Another rant about a guitar player

[eddiehimself]

Hi guys i'm getting a bit miffed with the guitar player in my band because i get the feeling he just thinks it's all just a big joke. All he ever seems to want to do is play more songs, even if the songs we're doing already aren't right. Right now me and the bass player want to concentrate on getting the cover versions tight so we can play them in front of an audience, then start to concentrate on writing songs, which i think will sound better for it. But all he wants to do is just write out song after song quickly as possible.

He just gets one idea for a riff and makes it into an entire song very quickly without thinking of the structure, even he said on one tuxguitar track he did that basically after halfway through it was just everything he'd already done repeating itself. Then the next week he'll come back and say the song he wrote last week was a piece of crap and here's a new one. He complains at me for taking a long time to write songs, but i'm trying to think the way the song will go through instead of just sticking 2 simple riffs together and pressing "repeat" a few times.

He's telling me he's bored with just doing the cover versions, even though we've just got a new member and we need to teach him the guitar parts for a start but apart from that we're just not tight enough. I tell him as much and he's just like "oh you're just being a perfectionist!" Well hang on, yeah i am a perfectionist but i just find it insulting, not so much on a personal level but for the band in general because it's as if he doesn't give a shit about how we sound as long as we do some new song all the time. I get the feeling he's not even practsing the songs we're doing and certainly not along to a metronome because his timing is pretty awful to be honest which means we sound even more sloppy. He can do loads of stuff on the guitar, but his basic playing is just sloppy sounding.

The best bit though is that he's complaining at me for not recording any of the guitar parts in our recordings. Well sorry mate but if you actually practise doing the songs and making them sound tight then you can do a good recording but otherwise i get the feeling that if i do a recording of him it's just going to sound sloppy and i'll have to do it myself because no doubt he's going to get sick of it after one take, because it was "good enough" even though it wasn't.

Yeah so i don't really know what i'm going to do, as i say he's been playing for 8 years or thereabouts so it's not as if he can blame inexperience and despite being able to do all the sweep picking and such techniques even the bass player who's been playing for 6 months has the basics of timing down better than him it seems. I want to talk it through really because for a start we're unlikely to find any other guitar players round here because there just aren't any unless you want to do indie or whatever but he's also a good friend, he just seems to have this easy going attitude in general but i really think he needs to take some things a bit more seriously if we're going to get anywhere instead of just peeing about like we are now.

[larryace]

So you're looking to change the way this person plays. Good luck with that. The way I see it you have only a few options.

Stick with him and hope for the best
Replace him
Join a new band
Bring someone in who can change his playing
Spell it out to him in no uncertain terms and see if he's the kind of guy who can deliver what's asked of him
After that, I'm tapped for ideas

[TTNW]

One approach you might want to consider is alternating the purpose of your rehearsal time. One session can be for looser playing, new song development, etc.. and then the next session on a different day could be for rehearsing what was done on the previous session.

This way if everyone agrees to the premise, he has to show up and try. It might get him to commit to the process without feeling like he has to give up totally what he enjoys the most about playing with everyone else.

[dairyairman]

i know what you're talking about with these impatient songwriters. i've been involved with several of them, even now, and they are frustrating. one guy i've been working with has a whole new set of songs every week. it's great that he's so prolific, and his songs are very good, but can't we just pick a few of them and get them tight enough to play live? we never do that because we're always playing something brand new.

the other band i'm in is not as bad, but kind of like that only with cover songs. every practice the lead guitar player is always searching for new songs for us to try instead of tightening up what we've played before. this band is more serious and the goal is to make money, but we'll never get there if we keep goofing around like this. no one is going to pay us to get up on stage and basically jam a bunch of songs we barely know.

i think these people like the idea of playing live but they get bored easily and don't want to put in the practice it takes to really nail a song. you see kids? music is not all just fun, fun, fun. it takes practice and dedication to pull it off.

[eddiehimself]

Originally Posted by larryace

So you're looking to change the way this person plays. Good luck with that. The way I see it you have only a few options.

Stick with him and hope for the best
Replace him
Join a new band
Bring someone in who can change his playing
Spell it out to him in no uncertain terms and see if he's the kind of guy who can deliver what's asked of him
After that, I'm tapped for ideas

Well the problem is for 2 and 4 is as i've already said. There simply isn't anyone we can find who's any good at the guitar. The annoying thing is that although there are these problems, he's probably the best we've got. As for joining a band, the thought did cross my mind but every time i ask to join a band they've already found someone else. I really don't know where all these musicians suddenly come from! I don't know if i'm up for joining a really good band anyway as i'm not really all that great on the drums.

Originally Posted by TTNW

One approach you might want to consider is alternating the purpose of your rehearsal time. One session can be for looser playing, new song development, etc.. and then the next session on a different day could be for rehearsing what was done on the previous session.

This way if everyone agrees to the premise, he has to show up and try. It might get him to commit to the process without feeling like he has to give up totally what he enjoys the most about playing with everyone else.

The problem is that we only get to practise once a week for a few hours so if we start alternating what we do then we're probably never going to get things done. But tfts anyway.

Originally Posted by dairyairman

i know what you're talking about with these impatient songwriters. i've been involved with several of them, even now, and they are frustrating. one guy i've been working with has a whole new set of songs every week. it's great that he's so prolific, and his songs are very good, but can't we just pick a few of them and get them tight enough to play live? we never do that because we're always playing something brand new.

the other band i'm in is not as bad, but kind of like that only with cover songs. every practice the lead guitar player is always searching for new songs for us to try instead of tightening up what we've played before. this band is more serious and the goal is to make money, but we'll never get there if we keep goofing around like this. no one is going to pay us to get up on stage and basically jam a bunch of songs we barely know.

i think these people like the idea of playing live but they get bored easily and don't want to put in the practice it takes to really nail a song. you see kids? music is not all just fun, fun, fun. it takes practice and dedication to pull it off.

That's exactly what i think as well. He just thinks it's all fun and he doesn't have to put any work into it but if we want to get tight and get gigs then the only way we're going to do that is relentless practising of our songs, whether he likes it or not.

[dairyairman]

good luck with this guy. one thing you could do that i've done before with these impatient types is to get them to agree on spending the first hour or two of practice working on a fixed set of songs that we want to play live. and then, and only then, move on to new songs during the last hour of practice. if you start out with new songs at the beginning of practice, the whole thing will turn into an extended jam session and nothing will get done most of the time.

[eddiehimself]

Originally Posted by dairyairman

good luck with this guy. one thing you could do that i've done before with these impatient types is to get them to agree on spending the first hour or two of practice working on a fixed set of songs that we want to play live. and then, and only then, move on to new songs during the last hour of practice. if you start out with new songs at the beginning of practice, the whole thing will turn into an extended jam session and nothing will get done most of the time.

That's probably a good idea. I'll give that a go tomorrow when we have practice.

[eddiehimself]

Well i think it seems to have been sorted. I didn't even know if he'd come round because we did have a rather "heated" discussion the other day but actually i was really pleased because he seems to have made a real effort to sort it out. He's totally agreed that we need to sort out our songs still so that's good.

I'm also pretty chuffed because it turns out his cousin is the singer of a most awesome band round our area who've even had their CDs being sold in the local HMV! So it would be amazing if we could get that gig, hard work though for all of us, me included. And we need a singer. But i've got my driving license now so i can drive into town and stick up an ad in the music shop.

[dairyairman]

it sounds like you've more or less got your guitarist under control. that's not an easy task! i usually try to get them to think whatever i want us to do is their idea. that takes some subtlety, but it works!

[bobdadruma]

I have similar problems with the singer/rhythm guitar player in one of my bands.
In this band the lead guitar player and I are the ones that want to try to get it right. The bass player and the mandolin player go along with the singer/rhythm player. (like lazy sheep)
The lead guitar player and I haven't been able figure a way to solve the problems. If we complain, the other members take it badly. If we stop songs during rehearsals to fix things they get impatient and mad.
Our lead guitar player is well educated with a degree in music. I learn a great deal from him. The other members see him as a threat, or something like that. I don't see why, He isn't obnoxious or arrogant. He simply points things out that are wrong and shows ways to fix them. I look at it as a free education! Im not threatened by him.
I'll run through a song ten times in a row, I don't like to have to do it, But I suck it up, learn something, and try to make it right.
I don't know how to get the others to spend more time on details?
I hope that there is a solution!

[Pollyanna]

Yes, there's often this problem where players differ in their conception - our basic aims.

Trouble is, our aims are often not clearly defined that it can be hard to know where to start. It's easy for someone with any sort of vision to be thought of as pushy. It's like people are feeling, "I don't have a vision myself but I don't want to adopt someone else's".

What's been bugging me is that a couple of the players in my band keep setting themselves parts that are beyond their capacity to play reliably. If they would just simplify they could help make the whole thing sound so much better! Once they nail the part then they can look at extra ornamentation if they want.

My band has these issues and I'm trying to make sense of them. I want to boil it down to:

• What do we want to achieve? Fun in a practice studio? Gigs? Cheap recordings? Is it all about the art or do we want to make some money?
• What gigs are available?
• What other opportunities are available?
• What style do we play? Does it have a place in the scene? If so, what? Where?
• What standard will the venues expect? What standard are we?

As I've said before, Sydney has been abysmal for gigs because poker machines replaced live music in most of the old venues. Or they simply shut down and were replaced by bars with gaming machines. Most of the venues seem to be genre-specific - blues, jazz or metal. We are pretty eclectic.

I wanted to see about busking but our busking licensing laws are such that it would cost the band about $400 per year to cover an area of about 6 square miles.

We're screwed - lol. We just play, talk to people, and every now and then something crops up. All very passive.

I really have no idea what we're trying to achieve so the only thing that makes sense to me is to continue having fun working towards continual musical development and improvement because that's my habit.