Whats your biggest beef about your musical peers?

[Bringindafunk]

Yes and no. Sometimes that's how a great song comes into being! Ya never know....
Hot for Teacher, my favorite Van Halen song, was created that way.

Haha. If anyone in any band I'm in writes an awesome chart-topping song with decades of staying power based off a between-song noodle, I will concede the point. Most of the time however, it just feels like they don't care what the other members have to say between songs and tends to make collaboration much more difficult. It just feels rude.

 

[jnewmark]

Not being prepared at rehearsals. Myself and the guitar player learn the songs on our own and are prepared to play them into shape at rehearsals. The keyboard player and drummer never seem to be as prepared as we are, sometimes not even knowing the bare bones arrangement. Its a waste of time, but they know the genre really well, but are full time dads with family issues, so we've been cutting them some slack. Still, very frustrating at times.

 

[MikePlaysBass]

My number one issue is players who only want to play things they already know and don't want to learn any new tunes. I've met a lot of players who fall into this rut. Sometimes they say they're too busy to work on new material or something keeps coming up before every practice. We all have the occasional week from hell, but aside from rare exceptions like that, I'm out of there.

 

[OptimalOptimus]

Music is the only profession that someone under qualified can make money.

too few people knows basic music theory

the focus on cover band instead of creating new music

cover band not playing anything from the 90s and forward because it isn't vintage enough ...
Thé 90s was 30 years ago ...

too many think they are good but aren't

too many want to learn everything by ear but their ear is poopie and they miss so many things

trying to reproduce a recording tone ...

Creating new name because they refuse to get any music education

focus on gig while not prepare enough and so nothing to set them apart

 

[bassbully]

Lack of commitment, lack of respect for one's time.
If you're gonna tell me to be somewhere at 11, I'd like you to also be there at 11, if you don't mind. Or at least show up at 12!

Yes agree lack of respect of others time. It's either being late, unprepared or not pulling their responsibilities such as setup and breakdown of gear.

 

[TjMetalhead]

Probably my biggest beef with bandmates is no one practicing in their own time. I get it we're busy with life but if you just put in at least 15-30 minutes a day practicing the parts that need improving then the next rehearsal we don't have to spend an hour relearning all the songs. To me rehearsal should be practicing the entire set, then working out the kinks song by song starting with the one that needs the most improvement. I feel a lot of people don't understand or don't want to put in the dedication and time into making a band as musically tight as it could be.

 

[BassBrass]

My peers are Fine. As for the rest, people should question their assumptions and judgments more. because It Ain't Necessarily So.

 

[Blue Dragon]

An opportune thread for me to bitch about our lead guitar player. He's new - came on last year when our old lead player bowed out for Covid. He doesn't sing, but I could live with that. But he also doesn't seem to recall what we learned last week. Granted we ask a lot of him I guess (esp. considering theres no money in this band). But I'm just getting tired of him not being able to simply play his parts and remember the breaks from week to week. And yes, weed is a factor. It is with other members of the band too, but I just think this guy is a bit too crispy fried. I want our old lead back, bitchy as he can be, because he can play.

 

[dangevans]

When they don't remember this simple rule about being in a cover band:
When planning your setlist, pick tunes 1. That are danceable, and 2. Girls like.
Nobody cares if we like the songs or not. What only matters is if the customer likes the songs.

 

[Joecooch]

With my particular band, it's simply sticking to songs that translate well with audiences AND work with our current instrumentation.

They're constantly bringing up songs that were cool a few years ago for a brief period, but are no longer relevant... in other words, songs that got to #34 on the charts for three weeks 4 years ago.

Also, we are drums, bass, 1 guitar and one keyboard. They constantly bring up songs that have 3 or more guitar parts, or a horn section (our keys player despises keys horns), or for whatever reason would have to be drastically altered to fit our band.

I end up being "the bad guy" sometimes when I poopoo their choices. I pick my battles. Everything else about this band is so awesome that I just let them win one from time to time.

Our goals are/were completely different from OP's. We set out to play gigs initially.

I agree with you 100%. For me it's worse. The guys I play with too have no concept of playing what people enjoy listening to vs what they like and want to play. We'll all talk about it, they agree and within a couple of weeks are coming up with another 45 year old song. To make it worse, it's always like the "B" side songs. The last one was off a Montrose album from 1974. I enjoyed Montrose growing up but audiences in this day and time wouldn't know who the hell they were. They never had an album or song break the top 200 in their entire career. People don't listen to that stuff anymore least of all pay money to hear it.

 

[JimmyM]

Nobody's doing anything wrong. They all have their reasons for being flakes and so do I

 

[azureblue]

coming to rehearsal half prepared. (IOW rehearsal is for working up / playing / writing / preparing to record - songs). Work on your chops and ideas at home. I want to have a good time playing the music.
Get your head out of your instrument and into the song.

 

[mb94952]

Or, in your mind what are people doing wrong?

For me it's two things.

The first is too much of an emphasis on gigs and not enough emphasis on development as a group and refining song structures. It seems like everyone I am involved with musically is just far too focused on the performance aspect of things, to the point that many just don't even really rehearse, and just book gigs.

It really just tells me that people are far more interested in being seen playing music as opposed to actually playing music that sounds good. While a lot of these "live jam sessions" sound ok, they just lack a lot of subtleties that would really make them sound better.

Even the jazz combo I put together some months back is starting to talk about gigs. Its all amateurs, and the goal for me with this was to just bring people together to work on their jazz skills but at least one of the people involved is talking about trying to book gigs with it and mentions it at almost every opportunity. Its fine I suppose, but playing out with this group isn't something I had on my mind, it was really just put together to work on chops.

Second for me is lack of consistency and continuity in most projects. Perfect example is one set of guys thats focused solely on putting sessions together where they pay musicians to come in and play with the intent of having "awesome jams". I get it, but generally these don't work out or sound as great as the expectations are. I keep making the argument to the person putting them together that it makes far more sense to just find musicians, (even if they are at a lower skill level), that are dedicated to playing on a regular basis and improving. personally I see more benefit in regular playing sessions with a core group of people than I do in sessions with random people even if they have a better skillset.

I get the reasons for a lot of this, people are busy with their lives and just want to get to the glory aspect of things.

I'm GUILTY of that. I broke up my jazz (rock) fusion band in 1994 for that very reason. We weren't getting enough gigs, yet we had PERFECT chemistry and STILL talk to this day. We had ENDLESS material between the three of us and I was short sighted, and stubborn.
I requested we make a demo and break up. Funny thing is the engineer we got the flier from on the telephone pole ended up being one of the most influential engineers in the Bay Area and he LOVED us. What a sad thing for me.
To this day, it's my BIGGEST regret. Not the girl that got away. The band that got away.

 

[azureblue]

Lack of commitment, lack of respect for one's time.
If you're gonna tell me to be somewhere at 11, I'd like you to also be there at 11, if you don't mind. Or at least show up at 12!

I was in a band and one of the guys was always 20 minutes late. So we started telling him that 6:00 practice was at 5:30.

 

[funkmaster p]

People not being in control of their stage volume.

 

[funkmaster p]

Singer/guitarists that spend so much of their time gigging as a solo act that whenever they play with a full group, it sounds like there are 2 bass players in the band.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

I really like the people I play with now, but there tends to be this comfort zone in the "hymnal" of 70's music. I don't mind that all that much because I really missed out on 70's music growing up in the 80's. You really didn't hear much 70's music in the 80's and then the 90's hit and grunge took over. Seemed like 70's didn't come back until the 00's. But anyways, yeah, the hymnal.

 

[rocmonster]

rant/ I don't have time to join a real band with commitments anymore, however, I do work with a few guys who play and would love to jam with them. The problem is that when we jam, the guitarist only wants to play '60's songs, and even though I can get behind most of them, learn them, and play them, and potentially have fun, he reverts to long patches of guitarist wankery that becomes tiresome. He also never tunes his guitar, or doesn't tune it to a tuner so we both have the same pitch.
The drummer never practices any of the tunes we say we want to jam to so it's nearly impossible to "lock in" with him. He just 'wings it'. Frankly I'm too old for this bullsh*t. /rant

 

[funkinbottom]

I am annoyed by one particularly pitchy, poor singer I work with who sometimes has bad timing to boot.

Reminds me of the old joke: How can you tell when a lead vocalist is at your door?... They can't find the key and don't know when to come in.

 

[Hevy T]

I play in a cover band and make about 90% of the song suggestions. I keep asking others to input what they want to do, but crickets! I ask for their input on what I have posted, so we can gain some sort of direction of genera but once again crickets! But after we get together then we choose a bunch of songs to learn for next time. Ok fine, but why not put this stuff in our chat ahead of time so we have materal to work on.