Finding The Talent For Your Band

Proceed with caution!

I said that to say this: Some of this is going to feel unneccisary, but trust me, this is as much of a "sell yourself" game as any other business could ever be.

If you want the record contract, the cold, hard truth is you have to do all of the work yourself before you will ever get recognised. And just because you can get the high score on Rock Star, doesn't mean your ready for this.

There isn't really a set way or order to do this, but I'll give you a brief run down of how we put together the bands that I have been in. And why not to do it like we did!

Your first concepts should be to understand that if you are to be the manager of the band, it can be a headache, especially if you get tight as a band before you can afford an outsourced band manager.

You will be the one fielding the calls, dealing with club owners, dealing with irate or zealous fans (both can be rough), scheduling around you band's individual lives, knowing when to allow the others to have a say, knowing when to quit, knowing when to keep going, keeping the band members happy and boosting morale, dealing with guitarist and vocalist (stereo-typically the worst) and their issues.

Besides all of that you cannot have two band members scheduling, but it is good for the others to bring you leads. Just like a real business.

First off, decide your target audience. Before you even think about your genre, think about who you want to be your fans. Do you want to play for mosh pits or dance floors? Do you just want to DJ for karaoke? Do you want this to be for pleasure or for money?

Then think about your dream music. Does it still fit in your grand scheme? Can money be made with it? Or will you be kicked out of clubs for being to loud? (If you are old enough to be in there in the first place)

Then pick what you want to play. Does it really fit where you what it to? How many songs can you find in a search? Can you play those songs yourself? Do you think the people you are looking for will play this music?

Then, and this will be a hard one, think of the quality of the music. Do you need monster subs for your drums and bass to come through clearly over the monster guitar stacks that you'll need to get the sound you want? How about the vocals? The microphone will be a big factor in your sound quality, will you need to spend big bucks on a high quality wireless so you vocals can move around or will a basic one on an XLR cable do?

Or will you just be doing acoustic sets? A different set of problems. But set up time is cut by several multiples of half.

How many mains will you need? How versatile do you want your mixer to be? Crossover? Equalizer? Will use any MIDI stuff? Make sure your MIDI equipment is compatible, just be cause it says it's compatible... That would be like plugging a Mac into a PC and expecting them to be instantly compatible.

I am getting ahead of myself a bit here. You won't need much in the way of equipment until gig time. But, thinking about it now will keep you from getting discouraged later.

Also, I have seen several groups that record their practices for future use, on multi-track units. So they can nitpick later, or even solo out one performance for effects changes, or killing the bass player's track and recording it so he can practice it at home.

And a last consideration, just thrown out free of charge; Lighting. It's a totally different beast altogether. Usually in this catagory is the fog machines, black lights, and strobe lights that every one fantasizes about.

By the way, the picture is intentionally small for now, until I can edit it some more, but yes we had two drummers for that gig, both at the same time. It was a combination performance of Cedaridge and False Hope. If either band had built more of a following, it would have been a hit.

Torrent Waters was pretty much my personal brain child. It was my name, my songs. And we never played live.

M&K and Beyond Reason were just me and my brother, though my son played drums for us on several occations. Reason was my self recordings. Beyond was Chris' self recordings so it just made sense to put the two together. And then we were looking for less of a heavy metalish name, and put Mozz and Keystone together for M&K.

Cedaridge was named for the cul-de-sac the band owner lived and built the studio. I came in late for that one, but I designed the website and the promotional stuff, my brother came in late to that one too, we were always the low men on the totem.

False Hope staggered through a list of 150 names. We still have the list. We googled and ask.com'ed until we were narrowed down to fifty. Then as we added members we asked them for ideas, and brought the list back up. Then we narrowed it down to about 3 to 5 names and voted. That process took a whole month of practice time. And we felt the name has lived up to several artist's interpretations of it.

Then of course you need to consider your talent level. There will be a time in your travels through the audition process when you will be completely humbled by someone decades ahead of your talent. But, they are too busy, won't show for practice, won't return phone calls, and so on. In your search, you need to work with every option available. The talent you find, may not even be capable of doing the genre you want to do, or possibly over qualified. It's never too early to go back to the drawing table, until you start building your fan base, but that comes later. Build the band first.

The Hub Page of this madness!
The first step it always the beginning.
Auditioning for talent.
Some ideas for rehearsals.
Things to remember before you leave!

And more to come!