12 Ways To Make Your Music Pants

Lou Reed's 'Metal Music Machine' sucked, but it was meant to!

So, following on from my recent post about the things bands do to make themselves feel they're getting somewhere (bless 'em!), I'd like now to wax lyrical about the things they do that actually make their music suck!

To start though, a little diversion...

A friend of mine manages one of the biggest bands to come out of Manchester in the 90s (I'm not mentioning any names!). This 'man-in-the-know' once recounted to me that he had witnessed a young band starting to create that ubiquitous 'buzz' in the Manchester scene. Word got out that these lads were good, they had an incredible stage show, they really pushed the boundaries. But most enticing of all, they were mysteriously unidentifiable; they wore masks on stage, they didn't have an online presence, they couldn't be contacted. Wow, radical!

Don't ask me how, but word of this great new band (dare I say it, this 'next-big-thing' ) got down to the dollar-heads in the big smoke. Suited execs started jostling each other in bars, racing to Euston whilst clutching their promises of stardom (and its associated biased percentages). They stormed into Manchester to seek out this new thing, this amazing phenomenon hailing from the home of some of the biggest bands in the world.

'So, what happened?', I asked my friend, 'did they make it big?'

'No,' he said, 'it turned out their music was just shit!'

All the hype in the world, all the gimmicks in the world, all the subtle marketing techniques in the world, even all the best contacts in the music bizz that you can nurture, can't help you if your music is pants!

And that brings me to the subject of this post. Who decides whether certain music is pants? You, the band? The music execs? Surely, your fans have a say (if you have any). Sometimes, even you know it's pants, right? And if you're happy with that, and are just having a great time anyway, then I salute you. You'll go far! Well, you won't, but who cares!

But, there are a whole bunch of things that can make your music pants, even if you're confident you do have some fans, and even if you can't admit it to yourself that you suck! So, here's a tongue-in-cheek list of the things many bands do (but not yours of course!) that make their music pants...

1. Buy the cheapest possible equipment, and enough FX boxes to mean you don't actually have to learn to play your instrument at all. Hold on, that was point 10 in 15 Ways To Make Your Band Believe They Are Going Somewhere. Oh well, it must be true...
2. Just write badly. Don't worry about melody, harmony, song structure, key, time signature or tempo or anything like that. You're not in the bloody London Philharmonic for Chrissakes! What the hell is a 'coda' anyway?

3. Keep it simple because you can't expect the public (or indeed yourself) to appreciate, let alone understand, complex musical concepts or experimentation. Under no circumstances attempt a 'tierce de picardie' or 'parallel key modulation' - even if you pull it off you'll still look like a pretentious prat!

4. Just play badly. Don't worry about timing, tightness, tuning, separation or any of those things that so-called 'sound engineers' or (God forbid) 'musicians' harp on about. Just turn it up and move about more... no one will notice!

5. Sound exactly like Oasis, only worse. (In fact, you can substitute any band name here.) It's been done already. We aren't going to fall for it again...

6. Sound exactly different to Oasis, only worse, when in fact you meant to sound exactly like Oasis. Or whoever. There's nothing worse than a bad rendition of something bad!

7. Churn out the same garbage as everyone else. Seriously, the band that were on before you at the gig last night? They were you! In fact, the band on after you? They were you too! So were the headliners! Yawn...

8. Churn out something different to everyone else, but make it garbage anyway. Honestly, do you think adding a trombone solo to that dark metal/ambient trance mash-up section really works? If people are frowning, it's not a good sign, believe me...

9. Get your mate Stu to record your band in his 'home studio' (only you'll have to wait till his Mum's washing has finished its spin cycle), using a couple of battered SM58s, and the free recording software that came with his sister's Toys-R-Us Karaoke set.

10. Get your mate Stu's mate, Ste, to mix your band's recordings for you, using that industry standard production package he got off the back of a packet of Cheerios. Oh, and use some free VSTs too, to really liven up that high end. Not!

11. Get your mate Stu's other mate, Bob, to master your band's tracks, not by subtly playing with the 3D space, the frequency domain, the dynamical content, the nuances of the ambience etc., but just by turning it up so loud the waveform looks like a bar of Cadbury's Bourneville.

12. On no account should you actually compare the quality of your freshly-minted EP to that of a commercially successful band, especially not the band you're trying to sound exactly like, only worse. Hell no, just bang it out there! They'll love it!

Next, try out More Ways To Make Your Band Believe They Are Going Somewhere!

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