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meeting new band today.. without instruments

D

dalconthenovice

Feb 6, 2008
351
8
Seattle, Washington
#1
so i agreed to join this project with a drummer i worked with previously and we're all going to a pub to just chill and shoot the ****

what kind of things should i look for that might give me a hint as to whether or not they are good musicians? i'm talkin, i wanna be all bene gesserit sneaky here, if you catch my reference there you get a bass clef shaped cookie
 
#2
Start with "what songs do you have in mind?" then delve a little more deeply into what the chords are, etc. Especially if they pick a song you know. I'd stick with musical, rather than gear-related, questions. Then again, a bit of an idea of what they use might be a good idea. Ask the guitarist what kind of amp he uses. In my case if he uses a Marshall half stack or full stack, I'd back out. For you it might just mean that he's got it exactly right for your genre.

KO
 
#4
Mordib! Worm sign!

I did something similar recently, and it worked out just fine. Just have them define things when they throw out references. e.g. They say, Punk. You say, "Aha, but punk could mean so many things..." Get them to be specific. You'll get a feel for it.
Wear a Fremen suit.
 
#7
First, just make sure you can tolerate their personalities. That's paramount.
Second, find out what their musical goals, ambitions, etc are. That's whatever's just under paramount.
After that, get to know them beyond that. The first time I met my current band was over at my singer's house for a halloween party in which he, one of my guitarists, and myself drank near an entire bottle of absinth. Apparently, that endeared me to them, and I was in like Flynn.
 
#13
dalconthenovice said:
so i agreed to join this project with a drummer i worked with previously and we're all going to a pub to just chill and shoot the ****

what kind of things should i look for that might give me a hint as to whether or not they are good musicians? i'm talkin, i wanna be all bene gesserit sneaky here, if you catch my reference there you get a bass clef shaped cookie
Click to expand...

You mean you want to be a witch with super powers?

On a serious note, this how I like to start and join bands. If you have the best players, but they can't get along it makes the hard work even harder. That's probably their main concern if they want to meet this way.

Talk about music. Goals, repertoire, and stuff like that. If you want to find out if they can actually play, talk about specific songs and how they execute them. One red flag for me is someone who won't talk about their limitations. I find the best players know their limits. The clueless don't.
 
#20
Great stuff. We'd adopted a similar approach with anyone coming in from Craigslist. Let's see if we can stand them first before we waste any time playin. I think most of the folks already hit on the key points - make sure you're all compatible, have the same goals, same direction, same work ethic/approach, etc. You can usually get a good feel for someone and get some idea of if they can play by their comments, questions, etc.

NO appletini's unless there is a female in the group...nah....not even then >:-)
 

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