Posted in: Music Making by Bob Craypoe on June 11, 2009 | 0 Comments
You’ve been in a band for a while now and it seems as if you, as a group, are not achieving anything. You should probably examine as to why that is and then take some form of action. This article tells you how to assess your band’s progress and recommends ways of speeding up your progress.
Maybe you’re a bit discouraged or frustrated regarding your band situation. Perhaps you feel as if it is not progressing quickly enough. The first thing you should do is an assessment as to whether or not you are justified in your suspicions. All accomplishments obviously come with time. But how much time should be needed to achieve certain goals?
First of all, does your band have goals? If you don’t, that may be reason number one for your band’s lack of progress. The other primary issue may be a lack of focus. Perhaps in the form of too many goals being pursued at once with no prioritization towards any single goal. That may cause you to run around in circles and get nowhere. Is everyone in the band aware of the goals? It is important that everyone is on the same wavelength.
You should begin with the end game in mind. That is your primary or main goal. Then you should break it down into smaller, easier to achieve goals. You can refer to those as steps. Maybe step one would be to get enough material together to play two hour shows. Most places want four hours of music but there are some that accept less.
So step one will be to get a repertoire together with your band that will allow you to play somewhere for two hours. Now let’s assume you’ve pursued that goal. So we fast forward now to three months later, where after three months of rehearsals, you realize that your band only has five songs down. We now have an obvious measurable lack of progress. So it is obvious that before we can really proceed further on to pursue other goals, we should probably resolve the issues that are causing this problem.
Is everyone learning their material? If not, who isn’t? Why isn’t he? If you are in a cover band, getting enough material together to play out should be a lot easier than if you were a band that plays all original material. You have CD’s you can listen to, online tablature and you can find the lyrics to just about any song online. If someone isn’t doing his share by learning the songs as he should, then you need to deal with that individual.
Maybe you have enough material to play out. Maybe your problem is that you aren’t getting any gigs. Why is that? In a lot of band situations there is quite often one member who handles the bookings. Usually it is someone who has been in a previous band that has played out and he’s got some connections. Sometimes, though, the guy handling the bookings doesn’t have any more experience than the rest of the members of the band. If that is the case, maybe you should consider finding a booking agency to handle things for you or turn the job over to another member of the band, if the guy currently handling the bookings is not up to snuff.
