Building Your Band

A better conversation about music, with David Loftis and Peter Bulanow

How to sound like a garage band (the classic blunder!)

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You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia”. But only slightly less well-known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha…”

– Vizzini, the Princess Bride

Back before Apple’s software co-opted the term, a Garage Band was a group of kids who decided to start a band, and the only place they could go to rehearse was someone’s garage. The acoustics of the space didn’t help – everything was echo-ey, and hearing yourself was difficult. Since this was everyone’s first time in a band, typically everyone would play all the time at full volume trying to show their friends how awesome they sounded, creating a veritable wall of sound devoid of any real dynamics.

Of course we would never do that in church. 😉

Yet there seems to be a negative pressure sucking people into doing precisely this. If they are on stage, they feel like they should be doing something, specifically making sound. Very few people feel comfortable not playing during a tune. There may even be a sense for a paid musician that they are getting paid by the note, so the flowerier they play, or the more notes they can fit in, the better.

But what if it became your job not to play?

Part of the job of the producer is to push back on the natural disorganization (decrease the entropy) that is naturally occurring. One way I’ve pushed back on this, is to make it each musician’s job to not play one section of each song. That could be the second verse, the bridge, the chorus after the bridge, the first verse – something!

When this happens, dynamics begin to emerge. People begin to think about how the way in which they are playing (or not playing) really serves the song instead of what serves their rock star image. This is the perspective of the producer.

Of course, as the producer you are free to dictate, “Hey guitar, why don’t you drop out the second verse and let it be a piano thing with bass and drums, and then come back in on the chorus?” Not only will this provide a wonderful relief to the naturally occurring wall of sound, the guitar will sound a-w-e-s-o-m-e when it comes back in.

This “subtracting not adding” is an idea that reoccurs in music time and again. We see it with the sound engineer applying parametric EQ, “cut, don’t boost”. We see it in the idea of a crescendo, as the secret to a crescendo really is to start quietly. The longer I live the more I’ve come to trust that less really is more.

 

How big should your band be?

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Well, the bigger your band, the less everyone should play and the better everyone has to be at listening and taking turns with one another. Is that what you expected to hear?

Smaller bands don’t have to take turns as much. They still need to take turns, and they still need to listen, but the simple fact is this: if there are less musicians, there are less instruments competing for the finite amount of sonic space.

It really is the same spectrum allocation problem the FCC is contending with, as only a limited amount of signal can fit in a given frequency spectrum.

When I play, my ideal band is:

  • A front man, center front on acoustic guitar
  • Drum kit in the back center
  • Bassist next to the drummer
  • Two backing vocals, in back opposite the bassist
  • Electric guitarist on one side, front
  • Me on piano and keyboards on the other side

What this means is that the electric guitarist and I share most of the space and we can look across the stage to coordinate, and together we work to stay out of the way of the vocals.

What is a rhythm section?

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Put another way – what is meant by a “rhythm section”? And more importantly, why is it called that?

A rhythm section is really just the drum kit and bass (upright or electric).

It’s called this because the rhythm section operates as an integrated unit by defining the rhythmic structure of the song as well as the tempo and the groove. That cool rhythm guitar part? Yeah that’s just filler or ear candy at best. The real song, the definitions of downbeat and the bass of the chord, are determined by this dynamic duo.

This idea is at the foundation of moving away from the pianist defining the song and the mix. And everyone has to be aware of this dynamic. Even if a song were to start out on acoustic piano, or with a guitar riff, as soon as the rhythm section is in, they define time.

When a rhythm section is working, it’s truly a beautiful thing. It frees other instrumentalists up to not have to “carry” the song, but to just play the parts that really add value.

Making room for the bass

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Once again I am going to write from the perspective of the keyboardist, which I can fortunately do not only because I am one, but also because keyboardists are the biggest offenders at this! It is actually pretty hard for a guitar to get down in that range, in the same way it’s hard for a viola to step on an upright base, or a cello to step on a violin.

So, dear keyboardists – your wax- on wax-off is to sit on your left hand. I’m serious – you don’t get to use it – not at all.

And here is the really beautiful thing. Your sound guy will appreciate it. The piano will sound better. Your band will sound better. It will be less muddy. Your bass player will probably take you out for dinner!  It’ll be a win-win-win-win-win, at least a five-way win.

Once it starts making sense to you what you should be playing, that you can indeed get away with using just one hand, once you don’t need it anymore – then you can finally have that hand back. And you will find that you will sound better than ever.

You were getting bored doing the same old thing week after week anyway, weren’t you? You needed a challenge. Well this is it.

Protip:  don’t forget to do your Hanon exercises so your left hand doesn’t atrophy!

Flesh and bones

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What on earth am I talking about here? This is how I think about the roles of the various instruments. The rhythm section, consisting of bass and drums is the skeleton, the bones, and everything else is the flesh that hangs off the skeleton.

So the real “song” is defined by the rhythm section. A vocal track should have no problem existing inside this space thus creating “the song”. And indeed it is all empty space in there. The other instruments – the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboard, organ, solo and orchestral instruments, backing vocals and choir – all are the flesh and muscle and organs (hah) that exists inside the skeleton, and must not conflict with the lead vocal or each other!

This paradigm, these new wine skins, must inform how everyone thinks about the song to include how it is played and how it is mixed. The mix must begin with the kick, snare, hat, etc. and then go to the bass, and then the other instruments. They can be sub-mixed in groups (the rhythm section in Group 1-2, the instruments in Group 3-4), so that the vocals speak, but the only thing that can conflict with the vocals are the instruments, not the rhythm section.

New wine in old wineskins

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If your church has been around for a while, it undoubtedly started out with a pianist and/or an organist. That person was the center of the music. I remember recognizing this quite dramatically when I was 12 years old, the first time the pastor’s wife in my little church of 100 was sick and couldn’t play piano. I was asked to step up and was stunned to notice that I had more power than the choir director. This despite the fact that I had been in orchestras and I knew how to follow a conductor, it turned out the conductor was following me!

This paradigm becomes so ingrained that even when band instruments are added – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, keyboard, bass, drums – the piano remains the central point of the music and the mix and directs how everything happens. You can tell this is the case not only when the piano plays the introduction and then the band comes in with the congregation, but also when the piano player is mentioned in the bulletin, to the exclusion of every other musician!

I’m sure this scenario isn’t the one Jesus had in mind when he said this, but I think this is one of those cases where putting new wine into old wineskins isn’t going to work out so well.

How this shift happens isn’t easy, it’s a discontinuity no doubt, but we need new wineskins in order for the group to move forward, and everyone needs to be aware of it. The long and terrible reign of the piano player as dictator for life must come to an end 😉 ha!

A bigger band means playing less

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If you took piano lessons, you learned that the piano is the whole orchestra. Your teacher made you play legato until it was sweet as strings. You hammered counterpoints out as bright as trumpets. You laid down the bass while adding percussive elements as well. You may have even learned how to voice individual instruments within a hand, so that the melody would sing out above the accompaniment.

So what happens when you start playing with other instruments? Hopefully you are adjusting your groove. Hopefully you’re not playing the same way you did before. Because if you are, there isn’t any room left! You are the whole orchestra when playing solo, however, when playing with a bassist, you really shouldn’t double his parts. He is going to be a lot better at laying down that low end and voicing it with respect to what you are playing than you will ever be. And that bassist is going to be able to groove against what you are playing in time, creating a more compelling momentum. When playing with an acoustic guitarist, you really shouldn’t be doubling the rhythm. You’re never going to get a feel as good as he will get, partially because you don’t really have upstrokes/downstrokes the way he has strumming. Likewise, when playing with a string section, or playing with a percussion section, or playing with a guitar, or playing with a choir… each new element that is introduced means you need to play less – or it just becomes a big mess.

Not doing this is how you get the “Wall of Sound” that is the bane of every sound tech’s existence. “You must unlearn what you have learned.”

What is production?

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At some point, churches understood that the ability to write and/or preach a compelling, moving, life-changing, visionary sermon did not equate with the ability to manage a church. So the paradigm of “Teaching Pastor” was born. Those that could preach would preach. Those that would manage would manage – so far so good.

Music (or Worship) Pastors face an equivalent dilemma that hasn’t yet been sorted out. They are often hired on the ability to lead worship and sound great singing a solo. This is a very analogous skill to preaching a great sermon. But does this mean they know how to manage (or produce) a band? Again, maybe, or again, maybe not.

The focus for churches remains on the extroverted worship leader, and resources today are worship-leader-centric. That is all fine and good, but may not actually be a good match. The giant blind spot in this is that the extroverted worship leader also needs to know how to produce a band, or we need to look elsewhere for the introverted producer – that magical person who doesn’t live in the limelight, but who is responsible for everything working and sounding so much better. If that person is one and the same, great. This blog is for you! If you’re not the worship leader though, and have a passion for building your band, this is for you too.

Producing music or a record means pulling together the right people and then getting them to play to their strengths in order to best serve the song. In a live setting it also means connecting with your audience in real time, so a dynamic flexibility and sensitivity to the Spirit is in order.

It begins with fundamentals and it builds. I hope this can be a real resource for you in building your band.

In the beginning

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2014-02-20 11.19.10Two moments I will never forget are: 1) when I saw my wife dressed in white at the end of the aisle, and 2) when the hospital told us we could take our newborn daughter home. I don’t know what I was expecting, but walking out of that hospital and placing my tiny daughter into her car seat was at once terrifying and wonderful. Four years have passed, and I am overwhelmed by the privilege of being a daddy (to the tutu girl in the batman shirt).

One thing that changed when my daughter Nyah was born is that I struggled to find the time to play music live. I love playing live. Let me back up: I love sound. And I love creating something in the moment, something ephemeral, informed by the Spirit. Something that can only be experienced once (so I hope you were there last Sunday!)

Ever since Nyah was born on July 3rd, 2010, I stopped playing out. And we’ve added a son to our family now as well, so my time is even more in demand with these amazing souls now present in my life. Life is beautiful and full, yet I’ve missed playing out. I’ve missed producing. Sound is an important part of my life, and so this is my effort to stay connected to producing, to playing, to sound, to connecting with that conversation and that community. Maybe it’s fitting, then, that this blog’s birthday is July 3rd – the birthdate of my first child, and all the posts will go out at 2:14am Eastern, the minute of her birth.