Breaking on Through (to the other side)

[HighDeaf1080p]

How do y'all find others to play music with? It just seems like there's an insurmountable wall of obstacles that prevents this for me. I would very much LIKE to play with others...work collaboratively to develop musical ideas...but how?

The last time I thought this was going to happen, I answered an ad on Craigslist, saying someone wanted to "start from the ground up" and wasn't skilled yet...was taking lessons as a guitarist...and just wanted to jam. Things seemed pretty good, when a bassist, a drummer, myself (guitarist), and a keyboardist all answered his ad. We met for coffee...everyone was at least within a 10 year age range, so none of the ageist bullshit became a problem (I'm a crusty old fart at 42). Then it became time to meet at the practice space (drummers living room) to "see what happens". Hilarity ensued.

I wasn't fully clear what "starting from the ground up" meant. Ignoring the fact that upon arrival, my gear melted down on me, and I then had to borrow a loaner guitar with a missing high E string from the drummer (yea, that's easy to compensate for on the fly), and play through a bass practice amp, things didn't go well. The keyboardist never bothered to show up, OR acknowledge our existence again. The bassist wanted to know where her sheet music was for what we were going to be playing. The drummer would immediately commence to jackhammering bricks into my skull with every last molecule of might he had, beating his drums well beyond any territory that a bass practice amp could dream of reaching, while the guitarist would burst into beautiful, high speed pentatonic scales in some key other than what we were attempting to play in. The fact that the drummer wasn't entirely clear about the need for each measure to have the same number of beats in it wasn't improving the situation.

I did my level best as the chaos continued through the evening, to lay out groups of 2 or 3 chords for us to jam on, and tried coaching the bassist on how to play to those chords without sheet music...and tell the other guitarist what scale would work well for those chords if he insisted on a non-stop, mind-melting guitar solo for 15 minutes at a time. Then the drummer would fire up, with his constantly variable rhythm, and all hope of hearing any other instrument or following a chord progression was lost.

Once spent, I politely thanked everyone as I was packing up my gear...I assume they thanked me too over my ringing ears, and then I drove home in a deep depression wondering how things went so terribly wrong. I was contacted a couple times via group e-mail to get back together...I was asked to be the group "chord progression wizard". The bassist complained about not having sheet music to follow. As such, I always found a reason to be too busy to meet up again after that first disasterous attempt.

I still have mild PTSD from the experience, and have since just receded into a cocoon of purchasing gear, and now designing and building gear...anything to avoid trying to find another set of hairless apes who are both accepting of me (again, crusty old fart of 42yo), respectful of music, and capable of playing at a reasonable volume, speed, in the correct key, and within a confined role within a band.

I have a friend from college, that I used to play electric bass with, while he played guitar. I was songwriter. My memory tells me that went great for what that's worth. Now that I play guitar, whenever I travel back to my hometown and we get together, it becomes battle of the guitarists. Short of me saying "here...play these chords in this rhythm" or "play within this scale", I can't understand really how to make coherent music with him. I know he's capable of doing that because he plays from sheet music for his church band, and would have been kicked out by now if he weren't obeying.

I dunno...I guess I just wondered what other's experience was with finding bandmates, or even just enjoyable collaborators who want the MUSIC to sound good...how you deal with playing music without written notation that dictates what each person must play...how you deal with people who have no respect for their volume or that of others in the band...etc.

I really would love to share my songwriting ideas with someone/someones and let them push them in new directions...and likewise, would love to show them my take on arrangements/harmonizing of their musical ideas...but that just seems like an impossible dream. I'm really great at getting along with anyone and everyone, so that's good...but I also really suck at telling someone "HOLD UP THERE TURBO...you're playing to damn loud and fast, this is not sonic warfare. II-V7-I is jazz...can you give me a little ride cymbal?!" Am I just attempting to play with people at too low of a skill level due to my own crippling self doubt? Also I tend to use ellipses too much...



At this point, I guess "solo artist" doesn't seem like such a bad gig, but I'd love to hear other's feelings on such matters.

[D.o.S.]

Don't do it live.

I think it's pretty obvious when people click together musically, and unfortunately the only good way to figure that out is by actually playing with them.

[Invisible Man]

Had lots of experiences...most of them were better than the one you describe, some were as bad. When it was guys I learned to play with, the low quality of our music was kind of endearing...we all sucked equally, and had great fun hanging out. We got pretty good, played a lot of shows, got compared to RATM a lot, and generally had fun being loud as fuck. I moved to a new city, answered a couple of ads, and quickly realized that I should retreat into a hermetic state as far as music goes. Too many variables.

Not helpful to write it, but I play all of the instruments I like to hear in a band, so I can be pretty happy just doing my own thing. Sometimes I jam with my brother, who is also a multi-instrumentalist. A lot of times I'll set up a gnarly loop on my CT5, run an exp pedal over next to my hi-hat stand, and go to town on the drums while the loop blasts away, then slowly change it with the exp pedal.

Your tastes as an ILFer seem so standard here, then you remember that 99.99% of the world has no idea what bands you're referencing, and even fucked-up musicians might kinda recognize the name of one band if they're cool. Write a really specific ad, maybe? One that names specific stuff.

Self-congratulatory copy-and-paste for posterity from an ad I posted...shit...nine years ago:

subject: Re: that's some good taste in drummers

Hey,

I am responding to your craigslist posting because you have the best taste of any musician I've read up here. Very cool. When does someone reference Zach Hill, Brian Chippendale, Damon Che and the like on this thing? Would Tomas Haake and Rey Washam pop up here? Impressive.

I just moved to AA from NYC, where I am a vocalist in a couple electronic/noise bands. If I had to describe my style, it'd probably be in the Mike Patton/David Yow/Bon Scott-type of mold. Maybe Chippendale too. But that's all pretty subjective.

Anyway, I'm new here, don't know many music people, so I've been checking craigslist. I am currently doing some loud stuff with an old synth, but it's deep in the experimental end. I wish you the best on the music score, and I hope I can hear some of this style someday. There are cool people here to pick up on it.

Again, awesome post. Happy Thanksgiving man.

Best,
C

A meetup never materialized, but it should have. That guy seemed rad. But I wrote a weird, weird ad...I'll try to find it.

[psychic vampire.]

I just force people who are already my friends to play music with me. Thankfully, most of the people i befriend are at least mildly interested in music. But for real, even with that considered, this most recent jamming group i've been playing with is the best feeling i've had playing music in years.

[Chankgeez]

I'm pretty sure I read this book (although, my memories of it are kinda fuzzy):



Seems like a little psychedelic tourism if you ask me.

[gnomethrone]

But I wrote a weird, weird ad...I'll try to find it.

a weird ad is mission critical. i met my new best bud after he responded to mine that said something like:
"summoning sludge fiends for occult riff praxis"
the stuff we ended up writing isn't really even sludge but it was a good way to eliminate the goobers.

[snipelfritz]

It's like finding the right lover: equal parts luck, putting yourself out there, tenacity, knowing when to step away, and a little touch of divine intervention.

Open mics can be a good place to start also.

[jrfox92]

But I wrote a weird, weird ad...I'll try to find it.

a weird ad is mission critical. i met my new best bud after he responded to mine that said something like:
"summoning sludge fiends for occult riff praxis"
the stuff we ended up writing isn't really even sludge but it was a good way to eliminate the goobers.

That's pretty much how I met my current doom (which is really more of a Kyuss-like stoner) band.
The other guitar player put an ad looking for a bassist and "the great white buffalo" back when I first started looking on craigslist.
About six months later he did it again (after finding a bassist) and I figured, "fuck it, they might want another guitar."

Also, my other band/duo-thing/jam-meet that I have with a friend started with answering a craigslist ad.
It then led to her getting me not one, but two jobs when I was desperately in need of one.

Of course, that was after having several people flake out on me.
Also there was this one weird encounter where I showed up, played some psych, and the dude got stoned and said up front that it probably wouldn't work out but he thought I was still really good.
And another case where a dude refused to go to my house alone after demanding all sorts of stupid shit.
Craigslist sucks.

[Eivind August]

Yeah, what the other people said. Know what you want to do, and be clear about it when talking to potential bandmates. Don't be a nazi, though. Just find likeminded people. Go to shows and meet new friends. Write weird ads. Don't be afraid to compromise, unless it entails doing stuff you're not cool with.

[snipelfritz]

And wear a condom.

[HighDeaf1080p]

Very very nearly 100% of craigslist ads are "working band looking for a drummer to come on tour with us" or "We have a gig tomorrow night...bassist needed" or "starting a classic rock cover band" or "wanted: experienced lead guitarist - call to schedule audition".

Nowhere near confident enough to show up and audition with an established band. I'm not looking to gig 2 nights a week for money. Not looking to be judged and scored on the spot based on how well I reproduce someone else's music I've never heard before. DEFINITELY not looking to play covers of Bon Jovi, Pantera, or Led Zepplin.

It's definitely an uphill battle. The few ads I've found in the last 2 years, saying "I am just wanting to find someone to jam with and write music" all contained something like "I'm 23 and looking for someone within 3 years of my age"...like they're looking for a sexual partner or something. *sigh* It makes sense. For whatever reason, playing/writing music with someone outside your age range is even weirder than having sex with someone outside your age range...and I have no idea why.

I suppose the next step is to post my OWN craigslist ad and brace myself for the replies. I'll take the advice given above and try to be clear without sounding like I'm a Nazi or a douchebag. Might even find someone with SOME jazz training this way I suppose.

In fact, as I think about this more, probably the very best thing to do is to record a body of music that represents my current songwriting/experimental efforts, and provide a link to them in the ad. That's going to go a long ways towards explaining how they could mesh with me and vice versa. If they have ideas of how to make that stuff better right off the bat, that's going to just make them that much more excited to respond and meet up, instrument in hand. I could even ask for a link to any music they're working on if they have one, too.

[psychic vampire.]

The only craigslist ad i ever posted looking for people was for room mates, not band mates, but i made sure to just get as weird as possible in the ad, bc then the people who responded were already on the same page. I was vegan straight edge at the time, and i heavily implied it, whilst using funnier synonyms for it.

I think when it comes to CL ads, a good mixture of humor, weirdness, and abruptness goes a long way.

[Strange Tales]

I think doing your own CL ad is the only way you can do it. The only people I've found I posted myself and although it didn't work out, better than nothing.

Most ads posted though are total shit though yea.

[gnomethrone]

One roommate I found on Craigslist was this German dude who was going to school in San Diego for the year. We met and up and hit it off and he goes "ah, one question about your ad, what is this four-two-zero I must be friendly with?" Ended up being an awesome roommate. When he would get drunk he would flex his arms and say "let us sing... MANOWAR!!" and we would.

[D.o.S.]

One roommate I found on Craigslist was this German dude who was going to school in San Diego for the year. We met and up and hit it off and he goes "ah, one question about your ad, what is this four-two-zero I must be friendly with?" Ended up being an awesome roommate. When he would get drunk he would flex his arms and say "let us sing... MANOWAR!!" and we would.

Everything about this is awesome.