Posted in: Musicouching by Bob Craypoe on August 1, 2009 | 0 Comments
There are many possible reasons behind a band not getting its repertoire together quickly enough, but one of the most common causes is that some members of the band are not learning the songs on their own time.
Quite often, when you are in a band situation, you may not be building your repertoire as fast as you should. A sure tell-tale sign would be having only 3 or 4 songs down after a few months of rehearsals. It would be obvious, at that point, that something is going seriously wrong.
Now you could ask yourself how many songs your band should have down after a few months. It generally takes longer to get original material together than it would cover tunes, so that should be taken into consideration when making this assessment. However, even if the 4 songs were all originals, it would still be an indication that something is definitely wrong.
To play out at a number of venues you will need more than 50 songs. That’s a fairly conservative estimate; more-or-less a best case scenario. That’s also assuming that the songs are over the usual 3.5 minute average run time. If not, you will need significantly more.
A band that does mostly covers or all cover material should have at least ten songs down after a month of rehearsals. People who really have their act together, will more than likely have more.
Now there are multiple causes for not getting your material together quickly enough but I have found one cause to be very common. The one I have found to be among the most common causes is that some members of the band are not learning the songs on their own time. To simplify matters, we’ll assume that you’re in a cover band and you are building a repertoire of all cover material. So here’s a scenario:
Jimmy Jam, is your bass player. He’s pretty good but he’s the least disciplined member of the band. All of the members of your four piece band have decided to learn three songs over the previous week and have them ready for practice. Unfortunately, Jimmy only learned one of the agreed upon songs. The other two, the guitar player had to show him how to play. Though it was fortunate that the guitar player knew the bass parts for the songs, the other members of the band just sat around while Jimmy was learning the song on the time they should have been using to rehearse it as a group.
It’s okay though, if it’s a one time thing. Oh no, it’s not? You mean he did the same thing this week too? Seems like a pattern developing here. It could be a problem if you want to get out there and play any time soon.
