Get Off The Bandwagon…

Bands. We all listen to them, whatever genre takes your fancy and we all enjoy listening to them. But, I hear you cry “What is it like to actually be in a band!?” Well, I am going to try and tell you what my band is like, what it’s like being a part of it and I’ll also try and give you a few pointers as to what is successful. But of course, there never is one set way.

For a band to get along and function properly it helps if you are relatively good friends before you decide to form one! This also makes the whole experience more enjoyable as you can have a bit of a laugh and play and compose music that you are interested in. A similar music taste also really helps as it prevents major fallouts and moody tantrums. Being able to play an instrument before you join a band also helps, but as in the case of my band, (the name is under development at the moment) the bassist had never played anything before he joined! Having a good sense of humour really helps as well. If you mess up for example, instead of getting a right telling of usually its just a bit of a chuckle and a starting from where you left off.
Being in a band takes commitment and time, we have a practice at least once a week and usually the practice takes up the majority of the day. To keep a track of what were playing and what it’s sounding like we use a 12 track recorder with a studio microphone. This allows us to be critical and to work on songs without having to meet up. One of the hardest things that we find is writing lyrics for songs. We have several songs we have written but at the moment none of them have lyrics! It’s such a challenge to write about anything that means something and equally as hard to write about things which do not! So were all sitting around waiting for the inspiration to hit us at the moment. We also have a lot of fun, playing music is great and I couldn’t live without it, making your own songs and then listening back to them and realising that there pretty good is great! I couldn’t comment on playing live at this point in time because we have mainly been focusing on getting our own songs sounding great with fairly good lyrics. But gigs are what we are working towards, and when we have a fair few of our own songs we will concentrate on making an album.
Which leads me onto my question, what is it about bands that interests you?

Tim Watson
- This is a picture of Interpol performing live. I think this picture encapsulates what being in a band is all about, enjoying yourself and allowing people to enjoy your music.