Your bandmates hear things you don’t

If you're the songwriter with some ideas for your song's arrangement, you might not notice everything on your own.

Let’s say you've got the melody down. Now it's time to get together with your band. You've got two guitars, a bass, and drums. Even though you could play any of those instruments, you're probably the rhythm guitarist since songwriters usually hold that role.

You've created a solid melody and good lyrics. Now you need to decide on the arrangement and parts for each instrument. Some might argue that you can't come up with good arrangements alone in your room, but that ain’t necessarily true. On other hand, you've got a band, right?

You might think the band just follows your lead completely. After all, arrangers usually work on the arrangements alone and write out parts for everyone. In bands though, people might not write anything down at all, or maybe just jot down a few chord ideas before rehearsal.

When bands work together, the process is more organic and things go better when everyone meets for practice. But if band members only focus on their parts and don't understand collective skills, they will just concentrate on what they play in each section instead of how they play it together with the rest of the band.

This approach doesn't work well because, when playing together, everyone should be thinking about the song as a whole. By now, you should have already practiced how to play riffs, chords, arpeggios, pads, or bass lines on your own. Once that's understood, the next step is to think about how to enhance the song.

You need skills that help make the melody stand out and improve the song's sound. Sometimes this means playing more simply in certain sections or adjusting your part if another instrument is more active. It's like a sports team working together—each player needs to contribute to make the team better.

When we talk about sports, let's take basketball as an example. The game has a clear goal: score more points. Each team has five players, and each player needs individual skills like dribbling, shooting, free throws, layups, and fast breaks.

You have to learn how to handle the ball and run independently. But there are collective skills you can't learn alone. You can't pass the ball or defend by yourself. These skills require practicing with other players on the court.

Similarly, in music, the goal is the song. Think of a song like the game. The main goal is for the lyrics and melody to stand out. Everything else supports the melody and lyrics.

No matter how well or poorly you play, everyone works towards making the song better. So you need to figure out where you fit into that big picture and how you can contribute.

So, keeping all that in mind, you can definitely have everything related to the arrangement. You might have a close-to-final idea or just a rough sketch, but if your bandmates understand that this is a team effort to make the song sound better, it'll be easier. Everyone needs to be clear on their roles and how they contribute to the collective sound of the song.

You could bring your arrangement idea to rehearsal and present it. Even playing a simple recording takes just a few minutes. You might only have ideas for a verse and a chorus, and that's okay. Your bandmates can help develop it further because everyone has different ideas and backgrounds.

Often, we get stuck trying to find all the solutions ourselves when it's better to come with open questions and trust your bandmates. This way, you’ll usually end up finding ideas you would’ve never found alone.

L. D. Bonilla

The Band Coach Method