Hi David,
"Band leadership" is tricky to define. Take my band--one person does
the booking, another puts together the promo stuff and does the
money stuff, another composes original tunes and one person takes a
very active role in arranging. Who's the leader here?
IMHO, the bandleader is the person who does the hiring and firing in
the band. The bandleader says who's in and who's out.
It sounds to me like you're not being pushed into the role of
bandleader but into the role of band arranger. If the other people
in your band want you to take that role, then accept their vote of
confidence and do it. An arranger is just another hat a composer
wears.
As long as you always couch your arrangement suggestions as
suggestions to be decided by the band, you'll do okay. If our band
has trouble deciding between different arrangements then we play it
both ways and tape them. The choice usually becomes obvious after we
listen to the tape a time or two.
Here's something about dealing with band members that I posted to the
bassplayer's list awhile ago:
----------------
> From: jhourcade@claven.idbsu.edu (Jack Hourcade)
> Help! I'm appealing to the collective wisdom and experience of TBL to
> solve an ongoing guitar volume problem.
>
> The guitarist in our classic rock band simply plays too loud. He
> says he can't hear himself except at that volume level, but it's
> actually physically uncomfortable to be around...
One of the toughest things about bands, IMHO, is dealing with
the other band members. One thing I've always worked on is praising
the stuff I like about a musician personally:
"WOW! I really like that angular asymmetric line you're doing!"
while criticising the musician in the abstract or as the entire band:
[to the band at large:] "I think we're not very tight on this
song. How about we follow the drums?"
rather than saying to the lead guitar:
You're rushing _and_ dragging! Practice with a metronome,
willya?!
In your friend's case, I would try to come up with a nonjudgmental way
of dealing with his need for volume:
[A short time but not immediately after praising the guitar player's
playing in front of the band:] "Everybody's having trouble hearing
themselves in the mix, am I right?. How about we spend some time
adjusting the onstage mix?"
If you have monitors, I'd give your guitar player (GP) his very
own monitor and crank his guitar WAY up in the mix on that monitor.
Put the GP to one side of the stage and point the monitor towards him
and away from the band.
If you don't have monitors, I'd try putting the GP off to the side and
in front of the band and put him directly in front of his speaker
cabs. If it's still too quiet for him, put the cabs up so that the
speakers are at his ear level.
But ya gotta be subtle about this arrangement. Spend a lot of time
fussing with the drummer's and singer's position and sound needs
first. Then work on the GP. Then place yourself so that you can hear
the drummer and singer okay without going deaf from the GP.
If you've got a mixing board or a sound guy, make sure that the GP's
monitor is cranked way up but the mains are more balanced. The GP
isn't going to know the difference onstage. If you don't have a sound
guy, make yourself the sound guy by being the band knob dweeb. Get
elected by universal acclamation. ;-)
You may have a GP who's going deaf. He just can't hear the difference
in sound levels. In which case you might look at getting him a
headphone monitor.
-----------------------------
So for your problem of the drummer I might say:
Wow! That was a lot of energy! I think you should take a solo
and so you can use some of those chops!
then a bit later I'd say:
I think we need to put a bit more space in this song. You know,
get that Brazilian laid-back feel to it. Here listen to this,
what do you think?
and then I'd pop a CD on of somebody playing "Insensitaz" the way I
wanted it. And then I'd go:
How about we try it again with more of this kind of feel? A bit
softer, a lot more space.
If I felt comfortable with the drummer I might say:
Do you think that you could try it with just brushes and the
hi-hat just once so we could hear how it sounds?
If there's still dissension, I'd tape both the crazed-drummer version
and the laid back version and ask the band members to decide.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Kevin
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"If you play it twice then it isn't a mistake."
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"You must allow people to be right, because it
consoles them for not being anything else." -Andre' Gide