Auditioning singers policy?

[Skipped]

I am out of the loop nowadays so should not really be commenting.
But I am going to anyway. Ha ha.
You kids nowadays have no idea. Back in the day I would pester my workmakes, friends. family, to "give it a go" and maybe join the band at a later point. Nobody interested - nothing. And now......... it is impossible to shut people up.
I would somehow want to take advantage of this by spending a weekend seeing everybody including the novices. All the possibles then get a grilling to see if they have any clue what is actually involved.
The possibility, simply because of the choice available, of finding someone with attitude, maybe even a voice, and "something". Especially if the band is writing material.
As has been said - your singer is pretty important. The Doors were not that great as a band were they??

[stratcat]

Sometimes it's not the singers 'ability' per se. Ok being in tune is a given but there are some very unorthodox singers out there who might not come across as 'great' singers but who have personality and musicality and importantly the determination to see it through.

Personally I'd rather take on someone who was a little under par and hungry for the gig and prepared to improve than someone who is great and 'knows it'.

These things don't show themselves in a twenty second demo and will only show themselves in a face to face. I'd audition everyone.

[tonyteech02]

Some things I as a singer, would want to know - what vocal range do you want. What keys are you playing in - what tempi - what genre of music. How many songs do I have to learn, how much do you want me to jam. If your potential singer is not asking these and similar questions such IS THERE ANY MONEY FOR ME IN THIS then they are beginnners. People having a go is fine, attitude fine, doing two one hour sets with lots of vocals potentially vocally destructive. Also are we assuming its a bloke you want

[guitarfishbay]

Well I've got us to half the 'good singer' audition time to 45 mins, but nobody else wants to drop the clip requirement. We'll just re audition if we get a good vibe which is fine by me. I'm still not convinced a 10-20 minute slot is worth travelling for but maybe I'm being over considerate of other people's time.

Most of me agrees that no clip thing weeds out the non serious (I know no gigging singers my age without clips) but part of me does wonder. I guess these things take time and we'll know when we've got the right person.

Re: singer being a founding member sadly that didn't work out. I knew a guy I really wanted to work with but sadly he's shifting off abroad permanently later this year. We've been headhunting and bugging friends too but nothing has worked out yet.

Cheers for the discussion so far guys

[erictheweary]

I think good singers tend to know they are good singers and, to echo Tony, they will be hiring you.As stratcat said it isn't by any means all about the ability to sing - there is personality, ideas, ability as a front person and some other stuff. It isn't hard to think of singers who are commercially successful or even quite interesting vocalists who aren't technically good singers who a clip recorded on a mobile phone would not do justice to.

Given how few responses ads for singers often get maybe you need to go that extra mile to find a diamond in the rough - that really good, confident singer with strong songwriting abilities may well be doing something else already.

[welly_59]

I've found joinmyband full of time wasters tbh. Do you go to any open mic nights or go watch local bands? You could always approach someone in these situations

[guitarfishbay]

I've found joinmyband full of time wasters tbh. Do you go to any open mic nights or go watch local bands? You could always approach someone in these situations

Definitely a lot of time wasters copy and pasting stock messages to all bands, we had one awesome vocalist (from a previous touring band) send what seemed like a positive message (with clips!) but when we contacted him within an hour of receiving the message we never heard back, and we sent a second message later too. On further read the message was very generic 'hey like the clips, like your influences' etc, and now I'm pretty sure it is a copy paste spam job like many other messages we receive.

One guy sent us a message containing complaints about how nobody on JMB is replying to him, so we replied and he never got back to us. Oh well, at least it is cheap to feature adverts (£4.25 for 2 weeks). Gumtree costs more but gets us less replies, and not one single person we've replied to on there has given us a second message back.

I have been approaching a few people from open mic nights or other bands but nobody we've wanted has been interested yet. I've been bugging all my friends for old contacts but again nothing suitable so far.

I haven't been to an open mic night in a few weeks though, might be worth it for us to have a band night out.

The ironic thing is that I know and still occasionally work with a few great singers as an amateur producer, but they're unsuitable for this band as they have soft folk/'pop' voices and we need someone who won't sound out of place in a rock band (and more importantly would enjoy being in one). They're just people I've met when not looking, and of course sod's law is that now I'm actually looking I can't find anyone who fits and wants to be in the band.

I've actually been asked to play live acoustic guitar for one of the folk singers, which I think I'll do but I know how busy she is in her personal and work life so I doubt it will be a regular gig. My no 1 choice though is to get this rock band going, other stuff would just be a side project as far as my priorities go at this time.

It will happen, it will just take time.

[thereformant]

I think good singers tend to know they are good singers and, to echo Tony, they will be hiring you.

I dunno, prob depends on the genre a bit.

[tonyteech02]

Best of luck with your search. However if I have a great rock voice. I can make money doing covers in a function band or similar and will probably be bored out of my brain but will make some dosh. Karaoke nights in pubs - open mics - talent shows - amdrams etc may yield some interesting voices. Whether they can jam is another matter.

[bochetagrave]

Fuckin' singers - I shit 'em..!