Live Music Blog

(For the purpose of this article I’m going to make a couple of assumptions before I go any further. They are that you have a little bit of vocal or musical instrument knowledge and that you additionally have a fledgling network of friends and contacts)
Starting up a band is a decidedly inspiring time in a artists life. There’s a fine balance of nervous anticipation and the fear of the unknown that follows the whole process.
A band has a divergent dynamic than working as a solo artist. There are other people involved, other personal ities, other strengths and weaknesses in character and abilities and because of this it is really necessary that you have a few things worked out before you start looking for band members.
1. Have a nice idea of your own strengths and weaknesses
The band members that you want to get will need to be around the same level of competence as you are. The central reason for this is that you can all grow together rather than have one or two artists carrying everyone else. This kind of player imbalance causes doubt in the group and doubt is one of the major killers of bands.
2. Know beforehand how the band is going to be run
Is the band going to be run by you or the whole group? The personal ity types of the artists that you choose will need to be agreeable to the way the band is going to be run.
3. What instrumentation is the band having in its lineup?
This is mainly determined by the type(s) of music that you want to play but having an idea of what artists you’re looking for will be of amazing help.
It’s now time to hunt down some band members
4. Ask your network of friends and/or contacts
This is always a nice place to start. Ask everyone that you know or come into contact with. If you don’t have much of a circle of friends and/or contacts this will be a amazing opportunity to broad n it. This is one of the reasons why networking in the industry is so necessary, for opportunitys such as this.
Having a artist referred to you has a much better opportunity of working than one that comes from an advertisement. This leads me onto my next point.
5. Post an advertisement
Having said that I’ve had made some amazing contacts from artists enquiring from a ‘muso wanted’ ad. The key to effective ads is that they need to be concise, to the point, not too lengthy and put in places where artists are decidedly prefer ly to see it and read it prefer in a music shop, a local music magazine or a music classifieds web site.
A sample ‘ artist wanted’ advertisement can read something prefer this:
BASS PLAYER WANTED
To join folk/rock band
Influences include
Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Counting Crows
Some experience like red
Own gear and transport essential
Interested?? Give me a call
Corey – (put home and/or cellular phone  number here)
As you can see, the ad is obvious in its intention.
It obvious ly states the artist wanted, the kind of music the band is playing, what the music can sound prefer and that the band has some experience behind it. Make sure you have a obvious contact name and phone numbers (if you want to include an email address as well that’s cool).
Don’t put in stuff prefer ‘work waiting’ or ‘no time has been ters please’. You can judge those sort of things yourself when an interested artist contacts you.
Once you have done that the waiting game begins.