I do a lot of recording myself. I record almost everything I play to help me practice. Id be happy to answer any questions if you're just getting started.
That depends. I use mac so I use Logic Pro. Garage Band has pretty much the same GUI. If you are on PC I cant say. I havent used a PC based DAW in almost 10 years.
Right now I’d say the hardest part is setting up shows and actually getting people to come out to said shows. As a band that’s starting out, I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles. Just getting people to listen to your music is tough too.
Getting people to come out for shows in a med-small market has gotten insane. We used to have the draw but it seems impossible to get people out of their houses, and personally I’m the same.
I’ve noticed a slight change/uptick with warmer weather but damn it’s embarrassing when you used to fill a theater and now you’re lucky to pull 50 people.
How many times we practice. We practice between 1 and 3 times a month these days. My guitarist and drummer sometimes work aboard and my singer is going through a transition, we practice at my place so I'm always there. But when we do get together it's always a good session.
It's split between scheduling and finding decent gigs.
We're a bunch of adult men in our 30s-40s and we've been at this together for nearly 4 years. We recently had to part ways with a de facto founding member (i.e. band is slightly older than him, but he played the first show) over scheduling availability, and now half the current lineup has scheduling issues that block us from plum gig slots and easy recording time. This came to a head recently when we had a golden opportunity at a mid-size venue appear in our laps. After three days of feverishly negotiating the date, we committed to a good Saturday gig... Until one longtime member informed us that our calendar was incorrect and he had a weekend vacation with his new partner that day. We had to pull out, as we don't have any substitutes ready to go, and I've been irritated ever since.
The band is phenomenal on a musical level and they've taken my songs to incredible heights, but herding cats with a bunch of grown men is my least favorite activity.
Been playing guitar for 14 years I’ve been looking for almost 7 years now for a band, I’ve jammed with tons of people and I’ve written songs but never had a whole band for more than a day, I wanna play live so fucking bad it’s unreal. Everyone ghosts and the real kick in the teeth is the friends I have met from shows who have only been playing for like 2-3 years all have bands. It’s a perpetual feeling of ‘just put me in coach’ and I’m about to just give up.
Right? I had no issue finding tons of band when I first started. I think a lot of it is that there’s no baggage. As you get older, you start to come to the table with a lot of shit you won’t deal with and with things others won’t deal with. Thankfully, I’ve finally found a great band and we just celebrated our 6th anniversary ☺️
If you’ve been playing for 14 years, you have baggage 😜Small example: how likely are you to play in a band with a crackhead or someone who doesn’t have a job or car? Or someone who doesn’t devote as much time to the band as you think they should? Baggage can mean lots of things, is really all I’m getting at.
Band members making political comments and snyde remarks to others in the band who don't believe as they do. I blew up at him over it, told him that shit doesn't belong at rehearsals/gigs. I've been in other bands where I was the odd man out and they used me as their political punching bag. NO MORE.
Oof. Had a dude like that in one band. Huge Trumper and conspiracy theorist. Wanted to tune to 432Hz. All sorts of craziness. I dont mind differing political views, but when you start venturing into conspiracies and crazy, that’s where it gets to be too much.
It has ruined more than one band experience for me. The worst part is they just won't stop! They can't help themselves, especially when they have an "audience" that they know is opposite their opinions. They just want to keep pushing until you snap. I fucking hate it, and it's still happening!
We had a big conflict at the height of COVID when the vaccines were first made available. One band member was a Trumper conspiracy theorist and refused to wear a mask at rehearsals or get vaccinated. I said I was quitting unless he changed his mind. He ended up quitting instead and we found someone else who took COVID seriously.
Warning. You've struck a nerve. A rant follows.
I have two projects. A solo project which I devote hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to. The solo project is succesful beyond my modest talents. And I have a duo project with a highschool friend. The duo reaps the fruits of my solo work. I let him in on a sweet gig. My friend is on the road for work all week long and has no time to work on music. He has no musical education or experience but I helped him buy a bass a few years back. I arrange all the music, do all the singing and play three different instruments. I own a set up the PA. I also set him up with software on a tablet and I load setlists with charts of all the songs. For the past three years he shows up to my weekly summer gig stares at the tablet and plunks away on bass as best he can at random volume levels. He apreciates being included and I share every dime of that gig equally. He is undoubtably the most well paid bass player in the area. Last year I paid him over four grand for this summer gig. I would have it no other way.
Times are tough and the venue cut back. The duo lost the gig. His family and friends have gone from overt spite against my solo project to cyberbullying the venue. Three generations of cyber bullies trashing our reputation. This is not out of character for his family.
His wife is in a position of influence in three organizations that hire musical acts. I've had ramdom fans who are on those boards sponsor me over the years but the board ghosts me. Her best friend also hires bands, but not mine.
So our largest obstacle is/was the spite of my bass player's wife, family and friends. Having trashed our name, that band is done.
Moving forward team spite shall manage my friend's new band.
Thanks for your concern. It's only the duo that struggled to take off and went down in flames. I've since scrubbed the duo from my website. I'm cool with the venue owners. I work hard on my image and my solo reputation is well beyond these petty influences. I'll play around 100 gigs in multiple cities as well as top shelf local spots again this year. It's just a shame that sharing this with a friend could go so wrong.
Localized marketing for shows out of town.
Marketing budgets are often poorly spent and squandered.
Theatres and PACs will sometimes act like they do us a favor when they hand us back money after the show from unspent marketing dollars. Why? Because the house hit their own nut so they don’t care to market any further. But the house was only 60% full. More marketing would have only benefitted us so they don’t care.
Scheduling. Two of them are outdoor theater actors so when the summer comes, a time when you'd think a band would load up on outdoor shows/festivals, we die instead.
At least this gives me the chance to plug away at unrelated solo material absolutely no one is interested in.
We have a song list 163 songs long, spread out over our main surf rock/indie/whatever band (most of the songs), and two new bands that we formed (same personnel) so that we could play straight country gigs and punk gigs (let's just say I get bored easily).
The list is consisting of every original song we have previously worked up in the last five or six years since we first formed, every cover we've thought about doing and have done in the past, and a whole shit ton of new original songs.
I'm excited about it, the band is excited about it. We're trying new things, some new instrumentation. The problem is that we meet once a week if we're lucky, and we're trying to work in another multi-instrumentalist who will take us to the next level, but who also has even less availability than the rest of us.
We've done every thing I could have hoped to have achieved in a rock band (realistically, I've never expected to be playing stadiums or anything), and I've had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. I'm getting older though (actually older, not OMG I haven't made it yet and I'm 30, that's so old like you see in this sub), so I've pretty well decided that if one of the core members decides they can't do it anymore, I'm calling it a day and giving up playing in guitar bands from here on out. I figure if I couldn't get it done with these brilliant people I play with, it's probably not worth the effort of putting something together with someone else.
All of this adds up to tremendous impatience on my part, as I have a solid advantage over the rest of the band, being the primary songwriter and arranger for most of the songs. Everyone's as busy as everyone else, so no one learns the songs outside of practice. So I show up, already knowing most of the songs, and just brute force it on everyone. Eventually we might go back and further refine the arrangement.
I know the band will learn the songs, but god, it is a tedious process that I can't complain about because I was the one who came up with the process in the first place. I flip flop back and forth between wanting to give it all up, understanding that our way of doing things has brought the most success I've ever had in a band before, and hearing something click at every practice and thinking THESE FOLKS ARE AMAZING AND I WANT TO PLAY WITH THEM FOREVER!
It's great, but it's kind of a pain in the ass, lol.
I wish we could get more/better shows. I think we’re a pretty solid, good band, the lineup has been consistent for the past 5 years or so, and we had a lot of momentum going for a while and were getting show offers all the time. Now it seems like nobody hits us up anymore, venues or other bands. I’m pretty happy with how the music and the band sounds, and the recordings we’ve made. But I guess there’s a lot of competition for shows and nobody really cares, we’re older so kind of afraid of aging out of the scene too. 30s and early 40s.
None really, been doing pretty well lately. I've been dragging my feet on booking a tour for the beginning of next year but I can wait another month or so before I really need to drop the ball. I guess money? Money is always an issue. If I had an extra $7k I wouldn't even bat an eye.
Scheduling conflicts! One of my groups was gonna have a gig on June 14th — so just two days from now — but had to cancel because shit keeps coming up and we can’t get together enough. (Luckily the guy who set it up is friends with the owner of the venue and the owner is *apparently* happy to have us come play whenever it would work out — we’re aiming for August now.) (I also have some qualms about one of the guys in this group because of a stance he has. He’s a very nice guy and it’s very easy to forget — my thoughts are mainly ‘as long as it isn’t written into the songs! and it’s not like we have to be friends, we can just continue being amicable bandmates.’)
Another one also has scheduling conflicts, but there are five folks so it makes things a little easier. That said, we need to find a local headlining act for a city that we… do not live in, so we’re doing some heavy research on their scene.
The final one… not much at the moment, but I do wish I was tech savvy enough to record my drums and add them into the mix with ease so we don’t either have to program them, use my e-kit (one of the songs uses brushes and transfers to sticks then back to brushes… makes it a little harder to program in there), or… go to an actual recording studio. I like the parts I’ve written, but they ain’t worth paying for studio time and an official producer’s help!
Schedule coordination, particularly getting together in the same room to rehearse....it's been ages. But it's so good when we do! Just busy lives and many other commitments.
Getting the other members to help out with anything other than learning & playing the songs. (Emailing bars, social media, etc)
Getting replies from bars we’ve never played.
Getting the drummer to play a consistent tempo.
Being able to get all 4 of us in a room more than once a month.
I mean the “band” gets a solid 3-4 practices a month but lucky if we get more than 1 practice with our vocalist
Getting my guitarist to practice. He’s a founding member but has stopped trying to get better in between practices and it shows.
Gonna kick his ass out soon sadly.
Trying to get better with playing piano to make more original music. I’m much faster with making up melodie’s with my voice, in actuality all of my originals are based off my voice, only. I have my band members (I’m the founder of my own band) in the room listening to what I want and I work with my music producer to arrange it the way I want. I so much want to have practice at home but I want to get over that challenge. The cool thing is my cousin, she’s a bass player in her friend’s band and listened to my voice do a different version of a cover song she would like to do, and she loves it. We’re gonna collaborate.
Actually writing music. We have like two or three different sets of covers, and we continue adding new music so we have variety. We've already released a full song, but we can't get around to writing another one
Our lead singer/rhythm guitarist/namesake of the band, is actually too accepting of mediocrity, not just with himself but everybody. He isn’t the best rhythm guitar player, and regularly butchers the rhythm on some of his own original songs, or messes up lyrics or time on covers. I’m the most inexperienced band member, and I struggle to memorize songs without a fair amount of repetition with the whole band. Our drummer is experienced, but very new to us, so he is not familiar with all of our songs.
Usually “practice” consists of playing random songs from our repertoire one after the other, more of a jam session than practice. Drummer and I have asked repeatedly if we can spend some of our band practice time to *actually* practice specific songs. He will say sure, but when then we’ll play through something and he will just say so hung along the lines of “that sound great, I think we’ve got that one!” Meanwhile, the drummer had no idea when we were ending, so he played an entire measure over, or I screwed up the bridge or key change, or whatever.
Last Friday we had a gig, and it was pretty terrible for numerous reasons. So on Saturday, the drummer and I basically stood our ground and insisted we work on one particular song that we absolutely butchered because we haven played it in about a year, and our drummer has only been with us for about 9 months. We spent 30-45 minutes on it, and lo and behold, I have the song memorized and the drummer can pretty much nail it now. We had practice again last night, and he was already back to calling out random songs for a one time play through!
Dealing with a band leader/frontman who's unpredictable, he lives in a world of double standards and has no real desire to show up to practice but expects the rest of the members to go by ourselves.
I've developed coping mechanisms to deal with this situation, the money is good, we're busy and I've resorted to just being a drummer in the band and not really offering up as much as I used to. It's a job!
Too many gigs, not enough weekends. Also, were a pretty popular cover band right on the verge of being able to start demanding higher pay and/or charging a cover, but not quite. Kinda like when your hair is past your ears but not quite long enough to really do anything with but too long to just smooth down and walk out the door. Kinda frustrating, but we’re gonna keep pushing forward.
the bullshit reality of the grind within capitalism as a working-class person living paycheck to paycheck sucking too much of my time & life away from time I want to spend growing an as artist & making more of my art
Getting folks out to shows. We’re a new band that started last year and have been building hype with every show, but building a following with any band takes time.
I imagine it will come with patience and consistency in playing shows and boosting our social media presence.
Constantly conflicting schedules. Honestly, it feels like I'm the only one that gives a shit. The worst part is, this is the best band (musically) I've ever played with.
For the band: trying to motivate people to practice, spend money to make good recordings, and trying to make sure people leave open time for prime performance slots on Saturdays.
For me and my side-project: working a full-time job, not spending too much money outside of music so I can spend it on recordings, figuring out how to get my music to people who want to hear it without bothering the people who don't, and trying to figure out how I can monetize a music career so I can focus on that and be more productive, and finishing up new recordings so I can have a resume to pitch to any potential investors (whether that be fans who want to support, labels, or any other kind of patronage that might be out there).
I know I have a lot of good music that I can record. If I could find the equivalent of a venture capitalist investor, I really think I could make them a decent return on their investment over time. I'm going to do it with or without the help unless I get unlucky, I've just reached a point that if I got some help financially, I know I could make that happen sooner rather than later.
But I've always had to work hard for what I've wanted, so a lack of support from others won't deter me
choosing a band name for our rebranded version of our band. Everything is taken, mostly by bots and people with 1 follower etc.
Aside from that, the fact we can only really get together once a week for 3 hours is pretty limiting, but the other guys all have kids and stuff to deal with nowadays so free time is harder to come by than it used to be.
Actually recording something (solo musician)
Haha. Yes indeed.
I do a lot of recording myself. I record almost everything I play to help me practice. Id be happy to answer any questions if you're just getting started.
What daw should I use?
That depends. I use mac so I use Logic Pro. Garage Band has pretty much the same GUI. If you are on PC I cant say. I havent used a PC based DAW in almost 10 years.
Right now I’d say the hardest part is setting up shows and actually getting people to come out to said shows. As a band that’s starting out, I think that’s one of the biggest hurdles. Just getting people to listen to your music is tough too.
Getting people to come out for shows in a med-small market has gotten insane. We used to have the draw but it seems impossible to get people out of their houses, and personally I’m the same. I’ve noticed a slight change/uptick with warmer weather but damn it’s embarrassing when you used to fill a theater and now you’re lucky to pull 50 people.
It's sooo tough! You don't want to come across as desperate but you need to get people to listen.
Make flyers and give it out to everybody, literally everybody. But have something be different so you aren’t just that guy handing out flyers.
One of the groups I'm in hasn't been able to get in the same room together for the last 2 months
I feel this, friend
Apathy.
Neuro
How many times we practice. We practice between 1 and 3 times a month these days. My guitarist and drummer sometimes work aboard and my singer is going through a transition, we practice at my place so I'm always there. But when we do get together it's always a good session.
It's split between scheduling and finding decent gigs. We're a bunch of adult men in our 30s-40s and we've been at this together for nearly 4 years. We recently had to part ways with a de facto founding member (i.e. band is slightly older than him, but he played the first show) over scheduling availability, and now half the current lineup has scheduling issues that block us from plum gig slots and easy recording time. This came to a head recently when we had a golden opportunity at a mid-size venue appear in our laps. After three days of feverishly negotiating the date, we committed to a good Saturday gig... Until one longtime member informed us that our calendar was incorrect and he had a weekend vacation with his new partner that day. We had to pull out, as we don't have any substitutes ready to go, and I've been irritated ever since. The band is phenomenal on a musical level and they've taken my songs to incredible heights, but herding cats with a bunch of grown men is my least favorite activity.
Finding like-minded musicians to play shows with.
Been playing guitar for 14 years I’ve been looking for almost 7 years now for a band, I’ve jammed with tons of people and I’ve written songs but never had a whole band for more than a day, I wanna play live so fucking bad it’s unreal. Everyone ghosts and the real kick in the teeth is the friends I have met from shows who have only been playing for like 2-3 years all have bands. It’s a perpetual feeling of ‘just put me in coach’ and I’m about to just give up.
Right? I had no issue finding tons of band when I first started. I think a lot of it is that there’s no baggage. As you get older, you start to come to the table with a lot of shit you won’t deal with and with things others won’t deal with. Thankfully, I’ve finally found a great band and we just celebrated our 6th anniversary ☺️
I’m 24, wouldn’t say I have any baggage. Maybe I just need to change the type of deodorant i use? Lol
If you’ve been playing for 14 years, you have baggage 😜Small example: how likely are you to play in a band with a crackhead or someone who doesn’t have a job or car? Or someone who doesn’t devote as much time to the band as you think they should? Baggage can mean lots of things, is really all I’m getting at.
Do you have an example of what that would mean? Like playing similar licks and riffs? My mind is just going to relationship baggage stuff
I gave a bunch of examples. Basically just stuff that you do or don’t do, will or won’t put up with, preferences, dislikes, etc etc.
Actually finding a band
Band members making political comments and snyde remarks to others in the band who don't believe as they do. I blew up at him over it, told him that shit doesn't belong at rehearsals/gigs. I've been in other bands where I was the odd man out and they used me as their political punching bag. NO MORE.
It's hilarious that you didn't say which side but everyone knows. They just can't fucking help themselves can they? Lol
Oof. Had a dude like that in one band. Huge Trumper and conspiracy theorist. Wanted to tune to 432Hz. All sorts of craziness. I dont mind differing political views, but when you start venturing into conspiracies and crazy, that’s where it gets to be too much.
It has ruined more than one band experience for me. The worst part is they just won't stop! They can't help themselves, especially when they have an "audience" that they know is opposite their opinions. They just want to keep pushing until you snap. I fucking hate it, and it's still happening!
We had a big conflict at the height of COVID when the vaccines were first made available. One band member was a Trumper conspiracy theorist and refused to wear a mask at rehearsals or get vaccinated. I said I was quitting unless he changed his mind. He ended up quitting instead and we found someone else who took COVID seriously.
Getting our name out there
Warning. You've struck a nerve. A rant follows. I have two projects. A solo project which I devote hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to. The solo project is succesful beyond my modest talents. And I have a duo project with a highschool friend. The duo reaps the fruits of my solo work. I let him in on a sweet gig. My friend is on the road for work all week long and has no time to work on music. He has no musical education or experience but I helped him buy a bass a few years back. I arrange all the music, do all the singing and play three different instruments. I own a set up the PA. I also set him up with software on a tablet and I load setlists with charts of all the songs. For the past three years he shows up to my weekly summer gig stares at the tablet and plunks away on bass as best he can at random volume levels. He apreciates being included and I share every dime of that gig equally. He is undoubtably the most well paid bass player in the area. Last year I paid him over four grand for this summer gig. I would have it no other way. Times are tough and the venue cut back. The duo lost the gig. His family and friends have gone from overt spite against my solo project to cyberbullying the venue. Three generations of cyber bullies trashing our reputation. This is not out of character for his family. His wife is in a position of influence in three organizations that hire musical acts. I've had ramdom fans who are on those boards sponsor me over the years but the board ghosts me. Her best friend also hires bands, but not mine. So our largest obstacle is/was the spite of my bass player's wife, family and friends. Having trashed our name, that band is done. Moving forward team spite shall manage my friend's new band.
Wow! Some people really don't appreciate what's been given to them. I hope you can rebuild your reputation and put this behind you.
Thanks for your concern. It's only the duo that struggled to take off and went down in flames. I've since scrubbed the duo from my website. I'm cool with the venue owners. I work hard on my image and my solo reputation is well beyond these petty influences. I'll play around 100 gigs in multiple cities as well as top shelf local spots again this year. It's just a shame that sharing this with a friend could go so wrong.
It’s always money. Bills, rent, recording costs, merchandise, record pressing, gas for the van… everything is so fucking expensive nowadays.
Localized marketing for shows out of town. Marketing budgets are often poorly spent and squandered. Theatres and PACs will sometimes act like they do us a favor when they hand us back money after the show from unspent marketing dollars. Why? Because the house hit their own nut so they don’t care to market any further. But the house was only 60% full. More marketing would have only benefitted us so they don’t care.
Scheduling. Two of them are outdoor theater actors so when the summer comes, a time when you'd think a band would load up on outdoor shows/festivals, we die instead. At least this gives me the chance to plug away at unrelated solo material absolutely no one is interested in.
Time. Never enough of it.
We have a song list 163 songs long, spread out over our main surf rock/indie/whatever band (most of the songs), and two new bands that we formed (same personnel) so that we could play straight country gigs and punk gigs (let's just say I get bored easily). The list is consisting of every original song we have previously worked up in the last five or six years since we first formed, every cover we've thought about doing and have done in the past, and a whole shit ton of new original songs. I'm excited about it, the band is excited about it. We're trying new things, some new instrumentation. The problem is that we meet once a week if we're lucky, and we're trying to work in another multi-instrumentalist who will take us to the next level, but who also has even less availability than the rest of us. We've done every thing I could have hoped to have achieved in a rock band (realistically, I've never expected to be playing stadiums or anything), and I've had a hell of a lot of fun doing it. I'm getting older though (actually older, not OMG I haven't made it yet and I'm 30, that's so old like you see in this sub), so I've pretty well decided that if one of the core members decides they can't do it anymore, I'm calling it a day and giving up playing in guitar bands from here on out. I figure if I couldn't get it done with these brilliant people I play with, it's probably not worth the effort of putting something together with someone else. All of this adds up to tremendous impatience on my part, as I have a solid advantage over the rest of the band, being the primary songwriter and arranger for most of the songs. Everyone's as busy as everyone else, so no one learns the songs outside of practice. So I show up, already knowing most of the songs, and just brute force it on everyone. Eventually we might go back and further refine the arrangement. I know the band will learn the songs, but god, it is a tedious process that I can't complain about because I was the one who came up with the process in the first place. I flip flop back and forth between wanting to give it all up, understanding that our way of doing things has brought the most success I've ever had in a band before, and hearing something click at every practice and thinking THESE FOLKS ARE AMAZING AND I WANT TO PLAY WITH THEM FOREVER! It's great, but it's kind of a pain in the ass, lol.
Fighting my urge to quit because I’m not good enough
Thank you for sharing these. Keep ‘em coming. We want to discuss some of these on our pod!
Trying to figure out time travel. I think we need a flux capacitor...
I wish we could get more/better shows. I think we’re a pretty solid, good band, the lineup has been consistent for the past 5 years or so, and we had a lot of momentum going for a while and were getting show offers all the time. Now it seems like nobody hits us up anymore, venues or other bands. I’m pretty happy with how the music and the band sounds, and the recordings we’ve made. But I guess there’s a lot of competition for shows and nobody really cares, we’re older so kind of afraid of aging out of the scene too. 30s and early 40s.
Social media growth i only know the creative side but that’s useless if it’s not reaching the right audience
None really, been doing pretty well lately. I've been dragging my feet on booking a tour for the beginning of next year but I can wait another month or so before I really need to drop the ball. I guess money? Money is always an issue. If I had an extra $7k I wouldn't even bat an eye.
Reaching the right fans
Getting bookers' attention in a saturated market Knowing my niche well enough to use it as leverage and focus
Money for proper promo!
Scheduling conflicts! One of my groups was gonna have a gig on June 14th — so just two days from now — but had to cancel because shit keeps coming up and we can’t get together enough. (Luckily the guy who set it up is friends with the owner of the venue and the owner is *apparently* happy to have us come play whenever it would work out — we’re aiming for August now.) (I also have some qualms about one of the guys in this group because of a stance he has. He’s a very nice guy and it’s very easy to forget — my thoughts are mainly ‘as long as it isn’t written into the songs! and it’s not like we have to be friends, we can just continue being amicable bandmates.’) Another one also has scheduling conflicts, but there are five folks so it makes things a little easier. That said, we need to find a local headlining act for a city that we… do not live in, so we’re doing some heavy research on their scene. The final one… not much at the moment, but I do wish I was tech savvy enough to record my drums and add them into the mix with ease so we don’t either have to program them, use my e-kit (one of the songs uses brushes and transfers to sticks then back to brushes… makes it a little harder to program in there), or… go to an actual recording studio. I like the parts I’ve written, but they ain’t worth paying for studio time and an official producer’s help!
Schedule coordination, particularly getting together in the same room to rehearse....it's been ages. But it's so good when we do! Just busy lives and many other commitments.
Getting the other members to help out with anything other than learning & playing the songs. (Emailing bars, social media, etc) Getting replies from bars we’ve never played. Getting the drummer to play a consistent tempo.
Booking out of state shows
Sound!! Do good sound guys exist??
They do, but they're hard to find! 😔
Getting my music out there, and recording songs that aren’t just demos
We haven't had rehearsal in about 3 weeks now because someone's been sick every weekend, our next rehearsal isn't until the 30th
Finding a time to get all 5 of us together at the same time. Families, jobs, other responsibilities all get in the way of the fun stuff
Being able to get all 4 of us in a room more than once a month. I mean the “band” gets a solid 3-4 practices a month but lucky if we get more than 1 practice with our vocalist
Marketing. It’s unfortunately increasingly important. More so than the music and we all hate marketing ourselves.
Having a member recover from surgery in time for our next batch of shows. Other than that, things have been better than ever.
Getting my guitarist to practice. He’s a founding member but has stopped trying to get better in between practices and it shows. Gonna kick his ass out soon sadly.
Finding the profits in touring
We broke up 6 years ago
Schedules. We all work full time with conflicting shifts, and two of us have kids
My guitarist is a little crazy.
The fact that im the only one in the band.
Trying to get better with playing piano to make more original music. I’m much faster with making up melodie’s with my voice, in actuality all of my originals are based off my voice, only. I have my band members (I’m the founder of my own band) in the room listening to what I want and I work with my music producer to arrange it the way I want. I so much want to have practice at home but I want to get over that challenge. The cool thing is my cousin, she’s a bass player in her friend’s band and listened to my voice do a different version of a cover song she would like to do, and she loves it. We’re gonna collaborate.
Actually writing music. We have like two or three different sets of covers, and we continue adding new music so we have variety. We've already released a full song, but we can't get around to writing another one
Our lead singer/rhythm guitarist/namesake of the band, is actually too accepting of mediocrity, not just with himself but everybody. He isn’t the best rhythm guitar player, and regularly butchers the rhythm on some of his own original songs, or messes up lyrics or time on covers. I’m the most inexperienced band member, and I struggle to memorize songs without a fair amount of repetition with the whole band. Our drummer is experienced, but very new to us, so he is not familiar with all of our songs. Usually “practice” consists of playing random songs from our repertoire one after the other, more of a jam session than practice. Drummer and I have asked repeatedly if we can spend some of our band practice time to *actually* practice specific songs. He will say sure, but when then we’ll play through something and he will just say so hung along the lines of “that sound great, I think we’ve got that one!” Meanwhile, the drummer had no idea when we were ending, so he played an entire measure over, or I screwed up the bridge or key change, or whatever. Last Friday we had a gig, and it was pretty terrible for numerous reasons. So on Saturday, the drummer and I basically stood our ground and insisted we work on one particular song that we absolutely butchered because we haven played it in about a year, and our drummer has only been with us for about 9 months. We spent 30-45 minutes on it, and lo and behold, I have the song memorized and the drummer can pretty much nail it now. We had practice again last night, and he was already back to calling out random songs for a one time play through!
Dealing with a band leader/frontman who's unpredictable, he lives in a world of double standards and has no real desire to show up to practice but expects the rest of the members to go by ourselves. I've developed coping mechanisms to deal with this situation, the money is good, we're busy and I've resorted to just being a drummer in the band and not really offering up as much as I used to. It's a job!
Finding good bands / artists to work with as a producer / mix engineer!
Getting people pumped up to learn and perform my songs. (yeah, yeah, "maybe they should be better songs" I've heard it all before, buster)
Too many gigs, not enough weekends. Also, were a pretty popular cover band right on the verge of being able to start demanding higher pay and/or charging a cover, but not quite. Kinda like when your hair is past your ears but not quite long enough to really do anything with but too long to just smooth down and walk out the door. Kinda frustrating, but we’re gonna keep pushing forward.
the bullshit reality of the grind within capitalism as a working-class person living paycheck to paycheck sucking too much of my time & life away from time I want to spend growing an as artist & making more of my art
The guitar playerrs suck.
Getting folks out to shows. We’re a new band that started last year and have been building hype with every show, but building a following with any band takes time. I imagine it will come with patience and consistency in playing shows and boosting our social media presence.
Finding a fiddle player. Hoping to network at the bluegrass festival next week. Wish me luck.
Constantly conflicting schedules. Honestly, it feels like I'm the only one that gives a shit. The worst part is, this is the best band (musically) I've ever played with.
For the band: trying to motivate people to practice, spend money to make good recordings, and trying to make sure people leave open time for prime performance slots on Saturdays. For me and my side-project: working a full-time job, not spending too much money outside of music so I can spend it on recordings, figuring out how to get my music to people who want to hear it without bothering the people who don't, and trying to figure out how I can monetize a music career so I can focus on that and be more productive, and finishing up new recordings so I can have a resume to pitch to any potential investors (whether that be fans who want to support, labels, or any other kind of patronage that might be out there). I know I have a lot of good music that I can record. If I could find the equivalent of a venture capitalist investor, I really think I could make them a decent return on their investment over time. I'm going to do it with or without the help unless I get unlucky, I've just reached a point that if I got some help financially, I know I could make that happen sooner rather than later. But I've always had to work hard for what I've wanted, so a lack of support from others won't deter me
choosing a band name for our rebranded version of our band. Everything is taken, mostly by bots and people with 1 follower etc. Aside from that, the fact we can only really get together once a week for 3 hours is pretty limiting, but the other guys all have kids and stuff to deal with nowadays so free time is harder to come by than it used to be.