There is no I in team...but there is a Me
The line above is meant to be a joke, but some performing situations can quickly break down to that sort of mentality. The true essence of teamwork is that everyone works together to do something bigger than they could do alone. It is where people attempt to put away their egos in an effort to reach something together. It also means that sometimes you will need to compromise and maybe do something that you would rather not.
Most bands will be stocked with talented people. But the difference between good bands and great bands is generally if all the members are able to work together towards a common goal.
A great illustration of that for me was when I was growing up as a runner. The number one team in the region was a team of about 10 guys who were all quite fast, but they took turns winning local races, as they would run as a group and alternating who would win the race. Now for the big races there was going to be a fastest runner, but by taking turns winning races and running as a team it built up the whole team, and in the end allowed them all to do better, and be a stronger team.
Sports and music are very much alike in that manner. If everybody on your team is looking out for the good of the group, your group will be amazing. If everyone is looking out only for themselves than the performance will obviously suffer.
A lot of playing together as a team comes down to paying attention to what your role is in a particular musical situation. You have to recognize if you have the melody or the focus point (solo) or are you accompanying and play in that manner. Another problem that people get stuck in is that they think the learning is done once they learn their own part and are able to perform it well with the band. However, this is only a middle stage of development, which means that you need to move through it to play at the next level. For instance, when you are first starting out you need to place all of your focus on what you are doing, then as you develop you are able to focus on more things at once beside just yourself.
A Step-by-Step list of the process might look like this:
Step 1 Perform your part alone
Step 2 Performing your part with the group, but only being able to listen to your part
Step 3 Performing your part with the group, and noticing how it interacts with the other parts
Step 4 Performing your part with the group, and using your part, interacting with the other players using volume, articulation, and intensity as a means of communication.
Many players make the mistake of thinking that Step 2 is the final stage, but as you can see there is much more to go. These are also the people who are perpetually bored doing the same thing over and over, which makes sense because that is all they are paying attention to. The good news is that the higher step that you are at the more exciting the performance becomes, because each time you perform the same song it could be different. By the time you reach Step 3 you are starting to play as a band, and when all of the players are at Step 4 you are probably playing with one of the best musicians around, as so few people do it.
There are two main types of reasons that bands don’t mesh well. The first type to be discussed can be categorized as unintentional. This generally consists of people not listening to what is going on. This generally happens when someone just decides to do their own thing without thinking about how it affects others in the group. This occurs typically when someone is bored with what they are playing and trying to amuse themselves or just not at the level yet where they can focus on more than one thing at a time. It typically shows up as the addition of some random technique (musical or physical) and it has no relation to the music at the current time.
The important thing to remember is that the intent isn’t to intentionally make the song sound bad or affect anyone else. Once people realize how their playing affects everyone, this type problem goes away.
The second main type of reason is intentional. These are tougher to solve because generally they are only a symptom of a larger problem, mostly based on personal relationship issues within the band. These can range from musical based arguments, for example, between the bass player and drummer as to where they want to place the beat. Or it can be a personal argument between players off the bandstand that shows itself on the bandstand. The former needs to be solved by either a third party or compromise, and the latter is just an example of a lack of professionalism. The tough part is that the result is the same in either situation, the band gets divided, and the performance suffers because of it.
The benefits of working together far outweigh the benefits of trying to work alone, and in the end, everyone looks better. By the way, the running team went on to be the fastest team in the State of New York, which is impressive on its own, but especially because the school was a public school that typically graduated around 85 students a year.
Make sure to check back for the Final T of the 5 T’s for getting more gigs. It is the most obvious but the most frequently overlooked…
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