Here we are again! Part 2, welcome back! So, now you have your band, a kick-ass name and you've decided what you're going to play! Good job, I'm proud of you! So what next?
Step 4
Find a place to make the magic happen
Finding good practise space is hard! Try in your bedroom and have the neighbours complain to the council (But ASBOS are so rock'n'roll). We started practising in Rhyl but if you know the area, then you'll know it wasn't long before we had chavs trying to brick the windows of our space and keying your cars because they heard 'some moshers' making 'goff music.' The place just wasn't right and not at all secure meaning we couldn't leave our equipment behind. When it takes 45 minutes at either end of your session to unpack and pack away, then it doesn't take a mathematician to realise how much time your wasting. This starts to become even more difficult when someones car is in the shop and you have enormous Marshall stacks and a full size drum-kit and have to take it all home in shuttle runs (I'll talk about a van later). We eventually found somewhere we could just turn up, plug in and play and it made everything much less of a hassle so if you can find somewhere that lets you do that, you're laughing. Otherwise, you might have to pay for recording space which has its ups-and-downs such as having to share with other bands and using their gash equipment.
Step 5
Write some killer choonz!
Pretty straight forward really, write some songs! I think it's really important to demo songs early on, even if you go onto change them later. Demoing means you really get to know how your songs sound and when you later come to record them properly you won't be fannying about as you'll know what to expect. In Leucine we'd often demo our songs before hitting the studio and I'd say it helped as we knew exactly what we wanted them to sound and we knew the structure of the songs. There's nothing worse than turning up to the studio with an unfinished, unrehearsed song. The band and the producer will hate you for it!
We spent around £400-500 on our home studio and eventually recorded our final two songs ourselves at home, sending them away to be mastered and I think it's definitely worth investing in home recording equipment. Not only will you be prepared for the studio instrumentally, you will also be ready mentally and begin to learn the recording process. I hated recording, I found it boring so it is good to get a taste when the pressure is off and you're not wasting everybody's time and money.
I also suggest copywriting all of your songs, it's pretty cheap and will save you money and hassle in the long run (especially is some sneaky Uzbek swines start trying to sell your music on the internet).
Step 6
The Internet (it's not just for porn)
At this point, you'll wanna start promoting yourselves. There are literally millions of websites out there to host your band info on and it becomes too difficult to keep track of if you put up info on all of them, especially is something big happens like band member changes or something. I suggest sticking to 5 core sites. Handily, you can wangle the 'big 3' social networking sites to all sync up, so information you post on Twitter shows up on MySpace and Facebook as well.
1. MySpace - Yes, it's had its day but I still consider this to be a 'shop window' for bands. Just keep it up to date with a pictures, tracks and dates and just leave it.
2. Twitter - It's what all the new cool people do. Easiest way to talk to fans directly and it doesn't need managing.
3. Facebook - Good for inviting people to shows (on a small scale) and putting out information without being a slave to 140 characters. I would be really careful to limit how often you use Facebook though, how many invites and updates do receive a day and just think 'fuck off and leave me alone?!?' Use it sparingly or watch your fans drop.
4. LastFm/PureVolume - Both of these sites are good to keep up an appearance on and require minimum attention.
5. Website - Leucine registered www.weareleucine.co.uk but redirected it straight back to our MySpace with the intention to one day fix it up. While a domain isn't expensive a website is a lot of work, needs to look professional and stay up-to-date and building a website can be very expensive. It might be worth registering your domain early on and saving it for another day.
Once you have all of these elements sorted then you can promote yourself as a band. You can either record first and gig later, that's what Leucine did and I found we were able to create a buzz with songs and information before we started gigging and our first show was in front of 200+ people. We waited as long as we could get away with before we played to make sure we were as tight as we could possibly be at that point. No one wants to see a band fresh out of the garage, unrehearsed and out of time.
Tomorrow, we can get started on booking shows!
PEACE!
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