General Music Chat

I tried this service for a month and I am underwhelmed. I'm an older guy but plays out regularly. Very few players are not age prejudiced.
I understand when it's metal or punk, but I have contacted several bands that would be a good fit and not one responded.
I am an excellent player and my appearance would not emabarrass anyone. What kills me is that the players that have an "image" issue all look terrible.
I got a contact from some jerk early on who made fun of me because I did a little name dropping. I have two choices. I do a little name dropping and pare down the ridiculous offers, or I advertise with a standard approach and get every idiot in town contacting me who didn't bother to read my ad, and therefore offer me postions in totally inappropriate situations.
There is a lot of metal. There are a lot of Christian bands.
Man, I'm in the wrong town. Milwaukee. Lived here for a year and it's like pulling teeth to find reliable and interesting bands that can work.
Using this service has not provided any help in my quest to find good players. As I talk to friends about this site, the attitude is that it is a joke and no more uselful than craigslist or milwaukeerocks.com.
I'm stuck in B F Egypt.

My experience has been that websites like Bandmix aren't very useful to musicians looking for bands/work simply because the vast majority of musicians in a given local area do not even know about the existence of such web sites. They aren't utilizing the web at all; they just don't know.

For instance - our current bass player doesn't even know how to use a computer. His wife uses it for e-mail. There are more people like that than you might suspect.

Bandmix, and other websites like it, are going to be a lot more useful in a few years as more and more people go online. The web isn't as ubiquitous as people think it is. In smaller areas, rural areas, people still aren't figuring it out yet.

In our local area, for instance, most people don't even know about Craigslist. Bandmix is completely off their radar. We recently had to find a replacement bassist, and I got far more response from putting an advertisement in the local classifieds/moneysaver than I did putting anything on the web.

That said - our band did get formed because of this site. Our drummer contacted me through Bandmix and we got the ball rolling.

But I think if you join a site like this, the value is in the community. Not so much in forming/finding bands, but in picking each others brains. In the future, as more people discover the web and make it a part of their daily lives, I think Bandmix will be able to fill that role, but it's a few years away still.

If you want to recruit or be recruited you need to go to where the players are; go to the local clubs and start talking to the local musicians face to face. They will know who is looking and lead you in the right direction.

I have only had a couple of bum offers for gigs and predator's looking for desperate artist's here.
However I visit the forum daily and there is a lot of help for musicians in the form of advise from other artist's and networking.
I don't think it's this or any other site that is the problem; there just aren't many gigs for full time or even weekend musician's in "any" city anymore. The only act's that do make money seem to be classic rock cover bands and country act's. Therefore "it seems" that mostly the sites are filled with weekend warriors who do it just for fun or love of playing. The days of many successful local bands seems to be over for the moment!

www.myspace.com/blunderingeye
www.myspace.com/445175001
http://ezfolk.com/audio/bands/6039/

"my dog is a bitch"

you are so right on ColorsFade, I didn't even know how to turn a computer on untill 2 years ago. My Wife spoiled me and did all the computer stuff for me, then I got this really cool job at a major university and I had to learn how to use one, man these things are like crack! about six months ago my computer here at work broke down and I had to take it over to the I.T. department well they kept it for about a week you talk about whimpering and sniveling oh I was heart broken. WHAT NO COMPUTER! My wife sure got a kick out of it she was laughing so hard.

A computer is like a girlfriend. You don't realize how much they mean to you until they go down on you.

A computer is like a girlfriend. You don't realize how much they mean to you until they go down on you.

Good One Man


This is more of an info site and humor and just bulling with other musicians.

Over the last yr and a half I have met about 6 folks from this site. I played with one guy for a few monthes. We never got the thing rolling.

Lighten up and have fun.

A couple of yrs ago I had a lot of calls from craigslist, and dude if youve done all the playing you said, you know how to get with musicians. Its out there whereever they are playing or music stores.

Good Luck and Welcome

Yeah, the tried & true methods are still the best - music stores & teachers, open mics, stealing musicians from other bands by going to their gigs & chatting them up, theaters & instrument repair shops...still, this is a fun place to hang & bitch about everything.

Welcome to the forum.

I've gotten some quality responses from Bandmix, some from Craig'sList, a good one from Musician Forest, a few weird ones from Backpage.com, and I know a lot of musicians. Bandmix is just one tool among many. Its usefulness for me is this forum. I enjoy it and have gotten a lot of useful information here. IMO you can get the best value by being a paid membership here. You'll regularly receive e-mail notifications of new Bandmix members in your area and you can contact and be contacted by other Bandmix members. There are many free or nearly free methods to find musicians. Tell everybody you know or meet that you are looking for musicians. Most everybody knows a musician. I found the best drummer I ever played with talking with a total stranger. Go to jam sessions. Go and see other bands who perform the genre of music you like. Talk to the band members between sets or after their show and introduce yourself. Some of the band members may have time to play with you and/or are unhappy with the band they are in. Also virtually every musician knows other musicians. In other words NETWORK. Just joining various websites may not be enough to get the job done. Good luck...