Orangutang Music

Preparing For Your First Gig – Getting Your Set Together

You’ve got the band members you want and the rehearsal process sorted out so now you’re ready to put your set together. This is where jamming and songwriting come into play.

To play it’s first gig a band is going to need songs to play. Lets assume that you want to write 15 songs as a starting goal. 15 songs will be enough for the band to play a 30 minute set at a double or triple bill somewhere.

As the bands songwriting process is going to be intergrated into the rehearsals it is going to be even more important that rehearsals are well organised and are efficient uses of everyones time and effort.

First of all everyone in the band needs to understand that the sooner a set of songs is written and rehearsed the sooner the band can go out and play gigs.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Make it a rule that everyone in the band comes into rehearsals with at least one lyrical or musical idea
If the lyrical and musical ideas are together then that’s even better. Bear in mind that bringing songwriting ideas to rehearsals will require a certain amount of confidence from each band member and some will be more comfortable doing this with others.

If this is the case:

2. Don’t be hard on the members that don’t bring along any songwriting ideas.
Be encouraging and make them feel comfortable in perhaps bringing something (even some scrawled lyrics on paper) to the  next rehearsal.

(Oh, by the way. If you or your band members are finding it hard to come up with songwriting ideas you might find my FREE eReport “11 Ways To Eliminate Writers Block FOREVER!” very useful)

Eventually the band member dynamics will sort themselves out and the songwriters and the players of the band will become apparent.

Generally if the band has a lead singer then the lyrics will mostly come from him/her. Musical ideas will generally come from either the guitarist or the keyboard player as these instruments deal more with chords which lends itself to song arrangement issues.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule. One example that comes to mind is Neil Peart, the drummer from “Rush”. He writes most (if not all) of their lyrics so there’s no excuses.

3. Bring a recording device to every rehearsal
Whether it be a tape recorder or a Zoom H4, it’s important that everybody has a recording of the rehearsal so they can listen to the songs and the songwriting ideas being introduced in their own time at home. Everything needs to be recorded.

4. Start the rehearsal by giving some time to every songwriting idea introduced
How much time you give to every songwriting idea is up to you but I would say 20 minutes could be a good starting point.

If you have five band members with one idea each then you are talking about the first hour and a half of your rehearsal being used in this way.

5. Once a songwriting idea has been worked on for the time limit allowed , stop and go to the next songwriting idea
You will also have a record of the songwriting jam on tape so don’t worry about trying to remember what you have done.

6. Once all songwriting ideas are intoduced, played and recorded it’s time to work on last weeks ideas
Of course miss this step for the first rehearsal but for every rehearsal after that this will be an important step.

In listening to the rehearsal tape over the week something would have stood out as a song to be looked at more closely by the band if this is the case then start jamming the idea more intensely and start trying to piece the puzzle together

7. End the rehearsal with a free for all jam
This is where anything goes, an aural brainstorming session by all of the band members. This is done for a bit of fun but also as a good stress release.

Make sure that you record these sessions as well because I have always been amazed at what comes out of these free for all jams.

How much time you devote to these steps is up to you but in no time you will find a set of songs at your disposal that the band will be happy with.

Once this has been achieved your band is one more step closer to playing live.

Until next time,

Corey Stewart
Orangutang Music

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