You probably figured this out already, but you have to ask yourself what you’re getting out of this and whether it is worth your time.
You’re not going to make any money off this. Ask yourself: what would I rather do, play in this band, or surf / golf / make love to my wife?
I agree on both points. I thought that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I’ve spent the bulk of my time recording by myself and working on those more nuanced aspects of the performance.
Thanks Peter. That’s really what it comes down to. I play music for how it makes me feel, but it’s kind of hard to feel the music when your in a constant learning mode.
Toleolu, I have been in the cover band situation a couple of times. Fast and dirty, where playing through 5-10 new songs at a practice is ‘learning’ those songs, immediately adding them to the playlist. It’s really nuts. We might have ran through them in following practices 2-3 more times before playing them at gigs, doing what you can in very little ‘practice’ time. I have heard all manner of excuses for it. It usually amounts to people wanting to get to gigging in a hurry. Feeding the ego playing in a band, a little money, free drinks, party environment, etc. I’ll never play in that sort of band again.
Last year a drummer friend rang me up saying that he was getting a band going and that I should check it out to see if I might be interested. There was talk of jamming, developing music, writing songs, playing some fresh stuff inbetween that isn’t typical. When it got down to it, the push was for a quick and dirty cover band from a couple of the other guys. I cut it off right there and tried to steer it back onto course. We got a good start on it, but the impatience of those other guys to do the quick and dirty cover band thing crept back in. And one of the guys tried to push his old songs from an old band in place of writing new songs to speed things along, which is where me and the drummer called it quits. The songs were terrible by the way. Unfortunately that guy’s place was the playing space, so that ended that. Maybe I’ll have another go with that drummer this year. He’s a solid player, easy to get along with, and he is interested in developing a good band and actually working hard to sound good, not another quick and dirty cover band.
If things go well this year (crossing my fingers) I intend to build a small shop / jam space to get it out of the house. Even if it only ends up just a space for jamming and writing with various people, I would like doing that much more than playing with a half-baked juke box band that too many people seem to want to throw together. And at the moment I have a big closet stuffed with gear that can’t be set up in the extra bedroom that I’ll be using for a jam space.
That was my exact experience with the band that bass player and I started at Pipeline’s place.
Just do some blues, start with some simple I - IV - V things, come up with lyrics and see if we could come up with something worth recording. Started out really great, but as we started adding other people, things started going south. The old “Let’s learn some covers and do gigs” thing. We tried to accommodate as best as we could but finally decided to shelve that project and regroup. It was a few weeks after that when he died in that motorcycle accident. So sad because he and I really clicked.
One thing I would be sure to do is sing all the songs I’m practising. Even if you don’t sing much or at all in this band right now it’s still a value added exercise that might offer potential options further down the track.
In my experience people tend to give up on disciplines not bc they’re lazy but bc they figure they’ve hit the wall of their potential.
Probably over-believing in the “you’ve either got it or you haven’t” paradigm.
Pitch accuracy with vocals can certainly keep improving over a long time span esp. the wide interval jumps in the melody; that’s where the inexperience can really show, and if there’s been an effort to go for lots of expression on such notes then the fail becomes more pronounced.
It’s important to just be able to hit and hold pitches before venturing too much into ‘expression’ imo
To hold an unwavering vocal pitch [no vibrato] is the first goal. Unintended vibrato in training is simply a failure to sustain a pitch and going into ‘fishing’ mode in trying to land the pitch. I’m rambling, but anyhoo
Yeah I fail to see the point too after reading this
I thought they were gigging
The only reasons to do covers are money or fun
or maybe food in this case 
Mixing covers and originals almost never works IME
You’ll end up a deluded cover band
Different crowds want different music
Cover crowds want to hear something they know
And you can’t play covers at original gigs, except maybe one reworked performance
My 2c on band rehearsals
I would play through the whole set every day, by myself
Until I knew it backwards
If you can play the song through without any backing, you know it
Members relying on band rehearsal to learn or tighten up their parts piss me off
You should all know the arrangement and parts before rehearsal,
and rehearsal is just making it tighter and gel better together
If you are gigging heaps weekly you can get away without rehearsing the set at rehearsal
but otherwise,
My original bands would go through the whole set once, first up at rehearsal, to remain tight for our gigs
If anything needed fixing or improving, we did that next
eg like a rhythm section part
Otherwise, we’d work on a new song or two
until one was arranged and gig ready, then we’d test it in the set
I always recorded our set and new stuff,
and listened back while driving over the next week, noting any problems
I prefer that to stopping during the set to fix it
If you’re doing 3 sets of covers, that’s a long rehearsal tho 
Best to gig heaps, get paid, and use your rehearsals for 1-2 new songs a week
Greg, the band leader, replied back to my email and said Yes, that’s basically how they work. He sends out tab sheets for the 4 or 5 new songs that we’ll do during the next session.
What this is, is what’s referred to locally here as “kanikapila” roughly translated as people getting together on the front porch and just playing music for the fun of it. No gigs, no worries about tone or quality performances. Just hanging out, talking story (another local term for shooting the breeze) and playing a little music.
That being the case, guess I’ll stick it out for awhile and see how things go. Hell, I’ve got nothing else to do so why not.
Mahalo to all for your advice.
I got hit up recently to play with an old friend in a purely creative band. It sounded possibly interesting, but I have a lot going on at the moment and am very much out of daily listening and playing. So I don’t have that strong vibe going on where I feel that I have to play and want to play as much as possible. I tried to explain this to him and told him to give me some time to get back in, but he wants to push it along and start jamming. Feels like rushing it would be a mistake and fizzle out pretty quick.
I would add, that while I was at university studying music, with a bunch of purists who wouldn’t dirty themselves with covers, I learned a whole bunch of stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise, by having to learn drum parts, that I never would have thought of, or cared to understand if I didn’t have to play the song at the cover gig tomorrow.
As it turns out, being able to understand and play drum parts from songs people actually like, can be an amazingly educational experience.
Well, that “band” experience was short lived.
I got booted because the leader said I asked too many questions and he was offended when I referred to the band in an email as a “kalapani” kind of thing. Which I intended as a compliment.
Oh well, back to playing golf. 
Lol, oh well…
Been ages since I had a chance to spend a day sucking at golf! It is good fun though.
I used to be pretty good. Anymore it’s just something to get me out of the house.
Still great fun though, just hope my back can hang in there for a couple more years.
Lol, I can actually say, hand on heart, that I got a hole in one! Off the toe of the club, through the trees, bounced off one, sideways across the green, smacked in to the flag, and dropped in.
If Matthew Pateman ever reads this, he’ll feel disgusted again at having to admit that he saw it with his own eyes.
Par 4 too!
Good on ya mate!!!
I’ve never had a hole in one. I’ve holed out from the fairway a few times on par 4’s but never from the tee on a par 3.
Your hole in one reminds me of my favorite saying about golf. “I’d rather be lucky than good”.
Oh, I was definitely lucky rather than good. I scored 45 for those 9 holes, with one one!
Should have seen the look on the faces in the clubhouse when I handed in my card!
Just glad I had a witness or they wouldn’t have believed me.
How long was the par 4?
Still pretty impressive that you got your drive that close to the green. You must have been an animal with the big dog.
I was hitting a 1 wood.
Badly obviously, but with a lot of enthusiasm!
Cant remember how long now, but it wasn’t short. Nobody ever accused me of hitting a golf ball too gently.
Yeah, 1 wood, driver, big dog, all the same thing.
Still one helluva of shot to get it close to the green on a par 4.
That’s partly why I’m having lower back problems now. I was an advocate of the old “Grip it and rip it” philosophy.