OK, so you think your really good at the guitar or bass. You got some good equipment, and your friends want you to join their band to play along. This all sounds good, playing other peoples songs, but once you make up your own songs, you guys can't get your act together, and it sounds horrible. You may be asking yourself how even the simplest of songs can have bans frustrated.
Well, the thing is that is important is the three C's, concentration, coordination, and consistency. Even though you wrote the lyrics and the riffs for the song, You might have trouble keeping up with the band. I'm here to break it down so that you can all understand it and actually get something accomplished in band practices.
First off, To make things easier, lets break it down into 5 parts. Drums, Keyboard, Guitar, Bass and misc instruments on the how to write a good song and how to get your band to cooperate and coordinate with you.
Drums:
Drums make the beat in the band, we all know that, we all listen to it. But what makes it important is that it keeps the band in organization for both timing, and tempo. The best Main thing for a drummer to do is to keep the rhythm of the strumming of the guitar/bass. If the strumming of a song goes a+a+a+e+a, the drummer will have to do the same thing for beat. Also it is important for a drummer to help signify the change of a song, such as verse to chorus, etc. It could be done by a drum roll or hitting a symbol to help move along the song. Another thing other then keeping up with the band, is to take it down a notch. In some songs the guitars drop and the singer sings, and the drummer drums. To make sure you don't over do it, a good thing is just to slowly tap the edge or a snare or evenly tap a tom. Most importantly throughout the lesson is to never try to sound too busy. There is a time and a place for everything their called solos.
Guitars:
In your band you may have one to however many guitarist you need. Guitarist mainly take the leadership roll in a band, cause they set the melody, the rhythem, tempo, and mode of a song. When writting riffs, thing to consider is key. Try to capture the key of the lead vocalist, and play in that key, this way things don't sound to seperate.
For Rhythm guitars, key things are to keep not only the rhythm but help separate different parts of the song. Sometimes for the verse, a good idea is to palm mute, or play clean/or Acoustic, and keep effects, distortion, and other loud noises to the chorus/solo's/intro's and so on.
For lead guitars, The key is not to sound to busy. It's cool to do stuff for intro's and solo's, but not when the lead singer is singing a verse. It's also good to keep up the melody of the song. Remember, the lead guitarist isn't their to out shine the band, but to add depth to it.
For Bass Players, it's true that you don't have the same huge responsibility of the guitarists and the drummer. What you will want to do though is pay close attention to both the guitarists and the drummer. You keep up the pace of the drums, while still playing the riffs of the guitar.
Keyboard players, again, don't try to sound to busy, but mostly keep the melody of the song.
Misc instruments:
Such as Turntables, horns, etc. I really can't go into in great depth cause I don't play these instruments, some I don't consider instruments. But try to keep up with the band, and show off to a minimum, try not to sound to busy, and keep the crazy stuff in the right places, such as intro's, outro's, solo's, breakdown's etc.
You will see in time, if you follow these steps and tips, practices will go much smoothly and much more will get accomplished.
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