So, friend of mine who is a drummer had a rock band and they had trouble with the basist. after a while band decided to kick her out, and since he was a friend of mine he called me to replace her. i was freelancing for the time beeing (just filling empty spots in bands until full time basist came) and saw this as an oportunity to be a full time basist. so we had our first reharsal, they sent me some recordings i ran trough them, and to be honest band sounded below average. but the thing is i liked people in the band, nice guys and I was open and told them the truth. so they agreed to my terms ; 3-4 times a week reharsal, drummer has metronome in earphones on reharsal, home practice and gig, we disect each song and go over and over and over again until it's perfect!
they had more than few problems. first of all "reharsal culture" as i call it was gone, so in a way reharsals were (so they told me) just excuses to meet and drink beer and play a bit. second rythm section had MAJOR problems. bass lines were identical to guitar riffs, that caused a big lack of groove and flow within songs. another thing, drummer (who is a friend of mine) had his lines with drum solo licks every 2 beats. and he was not on time or beat. last, "will to gig" was in lacking... (they had no plans for future, where they see themselves in a 6 moths , let alone 2-3 years)
now first job to get things up and running smooth was a agreement that we should ALL practice first at home. so that each of us goes trough the entire setlist at least ONCE a day. and after warming up, plus to that at least one hour of practicing (either band songs or whatever) daily.
after that we did one or two 2,5 hour reharsals for each song. so we broke up songs, went trough riffs, saw what was not sounding good. It was mostly rythm. i rearanged bass lines into solid groovy 8ths (it's a rock after all) and altrough it was somewhat hard thing to say to a friend , I proposed that drummer has 3-4 "licks" that he can use only at the end of a whole section. that caused a bit of turning heads but at the end of the day songs started sounding rock solid and with metronome in drummer's earphones songs started to sound more solid than on their studio recordings. so as days went by, we got more and more of band's songs reharsed up to perfection. we were going over and over the same riff for half an hour / hour until everyone could play it without even breaking a sweat. and that was all after drummer and i wrote most of songs in guitar pro. now that's a really usefull little tool. it gave us a perspective of what everybody is playing. it's hard to tell what 16th note at what time is someone playing. that raised band to a whole NEW level. everyone knew what everyone else was playing. really good thing!
another thing was that I proposed a mini tour for this spring, just to raise the morale of the band. when you think about it, it's not that hard to organize a tour, we got hundreds of contacts for the clubs and are making arangements right now for the spring. needless to say, everybody in band started to be very optimistic.
so here we are 2,5 moths since drummer invited me to the band. had 2 gigs since and i'm proud to say all the work paid off. we did last gig PERFECTLY. no missed notes, shaggy rhytm , oscilating tempo.... now as i heard lots of musicians bash the metronome usage live as spirit-killer , I think it opened a whole NEW level to our band. and with collosal ammount of practice time we put
in just two months it made a difference from a below average amateur sounding band and pro locked-groove world-class sounding band (as one jazz basist discribed us ... but for me it was an overstatment, hell i'll leave it
)
. I don't understand that metronome-rant that lots of drummers and other musicians do. As I've said to drummer, playing drums without metronome is like tuning by ear in a loud club while playing gig. does electronic tuner kill the "music spirit" or the "feel" ? but audience is sure to notice "falling apart rythm section" from "metronom backed up rythm section"
i had lot's of sacrifices in some way to say it in a band, i mean i played in a Dream Theater tribute, shredded like crazy, played complex stuff and now i had to go with 8th, 4th and here and there 16ths all for the sake of songs & band. now i realise how much of a fool was I to think that playing that is a "sacrifice"
my time, rythm, groove, feel, everything went up
it's like having more and more accurate "click" in the head every day. it's just amazing how much did every individual and the whole band mature musicaly in such a short period of time. we worked on reharsals and when not on reharsals. everywhere i went i had my mp3, and bands like AC/DC, U2, The Cult... that have that solid 8th note feel in rythm section. so that ignorant idea that that kind of "simple" music is really simple to play started to seem VERY VERY immature. i spent hours just trying to come up with a solid, tight but musical and expressive rythm for both bass and drums, so that rythm section is the foundation in a way that authour's message and idea (mostly guitarists and singer for now) can come trough and be heard. but also we did some really neat and tehnical licks but that were masked so that the whole song still had that pulsing 4/4 rythm.
to sum it all up, seems that hard work paid off in a really short time! and that we don't stop working like that
just tought I'd share my experience with you
P.S. it may seem that i'm the saviour that takes all the credit in this post, but it was all up to them. i was a freelancer because i could not find a band that would agree to my terms of reharsal tempo, metronom and song perfection. so it's their as well as mine credit for getting the bend in a current shape
