What to do with this "band"?
 

Hey all.

Me, and two of my friends, who both play the guitar, just got a place to practice, starting in febuary.
We have been playing 2-3 years but only a little with each other, but its time to change that.

We hope to be using it a lot, like 5-6 days a week or so for several hours.
Only problem is that we are really not that good yet and I feel that we could use some new ideas on what to practice then you are in a 1 bassist + 2 guitarist "band".

What we already do and plan to keep doing is the following:

Learn and play some songs - learn at home, play together
(at this point we only know like 5 songs that we can all play well together)


Jam over chord progressions - One of my friends is pretty good with chord progressions so he usally make one up containing like 3-4 chords which both guitars then play while I try to do my thing on the bass. Usally starting out with root notes, then adding notes from the chords or scales. After finding a groove and staying with it for some time we then take turns on soloing.


Jam to drum beats - As we dont have an actual drummer, we sometimes put on a prefixed drum beat which will then repeat. When playing like this we tend to just pick a scale and then we all just mess around with it.



Now, what I need from you is some new ideas and/or improvements on the approaches which we already use.

That's more or less the setup I had with my first 'band'. We would all agree to what covers we wanted to learn earlier in the week, and then we'd get together on Fridays and Saturdays to play them. What made it work was that everyone got to choose a song they wanted to do and everyone else had to learn it. It gave everyone the chance to do what they wanted, but it also forced everyone to get outside their own musical box. I'd personally suggest doing that at first just to work up some songs and to build up some skill.

I was actually jamming with 2 guitarists the other day. We ended up playing musical ' horse'. We would take turns coming up with riffs that we thought would stump the other players. I obviously didn't slap anything and they didn't do any super fast 32nds or anything, but we still kept it casually competitive.

You could try that. If anything it teaches everyone everyones tricks.
We had fun.

some beginner band ideas
 

I would suggest don't be afraid to write songs in pairs -- having two guitarists trying to write parts simultaneously is usually a mess. When you've got a few ideas strung together, bring the other guitarist in to see what he can fit over it.

Steal a bass line from something somewhat obscure that you like. Don't tell the guitar players what it's from. Tell them to do something different instead of following you note for note.

in my first band the drummer was always stealing beats from Rush songs, but it'd be over some idea of my own (on guitar at the time) so I didn't usually notice. Neither did the audience.

Chart out some songs that you like -- not what notes they are, but how many bars of verse, pre-chorus, chorus, where there's a bridge and solos, etc. Make an effort to have your songs follow similar patterns in the structure, at least at first.

Have fun! I played in original bands for ten years or so, made some excellent songs and played in some big venues. Never made any money at it but I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.