Resources

Series: Making The Band

- Know Your Limitations

By Mic Mustaine

1. Know your limitations.

What does that mean? Well it’s simple; what is it that you play, are you a drummer? If so, can you keep a beat, do you have rhythm? Really think about this. If you’re new at guitar and don’t have much experience or you play but you just pick up the thing and doodle every now then, lead guitar will not be your strong point. But that does not mean the end of the world okay. You're new at guitar but are a good song writer then maybe you should try Rhythm guitar or maybe Bass guitar. Whatever it is don’t get a big head and say it’s my band so I get to play what I want, be flexible and know your limitations.

Another part of that is be humble. Don’t be scared to seek out better and stronger players. In the end, it is your band but don’t be scared that someone is going to overshadow your abilities. The best thing you can do is surround yourself with better players that you can grow from as a musician and feed off of their experience. In one of my previous attempts to form a band, I brought in guys that I could control and teach. It turned into a headache and instead of learning from each other's mistakes and playing better, I spent most rehearsals trying to teach the guys their parts. It lead to wasted time. If I had players that were equal or better then it would have saved time and made for a better band.

You can not grow as a musician if there is one guy doing the leg work. Tou must be able to grow with each other, see someone making a mistake and be able to correct them and vice versa. Stay away from beginners. If you get to the point where you want to take this to the stage, the audience will not be accepting of you if all your musicians are not in sync with each other. This is going to make you sound terrible. I had a friend play Bass for us one night who had about eight months experience and he was out of tune all night and always a few beats behind. Let me tell you, there is nothing worse than having the audience chanting "you suck" and yelling for you to get off stage. So just because someone is your friend, don’t give in to a newbie.

The last thing I can say is know the players involved. You really have to be friends to get off the ground. Get folks that are like minded if you’re a metal head and you want to stay loyal to that genre then find fellow metal heads. If your blues oriented and you want a different sound then by all means go after a rock guitarist and try to merge them. Another mistake I made was to bring in a drummer I didn’t know; after about a month, he was trying to change everything which goes back to time. Time wasted arguing is time better spent practicing and taking your group to a higher level.

Now I’m not trying to say this is the official blueprint to forming a band. These are the mistakes that I have made and can be learned from. "And that is all my little droogies".

Coming up next month: Part 2