(This is an entry from my book, ‘The Useful Musician’, available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions)
WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:
You create a higher probability the song will come off well.
WHAT TO DO: Listen to the song in your head and imagine what it will sound like given the players you’ll be working with. A really busy acoustic strumming part might be just the thing to bring, but only if the rest of the band can support it and leave room for it. If you know the players, you might already know how it will go, and if you don’t know them, you really don’t know the answer at all. You need options.
There might be a really great bass part that you’ve either copied from the recording, or that you thought up yourself, but if the drummer can’t lock in with it, you’re wasting your time and inviting frustration. Bring the cool thing you can do, but have a couple of other approaches in your back pocket.
Examples:
Drums: Bring that funky beat with the little anticipated accents, but have a solid, good-feeling 2 & 4 beat you know will work as well.
Bass: A bass line that weaves and moves through the song, covering not only root tones but utilizing thirds and fifths as well—that might be great, but be ready with a simpler approach using more root tones and less movement.
Acoustic Guitar: Bring a capo chart (I talk about this elsewhere) so you can pull out various licks and tricks you know in various keys. Work something out that plays farther up the neck as well. It might be cool for one verse or one chorus. You could even snap a capo on quick for one verse and play something interesting, pulling it off again for the rest of the song.
Electric Guitar: Keep that chugging palm-muted part ready, but find a place on the neck you can play longer tones in case that doesn’t fit.
Keys: Be ready to play in the middle of the piano (a full, strong sound), but bring little arpeggios you can play an octave higher in case the guitars fill up the middle and leave you no room.
Everybody: Definitely steal cool ideas from the recording. Just don’t marry them.
THOUGHTS:
The song you’re attempting with a group of people will likely go together only one or two ways. Most players are just not terribly versatile, so they’re probably going to play what they’re going to play. They’ll have something they do that’s strong, but when they do that, it might change the way the rest of the band has to play.
At The Big Church, I had a drummer with really, really good hands, but he could only play whatever just…came out of his hands. He couldn’t stick to a kick drum pattern, or any pattern for that matter. He never played anything quite the same way twice. But what he could play was usually pretty good. So at Wednesday night rehearsals I would have a couple of things in mind, and then I’d say, “Let’s just play this song through one time to get used to it.” (I didn’t always do that, but with this guy, I needed to) While we were playing, I’d listen to his drum part. Usually what he played the first time was basically what I was gonna get. After that first run through I’d start pointing the other instruments in a direction that worked with the drums.
Had everybody played what was on the recording, that might not have worked with the drum part he brought to the song. I’m not sure anyone was aware I was doing this, but doing it always made the songs work better. In this case I was bringing the options for the other players, but the effect was the same.
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