Take a look at all the rock bands that have lasted for a long time and I’m sure you’ve noticed that not many of them have the all original lineup. Let’s talk about the lesson we can learn from that. I’ve played with a number of musicians in my band and know the feeling of having to look for a new bandmate. It’s not fun to feel like you are starting over. So how do you make the odds higher that your band will stick together? So what breaks up or causes members to leave? I would say the main reasons are communication, money, and personality differences.
You want to be on the same page as your bandmates. So, when you first get together as a band, you really want to be careful that you are making the right choice in bandmates. Take marriage for example. Before most people get married, they date for several years. This gives them a chance to get to know each other and get to know the real person. After they’ve stopped sending their non-flawed “representative” as Chris Rock would say. Usually with bands there is a short trial period if any and then you are married, aka in business together. Emphasis on business. So, how do you dive into this relationship with a little more confidence? First of all, start with yourself. Be the bandmate you would want to play with. Be a good hang and know your instrument. Those are listed in order of importance. Playing in a band and especially when touring you will be in close quarters a lot so you will want to be easy to hang out with. People will work with some musical limitations if you are fun to be around. If you want to grow as a musician find bandmates that are better and further along than you are. You will rise to their level.
As far as communication goes, you want to be an open book with your bandmates. No secrets, lay it all out on the table. If you have something that is bothering you tell them how you feel. Otherwise things get bottled up and resentment happens. Of course you want to be on the same page musically but more importantly your personalities should fit together. Can it work with wildly different personalities? Sure, some bands balance each other out like that. But, you don’t want bandmates who are so different they will drive each other crazy. You must have a unified plan to drive this machine forward. This requires discussing your goals as a band. I can’t overemphasize this enough. You don’t want the “That Thing You Do” scenario where one guy forgot to tell you he will be leaving the band to go join the Marines next month.
Money is a touchy subject with a lot of people. Here’s a scenario I’ve seen many times: bands arguing over publishing splits before they have made a dollar. Again, this is where communication comes in. Discuss this before it becomes a real problem because people can have conflicting points of view on this subject. This type of thing can create bad blood. You want to avoid this type of dysfunction. The solution is simple. Be upfront with your bandmates. These are the kind of people you want by the way; people that are honest and want things to be fair. There are different schools of thought on this and here’s my two cents. Make sure that everyone in the band gets rewarded for their efforts. For example, gig money usually gets split evenly between members. Same with merch. If one person is writing all the songs do you split that up? Some do, some don’t. I’ve seen situations where bands started with an even split of publishing and then some of the publishing reverted back to the original writers later in the band’s career. Only you and your bandmates can decide what’s right for you, but I suggest figuring out a way to split the money fairly even when you are early in the game to keep everyone motivated and feeling like a team. Making money keeps band moral up! Hint: if you are writing all the songs by yourself make sure the non-writers are making up their share of the workload with other band tasks. No one should get a free ride. Next time we’ll talk about assembling the rest of your team.
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Here’s an issue I see over and over with drum recordings and how I solve it. The problem is leakage. For example, on the tom mics there are cymbals bleeding into the recording. Different mixers handle this in different ways. Some will use noise gates that only allow the loudest hits to come through. Sometimes this solution works, but more often that not I edit these tracks by hand. What I mean by that is I manually cut away all the parts of those tracks that aren’t actual toms playing. There are several reasons I do this but probably the biggest one is that it cleans up the overall drum sound. This way I can also compress the toms and get them really punchy. Often on tom fills there will be a crash at the end of the fill leading into a chorus for example. I edit the crash leakage out of the tom track and do a quick fade. You might think that toms need to ring out but in the context of the full drum kit this is not noticeable. The overheads have enough ringing of toms that you don’t notice the tail gets cut off. Having said that I don’t cut off the tail of the toms if I don’t have to. Tribal type sections can really benefit from the toms sustaining.
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Also, in case you didn’t know, I mix singles, EPs, and Albums for Rock and Metal bands.