Just venting

[Glacies]

The band I play in is a great group of guys but our bass player is really starting to frustrate me. He never has any idea where we're playing, is always late, and never works on anything, so we spend half of our get-togethers letting him learn tunes. I have half a mind to pick up a bass myself just so we can make music when he doesn't come around which is 50% of the time. The drummer won't play when the bass player doesn't show up... It's pretty frustrating. My brother-in-law is coming into town this weekend and he plays bongos. I told the other guitarist to bring his acoustic and if the band doesn't get together we'll play around with that. If it does show up, we'll mike up the bongos.

band drama...

[Tig]

Venting is good.
Bass players are easier to find than drummers. Do what it take to keep the band together and happy.

[Katastrophe]

Welcome to cat herding...

You know, it's a wonder that music gets made in a band at all. You have to deal with all different kinds of personalities and egos, in a format where the object is to express emotion and be creative. On top of all that, one has to expect behavior from those artistic types that doesn't sit well with their personality (i.e. show up on time, learn songs, practice). On top of all that everyone has to get along, or at least be professional enough to work together.

It's a crazy, mixed up business, to be sure.

[NWBasser]

Stupid bass players...:mad

Why won't the drummer play without the bass player?

[Glacies]

Bass player didn't come to lunch with us today so we discussed the issue that we're taking way too much time to get him up to speed each time we get together.

The solution is I'll learn the bass notes and either play them or teach them to him for each song.

I don't know why the drummer won't hang with us without him, I think he's really into having the complete rhythm section or something.

[deeaa]

I'd say too many issues to fix, find another band to play with.

[Glacies]

I'd say too many issues to fix, find another band to play with.

Oh absolutely. I've been looking but they're not easy to find in this area. I'm a 28 year old professional engineer, I'm not looking to gig, just looking to get together with like minded people who are interested in music. I found a few on craigslist but we didn't seem to match up in ideology. Still looking. And I'm not going to quit the current one, it's just not challenging me as much as I want to be challenged right now and of course it has the frustrations listed above.

Although this weekend I will put some original material in front of the band for the first time. Kind of interested how everyone reacts. Nothing terribly complicated, I'm really enjoying punk music lately and wrote a few punks songs that I'm having a blast playing and singing. I unveiled them solo at a party I threw last Saturday and everyone really enjoyed them, especially my song "Stiff Parrot" and I caught people humming and singing it the next day so I'm hoping that means it's not bad :)

edit: reread what I wrote, I wouldn't be against gigging, just saying I'm a family man and music is a hobby. I'm not going to dedicated every ounce I have to a band I'm looking for a band that doesn't expect me, need me, want me to.

[deeaa]

I totally get that...I'm the same. I'm a family man too and music definitely is a hobby for me. I used to gig more than I'd have ever wanted till I was well past 30, and now I'm over forty and just happy to record music in my home 'studio', do sessions now and then and play two-three times a month with old buddies with whom there's never a problem about anything. They are anything but top notch musicians maybe, but we have a blast anyway, and we like to play kinda punk-grunge mostly...not stress about it much, just make noise and have fun. Gig once a year or something, when suitable opportunity comes up as a warm-up act for some band I'm friends with or something like that, and make a demo now and then...and even then not stress about it. Hell the first album we made was live and we'd played some of the songs like 3 times when we recorded them :-)

One thing I like to do is work in collabs...like Project-43 and Whobody, both 'remote' bands...never actually even met the P-43 guys but we've got 3 CD's out already anyway...and the next band is made of my old band members who live around the country and we make music with, mostly remotely, but we have 1-2 playing sessions a year too. Actually just next week the guys are coming over for two days and we'll make some new songs and record some of them at my other band's training facility & drink loads of beer and vodka. So that's a real option as well, but of course playing live has it's own thing you can't really get anywhere else.

The only real way most of the time to really be able to make a live band work like you want is to become the leader. Build your own band, make your own music, find players to realize YOUR dreams, not just a bunch of people who all want their own personal perfection. I don't mean like being a dictator, just that it's always best when you're the one putting people together, taking the initiative and calling the shots.

[Glacies]

Good points. I have been meaning to do some collabs with good friends that I've made on message boards over the years. I need to learn how to record onto my comp with some degree of quality. I think in august when I makeover my rig I'll be able to spend some more time focusing on getting my solid state patched into my comp.

There is something about playing with a full band though. Feeling the bass and the drums...

Since I really didn't know how to play in a band when I started with these guys, I certainly couldn't be the leader. But over time I started to understand how the bass and drums worked and how to get people in time or how to trim some fat out of a song and I have kind of taken over that role. I'm not saying I firmly know this stuff perfectly (have a lot to learn) but I'm at least able to organize us to get us sounding better. I'm not sure I can follow through that leadership with another group of people I don't know, particularly if they're better musicians.