A great way to assess your guitar playing and take it to the next level is to get together with other players and jam or play music together. The most important part of stating a band is not being afraid to just get it going. Some guitar players are afraid that they aren’t good enough players to join a band but it’s just not true. The sooner you start the better as you’ll see how fun it is and discover what skills you’re missing to make noise sound like music.
At first you should play with everyone and anyone. Don’t worry about what age they are or if they are “cool” or not because you can learn from every single musician you play with and that’s the goal. Everyone has to grow as players to become well rounded musicians.
Your band can consist of as few or as many players as you want but there must be at least two players! A simple way to start is just with a guitarist and drummer but you’ll want to build on that very soon after you start. Adding a singer, a bass player, a keyboardist or a second guitarist will really give you a lot of extra ideas and add to the fun and creativity.
The first few rehearsals or jams will likely just sound like a bunch of noise and that’s fine. Before too long you’ll find the drummer trying out new beats and you’ll come up with guitar riffs that sort of match or sound good with the beat and this is where things really get fun and start to take off. This is how songs are created and some of the biggest and best bands and the world have come up with the best songs in exactly this manner.
You can either make songs up or work on cover songs that you’ve learned. You will likely form your first band with friends so you may have common groups that you listen to. Pick some tunes from those bands, learn them as best you can and try them out. They never sound perfect the first time through but if you keep at it, you’ll be surprised at how quickly your band gets good at them and who knows, pretty soon you might be ready to have your band play live to an audience and that’s where you really get to rock!
