How a Band Is Formed

71 South was born from a New Year's resolution.

My name is Ron, and I play guitar. Our other guitarist, Mike, has been a friend for years. Mike and I have both played guitar since we were kids, and we have played together in a band in the past. Recently Mike and I started jamming with some friends. This jamming renewed my interest in playing guitar more seriously.

When 2010 rang in, I decided to make it a goal to play in a gigging band by the end of the year. I wasn't sure if Mike was going to join me in this endeavor. I shared my goal with him, but he wasn't quite on board. I decided I would try to find an existing band to join.

However, after a couple of weeks, Mike decided he wanted to give it a try. We decided we only wanted 4 members in the band. Basically, a smaller band is easier to manage. However, neither Mike nor I has ever really played the bass guitar. We decided we would trade off playing bass. This would allow us to have a singer, 2 guitarists/bassists, and a drummer.

We knew who we wanted to sing. A co-worker, Katie, had been a background singer for another band for a while, but she recently left that band. She had sung with Mike and I during our other jam sessions, and we both felt she would be a great lead singer for our band.

I asked Katie if she'd be interested, and sure enough, she agreed.

Mike asked a drummer friend of his if he'd like to join us, and he agreed. Within a week, we went from zero to jamming.

We've had two rehearsals, and so far things are a little rough, but we can see some promise. We started with 12 songs to work on for the first rehearsal. Mike and I have played some of these songs before, so the learning curve wasn't too bad. It was just a matter of getting used to playing together, and for Ron/Mike to get accustomed to playing bass.

So, choosing songs to play requires several things to consider. Can Katie sing it? Can it be adequately played with one guitar? How difficult are the backing vocals? And who will play bass?

For for the first few songs, we simply split them up. We plan to split the songs so that I play bass on half of them, and Mike plays bass on the other half. So far that's working out well. We can choose songs that fit our guitar style, and let the other cover the bass.

Some songs need to be played in a different key to acommodate Katie's voice. For example, we are playing "Real Wold" by Matchbox 20. That song is too low for Katie, so we've moved it up to a higher key. On the other hand, the song "Hot N Cold" by Katy Perry is a little high for her, so we've moved it down a little bit.

We are only 2 weeks into this project, but so far I think we've got a good thing going. We all need to practice more (always), but most of the songs are coming together really nicely. We hope to have enough material to gig within a month or so.

If you are needing a band for your special event, contact us! info@71southband.com.