Im in spain at teh moment, more stuff coming soon when I get back, it sucks here, I need to be with my band heh :thumb:

How about something about naming your band? I know it sounds simple, but it's really hard to find a name that would suit you and your bands. It's the probably the first thing people hear about you and it can easily kill you or exite the listeners.

this is pretty good stuff. i learned a thing or two myself.

If you want a good band name, be sure to make it something that you all like. Base it on your feelings or beliefs, or what you sing about and stand for.

or, just something everyone agrees is just generally cool.

RIght, next issue is sorted out, should be done the saturday I get back or the day after.

Band Naming and general band ethics.
Tour survival (I´ve been considering varying methods of now only keeping touring bands together, but stringing along a tight budget e.t.c., expect washing tips ;) )
A few more gig tips and general advice. :thumb:

w00t!

wow great..you've really elaborated the details which have always confuzzled my mind - Now I can actually explain to my band about some of this stuff :p

Great article you got..*is wondering if KKKKKocaine is in a big band :confused*

perhaps he's actually Brian May...

Heeeey.
Isnt it sunday?
wheres the update. :thumb:
I really cant wait for this tuff.

lol same here

BAND NAMING

Well, this is going to sound obvious, but the band name needs to be fitting.

You need to sound like your genre, if you play indie, don't call yourself
"Satans suicide rap"

You need to reach out to people through ad's and name dropping, if you have an ad on a website, death metallers will click, punkers will think "thats death metal....boring"

Imagine your first gig, you have posters all up over town, you go on stage to see 50 leather clad long haired bikers, lagers in hand, glaring a hole through your NOFX t-shirt.

Not a good sign huh?

The same goes for your song names and album names, as an indie band you wouldn't really be wanting to put "101 reasons my balls look good on your chin" as your debut album name.

It's all in image, you need to sound like you play mellow rock if you play mellow rock.

If you tour, you will be depending on this image to carry across, the second you leave your home town, the screaming fans (girlfriends, workmates, parents e.t.c.) won't be there to say "wanna come to 'Satans suicide rap' with me? they rock"

You need the right people coming to your gig.

As for deciding that name, well there are many ways, you could flip open a dictionary at a random page and use an unusual word, you could just sit and think, have a band session and think of buzz words, spider diagrams e.t.c.
As long as you all agree and it fits, then its fine.


TOUR SURVIVAL

Well this is what you joined a band to do, tour the country and get famous, spread your music to people and enjoy yourself.
It's also the hardest bit your band will face, a test of your character, commitment, and the bands friendship.

Let's face it, who here has been with a friend for more than a week?
You both get mighty tetchy don't you?
Well imagine this time, it's a ****ty little transit van, bad food, little sleep with litte quality, your constantly on the move.

It will put stress on the greatest of friendships, there is nothing that can be done about this ultimately, however litte things can be done to make it easier.

First off, calculate how much money you'll need, go to supermarkets, check out the prices of the best balanced (in terms of diet) foods you can, work out how many you'll need and account for buying a few extra.
Look into prices for spares for cars, and account for a little more than it costs.

These two simple bits of planning, will ultimately help you, you will have more than enough food, and money specialy put aside in case of your van breaking down, this will stop the basic tensions arising, and will cut down on frustration.

Now the tour is costing you a bomb anyhow, we're assuming this is your first, you've had to fork out for the transit van already, the overhead for a few venues, money is scarce, so there are a few money saving techniques.

SLEEPING

I shall be using David Hallamashire's Dig star system, although he meant it in a comical sense, it is a good indication of what you can expect when touring.

One Star (*)

One star digs are in fact, the back of the van. This is cold, damp, boring and horrible. Not unlike a bedsit. When you sleep in the van there is also nowhere to have a piss and so you have to revert to going out into the cold or using a milk bottle. Also like a bedsit.

It is also very inconvenient to have to share the van with the Roadie as there is nowhere to let out the funny smells, and as the Roadie lives on Vindaloo, the smells aren't very funny.

If you can survive the sub-zero temperatures and the funny smells coming from the Roadie, you will find that when you wake up it is raining. This is very odd, because you are in a van. However, when you look around you, you will find that the rain is coming from the roof of the van and falling in big blobs onto your sleeping bag. This is condensation. If the wet patch on your sleeping bag is not condensation then it is worth having a look to see what happened to the milk bottle someone used in the night.

Should you be lucky enough not to be sleeping in the van, it is always a good idea to wake up the members who are sleeping in the van by banging very hard on the door with the flat of your hand. This is very very funny. Or is, until the Roadie beats you to death.

Two Star (**)

The two star digs are a step up from sleeping in the back of the van. Not much. But better than nothing.

This is where you hire a single room in a Bed and Breakfast house and creep in one by one until all eight of the band are arranged on the floor in sleeping bags. This can be quite comfortable if you have left the Roadie in the van to make funny smells on his own. The only other problem being that seven people have to leave by the fire escape the next morning. In digs where more than one band are staying, the fire escape can resemble Oxford Street in the rush hour.

Three Star (***)

The three star band accommodation comes in the form of the Groupie. Or rather, the groupie's flat. As in the expression, "She's very accommodating." This accounts for the reason why so many sane, good looking musicians, end up with people that look as if they wrestle with bulls for a living. Anything is better than dossing in the van and it only takes a little prompting on your part to secure a bed for the night. The subtle approach is best. Something like: "Are we going to your place or what?", will generally get the idea across.

The problem with this form of accommodation is that you:

) Don't know when you are going to be beaten up by the lover who was supposed to be on night shift.

2) Don't get a lot of sleep.

3) Might catch something. (Cold, flu etc.)

Remember, when staying at a Groupie's flat it is always best to lie about everything. Give the guitarists name if you are the sax player. Give the wrong telephone number if you are asked for it and tell them you'll ring them when you get back to Sheffield/Nottingham/London etc. This may seem callous, but there will have been a lot of lying going on all night. ("I've never done this before." etc.)

It also lessens the possibility of the lover coming to Sheffield/Nottingham/London and smashing your teeth down your throat.

Four Star (****)

Four star band accommodation comes in the form of a cheap commercial Bed and Breakfast house, where you might have to share a room with two people you've never met before. Do not worry about this. The Irish navvy and the lorry driver will think it's you that is the lower life form. Which in some cases might be perfectly true. And it's always better than sharing the van with the Roadie.

NOTE: Nylon sheets are always used in these places so that everyone will get caught up in them, get friction burns, get electrocuted and fall out of bed so many times that they will be up and ready for breakfast by six.

It seems that people who snore are registered somehow and evenly distributed throughout the building so that if you do share a room it will be with a snorer. This must be to stop three snorers ending up in the same room and causing structural damage to the building.

Four star digs always have a toilet on the landing somewhere, but you can never find it when it's dark because all the doors look the same and the bulb on the landing doesn't work.

Five Star (*****)

It should be remembered that five star digs = one star hotel.

Five star digs are the Pro Digs. This is a grubby Bed and Breakfast place where people in the entertainment professions congregate. This arrangement allows a lot of people with ego problems to tell lies all night. "We've been booked for Japan." "When I backed Paul Simon," etc. However, the various characters you will meet can be quite interesting.

The girls who look like Strippers are Dancers, and the ones who look like Dancers are Strippers. However, the Strippers are easily identifiable as they can spit further. The people who look as if they haven't eaten for three days are the band, and the miserable git in the corner who looks half dead is the club comedian.

Then there is always a 'Bobby Stallion', or someone with an equally macho name who is very old, wears a wig, a gold sovereign ring, a white poly-cotton-satin-silk shirt (with frill down front), Cuban heeled white shoes and bri-nylon flared trousers and expects you to have heard of him because he was 'Big in the sixties', as a singer.

He will tell you with great enthusiasm how he 'nearly' played the Palladium and is sometimes accompanied by his wife, 'Gloria Starling', who swears she is twenty seven and wears mini skirts even though she looks like Zelda out of the Terrahawks. They will then tell you about the time they had a B.M.W. but have had to economise and now have a Cortina Escort which is just big enough to hold their couple of 2 x 12 cabs and W.E.M. Copycat.

It is always worth listening to a Bobby Stallion life history at least once, then you can ignore the other hundred you will meet in your career.

One of the good things about a Pro Digs is that breakfast is served right up to 11.00 A.M. It doesn't make the breakfast any better but at least you'll be awake enough to avoid eating the funny bits.

As you can see, although it was put across in a humerous fashion, you won't be sleeping anywhere great, so take the oppertunity to make as many friends in area's as you can, don't be afraid to ask if your new found friend at the gig would let you sleep in his living room floor, chances are he will be more than happy to oblige.
Oh dear lord, here it comes, "Be wary of people you meet on the internet"
Yes make sure you don't wake up chained to the bed :thumb:
A living room will be warm and much nicer than the van, and free too, chances are the guy might feed you.
A good money saving technique.


WASHING THINGS

Heh, bet you were expected a section on re-stringing your guitar with chicken wire.

You can ill afford to use a laundrette, nor do you want to wander around stinking.

So here's the plan, you shall require, dirty clothes, body wash, and a sink.

Simple enough, you put the dirty clothes in the sink, wash them with hot water, then add a fair amount of the body wash, mix it all around, make sure to get it into armpits e.t.c., any place that would harbour evil odurs, then take it out of the sink, get rid of the water and put some clean hot water in, no body wash this time, then put the shirt in, clean off all the body wash so it doesn't itch when you put it on.

Then leave it to dry, in the morning it will smell neutral, which is good enough, and best of all it cost nothing, a nice activity to do at the groupies house, they will have a hairdryer so you don't have to wait a day to be able to wear it again.

SCOUT

Look through the area where you are playing, the music shops, check them out, ask them what they do about gig problems, or if they do anything, if you break your guitars head mid song, its always a good idea to know where to rent a new one.
Look through the area and see if there are any cheap hotels/food places, its nice to treat yourself once in a while, if you have the time, relax with the band, it will be much appriciated and will take some tension away from everyone

Hopefully, following these few tips will take some financial and emotion stress from the tour, other than that, the only thing you can do is remember, you are there to enjoy yourself :thumb:

RECORDING ON A BUDGET

If your just starting out and need a good method of getting a few songs on cd for promotion and presskits, but don't have the cash to record and press.
Here's an idea, a split record, this is what my band are doing, 3 songs each, this means that

a) Both bands pay for pressing, costs go right in half
b) When someone buys the cd to hear my band, they are exposed to the other band, and vice versa
c) It can create a strong tie between similar bands

Remember though, for this to be effective in promotion you need to be similiar in styles, deathmetal and indie on one cd won't work very well.

Use simple designs, logo's with few colours, the inlay should have nothing more than the bands websites and prehaps a short bio and mailing list details.
You probably won't make millions of pounds from this, so its best to keep costs low, this is more aimed at bands releasing their first recordings so no-one will grill you if you didn't have the best upcoming artist design for you.

At best you can probably recoup most of what you spent, think of it more as an oppertunity to get your name out in the scene rather than a financial move.

Another idea for this, may be to add a special bonus track, with your band and the other band doing a song together, just an idea.


Or you could balance it out, on the split record, we will be having Wrong Halo as light emo/punk and my band to compensate with post hardcore, we balance each other out nicely, so even though there are only three songs, no-one will walk away thinking "this sucks, its all too light/too screamy"

:lol:, great posts kocaine, loved the humour with it (should of claimed it as your own!)

[QUOTE=DruMMeR_BoY14]:lol:, great posts kocaine, loved the humour with it (should of claimed it as your own!)[/QUOTE]

[url]http://members.lycos.co.uk/DaveFleming/stonedeaf.htm[/url]

The entire book is there, it never got published or something, funny as hell :thumb:

Great thread, Cant wait till the next one.

Yes, a new issue!! I must read.

EDIT: Great job, and very funny. :lol: Just some questions about touring: How do you get hooked up to do it? How do you get gigs scheduled in far away states/places? How much extra money will you need to take along?

kool, next you should make a post about the actuall gig/festival survival and playing onstage (how to get BIG crowds going) etc how not 2 cock up etc and what to expect from the promoters of the gig and stuff.

Mini tip: try playing with the lights off, the lighting at a gig may be **** so you need to be able to play weather you can see or not. :thumb:

Instead of plagiarizing stuff off of getsigned.com why dont you just give people the links?

here is one of the things you copied.
[url]http://www.getsigned.com/demosins.html[/url]

because, dude, we're all to lazy to go there. and he never claims its his own when it aint.

fag...

[QUOTE=moaner]because, dude, we're all to lazy to go there. and he never claims its his own when it aint.

fag...[/QUOTE]

First of all grow up. Second of all he didnt say he [I]didn't[/I] write it. He is going on as if he did. Its illegal to post copyrighted material and act as if he wrote it. Its much easier to give links. Besides getsigned.com has a lot more to offer than this thread does.

[QUOTE=the_only_singer]First of all grow up. Second of all he didnt say he [I]didn't[/I] write it. He is going on as if he did. Its illegal to post copyrighted material and act as if he wrote it. Its much easier to give links. Besides getsigned.com has a lot more to offer than this thread does.[/QUOTE]

Oh dear, I missed a link, lock me up and do me in the *** officer, I think it was blindingly obvious I didn't write the demo sin bit myself, especially seen as it's in an entirely different writing style to mine :rolleyes: (Call special Ed, a student has escaped)

Secondly, everyone go onto getsigned, try and find anything useful, you'll find some real gems, pity you have to battle through a crappy interface that involves reading 20 **** articles before you find the great one, getsigned only has alot of offer if it put's a new system in place, where you can go from page one of articles to page nine, rather than having to sift through them all.

Do you really think I would delibratly steal from getsigned and then in the next article and the one after, openly state who the great advice was from?

You really are a jealous little idiot.

To all the people with half a mind like this poster, The demosins bit is not something I wrote, something you probably already guessed though simply from comparing the differences in writing style.

EDIT: Just thought I'd ream this fellow a little more, lets assume for the moment that I did really steal it because I didn't think anyone used [url]www.getsigned.com[/url] (I mean, its only a tiny site, 20 visitors a month huh?)

If you're going to point fingers, point it at yourself, ever watch a pirated dvd, listen to a pirated mp3? (you didn't need to download it , just listening is illegal)
downloaded one? downloaded a video on the net, been to porn whilst underage?
:eek: I can say with definate certainty, that you have done one of those, funny how criminals are quick to point fingers huh?

Let's consider why I may have missed putting the link up?
Could it be that I was preparing for a holiday? Packing things?
Could it be that I have the N.A.S.S.K.C open championships coming up soon that I'm training for?
Could it be that I'm working on material with my band for the split e.p.?

Could it be that everyone slips up? Meaning that maybe possibly in the hustle and bustle of writing these articles I forgot to press CTRL+V to paste the url?

Impudent.

I think KKKKKocain is the winner here.

[QUOTE=KKKKKocaine]Oh dear, I missed a link, lock me up and do me in the *** officer, I think it was blindingly obvious I didn't write the demo sin bit myself, especially seen as it's in an entirely different writing style to mine :rolleyes: (Call special Ed, a student has escaped)

Secondly, everyone go onto getsigned, try and find anything useful, you'll find some real gems, pity you have to battle through a crappy interface that involves reading 20 **** articles before you find the great one, getsigned only has alot of offer if it put's a new system in place, where you can go from page one of articles to page nine, rather than having to sift through them all.

Do you really think I would delibratly steal from getsigned and then in the next article and the one after, openly state who the great advice was from?

You really are a jealous little idiot.

To all the people with half a mind like this poster, The demosins bit is not something I wrote, something you probably already guessed though simply from comparing the differences in writing style.

EDIT: Just thought I'd ream this fellow a little more, lets assume for the moment that I did really steal it because I didn't think anyone used [url]www.getsigned.com[/url] (I mean, its only a tiny site, 20 visitors a month huh?)

If you're going to point fingers, point it at yourself, ever watch a pirated dvd, listen to a pirated mp3? (you didn't need to download it , just listening is illegal)
downloaded one? downloaded a video on the net, been to porn whilst underage?
:eek: I can say with definate certainty, that you have done one of those, funny how criminals are quick to point fingers huh?

Let's consider why I may have missed putting the link up?
Could it be that I was preparing for a holiday? Packing things?
Could it be that I have the N.A.S.S.K.C open championships coming up soon that I'm training for?
Could it be that I'm working on material with my band for the split e.p.?

Could it be that everyone slips up? Meaning that maybe possibly in the hustle and bustle of writing these articles I forgot to press CTRL+V to paste the url?

Impudent.[/QUOTE]

:eek: My.... hero. :chug:

three cheers for KKKocaine, for trapsing through 30 pages of runbbish to find us the most helpful (and funny) things he can

I stand by my earlier comment, the only singer, however childish it may be

Right, Now that the only singer has been dealt with, I'm stumped for idea's for the next issue, What would everyone like to see covered?

Maybe something to do with writing songs/lyrics? or recording albums or something.

[QUOTE=Licketysplit]Maybe something to do with writing songs/lyrics? or recording albums or something.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I was thinking of doing a little bit on the recording process my band was using, well not just the recording process, but the method that we are preparing the songs for the e.p. but for me to go into great detail I might have to wait till monday to write it up.

sounds good

Could you answer the questions I posted earlier about touring?