Musician’s Notebook

After you’ve established the planning for your band, you need to plan for your recruits–who do you want playing what and how many of them? When you start evaluating band members, it’s not just about the music: it’s about who they are. What they like, dislike, what they stand for and what they are against. All these elements make up the brand of the band and will be used and exploited by the public, and the media. This third article in the Establishing Your Band series discusses the band member selection process, but it’s not about recruiting—so don’t jump the gun and start looking for members. First you need to know what you’re looking for. The article on recruiting band members will come later.

I’m sure you’ve put some thought into determining which instrumentalists you need and how many of each you want, but at this point you’re going to need to set that in stone. Make the decision. This is vital to not only recruiting band members, but to the next step of the process—repertoire development. You can’t write music unless you know which instruments you’re writing for.

You’ll also want to know if these instrumentalists can write music, sing backing vocals, play other instruments, or have recording experience. These are all qualities you’ll need to decide for or against far in advance—but remember, the more prerequisites you decide on, the longer it’ll take to build a band. On the other hand, it’ll be a damn good band.

Big tip: beware of looking for the ‘instant click’. Often, a musician is chosen at auditions because the band instantly clicked with them. This isn’t always a bad thing, in fact, it’s great when it happens. But you have to remember that it’s not the most important thing. The creative connection can be developed with some practice, and it’s just luck when it happens instantly. Don’t shortchange your band on talent for an instant creative connection. It also takes time to build the kind of relationship that can survive the internal and external stresses of running a band—stresses that will work to tear it apart. Remember the concept of band as brotherhood. If you can’t see these musical relationships developing into strong friendships, brotherhoods even, you’ll have a heck a lot of trouble down the track.

Getting back to the opening paragraph: your band members are elements that factor into the brand of the band. You need to consider perception management when looking for band members, and you also need to consider how each band member wants to be perceived and known. This is in part about creating a character and living in that character—much like Marilyn Manson—and it’s also about evaluating your choices carefully. How?

Marketers and public relations officers will be familiar with the SWOT. The SWOT is a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis. For this exercise, you’ll need to develop a set of SWOTs: a projected SWOT, which you create in advance to determine what kind of musicians you’re looking for, and a real SWOT you’ll fill in when you’re auditioning a prospect.

How to do it: draw up a table of four boxes for each band member you wish to recruit—one for the guitarist, the drummer, etc. Insert Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats into each of the boxes respectively. From there, you can list the values you’re looking for in your prospects and the potential weaknesses and threats that come with them.

When you’re auditioning, keep the projected SWOTs handy while filling in an identical table, this time trying to match the values listed in the projected SWOT with the values the prospect is displaying. Find ways to test them on each value without them realizing quite what you’re doing.

Now you know whether your prospect really is what you’re after—a great way to avoid the scumbags who will steal your riffs and get stoned before band practice.

The Establishing Your Band Series
Part One: What Direction Are You Going In?
Part Two: What’s This Band About?
Part Three: What You Need in Band Members
Part Four: Governing Models
Part Five: The Band Agreement
Part Six: Building Repertoire
Part Seven: Recruiting New Members
Part Eight: Learning & Arranging Repertoire

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