1. 1. INTRODUCTION
2. 2. HOW TO MANAGE YOUR BAND
• Solo?
• Members
• Auditions
• Musical Styles
• Songs
• Name
• The Everyday Life in the Band
• Schedules
• Band Issues
3. 3. GET STARTED
4. 4. HOW TO REHEARSE
5. 5. FINANCIAL ISSUES
6. 6. ABOUT GIGS
7. 7. THE SECRET WORLD OF CLUBS
8. 8. YOUR FIRST GIG
9. 9. ABOUT TOURING.
10. 10. MARKETING. .

2. HOW TO MANAGE YOUR BAND

 

Congratulations! You've made it past the stage that splinters many a fledgling band—finding a musical partner, setting rough goals, and figuring out what kind of band you are. You may have even started regular rehearsals. But where do you go from here?

If you're a traditional electric rock band, it may be time to find a rhythm section. Or you might want to add some new musical elements, like a second guitar player or a keyboardist, for texture and depth. Either way, the trick now is to mesh disparate musical visions into one cohesive whole and try to locate band "add-ons" who'll contribute their own particular styles and idiosyncrasies. As you start to define a "set list" and think about performing somewhat regularly in public, you may need the perspectives of talented, imaginative new members.

The important thing is to avoid being too dogmatic. If your favorite band is the Donnas, and all you want to do is play Donnas covers, you may have to compromise to accommodate a Celine Dion-loving singer and Red Hot Chili Peppers-loving bass player. Only after each band member embraces diversity and starts to value other members for their unique musical personalities will the band develop a group identity and make cohesive music. Any type of music, played by band members listening to each other and working toward the same goals, can be cohesive.

Technically, jamming disparate musical visions together can be a difficult trick. For example, if your guitarist loves to imitate folk singer Ani DiFranco while your bass player cranks Metallica up to 11 on his spare time, you'll have to do something about the combination of soft acoustic guitar and gigantic bass amplifier. One of these two players—preferably both—will have to make a change. Be magnanimous about it. Be the band member who volunteers to turn down his or her amp so as not to drown out the acoustic guitarist. Be the classically trained opera singer who translates complex sheet-music passages to the self-taught drummer.

Communication

As you grow and develop, you'll spend long hours in close contact, and will have to learn to communicate and compromise in order to stay together. Learning to play your instrument really, really well is important, of course, but so is getting along.

The bottom line of communication is staying open to other people's ideas. Allowing personal resentment to fester is the fastest way to kill a band, so do your best to avoid it.

One way to communicate effectively, in terms of playing music as a group, is to write everything down before you start. If everybody can read music fluently, great—that will make rehearsals easier. More likely, though, at least one of your fellow musicians won't have music-reading skills. So you'll have to transcribe the lyrics and print the chords in such a way that everybody can understand them. Make the charts simple—"A for four beats, then E for four beats, then back to D for one beat" may be the most efficient way of communicating musically, in a language everybody can easily understand. A slightly more complex type of chart is the head arrangement.

Solo?

 

As artists from John Mayer to Jewel have discovered, being a full-fledged member of a band may be too constrictive or complicated. You may have such a distinctive artistic vision that it's impossible to find a bass player or guitarist to go along with your complex ideas. Or personality-wise, you may be so set in your ways that you just can't compromise to get along with other musicians. The sooner you figure this out, the less frustrated you'll be.

One way to proceed as a solo artist is by hiring a backup band. As leader, you'll oversee a group of professional musicians paid to perform according to your instructions.

The other configuration is solo artist. That's just you, and probably your instrument, with nobody else to cover up your mistakes on stage. Obviously, in this situation, you're in complete control. You can play whatever solos you want, whenever you want, without throwing off a drummer's timing or stepping on a guitarist's showcase. A solo artist may find it easier to land certain kinds of quiet wedding gigs— particularly during the ceremony—or appear at coffeehouses.

Solo artists' expenses tend to be considerably lower than band expenses. You probably won't need the amplifiers to get your sound across. And you won't need cumbersome transportation options to carry yourself and your instrument to the gig. Then again, solo artists tend to get paid less than bands.

Whether you front a hired band or not, you'll have to be pretty talented as a musician to justify a solo career. (Some well-known artists, such as The Beatles' Ringo Starr and the Backstreet Boys' Nick Carter, were never successful on the level of the bands they left. Of course, Beyonce Knowles of Destiny's Child went on to huge success as a solo artist.) Even if you're good at your instrument, you'll need to work on new show-business skills such as charisma and stage presence to succeed with any kind of longevity.

Members

 

Unless you have the good fortune of having siblings who play bass, drums, and guitar, or unless you're married to your musical soul mate, you'll have to go out and find band members. This process may be as easy as hooking up with the person who sits next to you at music class or the next-door neighbor who admires your Velvet Underground LP collection. More often, though, it's a long, drawn-out process. Many bands, including Yes and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, can't seem to solidify a consistent lineup even after they become successful. So be prepared for some hard work and frequent changes of personnel.

Classified Ads

Unless you can draw from personal talent wells, such as friends' broken-up bands or school music classes, the search for new band members often begins with the classified ads.

If you do go the classified-ad route, always request that people send you a demo tape—that way you can prescreen candidates and only meet with the musicians that you are interested in. And always be professional and polite. In a local music scene, you never know when you'll encounter someone later.

Bulletin Boards

Even cheaper than classified ads are community bulletin boards. These are all over the place, especially in college towns—check kiosks at local outdoor malls, boards in student centers, entrance areas of record stores, libraries, bookstores, community radio stations and, coffeeshops.

Take a chance and scrawl an eye-catching ad on colorful paper. Include those little tabs at the bottom people can tear off so they don't have to copy down your phone number.

Be sure to scan the ads that already exist. If you're a metal band covering Limp Bizkit, Metallica, and other macho headbangers, you may not want to post at the campus Classical Music History Association. Then again, maybe you will—you never know where you'll find the person who perfectly fits your music.

Groups

Taking music lessons can be a great benefit, both to you and the band. If another member is a little more advanced than you, and it's difficult to keep up with him or her, you can advance a couple steps via private training.

Music lessons also give you networking opportunities. Your teacher, who is more experienced, is better connected locally, and probably has performed in a few bands, may know other students who'd fit your needs. The teacher may also suggest other contacts, or even local bulletin-board opportunities, for you to try out. In a pinch, this person may even be willing to step into your band temporarily until you find the right person.

Group music lessons, with more people, obviously present more opportunities.

Another common way bandmates find each other is in high school or college band classes. You may be playing second violin and strike up a conversation with the tuba player about how boring the class is. "We should rock" is a common invitation to start a band. So why not?

Internet

Be creative and aggressive when using the web for this sort of thing. Perhaps locally written blogs, or personal homepage diaries, contain gossip about bands looking for members in your town. Maybe your high school has an online bulletin board where you can post a bandmates-wanted message. Maybe an established band's site, like metallica.com, has bulletin-board threads dealing with Metallica-loving musicians in certain parts of the country. Cast your net widely in cyberspace.

Auditions

 

Once you've identified a prospective bandmate, the next step is to get together and play. An audition, another word for a job interview in the entertainment world, will give you a feeling for how well this musician can play. Perhaps more importantly, it will help you get to know the player personally—remember that the most talented musician in the world may not get along with the rest of the band. Conversely, the most easygoing person in the world may be far from the greatest musician. Consider both angles when hiring.

In rock history, auditions have been both famously elaborate and famously minimalist. In early 2002, Limp Bizkit embarked on a highly publicized quest for a new guitarist, auditioning literally thousands of regular Joes at guitar stores all over the country. Some applicants waited in freezing outdoor temperatures for hours. More than a year later, though, the popular rap-metal band simply hired a ringer singer Fred Durst knew from an established band, Snot.

At the other extreme, The Who didn't even know that they needed a replacement musician until a kid named Keith Moon approached the band after a show and declared himself better than their existing drummer. He started hammering away with the band and they asked him to show up at the next rehearsal. He kept showing up, and even after The Who had become superstars, nobody ever said, "You're in the band."

Try to stay focused on your needs as a group. If a guitarist shows up and blows you away with fiery heavy-metal leads, and you're a quiet folk-rock combo, don't get "new car fever." Tell the person you'll come to see his concerts someday, but he just isn't right for your band. You're looking for a musician, ultimately, who will stick with you for perhaps months or years—maybe even longer, if you follow The Rolling Stones so make the decision intelligently.

Talent will almost certainly be apparent. A serious band candidate will be able to play with you, rather than against you—not only in tune, but in time. He or she will know the difference between a verse and a chorus. This person will understand the subtleties of dynamics, or when to play soft and when to play loud. The ultimate bandmate will know to lay back when the singer sings and not rip off a loud, impressive solo in the middle of somebody else's verse.

Just as job interviews rarely indicate definitively whether a prospective employee will fit into the corporate culture, a musical audition won't screen for nebulous issues like compatibility. Play with your potential bandmate several times if necessary, but if you're really serious about this person, hang out with him or her in other settings.

Go out together for a cup of coffee. Have dinner, see a movie, attend a football match, or naturally, hear other bands. Do things as a group. Through such rigorous "screening," you'll probably find out whether this person will fit in with the rest of the band.

When they've just started, many bands will hire an easygoing friend who doesn't even know how to play an instrument—and teach him or her along the way. Perhaps the most famous example was Stu Sutcliffe, a hipster friend of The Beatles' John Lennon who knew such little bass that he stood with his back to the audience. The Pixies' Joey Santiago learned lead guitar, The Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious learned bass, and The Breeders' Kelley Deal learned rhythm guitar—instruments they'd never played—while their bands became famous.

Rejection can be traumatic for both the rejecter and the rejected. If you're unlucky enough to be in the latter category, get used to it. The music business will reject you frequently, whether it's kicking you out of a band, keeping you out of a club, keeping you off the radio, or keeping a record label from signing you. Don't take it personally. It isn't a conspiracy. It's just the way people do business. Learn from it and move on.

Your first musical rejection may come in the form of a failed audition. This can be extremely stressful, especially if the band expressed so much interest that they took you for a cup of coffee or a movie. In such cases, the rejection probably has nothing to do with you personally, or even the way you play. Another band member’s mother may have insisted her niece become the bass player. Or maybe somebody else owned a car and you didn't.

Once rejected, try to ask questions if they're appropriate. What did and didn't the band like? Would it be possible to re-audition in the future once you've learned certain songs? Then again, if somebody in the band just didn't like you personally, or if you have history with a band member's significant other, it'll be almost impossible to glean constructive criticism. So move on.

Rejecting an applicant may be just as stressful and depressing for the band members themselves. They may have really liked a certain musician but ultimately couldn't hire him or her for some of the reasons we've described.

Rejecters should be honest but gentle. Obviously, "You're crap, so pack up your gear and go home" is never an acceptable thing to say. Not only will it needlessly depress your applicant, it could give your band the reputation of abusing prospective members and being difficult to work with. This can make a difference later on, when you're trying to earn auditions with club owners or record labels. In the music business, even just the local club scene, gossip is prevalent and everybody's trying to damage your reputation somehow. Don't give anybody fuel by being a jerk for no good reason.

Musical Styles

 

Choosing a musical style is one of the first major decisions you'll make as a band. Sometimes it's simple: Everybody in the band listens to the same rock radio station, likes the same rock songs, and therefore agrees to play the same Aerosmith and Maroon 5 covers. Usually it's more complicated: The drummer grew up worshipping James Brown, the guitarist is a Tool kind of guy, and the bassist likes Irish folk ballads. (This latter combination may actually be more original and interesting than the Aerosmith scenario.) Regardless of what style you settle on, you'll find plenty of easy-to-play songs to start the band's repertoire. No genre of popular music is too difficult for a beginning band to master—even jazz is often based on basic pop standards.

In the early days of pop music, genres were easy to define. Rock 'n' roll meant Elvis Presley and, later, The Beatles. Folk meant Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. Blues meant Muddy Waters and old Robert Johnson records. Jazz was John Coltrane, country was Loretta Lynn ... you get the picture.

These definitions have expanded, almost to the point of meaninglessness, over the decades. "Rock" today refers to punk band Sleater-Kinney as well as pop diva Britney Spears. Thus, marketers, writers, radio programmers, and the musicians themselves have found it necessary to break down the genre into dozens of hair-splitting subcategories: hard rock, classic rock, punk rock, hardcore punk, pop-punk, emo, rap-metal, funk-metal, punk-metal, and so forth. Your options, when deciding on a genre, are all or none of the above. And feel free to invent your own.

Rock

Whether you believe Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or somebody else invented the style in the 1950s, rock 'n' roll music began as an exciting merger of white country-western music and black rhythm-and-blues. It has more or less stayed close to that original definition, although the "rock" category has expanded to all sorts of non-Elvis-like sounds.

Generally, the minimum number of players in a rock band is three. The core rock-band configuration is usually guitar, bass, drums, vocals. Rock music is mostly played in the standard 4/4 time. For each of these rules, however, you can probably name 100 exceptions.

As rock matures and ages, it splinters. During the mid-1970s, for example, New York City's The Ramones, and then England's The Clash and The Sex Pistols, decided rock was boring and needed to be simultaneously simplified and sped up. Thus, they invented the faster, shorter punk rock genre; over the years, younger bands like Nirvana, Green Day, Rancid, and Sum 41 picked up the style and added their distinctive personalities.

Alternative rock began in the early 1990s, when Seattle grunge bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden took punk rock's inspiration and turned it into something heavier. As grunge began to catch on at MTV and traditional rock radio stations, others copied die style—Bush and Stone Temple Pilots made grunge more palatable to larger numbers of listeners. As more and more bands jumped into the format, radio stations and record labels marketed it as alternative rock, or an alternative to the mainstream. (That this kind of rock was the mainstream didn't matter.)

Metal is loud, deep, and often obsessed with gothic fantasy images of death and destruction. Its inventors were Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin in the late 1960s and early 1970s; later, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Pantera, and Korn would add their idiosyncrasies. As various bands expanded the genre, metal became hyphenated—Slayer will always be thrash-metal, whereas you could call Limp Bizkit rap-metal. In the 1980s, pop bands with big hair juiced up metal's catchy melodies and invented what's now called hair metal: Bon Jovi, Poison, and so on.

You can play all of this rock stuff with rudimentary musical skills. Beatles bassist Paul McCartney, famously, never learned to read music. Joey Santiago, guitarist for Boston's influential Pixies, picked up his instrument the day that he joined the band and learned as he went along. Although we'll stop short of saying it's better not to know how to play your instrument, we believe passion and soul are far more important than technical musical ability.

Folk

Like rock, folk is a catch-all category that can cover everything from Nigerian drummers to American protest singers. So named because of its "music for the people" spirit, folk began as a network of sea chanties and field hollers passed down from generation to generation. Its major renaissance came in the 1960s, when political-minded "folkies"—Baez, Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, Phil Ochs—filled New York City coffeehouses with acoustic guitars.

That's not to say folk groups necessarily have to be political. Since the 1960s, the definition of folk has come to mean "a soft-spoken singer or singers with original songs and acoustic guitars"— James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin, and Dar Williams fit this broad category.

Groups can play folk music—The Weavers and The Kingston Trio are some of the most influential artists in the genre—but more common configurations are solo artists or duos.

The style is similar to rock, in terms of tempo and chords, although folk is usually a little slower and a lot quieter. The songs also tend to be personal, told from the narrator's first-person perspective or telling the classic story of John Henry the steel-driving man or the shady Philadelphia lawyer. As with rock and country, if you know three basic guitar chords and how to keep time, you can play folk.

Country

Country began, informally, as old-timey tunes in the Appalachian Mountains and other rural areas before the turn of the twentieth century. Like folk, country's origins are in self-taught, sing-around-the-fire songs passed down through word of mouth among friends and family members.

Beginning in the late 1920s, when the recording industry started to mature, singers such as Jimmie Rodgers, The Carter Family, Roy Acuff, and Hank Williams Sr. became stars in the genre. They sang in high, lonesome tones about living tough lives and finding relief in God, travelling, and drinking (although not necessarily in that order).

Over the years, country would shift in many different directions, from big-band-jazz-inspired western swing in the 1930s to the heavily produced, pre-rock 'n' roll "Nashville Sound" in the 1940s. One offshoot came from Kentucky mandolinist Bill Monroe, who with his Blue Grass Boys invented an influential, soulful sound known as bluegrass. One of Elvis Presley's early rock hits was a hopped-up version of Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky."

In the 1970s, The Byrds, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Gram Parsons, and Poco merged two genres, creating country-rock, which proved influential in the early 1990s. Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, and others streamlined this sound into massive record sales and huge superstardom. With Faith Hill and Shania Twain turning country into pop, the sound continues to evolve and—for better and worse—turn away from its hillbilly roots.

To play country or bluegrass, do you have to be from Kentucky? Of course not. But you need to know those three basic chords we keep talking about, and preferably have a good, soulful singer—many country stars are individuals, backed by an anonymous band.

Today's country, like rock, can pretty much sound like anything—Nashville's Steve Earle plays it like early 1970s Rolling Stones, Chicago's Waco Brothers turn it into punk, the late, great Johnny Cash sang the occasional Nine Inch Nails song, and Shania Twain is more like a pop diva than a country crooner. Bluegrass, however, is almost always played in the traditional manner, with rickety vocals and a band of mandolinists, fiddlers, and soft, acoustic instrumentation.

Blues

A purely American song form, blues began in the early twentieth century as an informal series of slave shouts and field hollers. The blues' roots are in Africa, where the music travelled to other countries via the slave trade; the music's brutally honest expressions of suffering and joy eventually influenced all levels of popular song.

Early blues were generally played on acoustic guitars, harmonicas, and washboards, by then-unheralded giants such as Charley Patton and Robert Johnson. The myths made the music richer: Johnson was one of several Mississippi Delta singers to have ostensibly sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads. They played at juke joints and house parties; folklorists sporadically tracked them down for recordings.

By the 1940s, many southern bluesmen joined the mass African American exodus from the South to industrial cities a little farther north. Muddy Waters wound up in Chicago, where he pioneered blues on electric instruments; John Lee Hooker took his "stomp" to Detroit; B. B. King landed in Memphis. Their recordings were vital precursors to rock 'n' roll.

Today's blues performers are usually traditionalists; some do the sitting-on-a-stool, singing-with-a-guitar thing, while others ape Muddy Waters and learn to play guitar in an electric band. They almost always use the 12-bar blues as a musical foundation— this refers to a repetitive structure using three particular chords.

A little music theory: To learn chords in the 12-bar blues figure out the I, IV, and V notes of any given scale. For example, if you're playing in the key of C, go up the scale to the first, fourth, and fifth notes—which would be C, F, and G. Thus, the C, F, and G chords are the three you'll play (generally speaking) in the C blues.

Once you know this pattern, you can play almost any blues standard—from "Stormy Monday" to "Sweet Home Chicago"—and lots of country, folk, and rock, too.

Jazz

They say Buddy Bowlen invented jazz in New Orleans in the 1910s, although no recordings of him exist. Pianist Jelly Roll Morton, also from New Orleans, staked his claim to the "inventor of jazz" title a few years later, turning pop standards into rich boogie-woogie originals.

Jazz is by nature improvisational, so the musicians solo regularly and often make up the song as they go along. As jazz has grown and changed dramatically, players such as saxophonists Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane; trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis; guitarist Charlie Christian; bassist Charles Mingus; and pianist Thelonious Monk have become legendary innovators.

Originally, jazz was usually played in the New Orleans Dixieland style. Armstrong came along and gave it personality. Later, it morphed into big-band swing orchestrated by black bandleaders such as Fletcher Henderson and Count Basie, but, by World War II, it was turning into pop music played by white talents Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller and their big bands.

By the 1940s, Parker and Davis eschewed the rulebook and created bebop, a more free-form, soloist-centered style that built on the framework of blues and pop standards. After that, important figures such as Coltrane, Mingus, Monk, and Ornette Coleman laid the foundation for modern jazz, which has almost no rules at all, just instinct and soul. Another strain is smooth jazz, like that played by Chuck Mangione and Kenny G., which is usually a melodic, radio-friendly version of traditional jazz standards with lots of soothing solos.

Jazz is a little more difficult to play, and certainly to master, than three-chord rock, blues, or country. Jazz combos—trios, quartets, or more, all the way up to multi-musician big bands—require at least one talented soloist. And the rhythm sections must know how to do more than simply keep a "one, two, three, four" beat; like classical music, jazz is often performed in complicated time signatures.

That's not to say you can't play jazz. Many standards, from Parker's "A Night in Tunisia" to Davis's "So What" are written in basic blues and pop arrangements. But your goal, as a jazz group, should be to eventually excel as a collection of soloists. Often, jazz groups form out of jazz-club jam nights or school orchestras.

Hip-Hop

Hip-hop began in the late 1970s, as New York City DJs took existing funk and disco songs, sliced up their beats, and chanted over the resulting grooves. The first major hip-hop song was The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," in 1979, and artists such as Kurds Blow, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Queen Latifah, N.W.A., Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Outkast, and Eminem followed.

Hip-hop took punk-rock's "do it yourself philosophy to an extreme. Although the rappers had to have a gift of gab and a certain amount of poetic skills, none played a musical instrument or followed any traditional song structure.

The "musicians" of rap are DJs, which isn't to say the disc jockeys you'd hear on radio stations. These sonic gurus pioneered the "two turntables and a microphone" approach, scratching vinyl records and turning samples, or snippets of classic funk and disco tracks, into completely new songs.

To start a hip-hop group, you'll need at least one lyricist, a DJ with a sense of rhythm and a strong record collection, and perhaps a dancer or two. As with rock, hip-hop stage moves are distinctive and stereotypical: Every emcee (lead rapper) at some point tells a crowd to "put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care!"

Note that while rap groups began by breaking down the traditional band concept, many performers these days tour with live bands such as the Roots.

Like every other pop genre, hip-hop has splintered into a million pieces. Gangsta rap grew out of Los Angeles band N.W.A.'s early 1990s imagery of guns and fighting back against police brutality. Jazz rap comes and goes, with groups like Digable Planets and Gangstarr showing how seamlessly classic jazz and modern rap fit together. Trip-hop is a spacier, more dance-club-oriented spinoff, exemplified on Tricky and Portishead CDs.

Although techno music doesn't sound much like hip-hop, the instrumentation is often the same. Growing out of warehouse dance parties in London, Detroit, and Chicago in the early 1980s, techno creates repetitive, loud, dance-able noise from turntables, drum machines, and these days, computers.

Briefly nicknamed electronica in the late 1990s, techno is what you'd usually hear at an all-night rave party. Its best-known artists include Moby, Orbital, and Paul Oakenfold.

Pop

Pop, short for popular music, is technically "whatever people are buying." It has come to represent Top 40 music from Olivia Newton-John in the 1970s to Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys in the 1990s. Today, aspiring singers flock to reality-TV shows. Rarely do pop singers form bands; they stay home and work on their voices and try to "make it" via talent shows and music-industry Svengalis.

Power-pop bands were allies of punk-rockers in the 1970s, and tried to reduce rock songs to their essence—short songs, short solos, unflashy singers, and punchy, powerful lyrics. Songs like Nick Lowe's "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass" and Dave Edmunds's "Girl Talk" sound simple but they're deceptively hard to play well and require much rehearsal.

Songs

 

To start out, you'll want to play basic songs in the genre you've picked. If you're in a funk band and aspire to play any gathering where people dance, you'll have to know Kool & the Gang's "Celebration." If you're in a blues band, you'll have to know "Sweet Home Chicago." Every genre has its signature song, and every band in that genre must be able to play it.

Having said that, it's worth thinking about long-term goals as you figure out what songs to work into your "we can play that" list. If you aspire to perform original material and make CDs for a record label someday, you won't want to get pigeonholed as "that band that plays Kool & the Gang." Of course, if you aspire to make money on the wedding-and-party circuit, "Celebration" will work just fine.

Initially, unless you're like Jim Morrison and have notebooks filled with brilliant, unheard poems, you'll want to play familiar covers. Everybody in the band probably knows the lyrics already, they're easy to learn, and fans, when you have them, will react enthusiastically. Plus, the more covers you play, the more you'll learn about universal chord changes, lyrical twists, and song structures.

For now, you may want to avoid originals. Once you've mastered a dozen cover songs, it may be time for somebody in the band to introduce original material. Until then, your focus should be on working together as a group and learning each other's musical nuances.

Originals add several new elements into the song-learning process—particularly ego, as the new writer may not yet be prepared for the band's critical feedback. But that's not to say you should never introduce new material. You should; when the time is right, it may take the band to a new level.

Name

 

The best band names are always short, simple, and easily memorable: Oasis, Blur, Kraftwerk. Often they're preceded by "the": The Beatles, like Buddy Holly's The Crickets only with a "beat"; The Rolling Stones, named after Muddy Waters's classic blues song; and so on. In any case, the most important thing is to pick one that's fairly representative of the music you play.

Another serious consideration is whether you can register your band name as a domain name on the Internet. Although you can easily get an alternative website address, at this stage it may be just as easy to change the band's name.

Don't get obsessed with cleverness. Again, simplicity rules. Pick out characters' names from famous books. Ask your Aunt Byrxegus if she'd mind if you borrowed her name. One band named itself after The New York Times' science writer, Gina Kolata (and wound up with bonus publicity when another writer interviewed the real Kolata about her namesake band).

To speed up the process, there are tons of Random Band Generators on the Internet. But perhaps the best way to generate a name is to relax, sit on comfortable chairs (outside your rehearsal space), and start throwing ideas around. Remember, in brainstorming, there's no such thing as a bad idea. Come up with a list of 100, and then narrow it down.

• Toad the Wet Sprocket took its name from a Monty Python sketch.

 

• "Chumbawamba" is what one of the Ewoks, in Return of the Jedi, exclaimed while falling over.

• Duran Duran is the villain from Barberella, doubled.

 

• The Sex Pistols grew out of the London punk-fashion store "Sex," then added Pistols to sound dangerous.

• Despite rumors to the contrary, Pearl Jam is named after singer Eddie Vedder's grandmother, Pearl, who apparently made jam.

 

• Pink Floyd is an amalgam of singer Syd Barrett's favorite blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

• ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is reportedly a prayer to Mayan corn gods.

 

The Everyday Life in the Band

Every successful band member leaves behind a long resume of unsuccessful bands. Before Pearl Jam had anything close to a hit record, members played in Green River, Mother Love Bone, Mookie Blaylock, and several other short-lived collectives. And that's just one of millions of examples. At some point, you'll probably play in a band that breaks up, too. So, it's time to start thinking about how the band will stay together in the long run. Which means hanging on to the musicians who are as serious and driven as yourself and weeding out the musicians who are in it exclusively for the post-show parties.

A band is like a marriage. (So in theory, more than 50 percent of them end in divorce…) All the musicians will spend so much time together—rehearsing, performing, dreaming, scheming, handling the business—that they'll feel they're in a long-term relationship. And just like husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, band members must figure out how to deal with each other in constant close quarters.

The usual relationship rules apply: Try not to get too picky; don't take things too personally; subvert your ego to reach a collective goal; and, perhaps most important at this stage, figure out your role in the band. Then stick to that role as best you can, whether it's a personal, getting-along-together kind of role or a musical, play-a-certain-chord-at-a-certain-time kind of role.

A key component of marriage is commitment. The day you join a band and the day it breaks up are often memorable—a lot like a wedding or a divorce. You may feel elated that first day, and emotionally spent on the last. As with marriage, it's important to learn to commit and to know, if necessary, when to move on when the sad time comes.

Following we list several general personality types in bands. Of course, you can't reduce complex musicians to simple stereotypes, and these rough categories can't possibly cover every band character. It's not necessary to obsess over recognizing the "comedian" or "friend," although it's usually important to pick a leader. If the band functions smoothly, and the music is progressing, chances are you've got a strong, complementary mix of personalities already.

The Leader

It's possible you're the leader and must start making decisions and generally setting direction for the band. If you're not the leader, learn to subvert your ego and acquiesce to the leader's decisions. At the least, give him or her a chance.

A strong leader helps direct the group in a specific musical or business direction. If this person has true leadership skills, he or she will consult the group for its input and make decisions, easy or hard, that make everybody feel valued and important. A weak leader may create resentment and disharmony—and if such behavior continues, you may have to start the difficult process of choosing a new leader.

The leader will most likely be the hardest-working member of the band. Among the leader's duties are negotiating with neighbors over where and when to hold rehearsals, researching songs and lyrics and presenting them to the band, casting the tie-breaking vote for rehearsal time if members' schedules conflict, halting rehearsal to ensure that everybody's input is heard, and arriving early to a gig to determine where and when to set up the equipment.

Who gets to be leader? Again, the band's "alpha personality" will usually just emerge naturally. If you have to sit around and figure out who the leader is, you're probably in a democratic band which is not always the best. A good leader will naturally earn respect. And the rest of the members are usually glad to accept leadership: "Just tell me when to be there" is a common refrain.

The leader doesn't necessarily have to be the best or most experienced musician in the band—although sometimes that helps. To be effective, he or she has to work hard, take initiative, make decisions, and be aware of others' feelings.

The leader will have to do certain things individually: signing any kind of contract, collecting the money the night of the show (because the entire band can't show up in the club office), and conducting media interviews (because reporters often have trouble focusing on multiple voices).

Some situations, though, demand a group vote:

• Whether you'll play a gig at a certain time and place (and for a certain amount of money)
• Certain financial decisions that affect everybody, such as opening a band bank account
• Whether to make a large group purchase, such as a PA system
• Choosing a band name
• How to disperse money from gigs, recordings, and so on
• Set-list disputes
• Choosing common goals

 

James Brown, the legendary Godfather of Soul, was notorious as a bandleader for maintaining control and order over his musicians. Some called him "militaristic," as he required each member to wear a three-piece suit, fined late employees, and scolded musicians who arrived with crooked ties. He paid the price for these dictatorial tendencies in the late 1960s, when several hot young members, including the great bassist Bootsy Collins, left to become famous in other bands.

The Talent

In the early Rolling Stones, if singer Mick Jagger was the leader, guitarist Brian Jones was the talent. (Sadly, Jones drowned in his swimming pool in 1969.) He was the heart and soul of the band, the guy who introduced country and Indian influences, suggesting a sitar bit in a certain song when nobody else would have possibly thought of such a thing.

The talent has just that—innate musical or show-business sense. This musician pushes the creative envelope and often winds up as the primary songwriter. During rehearsal, the talent will often make germane musical suggestions and encourage other members at precisely the right times. He or she might suggest a six-string bass instead of the usual four-string on a particular song—and might be right.

The Arranger

Traditionally, an arranger is the behind-the-scenes person who sees to it that many disparate musicians play in harmony. Famous arrangers include Paul Shaffer, bandleader for the Late Show with David Letterman, and Nelson Riddle, who conducted the orchestras for Frank Sinatra's classic Capitol recordings in the 1950s and 1960s.

In your band, the arranger most likely has a little more formal musical training than everybody else. This person understands the basics of music theory, knows a few extra chords and can help, say, quickly transpose a song in the key of C to an easier-to-sing key of E. Without an arranger type, bands can sit around for hours trying to help an untrained guitarist figure out a flatted-seventh note.

The Friend

Although the leader has the authority to tell others what to do, often the friend has the credibility. This easygoing personality type may be the only person who can kindly explain to the bassist that he consistently wears black clothes covered in dandruff to the gig. Or politely tell the singer he's flat.

The friend helps everybody get along. In a way, this person is the liaison between band members. If the drummer isn't speaking to the singer, the friend will take both characters out and communicate messages until finally coaxing them back onto speaking terms. Factions and camps are inevitable in every group, and the peacekeeping friend is invaluable to bring them together.

The Funny Guy

Bands have a nasty habit of taking themselves too seriously. The exception is the comedian, who's always quick with the one-liner and prepared to make even the angriest musician laugh. This character is almost always "on," and knows the difference between laughing at and laughing with other people. Drummer Keith Moon famously played this role to excess in The Who—and took it a bit too far, as he died of complications from drug and alcohol abuse in 1979.

Schedules

 

Nothing kills a new band faster than scheduling conflicts. We have no easy solution to this problem. The best you can do is be flexible and prioritize. If the band is more important to you than swim class, and three of the other four members can practice only during your swim class, consider canceling pool time. Before discussing times with everybody else, block off large chunks that are good for you and be willing to give something up. Invest in a date book.

If rehearsal is at 8 P.M. every Tuesday, don't show up at 8:20. Occasional explained absences are understandable, but consistent erratic behavior is a good way to wreck a band—or, at least, get yourself kicked out.

Activities you'll probably have to schedule on a regular basis include the following:

• Rehearsal (and more specialized rehearsals such as vocals and rhythm)
• Band meetings
• Gigs (plus loading in and out)

 

Band Issues

Now is the time to dream. Do you want to perform at stadiums someday? Sign with a major record label? Open for Linkin Park? Be Linkin Park? Or just play around town, stay together for a while, and then look back on the good old days?

All of these goals are reasonable. But if people in the band disagree on them—especially without communicating their desires—it can make even the smallest decision difficult.

Now might be the time for a band meeting, where everybody can discuss ideas and determine who agrees with whom. Once you've written everything down, take a vote, or allow the leader to make the final decision. Your goals will change as the band progresses, but for now it's helpful to know whether you're in it for the fan or the fame.

Eventually, as your band learns how to communicate and holds several successful meetings and rehearsals, you'll develop a framework for constructive criticism. Again, don't make it personal. If you want the bassist to know he's not playing in time during the second chorus, separate that issue from the issue of fighting with him over your girlfriend.

Try to break down every issue into a separate, bite-size discussion and stay focused on that. And stay focused.

Also, it's the little things that often break down group dynamics. Resist the urge to fold your arms, or worse, roll your eyes, when somebody else is talking. When addressing another musician, avoid "you" statements—"you're doing that wrong," "you're stupid," and so forth. Best to stick with "I" statements—"I feel perhaps this isn't sounding right." It's okay to be blunt on rare occasions, but keep in mind basic concepts of respect, kindness, and communication.

Group dynamics is a fancy psychology term for "several people getting along together." Researchers and business analysts have tons of theories for how to do this, but as usual, the basics apply. For example, don't let difficult issues linger; deal with them quickly and openly, at band meetings. Keep personal issues separate from musical or business issues. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Psychologists have studied group dynamics for decades, and one prominent theory comes from researcher B. W. Tuckman in the mid-1960s. (Doomed rock bands of that era, such as Buffalo Springfield and The Beatles, probably could have used his help.)

Tuckman identified the following five stages of group dynamics:

• Forming, or trying to avoid conflicts and keep things simple while beginning the task at hand

 

• Storming, or dealing with competition and conflict as members get deeper into the task

• Norming, or starting to get along with each other and function smoothly as a unit

 

• Performing, or beginning to achieve your goal as a group

• Adjourning, or breaking up the group altogether

 

The trickiest progression here is from storming to norming, and Tuckman recommends listening as a key transitional device. In other words, try to give up your personal baggage and ego issues. Figure out who the other band members are and why their needs are important. If everybody learns to do this consistently, jumping to the performing stage will be simple—and perhaps you can avoid the adjourning stage.

The most exciting Tuckman stage, for your purposes, is performing. Often, after the band hashes out its personal issues, that's when the best music starts to emerge. You'll be able to play your parts without resentment or frustration, satisfied that you'll get to solo as much as you want and you may reflexively find yourself humming along to the chorus. This is often the most rewarding point in a band's career, and the experience may stick with you forever.

Every sports team has one or two big stars and several other guys who do their jobs extremely well. Consider the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s—they won six basketball championships, largely due to the amazing talents of Michael Jordan. But several other players performed key roles: John Paxson hit a key three-point shot to win the 1993 championship series, and Ron Harper provided crucial defensive punch for the last three titles.

Bands function the same way. Bruce Springsteen may be a gigantic rock star and major talent, but his organist, Danny Federici, provides just the right sonic touches on several different songs, and drummer Max Weinberg keeps the beat big and steady and always avoids the urge to upstage his mates. Booker T and the MG's, The Band, and Crazy Horse performed similar roles for, respectively, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young. In other words, the front person doesn't have to shoot the big shot on every play. It's the final product—the group product—that's important.

Al Kooper, who played keyboards on Bob Dylan's 1960s classic "Like a Rolling Stone" and has been in many prominent rock bands, including Blood, Sweat & Tears, has his own group-dynamics theory. He compares bands to a stack of books on a table, with each book representing one musician. If you pull certain books out as far as they'll go, the stack will be wobbly—but it will often remain standing. This is a dangerous way to run a band, with various characters stretched as far onto the fringe as they can go. Kooper recommends stacking the books evenly, so everybody's easy to get along with.

Personal Issues

It's often necessary to "change parts" as a band progresses. Sometimes this decision will be obvious: If nobody in the band can read a note of music, and you're having trouble transposing keys or staying in tune, you may want to recruit a ringer. Conversely, somebody in the band may have unsalvageable music skills or may just not fit the group's personality. At this point, for the good of the band, you'll have to make a move—and the decision is often difficult.

Mark Rubin, bassist for the punk-bluegrass trio Bad Livers, advises bands to choose members based on how well they get along with other people. You may discover the greatest musician in rock history living in your town, but if that person has serious problems getting along with other people, it may make more sense to hire the mediocre musician who everybody likes. Group dynamics can be that fragile.

Rock and pop bands have often changed members on the route to fame. The best-known example is The Beatles, who fired Pete Best and hired Ringo Starr in the early 1960s. Country's Dixie Chicks, who began as a down-home bluegrass band, fired two original members, hired singer Natalie Maines, and sold millions of records. And Destiny's Child went through several different configurations before settling on its hugely successful R&B-trio format with singer Beyonce Knowles as the star.

Once the band has rehearsed and maybe even performed a few times, you may want to broaden your palette. Keyboards can add color, texture, and density. More simply, if you're playing a wedding, you may want to hire a saxophonist or other horn player for big-band-dance-style numbers or similar special requests.

There are excellent nonmusical reasons to add players as well. If the band is filled with flamboyant, difficult personalities, it may behoove you to find a down-to-earth, laid-back type to keep everybody grounded.

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