So, I was close to giving up on serious playing, and there I was, browsing trough band ads, without any plans to find a band. There i find a band looking for basist. They seem young, but, heck, I'm gonna listen to their demo and see what they got cooking. And boy was I stumped, they are green, yeah, but they do have some nice ideas and seem to get how to make some tunes. A little rough, but with a bit polishing and advices, they could be sounding good. so i send them a message, get to meet with band leader (guitarist/songwriter) and kid is burning with passion for music. He's 300% precent into it. 19yo kids usualy IMHO/IMHE are in bands cos of the barging rights and to score girls/boys. Well kid pours down his story, he wants a real band, rehearsals around the clock, serious members, and is getting tired from all those kids who don't make it to the rehearsals cos they have some other stuff going on ; video games, GF/BF, mom and dad won't let them, bad grades at school...usual stuff that 16-18yo kids get into. So I was like, ok, let's get together, play a few tunes and see what to do next. so we get down to play few days latter, and boy oh boy! drummer was falling apart, he couldn't keep time, beat or dynamics. and worst of all, he would not admit that he needed practice. So i gave him the metronome on phone and again, kid was falling appart. so i plugged phone into PA system and the place and it was so...horrible 
. second thing, vocalist was bad. dynamics, expression, diction. seriously bad. And a bit (annoyingly) cocky. And was late for rehearsal. Also he writes lyrics. that are bad. I know, English in not our first language, but boy he sounds like Borat trying to impersonate Bruno. but the band leader (guitarist) , that kid was good! And frustrated and a bit ashamed. So we sat down latter and I told him, ok you know what, wanna play in a real band, either keep this one and get a parallel band with me, or just kick out those two and let's get real members. And he was all for solution number 2. The fact that he has all the drum lines written on his PC, that makes us able to rehearse at home till we find drummer. So we went on searching for the drummer and vocal. And month latter the search is still on.
So what I did this time; I said no to bad, irresponsible players, let's be a part-band until we find right people. Having bad musicians pulling band down is worse than having half-band playing in living room.
We made plan divided with objectives, steps. Every song must be written down, sheet is king. Gear is on the way, ampless platform with digital mixer, electronic drums and IEMs. Why? I'll elaborate.
IMHO , bands spend too much time on hauling authentic valve amps/drums/gear and loose control of their sound the second they hit the stage, horrible sound levels onstage hurts performance. In reality, i would bet that less then 5% of our potential audience would hear the difference between line6 x3 simulated marshall j800 with tubescreamer and 4x12 box and the real deal. If they would and cared about that, noone would listen to electronic music
but we play rock. But thing is, I think that clear, defined sound and the ability to hear clearly each other on stage and drop the stage sound levels to zero is number one priority for evading problems with live sound. for our band. We really won't attract musicians but I think we'll hit good with 14-25yo girls LOL! guees how much of them care about authentic amp/drums sound. almost zero. and boy, those electronic drums sound really good (behringer 80 something). Band needs to sound tight, and this route FOR US is the best. IMHO.
Second thing is, whole of our gear fits into 10U rack + box for drums. that fits into the trunk of the small car. That cuts our gas costs by half. Setting up + sound checks ; a breeze. We get whole control of the sound, and PA guys just get to control the FOH volume. Mixer is XR18, we got shure 215 IEMs, guitarist uses line6 fx100 and i'm waiting for line6 x3 live. When we get our space all set up, I'll put some pics and videos.
Yesterday guitarist and i played around with fx100. That thing sound really really convincing. Marshal / fuzzface and or tubescreamer, boy oh boy! what a sound. I also played with bass on that thing, and i fell in love with it.
So all in all, we'll see where we get, and if i was wrong and how much I'll update it on a regular basis.
our first setup in my living room
07.17.2015.
So news update, we did find a real drummer, she's our age, cool, energetic, really fits into rock perfectly. but number one problem that we found was that electronic drums are NO QUIET. Problem is that we have our rehearsals in my living room, and since i live in a flat, i have neighbors, and in the flat below me, there is a really nice old lady living, and every time drummer hits kick it can be heard downstairs. So i had a chat with the lady downstairs and she was like "oh, it's not bad, i don't mind it" but i still decided we should be getting some other space. There are few rooms in the basement of the building, so we gave them a chance. Room no1 is spacious, but it has windows looking at the back yard, and problem is , all of the flats have bedrooms and living rooms turned to the back yard, and since windows in the room no1 can't be closed up all the way, again, kick is audible.
So i had a chat with neighbors and we got a room that's in the basement and really really in the belly of the beast (building). it's dry, it has electricity, and none can hear us (scream) from there. And today, we have our first rehearsal in the "dungeon" i.e. room no2.
"the dungeon" looks much better in real, trust me ! thing on the left are valves for the water pipes. it's around 2x5 meters... (what's that , 6,5x16 feet?)
Another interesting thing, drummer was reluctant of electronic drums at first, but she really got into it after a while. Sure, there are finesses that she can't reproduce 100% on electronic drums, but in the mix on IEMs they sound awesome! and we play with metronome all the time. dissect songs bar by bar, repeat all the tricky parts dozens of times, and in the last 3 rehersals band has gone up by insane amount. Now it sounds tight, clear, defined. There are ofc parts that need to be ironed out, but the speed at witch we are getting there is really impressive. so this week we will have 4 rehearsals. All thanks to the fact that we have our gear, place just for us. Also, since we are using IEMs for practice, there is no more noise and our ears thank us. downside was at first that we could hear every nuance and mistake. every note that was not played with 100% certainty, you could hear that. It's a whole new experience. I could not get back to loud rehearsals any more. That was a real eye-opener.
And we are still searching for a singer
. second thing, vocalist was bad. dynamics, expression, diction. seriously bad. And a bit (annoyingly) cocky. And was late for rehearsal. Also he writes lyrics. that are bad. I know, English in not our first language, but boy he sounds like Borat trying to impersonate Bruno. but the band leader (guitarist) , that kid was good! And frustrated and a bit ashamed. So we sat down latter and I told him, ok you know what, wanna play in a real band, either keep this one and get a parallel band with me, or just kick out those two and let's get real members. And he was all for solution number 2. The fact that he has all the drum lines written on his PC, that makes us able to rehearse at home till we find drummer. So we went on searching for the drummer and vocal. And month latter the search is still on.So what I did this time; I said no to bad, irresponsible players, let's be a part-band until we find right people. Having bad musicians pulling band down is worse than having half-band playing in living room.
We made plan divided with objectives, steps. Every song must be written down, sheet is king. Gear is on the way, ampless platform with digital mixer, electronic drums and IEMs. Why? I'll elaborate.
IMHO , bands spend too much time on hauling authentic valve amps/drums/gear and loose control of their sound the second they hit the stage, horrible sound levels onstage hurts performance. In reality, i would bet that less then 5% of our potential audience would hear the difference between line6 x3 simulated marshall j800 with tubescreamer and 4x12 box and the real deal. If they would and cared about that, noone would listen to electronic music
but we play rock. But thing is, I think that clear, defined sound and the ability to hear clearly each other on stage and drop the stage sound levels to zero is number one priority for evading problems with live sound. for our band. We really won't attract musicians but I think we'll hit good with 14-25yo girls LOL! guees how much of them care about authentic amp/drums sound. almost zero. and boy, those electronic drums sound really good (behringer 80 something). Band needs to sound tight, and this route FOR US is the best. IMHO.Second thing is, whole of our gear fits into 10U rack + box for drums. that fits into the trunk of the small car. That cuts our gas costs by half. Setting up + sound checks ; a breeze. We get whole control of the sound, and PA guys just get to control the FOH volume. Mixer is XR18, we got shure 215 IEMs, guitarist uses line6 fx100 and i'm waiting for line6 x3 live. When we get our space all set up, I'll put some pics and videos.
Yesterday guitarist and i played around with fx100. That thing sound really really convincing. Marshal / fuzzface and or tubescreamer, boy oh boy! what a sound. I also played with bass on that thing, and i fell in love with it.
So all in all, we'll see where we get, and if i was wrong and how much
I'll update it on a regular basis.our first setup in my living room
07.17.2015.
So news update, we did find a real drummer, she's our age, cool, energetic, really fits into rock perfectly. but number one problem that we found was that electronic drums are NO QUIET. Problem is that we have our rehearsals in my living room, and since i live in a flat, i have neighbors, and in the flat below me, there is a really nice old lady living, and every time drummer hits kick it can be heard downstairs. So i had a chat with the lady downstairs and she was like "oh, it's not bad, i don't mind it" but i still decided we should be getting some other space. There are few rooms in the basement of the building, so we gave them a chance. Room no1 is spacious, but it has windows looking at the back yard, and problem is , all of the flats have bedrooms and living rooms turned to the back yard, and since windows in the room no1 can't be closed up all the way, again, kick is audible.
So i had a chat with neighbors and we got a room that's in the basement and really really in the belly of the beast (building). it's dry, it has electricity, and none can hear us (scream) from there. And today, we have our first rehearsal in the "dungeon" i.e. room no2.
"the dungeon" looks much better in real, trust me
! thing on the left are valves for the water pipes. it's around 2x5 meters... (what's that , 6,5x16 feet?)Another interesting thing, drummer was reluctant of electronic drums at first, but she really got into it after a while. Sure, there are finesses that she can't reproduce 100% on electronic drums, but in the mix on IEMs they sound awesome! and we play with metronome all the time. dissect songs bar by bar, repeat all the tricky parts dozens of times, and in the last 3 rehersals band has gone up by insane amount. Now it sounds tight, clear, defined. There are ofc parts that need to be ironed out, but the speed at witch we are getting there is really impressive. so this week we will have 4 rehearsals. All thanks to the fact that we have our gear, place just for us. Also, since we are using IEMs for practice, there is no more noise and our ears thank us. downside was at first that we could hear every nuance and mistake. every note that was not played with 100% certainty, you could hear that. It's a whole new experience. I could not get back to loud rehearsals any more. That was a real eye-opener.
And we are still searching for a singer
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it's not too loud but the drummer is really kicking it hard. i mean, that's not bad at all, she plays with so much energy and she put the band on the whole new level. She plays a bit "forward" so to say. drives the band, but she is really tight, so even it seems she will be pushing the tempo up, she still lands 100% on the click. I've seen the diy tennis pad and will will try that asap and if that thing works out, we'll be moving back to the living room.
