 Okay, let's get this out of the way right now. Most of you watching probably got a ukulele for Christmas or something. You're probably 13 to 17 years old, you've been listening to a lot of emo bands like My Chemical Romance, Fallout Boy, Panic of the Disco, 21 Pilots. You traced all the way back to their older shows on YouTube and you're saying to yourself man I could probably do something like that. Well, I can tell you with an almost mathematical level of certainty that you will not end up like any of those bands that I just mentioned. You will never play arenas. You will never sell out a concert house. You will probably never even get around to releasing your own music if reality catches up to you and you realize how expensive, time consuming, and miserable being in a band can actually be. And unless you're like me where you have a massive social media presence to bounce off and kickstart your career in music, you're probably not even going to get a response from a record label. Does that make you sad? Does that make you discouraged? If the answer is yes, I'm afraid you're just not cut out for music in the first place. But, but, but, but. If you're willing to bury down all your hopeless fantasies of fame and fortune and find enough drive in performing in front of nine people at a time in some sweaty basement, you might be able to pull something out of this video. And that is our first and most important tip. Understand that your band is not going to go anywhere. If you're cool with that, we can continue. Dance, do this dance, so you gotta dance so fast. Okay. You're still watching. Awesome. First thing you're going to want to do is learn your instrument. Bass, guitar, piano, drums, vocals, whatever it is. Make sure that you know a thing or two about how to play it. YouTube tutorials are totally free and they're super effective to work with. Lessons are even better if you can afford them. Spend about six months to a year practicing by yourself and really get a feel for what you're doing. While you're by yourself, how about you learn a couple popular cover songs? Every genre and instrument is different, but most guitar players should know Sweet Home Alabama. Bass players should know Seven Nation Army, drummers should know Come Together, pianists should know Don't Stop Believing, and also ukulele players do need to know every single 21 pilot song ever written. And singers should be familiar with most of the songs I recommended. Now, this isn't critical, it's just something good to have on your belt when you move forward. It's also pretty smart to learn a thing or two about music theory as well. You don't need to do in-depth analysis of Beethoven or anything, just know the names for the parts of songs and whatnot. Is the drummer's time signature a little bit off? Is the bass player playing in the key of C major while everyone else is an E minor? This stuff is really simple and you can learn it all in a day if you set aside some time. And it'll make a world of difference once you're playing and writing with actual people. But Nate, the Beatles didn't know music theory so I guess I don't need to either. Well guess what? You're watching a YouTube video on how to start a band, you are obviously not the Beatles. Sure, you don't need to learn this stuff, but at the end of the day, virtually all music written nowadays has a very basic foundation. It's your job to learn these foundations, so don't get cocky with me punk. I seriously doubt that you're going to be the next Death Grips, okay? Another thing you're going to want to do is get all the stuff that you need. I'm talking instruments, I'm talking cables, amps, preamps, PA systems, backups, everything that you need. Nobody likes a leech and if you happen to show up at a gig down the road and you don't have what you need, your band may be going home humiliated. Listen, it doesn't need to be brand new. Just check Craigslist or the Facebook marketplace or something. You're going to find an instrument or whatever you need that works just fine. And finally, the most important thing that you need to do before you pull the trigger on starting a band is attending local shows. By doing so, you learn the basics of how to organize a musical event. You learn actual musicians who know what they're doing. You got to make friends, make connections, get your name out there before you've even picked up an instrument. Treat these like social events, go to as many as you can. I recommend aiming for attending at least 15 local shows in your area before you take the plunge. I promise you won't regret it. So since you are watching this and you are taking what I'm saying seriously, do you remember those friends they made at the local shows? I want you to contact them. Invite them to play with you at like a jam session or something like that. Don't start a band with your dumb friends that you made in high school who also got ukuleles for Christmas and have no idea what they're doing. Getting members who don't know their instruments will turn practices into a daycare really fast and you don't want that. Make sure the other members know a thing or two about music theory as well and make sure that they have similar influences as you. If you grew up listening to AWOL Nation and Modest Mouse, you're probably not going to mesh with someone who swears by ACDC and Led Zeppelin. Ensure that you can get along with your members and make sure they're not secretly white supremacists or red hot chili peppers or any kind of other deplorable human being. Do you like teenage girls? When you say teenage, how are we talking? Make sure they're the kinds of people who can show up on time for stuff, by the way. I'm talking rehearsals, gigs, recording appointments, et cetera. People who aren't exactly punctual with time will make you want to tear your hair out down the road. So over a Facebook Messenger group, you guys need to decide on where to practice. The drummer's house traditionally is the easiest bet because they more than likely already have a practice space where you don't need to worry about noise. Other alternatives to consider are garages, rentable studios, or any other properties where the cops won't get involved if you're making too much noise. Pick a few songs for everybody to play. Traditionally, everyone plays a few covers so you get a vibe of how you guys play together. Find out who's proficient with their instrument, who is out of their element, and who needs a little bit more one-on-one practice. By the way, when the day of the actual practice comes and everyone arrives, make sure that you guys actually get around to practicing. A lot of these first practices devolve into a hey, let's all hang out, talk, and watch TV event instead of everyone actually putting in effort. Sometimes you just need to break the ice, stand in the middle of the room, and say, OK, has everybody learned their parts? You got to pick up your instrument and start playing. Everyone will catch on. Once you guys start playing, you're going to come to a sudden realization. Your band sucks, horribly. Everyone's kind of doing their own thing. The sounds aren't exactly meshing. Nobody has any idea what they're doing. Don't worry, you guys are only going to suck for a few more weeks. Oh yeah, and don't forget to give the drummer a few breaks. That kid is killing himself over there while you other guys are literally twiddling your fingers and moving back and forth. At the end of every practice, it's smart for you guys to just make a habit of going through every song that you went through. Treat it like you're on stage or something like that, where you guys don't stop for mistakes. You just got to keep on going, chug through. You're probably going to be impressed by how much better you sound after doing that. I don't know, it's magic or something. OK, well, that train wreck is behind you now, and I'm assuming that none of you guys have either committed suicide or quit the band. Congratulations, you've made it a lot farther than most kids in your boots. A good goal to shoot for is one practice every week, which you're going to find as near impossible in the Facebook group chat. Everybody's going to start spouting off the ridiculous employment shifts, and you guys just need to figure out how to make it work. In the preceding practices, hopefully you guys include an element of songwriting. Here's a quick note. If you're watching this plan on starting a cover or a tribute band, I just want you to click off right now. I understand that nobody likes you. Bands like yours are trash. Tribute bands are a thing of the past. Cover bands take eyes away from groups to actually try, and they have this weird thing called dignity. Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about how real bands write music. There's two ways that people normally go about this. Number one, the guitarist normally says, hey guys, listen to this. And they play some riff they made up over the week. Everybody starts playing along and improvising. The vocalist makes up some of the worst lyrics you've ever heard in your life. Everybody goes home, they revise it, and when they come back, boom, you have a song. Pros of this method are is that you can write a lot of songs really quickly and a lot easier. The cons are that the songs rarely have dynamics and they sound a lot less inspired. Or number two, you go home, write full songs by yourself, and then you bring them to practice. Pros of this method are is that songs tend to have a lot more dynamics, more inspiration, and they feel a lot less scattered. The cons is teaching the band whatever's in your head in the first place and you end up babbling like a madman. There may also be creative differences with other members so, you know, it's also really important to practice at home as well. You wanna make sure that you're keeping up with the band and you don't get left behind. Okay, so once you have 30 minutes of material ready, it's time for you to start looking for your first gig. Generally, try to shoot for 25 minutes of original material and only one cover. Please, only one cover. If anybody wanted to listen to three Blink-182 songs in a row, they'd probably stay home and listen to Enema of the State or something like that. You gotta message smaller bars, restaurants, local venues, and see if they have any opening slots for your group. And by the way, don't even think about opening for a big signed band with 100,000 monthly listeners on Spotify your first go. You're more than likely going to be playing for an empty bar when you start off. With your band, it's generally smart to plan out some kind of wardrobe scheme. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, just ask everyone to stick to earth tones or something like that. This is a controversial statement, but I hear a lot of people saying that it's always smart to stay away from logos on stage too, although I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. You just do whatever you want. Oh, and here's something to remember. You're gonna suck. You're gonna be awful. Your band is gonna make fools of themselves on stage. This is gonna keep you up late at night for months and months, just thinking about how bad your first show was. It's okay, nobody is ready for their first gig. Take it with a grain of salt and treat it like learning experience. Oh yeah, I don't bring merch to your first gig, Moron. Nobody likes a band that royally blows up and sucks on stage, and then they have the audacity to ask them for money for the privilege of wearing the logo on their boobs. The first few months, you're gonna wanna play as many gigs as you can. Your first gig sucked, but your next few aren't. And once you get a feel for playing live, you'll seriously improve as a band and get your live performance sea legs ready. You will definitely improve with repeated shows. While you're opening for bigger bands than yourself, always watch on stage and see what they're doing that you aren't. Do the headlining bands have a tighter sound? Are they funny? Do they dress up? Take note to yourself and see what you can carry over to your sound to improve. Oh, and this also feeds into my next point. Think about your stage presence. Hearing live music is cool, but people came for a show, man. It's music as well as visuals. If your band is just standing around doing nothing, nobody's gonna remember you and your show's gonna be super boring. All right, here's a fantastic example. Here's a clip from 21 Pilots. Oh, okay. Okay, calm down. Listen, you can say whatever you want about 21 Pilots, but this is bigger than that, okay? Deleuzia? Come back, please. Come on, just listen to me, okay? So this clip is from 2011 when 21 Pilots was still underground. So they're playing at a high school during a CD release show with a relatively small crowd. Tyler Joseph relays some instructions to the crowd and preps them before they start their song. There's gonna be a point where you split down the middle again, I always want you to be a part of what we're doing. Not yet, I'll tell you what. Then one side's gonna sing something, you're gonna sing with Josh. The other side's gonna sing with me and we're gonna sing at each other. You're gonna crash back together and we're gonna go nuts. The key word is jump. What's the key word? Jump! So a few neat psychological things are happening right now. So the band is creating an expectation, a norm for the crowd that everyone is kind of expected to fall into. Nobody wants to be the odd man out so they're more likely to participate at risk of making it awkward. Oh shoot, I see we're trapped by societal convention. It's in the back of everyone's mind too, which causes them to build anticipation and dial into the song much more effectively. The band plays their song normally and everyone is magnetically fixated on them even though they're not doing anything crazy. Once they're nearing the end of the song, they have the audience participate in singing back and forth in a harmony. Josh's sign, on the right side, you're gonna sing this, he goes like this. Whoa! Whoa! My God, whoa, my side, we're going like this. Whoa! Tyler Joseph marches right into the middle of the crowd with nothing but a ladder and a flashlight in hand. He stands up, elevates himself atop of everybody, completely changing the dynamic of the show itself. He instructs everybody to participate with him in that moment. Like this! My God! Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! He turns on a flashlight, shines it in people's faces for cinematic effect and once momentum has reached a peak, he launches himself on top of everybody. The crowd loses it. He may actually hypnotize a whole crowd with just a ladder, a flashlight and a little bit of charisma. Again, say what you want about the quality of their music but as performers, the stuff is brilliant. Once you start getting creative and playing with your live shows and their dynamics, you're more than likely gonna start getting a local following. Once people start asking for merch, go ahead and make some. Go to a local print shop with a large original design and order bulk. Listen, it may be a lot of money upfront but the turnaround profits are spectacular and don't forget to make at least half of the order large. I found this out the hard way. Oh, and something else, don't play in dash. Show up at the beginning of the show and leave at the end unless it's a family emergency or something like that. In which case, you can congratulate all the other performers, give hugs, apologize profusely and then leave with your tail between your legs. There is nothing lamer than an opening band who stays only for their own set and then they leave. That is a fantastic way to lose friends and get kicked out of venues in the future. And to reiterate, please keep covers to a minimum and never ever under any circumstances do you cover smells like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. If any shady promoters happen to approach you and offer you a spot on a gig that you have to pay for, spit in their face and tell them to go away. Tell them that you have too much self-respect to pay them money for the privilege to play at their show that they are directly profiting from. Sounds atrocious, you're darn right, but this malpractice is rampant in smaller scenes, especially in the hip hop realm. So stay alert. When writing up set lists, keep dynamics of the songs in mind. Start the show off with a banger, keep momentum going for a little bit, slow things down so it doesn't become exhausting, throw in something unexpected, pick it up again and then end on your highest note. That's traditionally how it goes, but you'll find your own vibe as you continue performing. While you're playing gigs, why not hire a local photographer to take pictures of your set as well? You'll look coolest frick on your Facebook page and that will come in handy when you start looking for larger gigs down the road, like music festivals and whatnot and they want pictures. Okay, kid watching from home in their pajamas with their out of tune ukulele within reach, I'm gonna level with you. There's a good to fair chance that you're not gonna reach this phase. Most bands I see get stuck around the practice in first gig area, but if you're really gosh darn serious about this band thing, this is where things get tricky and sometimes stressful. There are much better in-depth YouTube tutorials on this specifically, so I'm just gonna keep it brief. Once your band has about 10 to 14 songs ready to go, play them, put a cell phone in the middle of your room and record demos. They don't need to sound pretty, they don't need to sound professional. They just need to get the basic vibe and structure the song down. If you wanna get fancy, you can use Pro Tools, Logic or even Audacity for nicer sounding recordings. This is a great time to ensure that everybody knows their parts inside and out. Now, save up money as a band, book studio time at a local establishment. Once you're there, you're gonna record drums and bass first, rhythm guitar, piano, synths and horns or whatever for the meats of the song. Lead elements like vocals and guitar and then finally you're gonna add like the weird quirks and flourishes or whatever at the end. Yeah, this is really bare bones but if you've reached the stage, you probably know what to do or you're friends with someone who does. You know, I'm not worried about this. Do not skimp out on cover art. A cell phone picture of an awful colored pencil rough draft will not cut it. You wanna get someone who actually knows a thing or two about Photoshop to design it for you. Pay them a little bit of money. If they do a good job, you're gonna be making the cash back anyway. When making announcements, make it a habit to always have a link for folks to go to. If you're announcing a show, add a link for an RSVP page. If you're announcing an album, link a song. Don't make hollow announcements and not have anything to back them up with. They will be buried and forgotten. Have a few local photographers get photos of you and your band looking serious or something. I don't know. All these pictures look the same. Try to do something different or whatever just so you don't look like these endless boring metal bands. Look up some famous music videos and take notes for when you wanna start making your own. You guys playing instruments in a weird spot just doesn't cut it anymore. Throw in some blood, throw in some costumes. Make it fun. God forbid you try. It's also important to get a consistent aesthetic for your band. Have your Facebook logo be the same as your Twitter logo be the same as your Instagram logo. Have a professionally designed logo that doesn't have this stupid, bloody cowboy font. I hate this. This is cancer for my eyes. Please make it stop. Finally, for bonus points, if you really wanna look professional, let the promo materials carry into your live shows. Is your CD cover a bunch of guys and gas masks or something? Why not walk on stage with gas masks and peel them off before you start? How about a few props to liven up the stage? A video intro. Think outside the box and set yourself apart from all these other bands you're playing with. I can't reiterate this enough. YouTube has all the information in the world at your fingertips. Use it to improve your instruments, your stage presence, media creations, anything at all. Do not sleep with fans. This never turns out well. There's also a really gross power dynamic that makes it icky and a big no-no, you know, this whole consent thing going on. Watch what you say on social media as well. Dumb stuff will always come back to bite you or even worse, appear on a Reddit thread and go viral. Lots of local venues and musicians check on what you're saying as well and you could end up on a blacklist if you or your bandmates are caught spouting off, I don't know, KKK propaganda or something like that and never be afraid to cut someone out of the band if they pose a PR nightmare. Your group's future is a lot more important than whatever dumb racist tangents the bass player may go on. Always push for all ages shows whenever possible. Bar shows are easy to get but they may alienate some of your most loyal fans. Support accessible venues and support your local music scene dog. If a record label happens to contact you, have a lawyer or legal friend look over everything and make sure that you're safe before you sign your life away. Make sure that you're in the clear and your material and rights aren't in danger. Oh, and speaking of which, pass up on major labels entirely. They're gross, they're bad. Stay independent and go with smaller labels with fewer groups that stick by their artists. Do tons of research with whoever you're considering signing with. They're more than likely gross and icky and have a banned Facebook account so that local booking agents can find you and contact you easily. And always have your links available. Spotify, Bandcamp, et cetera. They shouldn't be hard to find. There are way too many morons who don't take four seconds to add links to their stuff and they suffer in the long run because of it. And finally, have a dedicated banned email when you're messaging industry folks Throbbs and Caruso69420 at gmail.com is not gonna look nearly as professional as taking back Sunday at gmail.org. It's super simple, just do it. Okay, did you listen closely? Did you learn a thing or two? Just follow these instructions and you'll be playing in greasy dive bars full of stone teenagers in no time. And truth is, playing in a band is a lot lamer than it appears in movies and TV shows. Actually, performing gigs is a bit of a reality check for most people. As long as you're upfront with yourself and you understand that you're not gonna be arena rock gods or headline Bonnaroo or something like that, you're probably gonna have a little bit of fun. You're gonna make lots of friends, learn awesome social and management skills and you're gonna have a lot of cool stories until your nieces and nephews down the road. Approach this with the mindset of having fun and going on adventures and that's the best thing you can do. Keep your expectations in check and you just might go somewhere. So quit watching my garbage and pick up your ukulele, gosh darn it. Tune it for once, there's tons of free phone apps. Watch some tutorials, get going. You fail 100% of the things that you don't do. Kick butt, take names, make awesome music and stay spicy. I'll see you later. Also, lots of love to Ethanland. Gabby Taylor, Isis Happy Hour, Max Moore and my friend Sarah Jo Simper and Spencer Purcell for supporting me on my Patreon. Shout out to Otto Zagala, he's like 90% of my fan base and just some 13 year old kid from Australia and Harry Phillips who is paying me $15 a month so I can plug his channel. His Valentine's Day song is pretty, pretty cute. I buried it in the description somewhere. Go find it, plebs. Enjoy the end card, I worked so hard on it.