beatpoet

I'm an online session drummer and film drum cover videos to act as promo, here are some of them!

It's hard even to define rock music these days, so I'll go with "guitar bands". I don't think guitar bands will ever truly disappear, at the moment there's just a big problem with a lack of invention. The reunion culture is as big as it's ever been, so there definitely is a trend within guitar music of looking back on the past rather than progression. Guitar bands used to emerge saying we've had enough of all these boring old farts, our time is now . . . you never hear that anymore.

I'd be worried if they turned down the opportunity to get paid to mix it!

If you're struggling to find a sound just through writing, you might want to try and look for a theme amongst your songs instead. If you're writing for an album, it's better to write more songs than you need. With a bigger batch, you can pick the best ten or twelve songs which are connected together by a particular theme. Out of the theme, will come a sound!

Wasn't there some guy who got sacked from Starbucks because of some anti-Starbucks song he did that went viral? Did he ever get anywhere?

I run regularly, that's my main way of keeping fit. In my last band we did quite a demanding set of high tempo songs (plus I like to hit hard when playing rock) and I had a bit of a struggle getting into condition, as I hadn't been in a band for over a year previously. It wasn't the "totally out of breath" kind of struggling, more like that kind of struggle you have when you get two-thirds of the way through a fast song and find you're barely able to hold onto the sticks. Obviously practising and rehearsing over and over gets you into a good condition, but nothing can prepare you for being under the lights live. We got an EP recorded, did a few one-off gigs and went straight into a tour. I was certainly in good nick after playing every night for two weeks

It took me a long time to be able to play chords properly (well I still fudge them, but guitar isn't my first instrument). What actually helped me most was just sitting down with someone who could play guitar properly, or looking at other players and seeing how they mute certain strings. I used to be shocking at power chords!

I guess it depends what kind of music you play. Pop stuff like Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber will always do well on the internet because it's all tied in to Twitter and YouTube. A regular guitar band will need to do something incredibly gimmicky to get the same amount of attention. Kings Of Leon had to sell out and become a poppy boyband to achieve a greater level of success, but even they didn't reach the heights of Lady Gaga. At a grassroots level, based on my own experiences, you can play gigs for years and never get anywhere. It's hard to even start playing actual music venues (places where people exclusively go to watch bands, not pubs or backrooms) without any representation. A booking agent will get you gigs that are "closed off" to regular unsigned bands, but unless you are willing sink all your money into your band and give up your job to tour full time and sleep on floors, it's very hard to get anywhere by just doing gigs. I joined a band with a booking agent in London and while we did tour, we would have needed to go on the road full time to make the next step to increasing our profile (the band had been doing well before I joined, with Radio 1 sessions, NME coverage and TV spots). Added to that, London is supposed to be the music mecca of the UK ("London was calling!" they say), but you could do a year of gigs there and never get noticed. The standard of small gigs there isn't any higher there than anywhere else in the UK - if anything, it's lower, and that was a bit of an awakening. I'd add the Joy Formidable in as a band that have broken through by relentlessly touring. They've been touring non-stop since mid-2008, when they put out the first EP. Their debut album only came out in January this year, and they've just kept going round and round and round. They've already done more US tours than you can count on two hands. People appreciate how hard they work and it's reflected in their presentation and performance.

For someone more modern, check out Fran Healy of Travis. Not a popular band anymore, but he's great with melodies.

Fran Healy (of Travis, one of my fave singer/songwriters) recently put up a post about songwriting. Take a look at http://www.franhealy.com/2011/12/answer-to-don-from-vancouver/