Im a decent enough guitarist, played for a while. Played in an acoustic band for a while and i sing decently enough.
But my aim would be to get my lead chops up to a high standard in order to play lead/rhythm in a good function band.
I saw one of the players on here posting a nice setlist with up tempo disco tracks and i copied them onto a word document.
My goal would be to learn said tracks over the next year or so and then at that stage i feel like i could put myself out there.
Any advice from experience lead players how i should approach learning the tracks for prospective bands?
Comments
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
It's a little like driving. It's only once you've passed the test and you're out on your own that you really learn to drive. Get out there and play, have fun, make mistakes, learn from them. You'll get better quicker by doing so.
Some good advice I was given was to 'do the simple things well'. For me having great rhythm skills is most important but for lead playing - good time, tone, intonation (bends/vibrato) and being melodic are the most important aspects IMO rather than being too flash at first. Don't feel you have to try and impress people or play too much, serve the song first and foremost. Those are the musicians I like playing with most and besides, the sax player takes all the glory anyway
Try and get a lot of varied repertoire under your fingers. Keep your ears open and be adaptable because no matter how much homework you've done things don't always follow the recording you've worked off. But do make charts of what you've learned so that you can refer back to if/when needed.
Learn to bullshit too You'll be surprised what you can get away with if you can blag a bit and project an aura of confidence and control, even when you and the band are actually clinging on for dear life!
Get a set down but as soon as you can get out there, play and enjoy it. That's the best and only education really.
Ideally you should be practicing solos in the correct genre, getting to know your scale patterns, moving between positions cleanly, vibrato, bends etc
Where are you at with your theoretical knowledge?
Just feel like I need to learn a full setlist then put myself out there.
Don't take a year! Learn a set list in a couple of weeks; month at the max. They're only songs.
Then polish them all.
Lead playing: A well-played simplified solo sounds good; a poorly-played difficult solo sounds bad. Rule: simplify all difficult stuff until you can play it easily. (Or you will sound bad.) It's quite acceptable to gig with simplified solos. Joe Punter will not know any difference whatsoever.
“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
Thank you. Im pretty comfortable with the shapes and can solo reasonably well and also solo with arpeggios but I need to sit down and learn the songs and get my technique perfect.
I think the main thing I'm gathering is to keep it simple and try and get out there as quick as possible.
Lead playing in function bands is quite limited. Most audience members are there to hear songs which they know, and lead work is limited to a few well known solos. You can get away with learning simplified versions of these, as and when you need to. Opportunities to play your own composed solos can be rare, and even rarer are the times where you need to make up a solo on the spot.
More often you will find riffs or melody fragments which drive the song along, for example Run To You, Get Back, and Message In A Bottle. It's worth learning these for songs you like, or expect to play. In doing so you will pick up techniques like slides, hammers and bends, and a sense of timing.
I suppose it depends what you mean by a good functions band, if it's playing Mustang Sally down the pub to two old men or playing corporate functions or your aunt's wedding. Although in all of these outstanding soloing chops probably aren't what would get you the gig.
Function bands often have to learn stuff quickly for a gig and not just only do their regular set. If you are going to auditions you might have to learn something quickly for that as well. Working out / transcribing songs so you can play a working version in a relatively short period of time is probably more useful than learning every note in a solo over six months in terms of being able to hold down a functions gig. @octatonic did a wonderful Discussion on how he learns cover versions which is well worth a look if he or someone else can dig it up.
Just as a for example I went to see Imelda May the other week. She had two guitarists in her band neither of which had played on any of her records, so in effect this was a function gig to 1200 people for them. Very little of what they played was note for note off the records - they did good versions of themselves rather than bad versions of Marc Ribot, Jeff Beck and Darrell Higham. If anyone cared they were probably in a tiny minority, I noticed ( but didn't care) and I suspect that made me in a small minority as well.
http://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/85579/the-inaugural-learn-a-song-a-day-for-a-month-challenge/p1
Quite inspirational, I keep it open in a tab on my browser, very good resource, well presented, nice one @octatonic ...
I've been able to learn to play drums in less time that it has taken me to find a band to play guitar in.
I'm now gigging in two bands as a drummer and could potentially join 5 more.
If I want to play guitar in a band then I pretty much have to start it, or just dep for other people, which I do a bit of.
On transcription- don't be worried about note for note transcriptions unless you are in a tribute show for a specific band, even then you can take certain liberties.
This isn't classical music, you should feel comfortable about doing your own version of a song, up to a point.
The most important skill here is being adaptable and able to think (and play) on your feet.
You want to learn how to rapidly learn songs good enough to gig- I see people get bogged down on the first few songs and then give up.
You don't really want to busk them either, unless you are a really advanced guitarist.
I've been known to treat a gig as a rehearsal session and it can go ok, or it can go very badly.
This is how I approach transcribing songs:
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
Couple of the comments were things like learning a song a week is feasible and for the OP setting himself that kind of challenge might be ideal. He doesn't have to memorize 52 songs in the next year but it's getting used to the process.Eventually he will be looking at auditions and they will say ( something like)can you learn these three songs for next week and if the answer is No then that's that audition failed then ( assuming they are popular cover versions and not a band doing Frank Zappa songs at weddings).
As a disclaimer I'm not particularly good at that kind of process myself but I do try to work out the basics of something from time to time just to exercise that bit of my brain.
Arpeggios are a good place to start as you're outlining the chords but you need the tension and release that a scale offers to liven things up a bit, so maybe add some scale tones in once you've got the arps down
Twisted Imaginings - A Horror And Gore Themed Blog http://bit.ly/2DF1NYi