Starting A Band

Starting A Band
Part Two - Is It All About The Music?
by Shane Bailey

The repertoire your band selects is not the most important part of your band, but it is one of the most important aspects. The reality is there are a number of things that go into the make up of a band that are of equal importance, the repertoire being one of them. As discussed in Part One, if you're an original band selecting obscure covers to perform live to pad out your set doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What is the reasoning behind selecting the cover besides to fill out what may not quite be a complete set so you can get out playing live? It's fine to pad the set because it is important to play out as soon as you are ready musically with some strong stuff. Are you selecting that obscure cover for your enjoyment? If so, keep that for the rehearsal space, think of what the crowd might be after. Are you selecting the cover because it is so obscure some people might even think it's your own material? (It is done by some less than scrupulous acts!) Or are you selecting the obscure cover because it reflects your influences? If it's the latter it may be acceptable, but rarely is this the reason. If you're padding out the original set pick some fairly well known stuff popular with your genre and put your twist on it. Don't pick the most technical thinkg you can come up with that will require lots of valuable rehearsal time, there's little to be gained by working tirelessly on a song that isn't yours if you're an original act when that time could be better spent rehearsing your own material and/or writing.

If you're a cover act playing Top 40 and the like, again, don't pick really tough songs that require heaps of rehearsal time. You can use the time more wisely learning more material so you have a longer and more diverse set to choose from. Egos may suggest to you that if you're able to pull off all the hard chops in one tough song in your set that the crowd will think you're the greatest thing around. Some in the crowd might, but let me assure you without being patronising to Top 40 cover acts, the vast majority of the crowd couldn't give a rats if your band can pull off a Dream Theater song or your guitarist or drummer can play every note perfectly every time. Of course if you're a concept band performing the work of only one particular artist this is not quite relevant, but there is still the reality you're a cover act so pull yourself up once in a while and recall that very fact.

So you have your repertoire, maybe 45 minutes for an original band you can start hunting some multi-band slots, and double that or more in set length a cover band can start looking for work. Parties for friends and so forth don't count at this point, those things are par for the course up to this point. Make sure your set is tight and very well rehearsed, practice the sets and any instrument changes and tuning changes and the like you may need to do. I have two pet hates that enrage me when I see a live band so I urge you, please try not to do them. First is "dead air" between every song, actually between any songs.

Take a break to say something every few songs if you have something to say and to introduce yourselves and so on. String songs together, keep it moving and keep the crowd interested. A break is a cue to take a piss or go and get a drink for many people, their interest is diverted from you. My second pet hate kind of goes along with the first, it's a drummer smacking his snare or messing about with his kit in between songs or a guitarist tuning up between every song! Both of these things essentially retard the whole band from moving on to the next song, see my first pet hate. Any other instrumentalist could probably be guilty of something similar but I don't notice a bass player or keyboard player stuffing around as much as I do guitarists and drummers. A snare drum or bass drum on it's own or guitar tuning up, despite what the player may think, doesn't appeal to the majority of your audience when blaring through the PA. So drummers, fix your shit as the song's going, you know you can do it (unless of course it's something terminal which should be rare, if it's not rare then get some more reliable gear). Guitarists, if you have a minor tuning problem learn how to fix it while playing, o have a tuner with a mute function in your signal path you can access in a break in a song or something, no one wants to hear you tuning up, simple.

As for the rest of your performance, your personalities and such will determine a lot of what goes on. If you've not seen many live bands be sure and seek out some good ones and go along and check them out. Don't get your inspiration for your stage show from Wembley Stadium gigs. You won't have a) the stage size, b) the equipment, and c) 100,000 people egging you on. Keep your inspirations limited to similar sized venue shows for the short term, see how the good bands make the most of what are usually pretty shitty situations in small venues.

That's enough about your stage show and repertoire, that's your business, just always be mindful of what the audience are looking at and what they're getting from your show. If you keep that in mind you should have some happy punters at your show. Now we need to look at some of the more boring aspects of this band caper, basic management. At the beginning you're probably not going to need a manager or need to know a lot about dealing with venues just yet, that will come a very close second to this first problem you need to overcome. How will people hear and see you? PA and lights. If the venue has an in-house PA and engineer (often the case for original bands getting on the multi-band bill) and some of the more well patronised clubs catering to cover bands. If this is the case you can move on to the management of the money and so on. If not, then you need a PA and lights.

Despite the fact I run a music store and my business is selling music gear I don't, unlike many, suggest you, as a band, need your own full blown PA system. If you hire a rehearsal space with a PA included I'd suggest, in most cases, you don't need a PA at all, at least not yet and maybe not ever depending on your act. It sounds like a great idea to have your own PA so you don't have to pay anyone else but how much money do you realistically have to spend on said PA? Unless you have many, many thousands of dollars (at a minimum I would say around $8,000) then it's not really worth it in my opinion. Another of the most important aspects to your live band playing is how you sound out the front and, to a lesser extent how you hear yourself on stage. If you're using a $2,000 PA without enough channels or decent mics to fully compliment your band, chances are you'll sound like crap out front. Of course this doesn't apply to duos and so on but these articles really don't have a lot of relevance to such acts anyway. If you're a cover band and look like getting plenty of work, sure, having your own PA would be cost effective in the long term. But if you are such a cover band you'll probably need much more again to spend on a PA because you never quite know what size room you might be playing. If it comes to a bigger room down the track you'll probably end up hiring some pieces of equipment anyway. The hire of PA systems with engineers these days is pretty cost effective compared to when systems were huge and required hours and hours of set-up just for a medium sized pub gig. Let's say, hypothetically, that you were paying $150 with an engineer for a show. His system could be worth in excess of $20,000. So OK, you have your own $20K system instead. You pay an engineer $75 a show (very, very cheap and very much "mates rates" I'd suspect). So you make $75 you wouldn't have made if you hired the $150 system. It would take you in excess of $260 shows to pay off that $20,000 system, and that doesn't take into account maintenance that may need to be performed on your gear from time to time. You also have the issue of ownership of said equipment, what if you all pitched in to buy the system and someone leaves? You would probably then need to pay them out their share, and they could want back what they paid, the system simply isn't worth that once it's been gigged a bit so you're paying more to get that share back than it's even worth, there is a loss made there.

Granted, once you've paid off your PA it's more profit and so forth, very valid argument. But would it really matter if you played 10,20, even 50 shows before you decided to spring for your own system, if at all? For an original band shelling out money for your own PA makes very little sense indeed. If you have $20K at your disposal and you're in an original band you could spend it on many, many more things that could ultimately be more beneficial to you, such as recording for one. Besides which, almost all your shows will be in venues with in-house PAs or on multi-band bills where the PA hire cost will be split between you all or paid for by a promoter anyway.

So we've established whether you need a PA or not. Next time we'll discuss a few ways to secure a PA system for hire if you do require one and, if not, how to approach house engineers when using their system. Also, we'll take a look at how to deal with promoters and venue operators, these people are very important to you and they're often wankers :P Therefore there are a few things you're better off knowing going in than not!

Part One: Where Do you Start?
Part Three: Time To Get Gigging
Part Four: To Manage Or Be Managed