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iam 25 and have been playing guitar for the past 5 years. i decided to take music as a profession. when i found out i can do it better than anything else i can do. since then i;ve been working hard.
actually i was doing my bachelors in multimedia, studied only 1 year in an Arts college. and decided to leave my studies because it was getting difficult to achieve as a musician what i want to achieve, and also i don't belong to a rich family and a few basic equipment i got on a loan. so i took a big risk and i believe i did the right thing although my parents especially my father was against me first only bcoz they thought i just do it for fun. but he changed his mind after a friend of my father sugessted him to do what i want to do, i sat and discussed to my father about my future plan and they really support me now; actually in our society music and musicians are not given the respect they desereve i know thats why they were worried.
many still say that i should not have quit my studies but that doesn't make me feel that i have done something wrong becoz i take music as a subject and this is what iam studying.
But
what i want to ask is that i have a band of four members yet.
that include.
1 me (25 yrs old)
2 vocalist (22 years old)
3 drummer (28 years old)- new recent comer
4 bassist (21 years old)

of them all i am the only one whose relying on this profession. others are studying.
i know the vocalist personaly for five years he's the most reliable among all and then comes the basist who is also a good person. he was brougnt in by the vocalist as both study in the same college.
Drummer is the newcomer and he's a very very clever person . he want's the band going acoording to his directions. which is he wants to bring a couple of his known friends in the band a keyboardist or rythm players. especially because they are of his music taste he is also a wealthy person. before entering the band listened to our work and since then he has been so nice to us .
while i want to keep the band maximum to 4 members, and others would be session players. and especially they should have the same interests and tastes as musicians.
Even i, vocalist and bass player have different tastes but we manage it very decently . (while we three are familiar with this problem) why are we compromising in this situation ?
because it's almost impossible to find a drummer even for the good bands in our city (country i should say). and hiring a drummer especially for recording and jamming, we can't afford that.
all i need is a set of agreement or rules that i should put forward to all of them because i know my work and i'm doing it but someone elses's ignorance causes me trouble. i want to solve this problem fairly so we don't have a fight with him .
my english is poor but i hope u will understand this.

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Comments

RemyRAD Tue, 11/07/2006 - 22:25

hassan, part of the problem with being an artist is to find other people that see/hear art the way you do. Usually, that's an impossibility as part is a very personal thing. There has to be some kind of magic between other artists that bonds them together. And even then, with time, people's taste and visions change.

With the wonderful advent of the Internet, it is almost no longer needed to reside in the same city/country for artistic collaboration. That is to say, thanks to MP3, it is much easier to share your musical visions with other like-minded people around the world! This is becoming a very popular thing to do, for purely artistic reasons. Totally impractical if you are trying to get jobs at the local nightclubs or hotels.

Think about the Beatles. They were together for not quite 10 years before they had unreconcilable artistic differences and went their own ways in spite of their incredible success together.

I think it's always good for a band to have a leader or director but when faced with strong egos and artistic differences, this is not always in the equation for success. So I understand your frustrations especially when you are in a situation of not enough like-minded people as your self. Politics definitely comes into play even when you're not playing.

Playing with myself
Ms. Remy Ann David

Deusx Fri, 11/17/2006 - 17:26

Thanks a lot for the reply Ms. Remy Ann David , im learning by day and trying to get a good solution for these problems. after writing this post in frustration i searched for the band agreements articles on the web and found quite good information. as far as politics is concerned i really am not the type of guy who can play it very good, and i always speak straight what ever is in my mind trusting the other person but i now realize thats its not the best thing to do, i realize that as every body knows (the people i work with) that i always compromise , so they always taking advantage even the people i trust , while i do that thinking that they would do the same and when its time , they don't compromise at all and that hurts me. at that stage the first thing comes on my mind is to get rid of them. but as i have already done such thing. worked very hard with a band for 1 and half year, and left it after i couldnot take their impositions. i dont want to do it again not like that because i have to start from scratch.
but i am sure i'll get a good solution out this time,Once again thank you very much for replying.

mark_van_j Fri, 11/17/2006 - 23:30

http://www.blues101.org/articles/promotion1.htm

Not to be morbid, but it rarely works. You guys need to have a common vision... Rolling Stones have a common vision... You guys need to get along.

But I understand where you're coming from. I used to live in Slovenia, and it's next to impossible finding proper band members. In high school they all play either punk or metal, in uni they stop playing because of time constraints. That's when you adopt the "I'll take what I can get" attitude...

Croakus Tue, 11/21/2006 - 09:06

I agree that you first need to work out artistic differences. It may be proper to find different band mates. However, compromise will always be a part of your life.

On another note. You might want to look into partnership agreements. I don't know if you're located in the United States, but if you are you and your band mates will automatically fall under whatever partnership law your state provides. IE: Whether or not you sign a legal agreement, you are legally bound by partnership law the minute you go out in search of jobs as a group. It's in everyone's best interest to legally define the structure of the business.

Just my 2 cents.

anonymous Tue, 11/21/2006 - 19:28

Hi,
I know that this is a music business forum and people's general mindset here is to draft everything on paper.
I would actually disagree and say that this is possibly the ONE thing, that you shouldn't try to get people to sign on. If your decision has to do with money and who gets what cut, that should be on paper. If we're talking about artistic decisions, especially in our band of music, we're talking about something entirely different.
Part of the magic of being in a band is having all sorts of different perspectives blend together to form something unique. Before you jump to conclusions about how your ideas are the best and your drummer doesn't know what he's doing and I would try to sit back objectively and really ask myself if the way I was seeing things was simply a matter of perspective or whether I really need to intervein. There is a totally seperate issue and this is that of style.

While a band should definitely be diverse in what it plays, I definitely believe that a band should have its unique "sound" and style. If your the one who started this band and you had a certain vision for it, than it is certainly your right to try your best to see that vision through. Hopefully before you started, you told every body what kind of sound you were going for. They should definitely respect that, though you might have to remind them now and then while their own personal styles come creeping back. If you know that everybody is willing to share your same vision, then rock on. If your drummer has something else in mind and your set in what you want, you may have to face reality and get a new drummer. There are pleanty out there.
Good luck and hope this helps