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In this post… Dave Pinoli and his enormous pedal board. A disastrous gig at a children’s music recital. Handbag CEO. Gear Nerd characteristics. The basic guitar gear needed to play local gigs. The Gear Nerd is always a middle-aged guy, and nearly always an electric guitar player. He is obsessed with the technical specifications of various guitars, amplifiers and other guitar-related gadgetry, and has downloaded a lot of guitar apps onto his computer. He can talk knowledgeably for hours about the pros and cons of all manner of guitar gear. He spends a lot of his spare time reading online reviews of the various products. In most cases, this time would be better spent learning basic musicianship: for example, how to play a C major scale. Gear Nerds support a global industry of guitar gear manufacturers that totals billions of dollars in annual sales. As you form you first bands and start to play gigs, jam sessions and open mics, you are bound to come across the odd Gear Nerd or two. Perhaps you have already? Compared to other 'types' of musician I will mention in future blog posts though, the Gear Nerd is mostly harmless. I would rate the average Gear Nerd a moderate 6 on the musician toxicity scale. However, do read on as this blog post will help you to:
Dave Pinoli One amateur musician I knew, Dave Pinoli, was a gear nerd par excellence. Dave had a huge pedal board. For those of you who don’t know what a pedal board is, it’s a collection of small and colourful metal boxes containing electronics that flavour the basic sound of an electric guitar. The pedal board is placed at the feet of the guitar player and it is operated by tapping little switches on and off using the foot. Normally, an amateur guitarist playing local gigs has a modest pedal board that takes up the same amount of floor space as a shoe box. Dave Pinoli’s pedal board, on the other hand, occupied the same space as a large dog basket and would not have looked out of place as the control panel of an alien spacecraft in a 1970’s sci-fi movie.  Dave Pinoli's gargantuan pedal board A few years ago, Dave was asked if he could help out at a music school recital, where his young daughter and other children would be performing to an audience of mums and dads. Dave was scheduled to play two rock songs along with two other dads: a drummer and a bassist. They were to support a singer who was a 12-year-old girl. Dave had set up his enormous pedal board before the recital began and it effectively cornered off a quarter of the available stage space for the entire evening. Teachers and young kids were constantly tripping over it during the course of the evening. When it finally came time for Dave to step up to the stage and perform, he himself tripped over the pedal board. Halfway through the first song, he got confused, activated the wrong pedal and the resulting feedback (a high-pitch squeal) forced everyone in the audience to cover their ears with their hands. Bewildered young children in the audience anxiously looked up to their parents for reassurance. An equally bewildered Dave frenziedly tapped his foot on random pedals until his guitar suddenly went totally silent, and it remained that way for the rest of the song, much to the relief of the audience. Dave’s second (and final) song thankfully went better. After the show, Dave’s wife came up to me and asked “What do you think of all of his little boxes on the floor?" She was referring to Dave’s pedal board. I gave a non-committal shrug and she replied, “It’s pathetic, isn’t it?" Others were standing close by and within earshot, including Dave himself. I’m not sure if he heard his wife’s disparaging words. Mrs Pinoli was not one to save her husband’s blushes after a disastrous gig! Handbag CEO I offer the following story as an example of a case of gear-nerdery so severe, the sufferer was most probably never able to get his guitar playing to the level required to play in an amateur rock band. In fact, he was most probably never able to play the chord G. Years ago, the CEO of a well-known deluxe handbag company hit me up for some guitar lessons. He took three lessons with me. At each lesson, he brought along a different Les Paul Gibson guitar. These were expensive guitars and he wanted to talk about their features (or ‘specs’ as they are known in guitar circles): the woods used, the chambering (?), the inlays, the tuners… I tried to teach him the chord G. He wasn’t interested. He just wanted to show me all of his guitars for some reason. As he owned three Les Pauls, three lessons were enough, and he didn’t book a fourth lesson. However, two months later, he re-contacted me and he did book another lesson. As it turned out, he had bought a fourth Les Paul. This one had state-of-the-art robot tuners. In other words, the guitar tuned itself up at the push of a button. After this lesson, I never heard from the handbag CEO again, so I presume his guitar collection remains at four items. Gear Nerd characteristics The Gear Nerd is generally not a great musician nor a great creator of art. His priorities, in order of most important to least important are…
Typical Gear Nerd behaviour at rehearsals includes…
I have painted Dave Pinoli, Handbag CEO and gear nerds in general in a rather pathetic light here. I should say that the Gear Nerds I have known were all very decent people and successful in their day job professions. And, in their defence, a guitar player, or indeed any musician, does need to have some good equipment and knowledge of how to operate it (as we will see in a future blog post concerning the Gear Nerd’s arch-nemesis… The Gearophobe). However, perhaps you shouldn’t let gear get in the way of making music and art. Once you have some half-decent gear, stick with it and concentrate on creating within the gear’s limitations (all gear has limitations). Which guitar gear to buy to play in a local rock band Here is my take on gear if you are an amateur rock guitar player looking to play local gigs. Get yourself a combo amp with a 12” speaker. My preference is a single-channel amp. A two-channel amp would effectively have an overdrive pedal built into it that could be activated via a foot switch. Another preference of mine, and many guitarists, would be that the amp is a tube amp (a.k.a, a valve amp) due to the warm sound of these old-fashioned-styled amps. A 30- or 40-watt amp is normally sufficient. The amp can be miked and put through the P.A. at larger gigs if necessary. As for pedals, you probably need one or two overdrive pedals. Most of them are similar in my opinion. (OMG! Gear Nerds will NOT agree with that!). If you have a couple of them, you are sorted and you don’t need to buy any more. You can use these two pedals together for a more complex sound and more distortion. A tuner pedal is also a good idea. With this relatively simple gear, and the use of the volume control on your guitar, you should be able to get these three distinct sounds:
For most types of rock music, there is no need to go on a crazy quest for gear, in my opinion. Ultimately, your sound comes from your hands, not your gear. I’ve heard this old cliché many times over the years, but it is true to a large degree. For example, two guitar players who have been very popular with Gear Nerds over the last few decades are Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn. They both hit their guitar strings hard with accuracy. They set up their guitars so their strings were high relative to the frets and this enabled them to hit the strings hard without fret buzz. (This is called ‘high action’.) Both Jimi and SRV could play soft and delicately also, and so their range of possible dynamics was vast. Playing around with this dynamic range made for very expressive music. Also, both Jimi and SRV played with great groove and timing. These things are the secrets to their sound. Not a certain green Tube Screamer pedal nor a certain amp from 1968 nor a curly guitar cable. Conclusions about Gear Nerds Guitar Nerds are not the most disruptive character you will come across in a rock band. You may need to excuse yourself from tedious conversations about equipment occasionally. You may need to gently convince the Gear Nerd to simplify his rig (amp and pedals) so that there is enough room remaining for the singer to stand on the stage at a small venue.
Gear obsession is often coupled with other traits however, such as being unrealistically ambitious or being rhythmically dyslexic. (We’ll examine these two traits in upcoming posts.) Then there can be a problem. So, evidence of gear-nerdery is not on its own a red flag when auditioning a guitarist for your band. (Some names of individuals mentioned in this blog post were changed to protect identities.) Mark Baxter (c) 2024
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 The Shiny Exciters, live on stage somewhere in Belgium In a nutshell, the overarching principles and fundamental truths to bear in mind when forming a band are as follows:
I will now write about each of these rock band maxims in more detail: Benevolent dictatorship A rock band is best run by a benevolent dictator. Democracies don’t work in a band setting. Committees don’t work. Endless discussions about song arrangements or artistic direction will get you nowhere. The band needs one competent, hard-working and slightly overbearing chieftain whose leadership and vision for the band is respected by the other members and who they happily follow for the most part. The irony here is that popular music has never really flourished in countries run by authoritarian regimes. I’m sure we all prefer to live and to pursue artistic aims in largely free and democratic countries, but if you want your band to play a gig any time soon, go the dictator route. Dictators get things done fast. And, in case you are unsure who the benevolent dictator of your band is, it’s YOU. Networking In order to acquire the best possible members for your band (a blend of musical talent and agreeableness), you need to draw from a large pool of potential players. If you do not cultivate a wide network of musicians in your local area, you will have less options and you risk being stuck with either talentless players or loonies, or worse: talentless loonies. You don’t want that. As you will discover in the following blog posts, a sizeable percentage of amateur musicians fall into these undesirable categories. When it comes to forming a good band, having a large network is as important as practicing on your instrument. I must admit, networking is not my strong suit. I’m reclusive by nature. If, like me, you prefer to stay at home of an evening watching humorous cat videos or Amsterdam magnet fishing videos on YouTube, then you must force yourself out to local gigs and open mic nights in order to meet other local amateur musicians and grow your network. You can also connect online by joining groups and befriending musicians in your local area on Facebook and other online places. Consider the singer first for the best overall band sound Sometimes, an individual band member can view the band as a vehicle for promoting his or her (normally his) own talents. This is what led a guitarist I once knew, Mr X, to suggest the very deep-voiced singer in his band sing Beat it, a song by the very high-pitched Michael Jackson. Mr X selfishly wanted to play the flashy Eddie Van Halen guitar solo that features on this song. He didn’t seem to care that the singer would have needed the aid of helium to sing this song. Either that or he would have had to sing it one octave lower than the original. This would have been laughably ridiculous. I propose the radical idea that the overall band sound should be the first consideration when choosing and arranging songs, not the desires and preferences of individual players. In most cases, this means building a set list around the singer: choosing the style of songs their voice is best suited to singing and choosing the best key for their vocal range for all songs. The rest of the band should fit in around this and support the singer. In this way, you’ll build the best overall band sound. After all, the singing IS the song, literally. So, it’s best to consider the singing first and then build the other musicians’ parts around the singing. As band leader, you should largely ignore guitar players’ requests for songs. Occasionally, songs guitarists would like to play and which show off their skills will align with what is good for the singer. In this scenario, you can throw them a bone and play their song to keep them happy. If all the band members have their eye on what is good for the band’s overall sound, and not on servicing their own rock star fantasies, the band has a better chance of success. Good singers and drummers are rare It is a fact of life that good drummers and singers are very rare. Good guitarists and bassists, on the other hand, are relatively common. If you have a large enough network though, you should be able to find a good drummer and singer for your band. Be aware that good drummers and singers know they are a rare commodity and may act like divas because of this. Sadly, you may have to put up with a degree of diva-ish-ness and annoying behaviour if you want to form a decent band and actually play some gigs. In a future blog post about Chaotic Divas, I will help you to identify and deal with the inevitable diva you will come across on your rock band journey. Vet players well before committing The best approach to auditioning players is extreme caution. Have an initial audition and if the player impresses you and your band mates, invite them to another session without committing to them joining the band. You may notice certain flaws in their playing only after the first meeting. And, the player may reveal themself to have some annoying personality quirk only after a first session, such as being argumentative, being a Guardian reader or being a serial killer. So, it’s best to tread gingerly with potential new band mates. You will spend a lot of time with them if you invite them into the band, so you need to make sure they are a good fit, as far as you can. It sounds crazy, but inexperienced players sometimes commit to other musicians before even hearing them play. I’ve made this mistake myself in the past. For example, you meet a guy at a social event who also happens to be an amateur musician. He talks a good game. He talks like he is a good player. He seems knowledgable about music and mentions all the great musicians you also love. You get friendly with him. You bond and become brothers in arms. You talk about a musical collaboration together and set up a first meeting. In your heads, you are already planning a nationwide tour of clubs and theatres. Alas, when you meet up again, this time with your instruments, you know it’s not going to work within the first two minutes of playing together. His timekeeping is terrible. You then have to see the rest of the two-hour session out and afterwards try to extricate yourself from a lifelong commitment of music-making with this guy. You can save yourself a lot of hassle by asking a prospective collaborator for an example of their playing. With video cameras on phones these days, nearly everyone has a video of themselves playing that they can show you. You’ll get a good idea of their skill level from this and can then decide whether or not to take things further and arrange a meet-up with instruments. Be frank with other musicians If you don’t want to start or to continue a collaboration with another player or a band, it’s best to tell them this as soon as possible. Honesty is the best policy. In my experience, there is always a cost to not being honest with other players and continuing collaborations way past their expiry date. At band auditions, some amateur musicians find it very difficult to say no to the player auditioning, even if they are terrible. It is hard to tell another human to their face that they are not good enough. It’s easier in that moment to just invite them to join the band! This is especially the case if another person has recommended the player auditioning. By saying no you stand to disappoint both the musician AND the matchmaker. Before hosting an audition, be prepared to be brave and say no to the auditioning player. If their skills are lacking, you are only delaying the inevitable by not saying no there and then. A favourite trick of many musicians is to do a Homer Simpson. There is a popular internet meme of Homer Simpson backing up slowly into a hedge until he is completely engulfed by the hedge and disappears from view, presumably to get out of some tiresome social event. Many dissatisfied musicians will back away from a musical collaboration they no longer want to be part of in similar fashion: they will attend fewer and fewer rehearsals, offering a variety of excuses. They’ll sometimes annoyingly cancel at the last minute and then go off the radar for long periods of time (i.e., not answer calls and messages). Finally, their band mates get the message and stop contacting the musician. And so the musician succeeds in leaving the band with zero face-to-face confrontation and nothing being said explicitly. Mission accomplished! (This strikes me as being similar to the old urban myth of the husband saying “Sweatheart, I’m just going out to buy a newspaper” and then walking straight past the newsagents, catching a bus and starting a new life in another town.) The final interaction the cowardly musician has with the band is an awkward few minutes when he bumps into the singer in the sauces and condiments aisle in Asda two months later. I urge musicians not to ‘Do a Homer’. Just tell the other musician(s) straight, save everyone a lot of wasted time and annoyance and then move on with your separate lives. Musicians are often not unique snowflakes I first started playing guitar in the 1980's. Since then, I've taken part in many jam sessions and open-mic evenings. I've been a member of various amateur and semi-pro bands. I've met many musicians through the decades. And it's possible to group a surprisingly large number of them according to their shared characteristics: their personalities and their behaviours. I will mention many of these musician 'types' over the course of this blog. In future posts, you will meet Chaotic Divas, Dadolescent Rockers, Excessive Goosers, Rampers, Gear Nerds, Gearophobes, Wonky Subdividers and The Rhythmically Dyslexic, among others. If you have already done any kind of playing with other musicians, then you have probably already met some of these characters in real life. If you are yet to play with others, then expect to meet them in real life soon. The perfect musicians for your band probably don’t exist The perfect players for your band, musicians who are both impressively talented AND socially well-adjusted, probably don’t exist. So, forming a band will be a balancing act: on one side of the scale will be the musical quality of the band; on the other side, your own sanity. If you strike a good compromise, all your efforts of putting a band together will be well worth it. These are my general principles to keep in mind when forming a band. Mark Baxter (c) 2024  The instruments of the band "Wiggle Room", waiting for the musicians to return. At this very moment, somewhere on the planet, a group of amateur rock musicians are standing around and waiting impatiently. They have gathered together in a place some distance away from their family members, so as not to annoy them too much with the barrage of noise they will soon unleash. Maybe they are in a garage or a basement. Maybe they are in the local village hall or a friendly farmer’s hayloft. Perhaps they have rented a small, windowless rehearsal room on the outskirts of town. To kill time, while they wait, the musicians brainstorm possible band names. They throw out some ideas... Captain Testos, Mouldylocks, Murder Death Kill, Ronny Ray Gun... and quickly discard them all. They are looking for something “rock and roll”, something cool, something... edgy. But not so edgy that it would cause colleagues at their regular day jobs to raise their eyebrows. The band will be several more months before finally settling on the ideal band name which all band members like and agree to. They’ll discuss getting t-shirts printed with the new name on them. Sadly though, a belated google will reveal this name has already been taken, probably by some random band in rural Canada with 23 followers on Instagram. It’s incredibly difficult to come up with a unique band name in 2024! The electric guitar player is not part of the conversation about band names. He is still busy setting up his equipment: plugging cables into electronic boxes and twiddling dials. He’s finished now and is starting to tune up his guitar. As usual, he is doing this at maximum amplified volume, much to the annoyance of his fellow band mates who now cannot hear themselves talk over the din. After tuning up, the guitarist launches into a short celebratory rendition of Foxy Lady by Jimi Hendrix, also at full volume. Each band member has spent the last hour involved in the logistics of band practice. Their musical equipment has been:
By the way, the combined cost of all the equipment now laid out in the rehearsal room, all the drums, amplifiers, guitars, cymbals, electronic gadgets, cables, stands, microphones, etc., is the equivalent of a down payment on a two-bedroom house. 10 minutes later, the singer finally arrives, empty handed. Having skilfully avoided any heavy lifting, she cheerfully hugs and kisses everyone, takes a quick selfie, posts it to social media and the rehearsal finally begins. All this activity, all this effort, expense and patience, is with the aim of playing 20 songs to a sizeable and enthusiastic audience at a local venue at some future date. The payment: 50 quid and two free beers each. Many bands succeed in this quest. More fail. And of those bands that do succeed, many of them fail to be asked back to that same venue to play a second gig. Forming a good amateur band is a process fraught with frustration and disappointment, but the end result can be incredibly satisfying and perhaps even life-affirming if successful. So much so, that when you wake up the morning after a great gig, you enthusiastically jump out of bed, play some quick air guitar, put your clothes on and continue to relive the highlights of the gig during your next 16 waking hours, despite a terrible hangover. And... you will continue to look back fondly on this gig for years to come. You and your band mates were able to magically transmit energy and joy to a room full of people for a one hour and 30 minutes, and you were appreciated for it. It’s a great feeling. The challenge Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, will be to...
If you and your future band mates work full-time jobs, it will take you a number of months to accomplish these goals. Perhaps it will take you a year or more. Next blog: General principles to keep in mind when forming a rock band. Mark Baxter (c) 2024 Hello. My name is Mark Baxter, music teacher. Welcome to the blog. This blog will bring together in one place all the info I would like to pass on to my music students, present and future, when they form their first bands and start to play live gigs. This information, if heeded, will save them a lot of time, effort, frustration and heartache. It will help make the whole process of putting a band together more enjoyable and worthwhile. It will increase the chances of their bands being successful. This is my hope anyway.
My definition of a band being successful is as follows:
If you have stumbled upon this blog and are not a student of mine, you are very welcome to read the posts. If you are starting your rock band journey, I’m sure you too will find useful and time-saving lessons here. If you are further along this journey and have already been in bands and have some gigging experience, you may find many of the stories I will tell relatable and, dare I say, even humourous. (I don't want to assume too much.) Some of the info in the blog may reaffirm your thoughts about certain aspects of playing in a band. It may serve to clarify certain things. The blog is called “How to form a rock band. Also, how NOT to form a rock band”. The “How to form a rock band” part refers to tips, tricks and words of advice I have for amateur musicians. In upcoming posts, I’ll share my ideas on topics such as:
There is a science to all of these aspects of forming a band and playing gigs which you can learn by reading future blog posts here. The “How NOT to form a rock band” part of the title refers to cautionary tales of onstage disasters, band break-ups, toxic band members and other perils for the amateur musician to avoid. Many future posts on this blog will feature such stories. I will draw from my experience of playing in and managing amateur and semi-pro bands. You will be able to learn from my mistakes and also the mistakes of other musicians I have played with and known over the years. For example, you will meet Chaotic Divas such as Colin Europe, Fabiola Tantrums and Hugh Jazz, who each managed to torpedo a gig due to their ill-conceived behaviour. They never intended to be so disruptive. They were just being themselves and living their best lives. Nevertheless, venues and event organisers refused to hire them ever again. You'll also meet obsessive Gear Nerds such as Dave Pinoli and Gearophobes such as Careless Santana. The polar opposite behaviour of these two characters brought about exactly the same end result: a disastrous and embarrassing gig for each of them. I will introduce you to players with different varieties of Rhythmical Dyslexia, such as Ginger Faker and Pandiero Pete. Troy Alexander is sure to feature in an upcoming blog post as an example of a Ridiculously Loud Drummer: so loud in fact, that one popular local venue refused to host live rock bands ever again after a Troy Alexander appearance. Instead, the venue turned into a salsa dance bar to avoid further neighbourhood complaints and visits from the police. Likewise, Ian Womb, managed to shut down four open-mic nights in short succession due to his excessive volume on the drums at these events. We’ll likely hear from Mr X of the band O’Beast. Mr X suffered from a malady afflicting a surprising number of amateur guitar players. Namely, Overly-Ambitious Dunning-Kruger Syndrome. In addition, I’ll introduce you to a wide array of other characters falling into the categories of Goosers, Rampers, Wonky Subdividers and Dadolescent Rockers. These types of musician each have the potential to be the musical equivalent of a suicide bomber self-detonating on stage and causing havoc in any band. Indeed, many of the obstacles standing in the way of your forming a band and playing your first gigs will be human obstacles. As with most endeavours in life, it’s the personalities involved that cause the most consternation and annoyance, rather than other non-human obstacles… such as a malfunctioning guitar amplifier or a lack of available rehearsal spaces in your area. So, I plan to dedicate a substantial number of blog posts to identifying and then dealing with the troublesome types of musician you will inevitably encounter on your rock band quest. Also, in the course of writing this blog, I may include some of my musings on the state of rock music today, its place in the current culture and the history of rock music. This would be so you can view your band in a broader context. Despite the uphill struggle and frustration involved in forming a band, it is a very worthwhile pursuit. The end result of playing gigs can be hugely satisfying and even life-affirming. So much so, that when you wake up the morning after a great gig, you enthusiastically jump out of bed, play some quick air guitar, put your clothes on and continue to relive the highlights of the gig during your next 16 waking hours, despite a terrible hangover. And... you will continue to look back fondly on this gig for years to come. You and your band mates were able to magically transmit energy and joy to a room full of people for a one hour and 30 minutes, and you were appreciated for it. It’s a great feeling. My background A little bit about me. I started work as a guitar teacher in 1989 at Terry’s Music Shop in the small town of Boston in rural Lincolnshire, England. Since then, I’ve taught hundreds of music students in the UK and in Belgium. I’ve played in various amateur and semi-pro bands and have produced several bands of music students over the years. I play electric and acoustic guitar, bass guitar and drums. Musician and band names Many of my planned blog posts will include daft behaviour by musicians I have known over the years (including myself). These musicians are otherwise sane, decent and lovely people and so, in order to protect their identities and save them any embarrassment, I have changed some of their names and the names of their bands. The replacement band names used in this blog will all be names I have suggested for new bands I’ve been involved with over years. They were ALL rejected by my fellow band mates. I’m happy to finally give these unloved and discarded band names a home here, in this blog. I wish you the very best in your musical endeavours. Mark Baxter, late July 2024, Waterloo, Belgium. (c) 2024 |
Blog: How to form a rock band. Also, how NOT to form a rock band.About this blog
These blog posts contain info I would like to pass on to my music students when they form their first bands and start to play live gigs. I explain more here in my first blog post.
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Mark Baxter, musician, music teacher, guitarist, bassist, drummer. English expat living in Belgium.
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