Live Music Blog

(For the purpose of this article I am going to make a couple of assumptions before I go any further. They are that you’ve a little bit of vocal or musical instrument knowledge and that you likewise have a fledgling network of friends and contacts)

Starting up a band is a unusually interesting time in a artists life. There is 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 individuals involved, other individual ities, other strengths and weaknesses in character and abilities and because of this it’s really necessary that you’ve several things worked out before you start looking for band members.

1. Have a good idea of your own strengths and weaknesses

The performer members that you want to get will need to be around the same level of competence as you are. The main reason for this is that you might all grow together rather than have one or two artists carrying everyone else. This type of player imbalance causes doubt in the group and doubt is one of the major killers of bands.

2. Know beforehand how the performer is going to be run

Is the performer going to be run by you or the whole group? The individual ity categories of the musicians that you select will need to be agreeable to the way the performer 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 performance but having an idea of what performers you are looking for will be of great help.

It is now time to hunt down some band members

4. Ask your network of companions and/or contacts

This is always a nice place to start. Ask anybody at all 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 great opening  to wide n it. This is one of the reasons why networking in the industry is so vital, for opening s such as this.

Having a musician referred to you has a much better occasion 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 great contacts from performers 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 performers are wonderfully like ly to see it and read it like in a music shop, a Local music magazine or a music classifieds website.

A sample ‘ performer wanted‘ advertisement may read something like 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 cell telephone  number here)

As you could see, the ad is evident in its intention.

It evident ly states the musician wanted, the type of music the band is playing, what the music might sound like and that the band has some experience behind it. Make sure you have a evident contact name and phone numbers (if you want to include an email address as well that is cool).

Don’t put in stuff like ‘work waiting‘ or ‘no time was ters please‘. You might judge those sort of things yourself when an interested musician contacts you.

Once you’ve done that the waiting game begins.