Band Ready?

Have a partner in crime - same experience as you- and begin your own band.
is how most of us started out- with equals/ contemporaries
then with some experience opportunities -all kinds later- come along
You have no pals that play guitar bass or keys?
Rehearse with them then gig around town
 
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Am I just a simpleton?..am I getting old?..i SHOULD just wait but I'm putting myself in the position of the asker and the responses here are so thoughtful. This is the kind of thing even though it's not particularly deep (yet it is) that makes me appreciate and love this forum.
 
specgrade said:
How do you know when you are ready/enough experience to start/look for a band? Does it really matter? Just go for it?
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If you can easily play along to recordings of the sort of music you'll be playing, just go for it.
 
You might try an open mic night or jam session. The first time just try to determine if you think you are ready and get a list of the songs they play at the session. If you think you are ready, practice their songs with a CD before returning.

This will help you decide if you are ready and prevent (hopefully) you from sounding like a dork on your first try. It is also a good way to make some contacts and find other players at your skill level.

You will need to find a session where the house band is truly interested in helping newbies instead of just showing off in front of their buddies.
 
There's no point in waiting, and there's no harm in just jumping in and giving it a try. An open mic or some kind of jam session might be a good start, but if you know people that want to play the same kind of music you do, you should just go for it.

Either it will work well or you'll quickly find out what you still need to work on. Either way, you'll never need to wonder "if" anymore.
 
I can't think of a single good reason not to try it. Plenty of good suggestions here on how to get into it.

The only way to get better at playing with other musicians is playing with other musicians. Go for it!
 
I'd suggest just attending at first to see what the other guys do and what songs get called. Get the lay of the land. Observe. When you reach a point where you say to yourself...I can do that...then you should go for it without hesitation. If you want to get to the next level, you have to play with strangers. All you really have to do is keep time and exercise restraint. Even though most drummers want to show off, believe me when I tell you, it's just the worst way to do blues jams. If you want to impress others, keep time, don't fill unless the song calls for it, and save any chops for the endings. It's completely backwards and counter-intuitively, it works the best...for blues.
 
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do it jewish GIF
 
Find better players than you. You'll progress faster. You'll learn more. And I've never been in a band of any length wherein all players are similarly proficient, and my current thing plays 100 shows a year. Just get out there.

Here there weren't enough drummers so once a drum set appeared before me people asked me to play drums. They even helped me buy my first drums.
 
Bo Eder said:
I’d get some form of evaluation though. You don’t want to be that guy that everybody thinks can’t play.
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Idk, if you cant perform, you just cant. If you're old, maybe that's a barrier too?

I got that label last year. I did. Prob still have it, but there's more to the story, and even disputed labels 1 year later. I got it because I got tapped to be a paid host Jam drummer with some area top players when I hadn't gotten back to speed after a 15 year layoff. Not your typical band thing where the band decides who gets the gig. The owner of the jam decided who drums and that = friction with the other players for me and him.

It was November last year and admittedly it was weak because I intended to play bass, not drums. I only drummed around jams prior because I used to drum but couldn't just play bass on any called song at a jam. November last year I decided to be serious on drums.

This area is RICH in talent. Out of area players say it constantly.
Not even a year into my return a top tier mutually acknowledged guitarist said I'm his favorite drummer outside of his longtime drummer bandmate. I said there's better drummers he plays with, so, wtf?! He was honest and said it's not about being best. It's about being solid and being who he meshes with and we read each other.
I took the time to get interested in what he does, in what everybody does and what works across the board. A 2nd top tier guitarist heard me talk about a potential project and said he was interested if we did something.

Just as quoted above, I probably still have that 'poor player' label from some official jam guys, even 100 paid shows in a year later. 100 more next year if I still only work with the 1 current band.
Some fellow musicians are quite jealous about 1 or the other above scenarios, lol. I'm not really even being competitive. There's even been a little conspiring that I've witnessed. I'll just keep doing my thing. There's more, but this is too much info to take in now.
 
Looking back.. i started jamming with friends in high school as well as playing in every type of HS band. Problem with jamming.. is although its fun and good learning experience.. you have nothing to show for it… unless you record and constantly try to improve by listening to yourself. The next step is practice auditioning for bands.. yes strangers! Learn to learn setlists of tunes fast and nail the tempos. You may fail the audition but learn from your mistakes. The only mistake i made in an audition was trying to figure out a particularly tricky pattern during the audition.. in fairness i didnt really want to play with this band due to distance.. but i really wanted to figure out this syncopated off beat pattern.. so i wasted a few minutes of the bands time while i tried several variations of what i thought might be the groove pattern.. probably why they decided I was the #2 choice out of the 20 drummers they tried out. Moral show up ready to play and nail it.. also show up on time Lol.
 
When you have the gear and a way to get it to a place to jam out at, you are ready. After you've been carting around that gear for a while, you can decide if what you're ready for is worth the hassle, or if you want to go back to the shed for a while then triumphantly return
 
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