Avoid mantraps, draw up agreements

Most musicians seem to take the attitude that it’s all OK, that they are all creative souls working together towards the same thing. But very rarely do groups of individuals share a common goal or vision, or ideas about how to achieve those goals and visions. The result with musical groups is most often failure. Many musical projects bite the dust because of arguments between band members or collaborators about how they are going to do things, and conflicts around the music and direction that escalate into personal confrontations. This is because no ground rules or understandings have been set up in the first place.

 

Roles and responsibilities

 

This simple adage holds true with many things in communally creative life. As a band it is important to iron out how equipment will be handled or bought, how money earned will be shared, what each member’s role is, and what the specific responsibilities of each member will be. There are also issues of songwriting credits, publishing and the like. If these are not addressed, they are potential conflict zones that are left to lurk like mantraps.

 

The idea here is to create an environment where all members of the project are aware of their roles and responsibilities, and how important it is that they fulfil these roles. The idea is not to create a mini-totalitarian state where everyone is ruled through fear of stepping out of line. Instead, these agreements should be set up in such a way that all members know they are playing to their strengths, that all of their contributions are noted and valued, and that the balance of power is distributed fairly amongst them.

 

Intra-band agreements: the musical

 

The obvious part of intra-band agreements is the musical; by which I mean who plays what instrument. But experience shows that it is often wise to go a bit further even here. It is healthy to try and establish a culture of growth amongst the people you work with. Firstly because it staves off boredom and stagnation, and secondly because it prevents the group from becoming creatively and musically stuck in a rut. So when you are all agreeing that so and so is the bass player and so and so the DJ, also include the idea that each member is committed to and responsible for growth and skills development in this area. Make sure that your singer is committed to going for some singing lessons or that your bassist is prepared to learn some new style that your drummer will learn to play to a click track, your DJ will explore new genres and styles and so on. If not everyone is committed to becoming a better musician and technician, what most often happens is that those who practise more and stretch themselves soon exceed the abilities of the others in the band. Then you are left with a situation in which someone can no longer keep up with the band as a whole, effectively holding back its growth and creating tension, or in which one member outgrows the band and decides to move on to find challenges to fit her new skills.

 

Losing an original band member

 

It is not uncommon for some people to just have a gift and become enormously better at one thing than the rest of the group. But if the group as a whole is growing and changing as well, the tensions that arise from this can be reduced and the loss of members avoided. Now sometimes it is unavoidable and desirable to lose band members. Perhaps someone has personal goings-on that are always going to prevent them being a full part of the journey, or maybe they are just not good enough. But losing an original band member is often the death knell for many projects. This is not so much the case when you are still establishing yourselves and have yet to break out into the public consciousness. However, for bands that are gigging and releasing material to radio or the stores, losing an original member can often be catastrophic. And mostly it can be avoided.

 

 

Business life of the band

 

It is also very important that each member feels part of the life of the band in general; that is to say, not just in the playing of gigs. The day-to-day life of any musical entity involves a lot of activity. There are shows to be booked, practice rooms to be looked after, equipment to be maintained, flyers to be designed and made, websites and mailing lists to be looked after and so on. Each member of your outfit could and should be responsible for some aspect of the business life of the band as well. Again, this is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, many groups are unbalanced in terms of creativity. There is more often than not a creative kernel that writes the material and around whose vision the act is centred. If this comprises only one or two people in the unit, over time the others can become demotivated and disinterested as they will feel that they are being dictated to, that they have no say in how things are run, and that they are nothing more than hired hands. But there are many and equally important ways that non-songwriting band members can contribute to the growth and success of your project. These members need to be assigned these responsibilities and everyone needs to buy into their importance and ensure that these tasks are done.

 

Agreeing to dedication

 

So draw up a contract between your band members that covers two main things: the fact that each member must agree to play a musical role in the band, and that each should be committed and dedicated to that role. This must include being committed to improving skills in order to become as good at what they do as they are capable of becoming. A full discussion of these roles and jobs follows a bit later. But for now, remember that when you are setting up your members’ agreement, it needs to include these jobs, and that all members must buy into their importance and contribution to the success of the whole.

 

Originally published in David Chislett's One, Two, One, Two: A Step By Step Guide To The South African Music Industry. Download a free copy of the book at www.davidchislett.co.za.