- Messages
- 9,665
Any of you guys ever seen Tom Hess?
He goes so far as to say you should have a written plan for the band objectives, that includes any and everything that having a band entails. And then you use that "manual" as the roadmap. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but his thinking is that it takes away the possibility of one person "being in charge," since it's a piece of paper, and not a member, who makes the decisions.
I guess it makes sense, whether it's written or not. But I don't know how you could think of every single thing to address, beforehand, and, if I'm being honest, I'm fine with one person ending up being the de facto 'leader', as long as he doesn't try to take things in a direction that's different from what was originally agreed upon.
Definitely not wrong about a ’road map’ or mission statement kinda thing. My former drummer and I did this when we started our band in ‘03 after writing a couple songs and figuring out how we wrote together. We had a timeline of when we wanted things to be done by, like when we’d want to start gigging, when we‘d want to start buying merch, when we’d want to record, etc. It actually worked out about 90% spot on with our plans and I’m not surprised that that band was the most successful one I was in, I think largely because of that.
While everyone knew at the end of the day it was him and I who were ‘in charge’, everyone got to speak their peace openly but it never about the music itself, everyone got to write their parts as long as it was within the framework of the band. Well, except for my buddy Nacho’s parts….hahah…I don’t know my theory for sh*t, but I can tell when something is out of key and his ear is about as good as my theory knowledge.