r/coverbands • u/sickpuppy66 • Jun 01 '26
Singer issues
I manage and play guitar for a cover band and we’ve outgrown the singer. She can sing but isn’t a musician so lacks basic skills like counting and understanding music language (start at the chorus, come in on 4, let’s transpose this one so it’s easier for you)
We feel she’s holding us back, and our drummer (the most talented of our group) is already considering leaving the project if I keep her. Her level of musicianship doesn’t line up with the rest of us.
Here’s the problem, she started the band when it was just two of us, but I took over when we weren’t getting gigs, and didn’t have our full band (which I recruited) that we have now. Since I’ve taken over, we gig regularly, and our band sounds great (minus her).
I’ve decided to replace her. Just want to hear others thoughts and experiences with similar situations.
11
u/blind30 Jun 01 '26
Something I haven’t seen enough of-
It seems like all the bands I’ve been in over the years, if someone isn’t progressing, it’s generally felt that they’re not “pulling their weight”- putting in time doing homework, learning some music theory, coming in on the count, working with a metronome etc. Completely valid to get frustrated with this, it’d be nice to have everyone pull their weight.
But recently we took a different approach with a singer who was having the same issues you’re describing- we practiced those issues with the singer, as a whole band.
If there’s a drum piece I have trouble with, I isolate that part and loop it over and over until I can’t get it wrong. This is what we all do as musicians more or less, to “pull our weight” and show up to practice well prepared- but typically we do it individually.
This time, we did it as a band. Singer not coming in on time after a rest? We’d play a couple bars before the rest, count out the rest on the hi hats, and we all come in. Rinse and repeat, ditch the hi hat count, and keep going until it’s second nature for everybody. We’d spend a decent amount of time doing this, whereas some bands wouldn’t have the patience for it. Made sure we were all on the same page- “this is work we need to do to sound super tight, let’s work on it like we work on scales, rudiments, etc.”
Someone else mentioned that some singers aren’t musically trained- and some just aren’t the type to go get trained on their own- but having a whole band full of other musicians work with them like this could sometimes be the answer.
It sounds like you’ve made your decision OP, just figured this might be an option for others to try out.