Is anyone here in a band? Any advice?

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If you are in a band, how did you guys meet? What do you play? As an Aspie, how do you manage working together with your bandmates?

I've never been in a band considering I've been socially awkward my whole life. I just placed an ad online in hopes that I could be a part of a band. I sing, play a bit of piano, and I've written 5 songs and I hope to make something outta that one day.

I've been in several bands. I started being in bands in highschool where I met my bandmates in music classes at school. These were just jam bands though. The main band Ive played in during my music career I met at one of their shows, but some of the people in my jam band at the time knew them too. I have been in other bands as well with people I have met through my music career. I also make some music by myself. If you cannot find anyone to be in a band with you can always sing and play guitar to a computer using programming, beats, sequences and samples. The hardest part for me doing music is the buisness managment aspect.

I've been in a few bands, a few jam groups and also have had this mostly solo side-project going for a few years. For me, anyway, being in a band is pretty difficult. I find that, unless I'm the lead creative force, I either don't feel motivated or feel too insignificant to care enough to contribute intellectually. The most recent band I quit was a metal band...they loved me because I can absolutely nail any technical challenge on guitar, every time, but I ended up leaving because I realized, though I enjoy some metal and it's fun to play, my heart wasn't nearly in it as them and I attribute that to the fact that their group had existed prior to my joining. It's weird, like, I'm not selfish or controlling...I just can't muster the same dedication and eventually dread rehearsals and spending time with the people. I think the best advice I can give is, try to put together a group of similarly skilled musicians. I've gone through the whole craigslist thing and have 'tried out' for a dozen overly confident, mostly awful groups...I don't blame them at all, because how could they have known that I'd spent every waking hour for eight years practicing guitar . Basically, be completely honest about your skill level and find musicians who you can both teach and learn from. Then again, there's some people who don't care how good you are, just how it sounds and that's cool too. I guess, as long as you're having fun, you're doing something right!

Hya

I've been in 1 serious band in my entire lifetime (i'm 19). I remember one of us had a key to a school's gym there we were doing rehersals. The drummer had a van where he brought his entire kit and assembled it. Until we finally tuned everything and started to play it took a while. But we stayed all night playing until we were tired. Sometimes one of us would being some wine and some light food. I was the keyboard player in the band. I had a roland EP-760 (a crappy e-piano) I'm certain it's somewhere in my parents' house. We had a drummer, Bassist, me (keys), sax player, e-guitarist and A-guitarist on vocals too. It's been a blast. How did we meet? actually through friends of my mother I don't exactly remember.

As an aspie I had no problems with my bandmates, I am really social. We were all in different ages and that was the inspiration for the name of the band.

Right now I am focusing on doing music alone although I play often with friends. Music is mah life

I'd also like to hear about people's band experiences. Particularly the ins and outs of playing and arranging gigs.

A friend of mine recruited me to his new band with him about 4 other people in it. I'd never considered being in a band before as I feared encountering rock-and-roll egos, but I trusted his judgement. It never really worked though- some members just didn't come to rehearsals, or never seemed to learn the songs properly. Add to that a really random line-up of instruments and over-ambitious songs, and it was a bit doomed. Played one proper gig in that time, which was just a shambles. I found it a fun band to mess around in, but my friend got horribly frustrated. Lack of structure plus nice but unreliable people.

We decided to make the line-up more ordinary- I started learning bass and we put out an ad for a drummer. Of two possible drummers, we went for the one who seemed friendliest over the one with scarily good skills- good decision, it turned out. But one of our guitarists promptly decided to quit, before we'd even had a rehearsal with the new line-up. Shortly afterwards, the other guitarist left- he'd been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Utterly heartbreaking, he was just a lovely, gentle person. Most of us got back together for one last gig shortly before he passed away, which took a gruelling rehearsal schedule to pull off.

Three of us ended up forming a new band together- the drummer, me on bass and vocals, and on guitar and vocals, the friend who got me into the original band. Every so often we think about getting someone else in, but decide not to- having just three of us makes organising everything so much easier! None of us have massive egos, though wierd cross-purpose fights occasionally blow up between the other two. Then I have to be the diplomatic one, tp the best of my limited ability. We may not be the greatest musicians, but we're all reasonable people and we can trust each other. Which is vital- I've heard horror stories about band politics, and want no part of it.

It took us about two years to get any good. Tips I picked up- ALWAYs use earplugs in rehearsals, even if I can take the noise. It lowers stress levels. We started out doing 4-hour rehearsals, which I quickly had to cut down to 2 hours (including tea break) because of sensory overload problems. We mainly do orginal songs which we collaborate on, and it has taken me 2 years to get my head round that. Example: if something isn't working on a song, I want to tweak and practice that bit in minute detail til it works. The guitarist wants to chuck that bit out and replace it with something else. We used to go round in circles arguing about this, but nowadays we respect each other's working styles a bit more and can compromise or back down.

In 2016, we finally started playing gigs. They've mostly gone well, but it's been a challenge. I'm fine on stage, but the logistics of getting to an unfamiliar venue and setting up often give me panic attacks. And I often have to say we can't do particular gigs we've been offered, for reasons the others don't really seem to understand. It's a combination of my mental health, antisocial working hours, and the fact that doing too much in a day messes me up. There are evenings when I'm technically free, but know damn well I wouldn't be able to cope with getting to the gig.

"Stage presence" is an issue- at the moment, I pretty much just play and sing. I can talk to the audience a bit, but don't have any sort of rockstar persona. And dancing? forget it.

[I'm reviving this 4-year-old thread 'cos it asked a question I wanted to ask!]

I'm in a band that has numerous challenges separate from my ASD, we're spread out around the country (and France) so we don't practice often at all as a group. We do make a special effort to get together for blocks of time to complete writing or around playing shows/touring so that we're not complete garbage when we play. A mutual respect and understanding is in place that we stay on top of our songs and we tend to throw ideas around by e-mail for concepts and structures before fleshing them out in person.

Our music occupies a very strange niche so it took a long time for us to become a functional unit. Once we finalised our lineup, it started with myself (vocals) and our guitarist essentially handing song ideas to the other 2 guys and telling them more or less what we wanted from their respective instruments but now it's a much, much more collaborative effort. We are all technically minded people and that's reflected in the nature of our music but it also means that we're all happy to lock in to examining one aspect of a song until it feels resolved.

For me it's a nice situation to be in as I take the lead on organisation regarding shows/tours as it's something I do for fun any way (organise shows for touring musicians) which means that I have ample time to plan what I need and where I go so I'm not likely to be scuppered too much by the unexpected. We're all clear on each others roles and what we expect from the band so there is very little conflict apart from getting frustrated when we can't figure out what to do with a song!