5 Key Things That I’ve Learnt from Youth Band Leader Sessions by Dan Tween (Youth Band Leader on Base Studios’ The Junction project)
Helping the young musicians of today move forward in the ever-expanding music industry is a great joy and also enables us to make an everlasting impact upon them. I only wish that I had the opportunity that these brilliant and bright young individuals have when I was growing up. Someone to tell me where I might be going wrong and to help guide me.
1. Listen to Every Member: When working with a group of young individuals that have never worked with each other or even worked in this type of environment before, it is important to remember that each individual is going to have different ideas in mind, different aspirations and goals as to what they want to achieve from the project. At first I had gone into the session thinking it would be easy to tell them which songs to play, which would be relevant to their set and would make them stand out, but there is a point in which you have to stand back and let them make this decision and guide them from when their decision is made. Maybe ask the question of “Why they’ve picked that song?” or “Do they think that genre will work in their band”? It’s always safe to be sure that everyone is comfortable with the decision. If the singer is not happy playing this song because it’s too high for them, these thoughts need to be heard as it could prevent the singer from damaging their voice. This could then be resolved with a simple key change. Listen to each member and guide them through the process.
2. Use Personal Experience as examples. As a working musician, I found it incredibly useful to tell the group stories of different occasions that had occurred either during the week or even as far back as 5 years ago. Making your stories relevant to what they’re talking about, i.e.; Someone in the band was talking about forgetting lyrics on stage and I had told them what I had done when I had to commit 10 songs to memory in 2 days. I had appointed moves to certain lyrics which jogged my memory within the track. They thought it was funny and did exactly that, and did not forget the lyrics.
3. Give Them Space - Depending on the type of group that you are given to work with, I found it extremely healthy to give them space. It was great to start the session off with them, help make sure they’ve plugged themselves in correctly and that they have all the materials that they need. But then, once you’re 40 minutes in, give them 10-20minutes to themselves as you’ll find they’ll start doing things they wouldn’t do with someone staring at them. They’ll open up a bit more, bringing new ideas to the table.
4. Find the Middle Ground with the Group – When first getting your band together on deciding a genre they want to play but everybody feels like they all like different types of music, get them to voice the last 5 bands or artists that they listened to. If you were to imagine a bubble chart, place each band inside a bubble and you’ll see that once they’ve all been voiced, there’ll be a crossover and it’s a great starting point for your band.
5. Encouragement is Key - We all have to start somewhere and although it is so easy to get wrapped up in the desire of sounding like you’re at Wembley stadium, at this stage in the game it’s tough to make that happen. So, if you perform a gig and you by chance don’t have the best sound (be it due to an amp or to the sound engineer), try to not let this hinder you. If you go out there and give it everything you’ve got, the crowd won’t notice the sound, they’ll just see an awesome band smashing it on stage. Encourage your band to be the best they can be on stage and most importantly, to enjoy it!