My general feelings on fellow musicians and bandmates...

[jgcable]

They don't practice enough.
They think that owning gear and buying new gear makes them a better player
They are lazy
They feel that learning songs or styles is work
They are one dimensional
They rarely if ever get better with age. Basically.. when they show up at your rehearsal space you need to understand that what you hear is about as good as its ever going to get.
They are always looking for a leader for the band and rarely if ever take any innitiative on anything yet they are the first to complain about everything
They have super high musical standards and morals.. neither of which have anything to do with making you a better player.
They don't practice enough.. i needed to say this one again.

[DonP]

Personally I

agree
disagree (I know owning the best gear that I still suck LOL!)
agree
yep
Not sure on one dimensional - please give some examples
I think I slowly get better. When you are at the bottom you can only go up LOL!
interesting. Never been in a band. You always hear about bands breaking up from fighting and I thought it was too much initiative
not sure about that
I agree

I will say, if I was to join a band, I'd be busting my ass off because I'm self-concious enough as it is and would be scared to death to "suck in front of an audiance". You will NEVER see me making an MP3 submission LOL!

[jgcable]

Here is what I mean by one dimensional...

I know many musicians who consider themselves 80's metal dudes. They never learned any other style... not even blues... heck not even classic rock! They don't listen to any other style of music. They can't play any other style. Its like wanting to be a master chef but only willing to cook one kind of food.

[jgcable]

What I mean by point #2 I'll take from The Fast and the Furious.
Its not how you stand by your car.. its how you drive your car.

[DonP]

Ok, I'm one-dimentional as well

I've honestly tried to listen to blues - got Clapton's John Mayell band (sp?) CD, some ZZ-Top stuff. But I'm a child of the 80's and I always go back to that. Stuck here in Nashville for during the CMA awards, I think I'm gonna puke

My current favorite stuff I listen to and play along with is the last two Accept CD's. Wolf is a MONSTER. I tracked down his photo business phone number and left a message thanking him for making two awesome CD's I can't get this stuff out of my head. I know you said you worked out once before. The Accept CD's are high in my gym workout rotation.

[VitaminG]

I think I could stand to be more one dimensional. Or more single-minded anyway. I'm so attracted to so many different styles that I dabble in all and master none. It would be good to focus on one aspect long enough to properly integrate it into my playing. Some things kind of sneak there so there is growth, but it is slow & inconsistent and in a crisis, my playing will revert to the hackneyed stuff I've been doing since 1832.

[Hellbat]

Joining my cover band at work has done wonders for my playing. I've really got no interest in learning Eagles or Aretha Franklin songs, but I have to because the band covers songs from all eras of popular music. Sometimes they pull a song out of the hat that I can't learn and thats cool.

The biggest improvement in my playing hasn't been so much my dexterity or even phrasing. It's more that learning these songs has increased my vocabulary from straight powerchord riffing (not that theres anything wrong with that) to major/minor/7th chords. My playing has gotten more economical as a result too. When you are playing three 45 minute sets in three hours, you need to learn to conserve some energy in your playing or you end up being a wreck in that third set. It's a lot different than playing for 10-15 minutes and getting distracted and doing something else and then playing for a few minutes again.

I've also improved my ability to learn new material as well as the speed at which I pick things up. I used to be a "look at my fingers while I play" guy. Especially when learning new chords and chord shapes. Now I find once I lock the finger positions into muscle memory I actually play better when I don't look and just 'feel' it.

I still am uncomfortable with performing because I don't really like attention but I'm trying to get better at engaging with the audience when I play. People tell me I do well but I'm still at the point where I don't believe them because I'm pretty self critical and don't hear my successes as much as I hear the mistakes.

It helps that the band has other talented musicians and really talented singers too, but it's definitely accelerated the speed at which I'm learning.

[Bert]

I hate bandmates who show up to practice and expect to learn the songs there. Fuck that! You learn the songs at home and show up ready to play the thing without listening to it while everyone stands around waiting for you to get your act together. Seriously, how hard is it to listen to the songs a few times at home and figure it out? I'm in a classic rock cover band and the material we choose isn't even particularly challenging!

Sorry for that rant.

[CowboyFromHell]

Wow! Guess I'm a lil more versatile, compared to some, than I thought. As far as rock goes, we do everything from the 50's on up through today. We do metal alot (more than any other genre to be honest) but we also do some country and blues. Personally I find myself doing quite a bit of "interpretation" sitting around playing along to this instrumental stuff that gets played at the college while I'm there. What really amazes me though is that I'm about to turn 44 and almost 30 years after I started playing I still love it as much as I did back in the beginning. I agree with you about band members that wait til they show up and are on your dime to learn the songs instead of taking their own time to learn it. Those people haven't had a great track record as far as lasting in my bands. To me it shows a lack of dedication. I need to get my ass back out there and gig more instead of "hiding" in our practices. I've been slow to pull the trigger on gigs since Gary passed away but I've realized that and am pushing myself back towards getting out more. When it comes to "standing next to your car..." I've been here a lil while now, and I'm truly amazed at the changes I've seen take place here. I remember back when I joined I caught hell for crappy pics of My first Jackson (RR Performer series) and my Les Paul clone (fake). I've since then acquired my RR3 (love it) but I still play my first RR frequently and the Les Paul, while not being a true Gibson has turned into a beast that really roars. It might not be worth $100 to some but it fits me well and has found it's permanent home. Guess that's kind of like leaning against an '86 Corolla. In the right hands... Anyway, I've rambled on enough. Overall I agree with you, but have been blessed enough to have a great bunch of guys with me atm.

[tomanyjacksons]

What Bert said, for sure. I've come to the conclusion over the years that about all bands have at least one person that doesn't belong there for one reason or another.

[jgcable]

What Bert said, for sure. I've come to the conclusion over the years that about all bands have at least one person that doesn't belong there for one reason or another.

That is so true. The bands that have no weak spots in their line ups tend to turn into SUPERGROUPS.

[BenoA]

They are always looking for a leader for the band and rarely if ever take any innitiative on anything yet they are the first to complain about everything.

This is SO TRUE! In the band I am in (almost 5 years), I used to take care of booking, selecting songs, web site, posters and other stuff... At one point, I got tired and decided to leave it to others and just play the guitar... Well, since then, the place we gig are the same as we used to go and we don't get out of the rehearsal room very often...

[Newc]

They don't practice enough.

No, I don't. I have an issue of Guitar School with Steve Vai's 10-hour workout sitting on the music stand, closed. I get tired of looking at Friedman's Poodle-cut on the front so I flip it over to the Valvestate ad on the back. I've opened it a few times and read through Vai's article, and know what the fingerings are for each "hour", and once in a bloo mune I'll run through the 1,2,3,4 fingerings, then go back to whatever I was doing the day before.
Aside from the Pentatonics, I learned the Mixolydian scale from an Alex Skolnick article some years ago, and use the fuck out of that scale. I play around with phrasing, arpeggiating it, and seeing how fast I can blaze through it from E to E and back again, and how I can shift from that into a Pentatonic and back again. That's it. I really need to crack open the 30+ years' worth of magazines I have in trunks sitting around my room and go through all the lessons. I have an onopened Troy Stetina Speed Mechanics or whatever the hell it is book/DVD that I bought almost 10 years ago.

They think that owning gear and buying new gear makes them a better player

Fortunately for me, I have no delusions that my 30 guitars/basses/acoustics make me a better player. I like guitars. I like owning a large number of them, most of which (aside from the 4 NASLs and 6 WRMG/XT mutts) are all different. The one Jazz'R, the one Morton, the one SoCal, the one Collen Archtop, the one KV2T, the one Dinky (well, 2 counting the 7-string), the 3 different Customs, the different basses, etc. Do I need them all? Certainly not. I could do just fine with 4 guitars (one for C#, D, Eb, and E for playing along with Sabbath and whatnot) and a 5-string bass.

They are lazy

I'm sure I could finagle an excuse, but basically there's no pressure on me, so yeah, I could try harder. I'm only 44, and with the resurgence of "old farts" hitting the road, and the internet/YouTube/Facebook outlets making it incredibly easy to build a fanbase, as well as find a band. Plus, you've got PC software that turns your bedroom into a 128 track pro studio, and you can share tracks over the web with a virtual band, and sell your music through online retailers for $1 each and yet still I'm sitting here on my ass posting on an internet forum instead of doing all that I can to have some semblance of a career in music.

They feel that learning songs or styles is work

Actually I'm at the point now where I'm working on originals only, as I have musical cleptomania. I hear something once and 6 months later it shows up in my list of things to work on, and once I put weeks and months into it, it dawns on me that I've merely been doing a variation of someone else's riff or melody that I heard almost a year prior. That pisses me the fuck off

They are one dimensional

I've got a wide variety of stuff that I grew up listening to still stuck in my head - Alice Cooper, Sabbath, Maiden, Priest, Metallica, Megadeth, Glenn Miller, ZZ Top, Zeppelin, GnR, Hair Metal, Blues, Surf music, C&W, Classical, Fusion, Jazz, Classic Rock, 50s rock - and I cannot bring myself to settle on one style for my own stuff. I try to bring my own interpretation into something whenever I can, even if it's using vintage Judas Priest guitar tones for a Megadeth-ish riff. I don't always succeed because I get hung up on "this is how a Megadeth riff should sound".

They rarely if ever get better with age. Basically.. when they show up at your rehearsal space you need to understand that what you hear is about as good as its ever going to get.

Yes and no. I feel that the longer I work with the limited scale set I have, the more time I spend on phrasing and building melodies using only those scales. I think of a melodic phrase and work it through a basic up and down form, but then maybe throw a flat or sharp in it to see how the feel of it changes.

They are always looking for a leader for the band and rarely if ever take any innitiative on anything yet they are the first to complain about everything

I have limited experience with being in a band, but was in a band with people who had been in other bands that did gig regularly. I defaulted to their knowledge of the local audience's tastes, as I did not go out to these places myself. I knew that Classic Rock would go over, being in West TN (Skynrd, Creedence, etc) but didn't know that there were plenty of people willing to two-step to Man In The Box. I am also relatively difficult to get along with. I am just as argumentative and confrontational in real life as I am on the interwebs, so I end up being the asshole in the band.

Especially when you all agreed last week to learn a given song, and you find out that you were the only one who did, and everyone else wants to learn it at rehearsal.

They have super high musical standards and morals.. neither of which have anything to do with making you a better player.

The first part I agree with - the second part, I don't.
If I'm playing a cover, I intend to play it the way I learned it - as it appears on the record. To me it's a testament that I've taken the time to learn the song the way it was written and didn't just steal the hook and rewrite the lyrics. Paying customers don't want to hear my interpretation of Freebird, they want to hear Skynrd doing Freebird.
Unfortunately, a couple of the guys I was in a band with simply wanted to offer their interpretation of some songs - put in a change where there was none, take out a break/change, etc. As a fan, I wanted to hear it done "the right way". As a musician, I wanted to play it the way I would want to hear it. We might crank up the gain and do a heavier version of Long Haired Country Boy, but I wanted that to be the only difference.

They don't practice enough.. i needed to say this one again.

And I'll agree once again, but this time I'll offer an excuse:
Ever since I got a guitar at 16, I could not play it for more than 10 minutes at a time due to someone interrupting me with some nonsense. Whether it was through speakers or heapdphones, no sooner had I just gotten warmed up than my door was opened witih "come here for a minute" which turned into the rest of the day.

I've lived with my parents all my life, mostly due to not making enough money in my younger days to live on my own, and in successive years one or the other was down with a physical ailment and we could not afford a live-in assistant.

My mother suffered a debilitating back injury in the early 90s that left her unable to get in and out of bed without help, and there were many times when I had to help her off the toilet.
Caring for the house (cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc) fell to me, since my father could not/would not do it, and my older brother was in the Navy.

Once my mother was able to take some of those duties back, she still needed help around the house with the things she couldn't do alone, so I stayed.

When my father had a stroke in 2003 and needed quadruple-bypass surgery, the monthly bills fell to me.

When my mother had her first cancer later that year, the duties of the house once again fell to me.

When my mother had her 2nd cancer in 2005, again, I had to keep the house.


My father moved out of his mother's house in 1965 after he was married. He never had to clean anything except his plate and his own ass, and my mother took over the family finances early on when he blew a month's pay on some frivolous bullshit for himself with no regard for his wife and children or household bills.

When my mother passed away in 2007, my dad was left with no housekeeping skills, so again, it fell to me. It took time, but my dad can now manage his own finances, wash his own clothes, vacuum and mop his own floors, and cook his own food that does not involve deep frying or McDonald's.

However, some years ago I gave up on saving money to move out and live my own life in my own place due to the incessant obstacles and obligations, and went batshit crazy with a credit card I had built up from a $1000 limit to a $15,000 limit, and for the past several years have fought to pay it off without selling anything I bought with it. The few things I have sold with the intention of paying down my debt, more often than not, went for more gear instead. I borrowed $3K from my 401k some years ago to cut my CC debt in half, but instead spent half on a guitar, leaving the other half for the bill. I've got a couple of years left to pay that back, and am still $7500 into the CC.

My father, now retired and on Obamacare, suffered a non-work-related hip injury back in 2004, when he had a job and insurance, and instead of having it addressed when it happend, he shrugged it off and toughed it out John Wayne style. Despite Federal Law to the contrary, he insisted he'd be jobless and homeless if he took time off from work to have his hips fixed when they were fixable.

Last week he had x-rays done and one hip has no ball at the top, it's just the broken bone rolling around in the hip socket, and the other hip is on its way out due to bearing all the work of his injured hip for 9 years. He's going for a replacement sometime next month, which will leave him basically incapacitated here at the house for who-knows-how-long.

He plans to move his girlfriend into the house to tend to him so I don't have to take off work to do it, however, this is the same 65 year old g/f that fucked up my last 3-day weekend when I got my JCM800. She's thin and frail, and I highly doubt she'll be of any use to him other than to cook and clean.

And again, I won't be able to play my guitar.

So yeah, I need to practice more. I also need to win the lottery so I can afford the best care money can buy for my father so I can live by myself and for once in my 28 years of playing have more than 10 minutes to myself to practice.