay to organise things and direct your music? Is it part of an organised band school? I'm writing from the UK, and most bands here just seem to start with a few friends jamming informally together.
Best wishes for the next gigs, Steve

Hi Steve -

Thanks for following my saga.

Our band is organized through a local music store/school. They have a program where they will put together bands based on age group and assign each one a mentor. The mentor is one of the music instructors at the store. Ours happens to be a drummer, though he plays bass too.

It's a relatively new concept here. The School of Rock I think was the first school to do something like this.

The idea is to give people learning rock instruments a way to perform in front of others, much like piano or violin students will play at a recital.

Thanks Rich for the clarification - I think this is an amazing, brilliant idea! Music stores here (NW England) tend to lose interest in you as soon as you've paid for your guitar, so I'm envious too! All the best with it, Steve

Sounds like its going really well Rich! If it were me, I'd be selfish and hold out against playing bass... but that's just me. It also sounds like you're one of the stronger "I know what I'm doing with my instrument" members, so to me it wouldn't make sense to have that person moved to an instrument they are not familiar with.

Not surprised with the zoom thing... I think all those multi-pedals struggle with the transition from practice sound to going into a full sized amp at volume. I guess there's a reason a lot of the pros still use pedal boards and tube amps! I've gone through the same issue with just about every multi-effects unit I've ever owned... practice sounds fine, then you go to play live and it just sounds harsh and brittle. Oh well, if it makes you feel better, I know guys struggle even with units like the Fractal Audio AXE FX... at least there's lots of good stomp box options out there if you need to go that route. The website www.gilmourish.com has some good reviews of pedals that might fit the bill.

Keep us posted!

I hear ya. If this were a "real" band situation and not a learning experience set up by a school, I wouldn't budge. Not to be conceited, but the fact of the matter is that yes, I'm one of the stonger players and am recognized as such. I was kind of hoping that they other guitar player would recognize that and for the good of the band take over on bass. He's making no motions at all to do so. The drama...:-).

You're right - there is a reason tube amps and pedal boards are still the choice of the pros. I haven't taken to a particular effect to incorporate into my sound, so I'm good with just overdriving the amp if need be at this point.

I've found myself at that website before. It's rediculous the complexity involved in trying to attain David Gilmour's tone.