Hello everyone!
I apologize in advance for the length of the post and the fact that it's not exclusively drum-related.
I've got a couple of issues going on within the (newly formed) band that i'm in.
A little background:
I just started playing the drums, and after purchasing my kit I convinced my closest friend to pick up the guitar so that we could pursue our mutual interest in music together. We decided that we wanted to form some kind of band to make our 'practices' a bit more formal, as we were just goofing off on our instruments and not really getting anywhere. Let's call this friend Jim.
Now, Jim has a girlfriend who is extremely fluent on the keyboard, shes been playing almost her whole life and we both decided that it would be awesome to have her fill in for the song we were working on at the time. (Pork and beans, by Weezer). She came in, nailed her part(s) perfectly, and both Jim and I were very satisfied with the result. She (lets call her Kate) agreed to play with us. In order to have a functioning band, we needed a bassist, I asked my girlfriend (a very talented vocalist, let's call her Jan.) if she would be interesting in both singing for us and learning how to play the bass guitar. She was immediately interested.
Great, we have a full functioning band, we are all close friends. We love hanging out together so this should flow really well.
We've gotten together only a couple of times for a full practice, by the first practice everyone knew our first song really well (Pork and Beans). We all decided that we should try and find more songs to cover as a whole.
We aren't nearly talented enough to start writing our own material yet, so we are covering songs to become familiar and fluent with our instruments. We decided on Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.
Now, before I go on I want to throw in that none of us have any real leadership experience, in anything. And I knew that in order for this to work somebody had to step up and start 'leading' this thing. So our second practice I started selecting songs that I thought we could do and I scheduled practices, put all of our schedules together to find days that we were all free, etc. Essentially, I had become the 'leader' of this band.
Now, when we decided to do Chasing Cars it was agreed upon that we would individually learn our parts and when we got together we would play the piece as a whole and fine tune it after a few runs. When the next practice started, Kate and I knew our parts but Jim and Jan came completely unprepared and we spent the first half of practice teaching Jan how to tune her bass, and Jim spent the other half learning his part. By the end of the practice, we hadn't even played the song through. Kate and I spent 3 hours sitting behind our instruments. I let everyone know that I wasn't satisfied with how things went and that we all should try harder to come more prepared for practice. That was the most recent practice.
We have all been trying to find new songs to add to our list of songs we should cover, looking for songs that are do-able but still challenging. I came across Crush Crush Crush by Paramore and decided that it would be challenging for everyone but still do-able, given a bit of practice. I ran it by Jim and he was completely against the idea.
He feels that it's not fair to Kate to pick a song that she doesn't have a part in. He feels that we should only pick songs with keyboard in them so that everyone gets to play and so that Kate isn't sitting there bored the whole time.
And I feel that we shouldn't limit our choices to those only with keyboard. I feel that it will be more difficult for us to have to sift through songs with keyboard, while we could pick songs that Jim, Jan and I can learn, and help assist in getting us 3 more fluent with our instruments. (Consider that Kate has been playing her whole life, and doesn't necessarily need the practice). It's also important to mention we've been having a hard time finding songs with keyboard that are do-able for us. (it's also agreed that when we write our own material it will include keyboard in most of it, so it's not like Kate is left out entirely, and we still have songs that include keyboard, it's just this particular song that doesn't.)
With that being said, I feel that Jim and I both have very strong points. While I think that he may be coming to Kate's defense simply because they are involved romantically, its still gotta suck to have to sit out. At the same time (I feel) we are hindering our progress by trying to find songs WITH keyboard that are all reasonable considering our skill level.
Remember we are all really good friends and this is causing us a lot of grief and arguing. I'd like to progress as quickly as possible so that we can start writing our own material (which everyone is extremely excited about doing) and start playing in front of an audience.
What should I do? What would you do?
Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me, as i'm sure this isn't a rare occurrence.
Thanks in advance, everyone!
I apologize in advance for the length of the post and the fact that it's not exclusively drum-related.
I've got a couple of issues going on within the (newly formed) band that i'm in.
A little background:
I just started playing the drums, and after purchasing my kit I convinced my closest friend to pick up the guitar so that we could pursue our mutual interest in music together. We decided that we wanted to form some kind of band to make our 'practices' a bit more formal, as we were just goofing off on our instruments and not really getting anywhere. Let's call this friend Jim.
Now, Jim has a girlfriend who is extremely fluent on the keyboard, shes been playing almost her whole life and we both decided that it would be awesome to have her fill in for the song we were working on at the time. (Pork and beans, by Weezer). She came in, nailed her part(s) perfectly, and both Jim and I were very satisfied with the result. She (lets call her Kate) agreed to play with us. In order to have a functioning band, we needed a bassist, I asked my girlfriend (a very talented vocalist, let's call her Jan.) if she would be interesting in both singing for us and learning how to play the bass guitar. She was immediately interested.
Great, we have a full functioning band, we are all close friends. We love hanging out together so this should flow really well.
We've gotten together only a couple of times for a full practice, by the first practice everyone knew our first song really well (Pork and Beans). We all decided that we should try and find more songs to cover as a whole.
We aren't nearly talented enough to start writing our own material yet, so we are covering songs to become familiar and fluent with our instruments. We decided on Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.
Now, before I go on I want to throw in that none of us have any real leadership experience, in anything. And I knew that in order for this to work somebody had to step up and start 'leading' this thing. So our second practice I started selecting songs that I thought we could do and I scheduled practices, put all of our schedules together to find days that we were all free, etc. Essentially, I had become the 'leader' of this band.
Now, when we decided to do Chasing Cars it was agreed upon that we would individually learn our parts and when we got together we would play the piece as a whole and fine tune it after a few runs. When the next practice started, Kate and I knew our parts but Jim and Jan came completely unprepared and we spent the first half of practice teaching Jan how to tune her bass, and Jim spent the other half learning his part. By the end of the practice, we hadn't even played the song through. Kate and I spent 3 hours sitting behind our instruments. I let everyone know that I wasn't satisfied with how things went and that we all should try harder to come more prepared for practice. That was the most recent practice.
We have all been trying to find new songs to add to our list of songs we should cover, looking for songs that are do-able but still challenging. I came across Crush Crush Crush by Paramore and decided that it would be challenging for everyone but still do-able, given a bit of practice. I ran it by Jim and he was completely against the idea.
He feels that it's not fair to Kate to pick a song that she doesn't have a part in. He feels that we should only pick songs with keyboard in them so that everyone gets to play and so that Kate isn't sitting there bored the whole time.
And I feel that we shouldn't limit our choices to those only with keyboard. I feel that it will be more difficult for us to have to sift through songs with keyboard, while we could pick songs that Jim, Jan and I can learn, and help assist in getting us 3 more fluent with our instruments. (Consider that Kate has been playing her whole life, and doesn't necessarily need the practice). It's also important to mention we've been having a hard time finding songs with keyboard that are do-able for us. (it's also agreed that when we write our own material it will include keyboard in most of it, so it's not like Kate is left out entirely, and we still have songs that include keyboard, it's just this particular song that doesn't.)
With that being said, I feel that Jim and I both have very strong points. While I think that he may be coming to Kate's defense simply because they are involved romantically, its still gotta suck to have to sit out. At the same time (I feel) we are hindering our progress by trying to find songs WITH keyboard that are all reasonable considering our skill level.
Remember we are all really good friends and this is causing us a lot of grief and arguing. I'd like to progress as quickly as possible so that we can start writing our own material (which everyone is extremely excited about doing) and start playing in front of an audience.
What should I do? What would you do?
Hopefully someone can shed some light on this for me, as i'm sure this isn't a rare occurrence.
Thanks in advance, everyone!