Working up new songs

[Darren]

I was curious how others that play regularly in a group work up new material. I play Bluegrass semi regularly with a guitarist and banjo player and we tend not to attempt a new song until everyone can play it up to speed. The banjo player and I are pretty green so it takes us a month or two to get the song in order.

What do others do?

[mandofiddle]

We bring in enough charts for everyone, and then play through the tune once to get the feel. Then we draw up a lead sheet. Lead sheet basicaaly says...

Intro on verse - fiddle
verse sing
chorus sing
verse solo - mando
chorus solo - guitar

etc...

Once we have the lead sheet down, we'll figure out where we want the harmony vocal parts at, and then write them down note for note for each part to make sure everyone knows exactly what their part is (and that there's no matching, etc). We get it to a point usually within a rehearsal to record the tune well enough to use on a practice CD. Then we distribute the tune online as an mp3 so each band member can download and practice along with it on their own. That way, next time at rehearsal, everyone knows their parts, and is a lot more familiar with the tune. We got three tunes down last night, though only 2 had vocal harmonies.

Too bad we haven't gotten to a point of getting 2 or 3 down every rehearsal though. Man, THAT would be nice. We're currently trying to beef up our song selection as quickly as possible for a big festival we're playing at the end of the month.

[John Flynn]

I will not claim that the following process works perfectly every time, but this what we try to do: We'll do a "show and tell" at the end of practice, where each member will demo tunes they want the group to do, either by playing them live or playing a recording. If the group agrees they want to do the tune, the tune nominator makes chord sheets and recordings on cassette for everyone and brings them to the next practice. Then, at the next subsequent practice, we run through the tune at a slow pace and work out the bugs. Then at all the following practices, we run trough the tune full speed, multiple times. At some point, the group agrees we have the tune ready to add to set list. With easy tunes, this goes pretty quick, perhaps three practices from intial tune suggestion to set list. With harder tunes, it may take five or six practices. We can work up multiple tunes simultaneously on this schedule and often we have different tunes at different stages of development.

How it works for any given group really depends on the individual musicians, how good they are at learning tunes and how much work they are willing to put in on thier own. I have also found this to sometimes be a devisive issue in groups. Some members learn quickly, through a combination of talent and hard work, while others either hold the group back or try to fake it.

[jamesrenz]

Somebody will have a new tune and they will play it for the group, "introduce" it, I suppose. Depending on the intricacy, we will either learn it on the spot or, more likely, woodshed it. Sometimes someone will write it out for the others, but mostly we each have other sources for the tunes we play as well -- e.g. recordings, written music. We have so many tunes that mostly new tunes simply get worked in over time, or old "forgotten" tunes get recalled. We just informally begin to add them to our rehearsals. Someone will take care of fiddle, someone guitar, someone mandolin or banjo, etc. Someone will develop a harmony. We are laid back, no "assignment" of parts or anything like that goes on. Everyone knows what he/she is supposed to be doing, and we get the job down quite well.

[roland]

Here's an interesting twist, but not a "how to" because it's more of a "how not to" from my perspective...

A trio I'm in does all vocals - mostly covers. Any one of us brings a tune in and arrangement/harmony stuff naturally falls into place pretty easily. The other two members have together done some writing of originals as well, and those songs usually develop over a longer time frame, of course, as to be expected.

So... I've been writing songs on my own for a while (in a secluded manner) and finally decided that the trio should maybe listen to a couple to try them out. I met immediate resistance to this idea unless I could assure the others ahead of time that I would welcome with open arms any suggestions to change my songs if they didn't like something about them.

I was taken aback.
They really seemed to be saying that, unheard, my songs better be available "for changing" by them, that song writing should be a "collaborative process" and they didn't want to be "back-up musicians" to me and my songs.
Now, just to clarify, I'm not talking about each of us working out our instrumental stuff and the arrangement...for I would expect the regular process to be in effect. But they seemed unwilling to let us try something without this pre-approval to change it.
Again, I made clear I was not dictating how we did the song, but that I was merely presenting a complete song as far as lyric-melody-chords. The arrangement and development of "our versions" of harmonies, intros, breaks would be handled just as though I brought in a song from any other source, such as a CD.
They didn't want to give up the pre-approval thing.

Needless to say, I also am now feeling inhibited and pessimistic about the whole thing..... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif