The Incomplete Band Myth

I have met far too many talented musicians who are without a band, but who long to start one. They sit upon hours of golden material and aren’t sure what the next step is for getting closer to the stage. I’d like to talk a little bit about the process of forming a band, looking for members, auditions, and how to market yourself to attract the right people. I know from experience that it’s a tedious process, but if you put in the effort and don’t settle, you’ll undoubtedly find the right people.

Let’s jump back a little bit to the lone rock star shredding at home to videos of Steve Vai and Jimi Hendrix; you’ve got the chops and now it’s time to find the right people. I’m going to use a rock band with original material as a prototype throughout this article, because this is what I’m familiar with.

First thing you should consider doing is keeping a log of all your compositional ideas. Maybe you have some stray guitar riffs here and there, some chord progressions on an acoustic guitar, some melodies in your head, a sweet bass line, a fat drum beat; whatever instrument it is, record your ideas or write them down so they aren’t lost over time. I’ve written songs to a singer’s cell phone recording of them humming a melody while driving home. I’ve heard a drummer write his drum parts, a bass line, and guitar parts all on a midi keyboard in a recording program called Logic. The point is, when inspiration hits, get it on tape however you can! It doesn’t matter if you think it sucks or if it’s a bad quality recording, stick with it and develop it until you either keep it or throw it away. Remember not to give up on your ideas straight away; sometimes people are too critical of themselves. Composition takes practice.

I was in this exact position 2 years ago. I had written some guitar parts with my friend Elijah Melanson (of Helicopria), but we had no bassist and no vocalist. As we carried on writing we both felt that we had something special developing and we sighed over “what ifs” and whined “I wish we had…”until I sucked it up and started singing some melodies over our tunes. We became obsessed with the idea of finding our fellow band members and decided to create a promotional video to ignite the search. We made a video of ourselves playing our songs live on acoustic guitars with me singing, all done on our laptop cameras and edited in iMovie. We also added some silly clips to show our band dynamic, and then announced we were searching for a vocalist (male or female) to audition. We did what we could to get these ideas down, as ridiculous as the set-up was. We put the video up on Youtube and Facebook and posted it around for as many people to see as possible.

We had no idea how our music was going to be received and I certainly felt self-conscious of my singing, playing, and writing, but it had worked! We had several people respond to our video, some were trained vocalists and some weren’t. We held an exhausting amount of auditions over the course of 4 months where we had each person prepare the two songs from the video and sing along while we played. We made sure to make it very easy to get the material they needed to prepare; we recorded a backing track of the acoustic guitars and I posted the lyrics online. If we liked what we heard, we would then take the opportunity to communicate our vision for the future group, the amount of practice time that would be required, and how we were completely serious about this being our career in the future. We felt it was important to attract people to our idea, but not to overwhelm them right off the get-go. When we’d met them in person, we felt it was vital to be clear with a potential band member and communicate what we would expect of them.

This is just a small glimpse into the numerous ways you can go about attracting people to your music. Be clever about your promotion, be clear about what you’re asking for/searching for, and remember to be prompt in responding to those who contact you. Remember, you are auditioning for your future band member just as much as they are auditioning for you!

If I could emphasize one point, it would be to work with what you have. This is an idea I’m always communicating to the people I work with, don’t let things like equipment or an incomplete band stop you, just do the best you can to keep moving forward and someone will take notice!

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