Growing Up As A Musician
Sun, 03/11/2012
So, I've been in my share of bands. I've been playing in bands since I was about 12 years old. I went from playing shows for my close friends in the basement to touring internationally and opening up for some big name acts. For the last year I've been working with my best friends on my latest musical journey: Prop Planes.
Many people have asked me the question, "So, what is different about your new band, Prop Planes?" Well for one, I'm playing bass which I haven't done since I was a teen. But the biggest difference has been the way we write music. To be honest, it's probably been the biggest difference and the most satisfying.
For one, we are really taking our time writing and finding our sound. In previous bands whatever the first 7-8 songs sounded like, no matter if they all sounded different, was "our sound". We would write a set in a month and be playing a show the next. With Prop Planes I think we've written about 12-14 songs over the course of 2011 and the start to 2012, but we've only kept around a half a dozen or so. Not because the others were shitty songs, but we just really wanted to make sure we as a band were happy with what we were playing.
With so many of the bands I've played in, we would write songs and when we would analyze what we had written the first questions were always, "how is the crowd going to react to this?" "Will kids start dancing their faces off when we play this part?" "Let's put this heavy breakdown in that part becasue the crowd will love it." With Mark, Riley, Craig and Myself, I don't think we've even discussed what we think the crowd or audience is going to think about any of our songs. For the first time in all of my music playing, my band and I are writing songs that we want to write or that we would enjoy listening to. It seems really weird to say that, but I think many bands get caught in, what's popular or what is going to sell.
I don't think this process discredits any of the previous bands I've played in, I simply think you mature and grow as a musician and a human being. You start to really zone in on the real reason you're making music. Because you love it.
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