Me and my friends are planning a show out of our drummers garage on the 28th, we aren't gonna sell tickets or anything, so how could we make money from this? We were thinking selling food and drink and having a tip jar, any advice? Also just to get this out there, none of us are in this for the money, it's just a shared dream of doing this stuff full time, and we're kids in highschool so any money is good to us.

We keep song submission posts to a minimum to keep this place spam free, but we are all musicians and most of us have songs to share. Let's connect with and support each other musically in a weekly thread. This is a safe space to post what your band is up to musically. Feel free to share your music, or ask for feedback.

In the spirit of community and cooperation that we have here in /r/bandmembers, Please give more feedback than you ask for. Use the 1 in 10 rule as a guideline. Comment on 10 other people's songs for every one of your own that you post. This might mean you have to comment on some weeks when you don't submit your song. If everyone follows that rule, we'll all have more feedback when we post our own songs.

Yo yo det är så att jag har flyttat ner till Stockholm nu i hösten och är svin sugen på att hitta nått umgänge att spela musik med. Då jag inte har så mycket vänner och folk att sträcka ut mig till när det kommer till Stockholm så tänkte jag att det här kanske är ett perfekt ställe att leta upp lite folk. Skulle vara kul med lite folk som skulle kunna tänka sig spela typ rock, punk, grunge, indie. Jag är 21år (tänker typ folk mellan 18 och 23) och har spelat gitarr i 7 år och bas i ett halv år så skulle kunna tänka mig ställa upp med vardera instrument vid behov med tänke på vilka som skulle vissa intresse☺️ Har ni frågor är det bara att ställa på!

Jag hade tyckt det hade varit skit kul att spela musik som t. ex Deftones Nirvana Kent Muse Radiohead The 1975 Misfits Destroy Boys (And the list goes on, lämna gärna förslag!)

Är så klart öppen för annan musik men tänkte så ni skulle få nån typ av inblick i vad jag är intresserad av och gillar så vi är on the same page!

my band currently has a fishman acoustic amp for vocals but it’s not cutting it for volume, anyone have recommendations?

Three guys in our early thirties playing rock. They’re old friends of mine. I am the most experienced player, they’re just starting out/haven’t played in a while.

For context, I live in a small country with very few opportunities to find people to jam with.

We’ve played together a handful of times, once a week. The drummer does not have a kit at home, only a practice pad. I offered the bass player (who may be a better drummer than the drummer is) to pick up a bass from storage, and he hasn’t done it. I don’t want to chase him down and hand him a free instrument if he doesn’t want to play it.

Now that we’ve played together a few times I’ve started wanting to over certain parts of a song and getting a whole song down a to z instead of loose jam bullshit. When I’ve started asking that we go over something the drummer, who only really gets to play on a lot once a week, seems reluctant to go over getting a fill down correctly.

I asked that they practice a cover (Siva, The Smashing Pumpkins) and there was crickets on that.

Since they’re my friends and I respect that it’s there time as well as mine, am I pushing them too hard too soon to want to be able to play at least once song the whole way through from a to z? Or am I not pushing them enough and need to be blunt with them that it’s a waste of our time to meet up once a week and not be able to solidly play something through?

Hey, so I share a google drive with the band. I record each practice (Line 6 HX’s for silent stringed instruments, kick and single overhead for speed and ease, whole band on IEM’s)

I just wanted to know how people structure their folders on GDrive for band members to access easily and get the most out of it. My current folder structure is:

• Practice (Folders by practice date, reaper multitracks inside)

• Songs (For ideas that have developed into useable songs. Each song is a folder, different versions of the song are in seperate folders)

• Drummer folder (I’ve told him to upload recording and ideas in here, and I’ll clean it up if it needs it and put into “Songs”)

• Vocalist folder (Same as above)

• Guitarist folder (Same again)

We’re still pretty early in the project, so haven’t actually gigged yet. But I’d imagine I’ll add a live performance section to this as well

We keep song submission posts to a minimum to keep this place spam free, but we are all musicians and most of us have songs to share. Let's connect with and support each other musically in a weekly thread. This is a safe space to post what your band is up to musically. Feel free to share your music, or ask for feedback.

In the spirit of community and cooperation that we have here in /r/bandmembers, Please give more feedback than you ask for. Use the 1 in 10 rule as a guideline. Comment on 10 other people's songs for every one of your own that you post. This might mean you have to comment on some weeks when you don't submit your song. If everyone follows that rule, we'll all have more feedback when we post our own songs.

My band has gotten an opportunity for a gig, but the person who reached out to us says theyre going to send us 30 tickets for us to sell, I asked him if we need to sell them all, he said "If you end up being short a few tickets its cool, want to make sure you are confident about 30 though." Should we take this?

I'm not talking about bookings within a 3 to 6 hour drive. I mean like if your based in Houston and you have a show inqury in Vegas. What are you typically looking to charge the venue so that travel is covered?

Also how do you get your gear to another state if your flying? Do you ship it or rent from some local music store?

My band is a tribute band. We charge about $1200 to $ 1500 per show locally and starting to get inquiries from venues well away from our home base. When I start thinking of flights, hotels, the money it would take so we don't lose money performing starts to seem unrealistic for a tribute act but I've seen some do it where they have shows across the nation or even across countries and I'm not exactly sure how they do it to make financial sense.

Answering a classified advert, I submitted some songs I've written. They really liked them. Everything was going great with the online back-and-forth conversation, until I told them how old I am. Too old for them, apparently. Nope, they said, no thanks. Which is sort of weird to me, because I've played and jammed with people of all ages.

I understand that people may be looking to maintain a certain group image, but I always thought that the music ought to come first. So, despite my looking a lot younger than I actually am, I didn't say so or protest. Their band, their rules. I just figured that if they are being that parochial, that it was pointless to continue the conversation.

Have any of you experienced this? What are your thoughts?

I've been told that both fighters came away unscathed, but our band sure got our asses kicked.

We played our favorite venue last night and had less than half the crowd that we usually do because everyone was watching the "fight". I saw one party on Facebook attended by about 15 people that come to almost all of our shows.

Better planning next time I reckon :)

I'm only in high school and I'll be playing faint from Linkin Park. I play the rhythmic guitar. During the verse, I don't play. What am I supposed to do when I'm not the one playing?

Hello, bandmembers redditor.

I'm here maybe just for a rant, but hear me out.

I was a high-school rock band drummer (Now 30yo), left music for years and just continue with the passion now. Have a few friends who were hanging out together, 5 of us including me, so one day we somehow decided to start a band with the goal to have some EPs or album released on YT / Spotify independently, and wanna play live somehow.

I wanted to go for drumming, and there is 1 bass , 2 guitars and a vocalist.

(We are all office worker- full time 9-6).

Me myself is an amateur multi-instrumentalist so I wrote a few songs that ready to be rehearsed and records, and confusingly became a band producer and arranger and mixing engineer and everything ... by default...

Everyone is sure busy, but the thing is here...

Most of the band members are beginner musician (including vocalist), except guitar 1 player which he is a music-head.

Bass player – Subzero beginner

Guitar 2 – Can play some open chords (0 theories, only memorization)

Vocalist – beginner, can hit notes, but still lacking technique

Thing is, even I tried to motivate them, give them youtube videos, lesson or practice routines, they don’t seem to practice outside of the band meeting.

Guitarist 2 can’t even play the riff part of the song properly (which is not hard, very slow part). Bass player forgets everything they learn (I use they to avoid he or she)

Guitarist 2 bought new electric guitar the same month as me (I need to use it to produce), I changed the strings 3 times now, but they still use stock string and look as new.

They don’t practice ... so every time there is a rehearsal meeting, it just became an instrument lesson... they come to learn, then go home and not practicing, then they forget, they forget the part, their fingers can’t have muscle memory and so on ... the loop goes.

This ... really demotivating me as a bandmember and a producer of the song. Also unmotivated as a teacher, because everything I taught get forgotten...

They don’t seem to work on theory, or techniques, or even songs on their own too... when I ask won’t you find anything to play alone just for fun or improve your techniques ? Like a song you like, they said they don’t have one... so they don’t even like to play the instrument ...

They are also not really into music... don’t appreciated anything musical, except listening to pop songs casually.

Being in a band, set goals, trying to pull everything together and get something like this in return is really demotivating.

We tried recording cover song once, but that session just becoming a guitar solo practice ... and everyone is waiting for them to practice, and the recordings turn out to be lack of accents, not very good timing.
So we have to move on because we don’t have that much time to redo everything. We only meet once in a month or so.

I’m not saying that they are hindering me, because I’m not aiming for being a star or to make money with music.

But,,, the fact that they don’t even love music but wanna be in the band and make music frustrates me so hard ...

Again, not aiming for music career, but even for just making youtube music, or spotify, or to have a chance to play live even covers or original, this is too hard ...

Sigh ... and because we are all hanging out friends, so I cannot go hard on them, so I just have to change my mindset, put this band aside, pour less of my heart and energy to it and doing my own solo project.

Which is very very sad, because all I want is to play drum LIVE and have reliable bandmates in the first place.

Just a rant tho,,, any share thoughts or advice ?

PS. English is not my native with me, so please bare with my language.

Wanted to get about 100 lighters for merch but every site has at least a 300 lighter minimum, any sites or companies that do smaller batches?

Exactly what the title says. Recently me and some friends formed a band to perform on a school event, after that was over, we got a couple other gigs and other school events to perform on.

And so now the problem is it seems that everybody wants to sing lead vocals. We have a lead singer already, but the other guitarist, bassist and synth now want to sing. And like literally our "lead singer" would just not be on stage for a couple songs since hes not singing it. A lot of egos clashing and bringing others down.

And it just feels so frustrating because it seems everyones trying to make it about themselves. The drummer, bassist and synth has only recently picked up their instruments so its like I have to teach all of them how to play each song. Our synth doesnt even practice regularly and it doesnt seem like hes even interested in his instrument seeing that he brings his guitar to practice, and mind you hes not good at it all seeing hes been playing for less than a month.

It feels like everyone joined the band for the sake of being on stage and being a rockstar. As the guy sort of in charge, I know this is kind of my mistake for not making it clear to everyone what everyones intentions of forming the band.

If gonna be honest, I want to leave. But, it feels wrong since im the one who really started this, and practice and rehearsals are at my house since i have a little bedroom studio thing.

I dont know what to do, we have a school event gig thing coming in 2 weeks, and if im being honest, i want it to be my last if I cant fix this band by then.

Advice is welcome but I only really wanted to just vent and rant since I dont have many friends to talk to about this.

Edit: I was a little harsh and emotional in writing this post. Now that ive calmed down a bit ive decided im gonna talk to them about this and take a step back in leading the band since I think it was trying to manage everything that was really bothering me. Thank you for the replies, well see if everything will work out.

Is this a normal practice?

We keep song submission posts to a minimum to keep this place spam free, but we are all musicians and most of us have songs to share. Let's connect with and support each other musically in a weekly thread. This is a safe space to post what your band is up to musically. Feel free to share your music, or ask for feedback.

In the spirit of community and cooperation that we have here in /r/bandmembers, Please give more feedback than you ask for. Use the 1 in 10 rule as a guideline. Comment on 10 other people's songs for every one of your own that you post. This might mean you have to comment on some weeks when you don't submit your song. If everyone follows that rule, we'll all have more feedback when we post our own songs.

I have been playing with a band for 7 years now, 3 of which with a new singer because the previous one had to quit. We had some good quality material and some performances. We started with our old songs but also want new songs, so some lyrics have to be written. However, our new singer indicates that it is not necessarily the singer who writes songs in a band. His previous band was a cover band. He also tell us that he is not good at writing and certainly not in the rehearsal room. To me as a guitarist it sounds like I can't come up with guitar parts myself. I once offered to try to do it together outside the rehearsal room, because I do have some experience. That was not responded to because he does not necessarily think it is 'his job'.

How do you move forward with writing in this situation?

Our cover band (in Europe) plays bars two or three weekends a month, and we get 50€ per gig each. We're in it for the fun, not the money, obviously.

One guy is extremely rich and retired. The type of guy who has twenty rare guitars, six expensive amps and suitcases full of 200 - 400€ pedals.

The other four are either unemployed or low income, and either use their own fairly crappy instruments, or borrow from the rich guy.

The rich guy also bought a shitty old second hand PA for 800€, that is going to need maintenance to keep it running.

He wants us to cover the cost of wear and tear and damage to his all gear. It hasn't happened yet, but we're talking about it before it inevitably does.

He's a good guy and fairly reasonable, although very miserly (in the way that all rich people are - they never allow themselves to be out of pocket for anything).

I don't mind contributing to the upkeep of collectively owned gear (of which there is none). But I don't feel like paying towards a broken 600€ amp or guitar, when my own gear is all second hand shit that, even then, I had a hard time in justifying. Also, 600€ to this guy is chump change, but for the rest of us, having to fork out 100€ each to buy him a brand new guitar or amp would be quite difficult for us.

I want to suggest that the responsibility for borrowed gear should be between him and the borrower (unless I had a direct hand in damaging it). However, I know that the unemployed guys could never repay that kind of money by themselves, and would need help from the rest of us.

The amount of times, for instance, that I've seen his lyric tablet nearly broken from careless falls or being crushed - I don't want to chip-in 80€ to buy him a new one, when I don't even have one myself due to the cost. Further, if my drumkit was damaged, I would just write it off as something that happens, and I knew the risk when I decided to gig with it. One of the guys dropped my snare and damaged the snare hoop a couple of weeks ago. I just shrugged it off. It was an accident; shit happens.

Let me hear what you think about this kind of stuff.

What do you do about splitting costs for damages and losses to band gear? What arrangements have you made?

Has this kind of thing caused arguments and splits amongst any of you?

I've played keyboards for like 15 years now, I'm somewhat decent I guess. I've always enjoyed making my own solo projects, but lately I've been feeling like a loner and want to make music with others.

I've always seen piano as more of a solo instrument compared to guitar and bass. I feel like rarely hear of bands in need of a keyboard player. I'm not really connected to a music scene so maybe I'm wrong about this.

Anyways. my question is which musician is in more demand: A good keyboard player or a passable bassist?

I know this is totally subjective but based on your personal music scene what's your experience?

Long story short, my band is technically bad. I used to like the genre we play but the performances and scarce rehearsals are so infuriatingly bad it is humiliating. It is like 2 out 5 of us are actual musicians and we have so far relied heavily on the producer to write and work our songs. But that second musician, the guitarist, is also an extremely difficult person to work with. The only reliable person is the singer and the other two are just completely out of touch with consistency.

On the other hand, everyone except me is short of local influencer type. There is no other band that is known around here and the music scene in my country is almost non-existent, so watching the band page on tiktok and instagram gather likes and what not is the only reason I've stayed this long, along with some rich connections we have, in the hopes that there is a chance we made it.

I've been working my a off to be good at my instrument and gone on and off with bands that don't give a damn about music so it makes me wonder if this is the best payoff I am getting out of all these years. That certain experience also makes my band depended on me in songwriting and performance in general.

So my question is, do I wait this out and risk getting burned out, or just leave and write my own stuff with the dread of ruining chances with a successful-to-be band?

https://imgur.com/a/1Q7UJpw

For a little context, i'm the band's guitar player, since i was a kid i always liked Rock and Heavy Metal, and of course i enjoy playing other genres like blues or sometimes funk, but Heavy Rock-Metal has always been my thing. When i got into this band, the first time that i sat down with the band's leader he told me that he wanted to do some Maragold inspired thing (funk rock-metal), and i really liked that idea, the songs had a really cool and flowy sound (kinda reminded me of Extreme, one of my favourite groups ever), so i didn't think twice after that proposal. When we started to actually play, of course we chose some covers to do, but apart from the really great and classic Rock songs, we did some Dua Lipa or REALLY burned out classic pop songs like "I Will Survive". Don't get me wrong, i don't have anything against that music, it's just that i don't enjoy playing it. This kind of thing went along in time and we always do those kind of songs, and i'm not enjoying the process at all. We have some gigs with a decent paycheck, but i feel unmotivated with the whole thing for not being able to do what i really like. How should i tell them this? I don't think they'd give me a negative or angry response, i know them very well and they're excellent people, but idk, i don't want to offend them or make them misinterpret what i say in any way.

So for starters I am in a supposed screamo band, at least thats what it was when we first started. And now my bandmate is telling me screamo makes him very depressed, and he hates making it, so he wants to do more poppy midwest emo stuff. But that is what I hate in terms of Midwest Emo, I hate that poppy sound (think of Mom Jeans, etc). And I want to do more heavy screamo stuff, more emotional, and melodic (think of Widowdusk, Febuary, sans visage, etc). So our views of what we want to do is different for the band and im just very conflicted on what to do. If anyone has any advice it would be great.

We keep song submission posts to a minimum to keep this place spam free, but we are all musicians and most of us have songs to share. Let's connect with and support each other musically in a weekly thread. This is a safe space to post what your band is up to musically. Feel free to share your music, or ask for feedback.

In the spirit of community and cooperation that we have here in /r/bandmembers, Please give more feedback than you ask for. Use the 1 in 10 rule as a guideline. Comment on 10 other people's songs for every one of your own that you post. This might mean you have to comment on some weeks when you don't submit your song. If everyone follows that rule, we'll all have more feedback when we post our own songs.

Hi, I'm a guitarist in a local cover band and recently played my first show with them (which also was my first live show ever) and looking back on the video I just seem kind of lifeless compared to the other band members, just standing still hunched over the guitar staring at the fretboard. I'd like to be more energetic while performing but the issue is when I'm up there I don't really know what to do, so I do the same as in rehearsal. How can I go about improving this?

On a similar note, how can I identify the appropriate level of energy for a show? I want to move more but I don't want to end up being the annoying band member who goes overboard with the movement.

my band just played a massive show at a venue we were really looking forward to last night, and my god was i nervous. i’m a lead singer that usually has a big presence onstage, but this time I got so stressed out that the crowd wasn’t responding that I ended up jumping far too much and doing way too many movements to the point that my vocals were near awful. looking back on the videos, I was clearly floundering and I look horrendous jumping around like a lunatic while sounding god awful at the same time as the crowd is completely still. my bandmates even told me afterwards that i really have to start toning it down and I feel so awful. I’m the most embarrassed I have ever been especially because the band we were opening for is one of the best bands i’ve ever played with and we really needed this gig for new exposure. I sounded like absolute shit in all the videos and I looked like a clown with the audience.

I don’t know how to help myself move on from this, it keeps replaying in my memory. Please help me.

Hi all, my band and I have been playing shows for about a year and a half. We are located in the SF Bay Area and we're trying to figure out how to get to the next level. I've been experimenting with sending emails to norcal bookers with little success. Next I'm thinking to send emails to venues. I'm curious to discover new ways to secure more gigs. Any tips would be helpful!