- Jul 7, 2013
- 255
- 64
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Orange Amplifiers and Spector Basses
So, about 6 months ago I joined a band, that when I heard the music, made me very excited because I realized this was the band I'd been searching for my entire musical life. The music is in my favorite genre that I've always wanted to play (Coheed, Minus the Bear esque), everyone is elite at their instrument, the vocalist is amazing, and more over everyone is responsible, available, and committed to the band.
My issue is that we have been practicing 2-3 times a week for the past 6 months and when I joined, the guitarist and drummer had already created very high quality pre-pro. We are all using in ears to play to a click track, are very tight musically, and have been trying to do things the “right way” meaning that we weren’t even going to announce the band until we had high quality music, studio play through videos, a high quality social media and web presence, etc. We’ve even had a very big name engineer listen to our pre-pro and agree to mix and master our album, simply off of pre-pre tracks. The guitarist and drummer go to a recording school to become engineers, and so for each of their “senior projects” they are tracking us in a multi-million dollar studio for free, and then we were going to pay to have the engineer mix and master the album. We have been in the studio for the past month working on tracks, and our plan was to get 3 tracks finished and launch our website in the next two months, promote online, start booking shows, and then when the guitarist has his senior project in July, use that time to track the final album, or the rest of the final album. We had a disagreement because some of us thought that these 3 songs we just recorded would be our “demo” that we would use to start marketing ourselves to build a fan base for our final album and then we would re-record them for the final album because certain members seem to think that the album won’t be sonically consistent if certain songs are recorded a few months apart from the rest of the album, even though we would be using the same gear, same studio, same engineer for mixing and mastering, etc. These 3 songs, which are pretty much finalized and we’ve been playing for 6 months, came out sounding pretty great in my opinion. However, two members think that just because the drummer had a slightly cracked cymbal (which you can’t hear at all in the recording; it’s more like they are saying we can’t use the drum takes simply because they know a cymbal was cracked when he recorded, not that you can hear it or that the take is bad) that we should completely now scrap these tracks and put everything on hold until we record the final album. We keep making plans and they keep pushing them back using the argument that we rushed something, even though the songs came out sounding amazing. I feel like we’ve been in the woodshed for so long with no public opinion on our music that we are second guessing everything we do and holding it to this invisible bar we’ve set, and no one really knows where the bar is at anymore. I definitely do want to do things the right way, but I think there is a point where waiting does more harm than good and especially there is a point when bands just need to get out and play and share their art with people.
Our singer told me yesterday that it was foolish to release one version of the three songs and then release them again 5-6 months later. I suppose I agree with that, especially since we were originally considering paying the engineer a decent sum to mix and master the 3 songs, and would have paid him again to mix and master the “final versions”. However, I’ve always noticed that most bands starting out typically almost always have a 3-5 song EP with songs that are eventually on their first full length. The vocalist and guitarist seem to now think that we need to scrap everything we’ve recorded over the past month, not launch any media or even announce ourselves as a band until after we’ve finished the full length. Which means it will now be at least October or November before we even announce ourselves, much less start playing shows. That would mean I would have been in the band for almost a year and a half before we even went live. I feel like we are second guessing ourselves and getting cabin fever a little bit. Their rationale is that “well, what if these songs change, and there’s no point in releasing the same songs twice”. I guess I see what they mean, but my argument is why not fix the small errors in these quality takes, get them mix and mastered by the engineers, and then use these songs for the final album as well? We can stagger release them over the coming months so that we can establish a fan base who will actually want to buy our album. Plus, releasing a few songs to the public would be a good test to see if we get any general consensus’ about our music that may make us want to change something for the final album. Waiting for anyone to hear us until we’ve already recorded a full album seems like we are putting all of our eggs into one basket without getting any real feedback from anyone other than our close friends. Not to mention that it took us our drummers whole senior project time to track 3 songs and half ass 2 others we know will never be released, so trying to do 10-11 songs when our guitarist has his project is a huge risk. So, after writing this novel, my question to you guys is, do I just need to chill and go with the flow? Is it pretty common for bands to take this long to get off the ground? Is it a to each his own sort of situation? Or is the band being overly anal and second guessing ourselves too much? Has anyone ever taken a year and a half (after all members were assembled and you had guitar and drums for 7 songs) to even announce your band, much less play a show? Does staying in the woodshed that long do more harm than good?
My issue is that we have been practicing 2-3 times a week for the past 6 months and when I joined, the guitarist and drummer had already created very high quality pre-pro. We are all using in ears to play to a click track, are very tight musically, and have been trying to do things the “right way” meaning that we weren’t even going to announce the band until we had high quality music, studio play through videos, a high quality social media and web presence, etc. We’ve even had a very big name engineer listen to our pre-pro and agree to mix and master our album, simply off of pre-pre tracks. The guitarist and drummer go to a recording school to become engineers, and so for each of their “senior projects” they are tracking us in a multi-million dollar studio for free, and then we were going to pay to have the engineer mix and master the album. We have been in the studio for the past month working on tracks, and our plan was to get 3 tracks finished and launch our website in the next two months, promote online, start booking shows, and then when the guitarist has his senior project in July, use that time to track the final album, or the rest of the final album. We had a disagreement because some of us thought that these 3 songs we just recorded would be our “demo” that we would use to start marketing ourselves to build a fan base for our final album and then we would re-record them for the final album because certain members seem to think that the album won’t be sonically consistent if certain songs are recorded a few months apart from the rest of the album, even though we would be using the same gear, same studio, same engineer for mixing and mastering, etc. These 3 songs, which are pretty much finalized and we’ve been playing for 6 months, came out sounding pretty great in my opinion. However, two members think that just because the drummer had a slightly cracked cymbal (which you can’t hear at all in the recording; it’s more like they are saying we can’t use the drum takes simply because they know a cymbal was cracked when he recorded, not that you can hear it or that the take is bad) that we should completely now scrap these tracks and put everything on hold until we record the final album. We keep making plans and they keep pushing them back using the argument that we rushed something, even though the songs came out sounding amazing. I feel like we’ve been in the woodshed for so long with no public opinion on our music that we are second guessing everything we do and holding it to this invisible bar we’ve set, and no one really knows where the bar is at anymore. I definitely do want to do things the right way, but I think there is a point where waiting does more harm than good and especially there is a point when bands just need to get out and play and share their art with people.
Our singer told me yesterday that it was foolish to release one version of the three songs and then release them again 5-6 months later. I suppose I agree with that, especially since we were originally considering paying the engineer a decent sum to mix and master the 3 songs, and would have paid him again to mix and master the “final versions”. However, I’ve always noticed that most bands starting out typically almost always have a 3-5 song EP with songs that are eventually on their first full length. The vocalist and guitarist seem to now think that we need to scrap everything we’ve recorded over the past month, not launch any media or even announce ourselves as a band until after we’ve finished the full length. Which means it will now be at least October or November before we even announce ourselves, much less start playing shows. That would mean I would have been in the band for almost a year and a half before we even went live. I feel like we are second guessing ourselves and getting cabin fever a little bit. Their rationale is that “well, what if these songs change, and there’s no point in releasing the same songs twice”. I guess I see what they mean, but my argument is why not fix the small errors in these quality takes, get them mix and mastered by the engineers, and then use these songs for the final album as well? We can stagger release them over the coming months so that we can establish a fan base who will actually want to buy our album. Plus, releasing a few songs to the public would be a good test to see if we get any general consensus’ about our music that may make us want to change something for the final album. Waiting for anyone to hear us until we’ve already recorded a full album seems like we are putting all of our eggs into one basket without getting any real feedback from anyone other than our close friends. Not to mention that it took us our drummers whole senior project time to track 3 songs and half ass 2 others we know will never be released, so trying to do 10-11 songs when our guitarist has his project is a huge risk. So, after writing this novel, my question to you guys is, do I just need to chill and go with the flow? Is it pretty common for bands to take this long to get off the ground? Is it a to each his own sort of situation? Or is the band being overly anal and second guessing ourselves too much? Has anyone ever taken a year and a half (after all members were assembled and you had guitar and drums for 7 songs) to even announce your band, much less play a show? Does staying in the woodshed that long do more harm than good?
