One of my bands Them As Well needed to replace it's rhythm guitarist, so started up auditions for them. This is a story about one of the auditions as sent to my mate the night after.
The Guitar Hero (Events occur in September 2010)
Today I was auditioning a guitarist for a band who had a gig in 3 weeks.
Basically I needed someone who knew their shit. I've got chord sheets
written out. He was not available for full band practice, so I arranged
with him to check him out, just us two tonight.
Anyways when he
arrives I'm like, "what guitar you got?" and he's "yeah got a Squire,
used to have a Les Paul but I had to sell it", I go "wow that change
from humbuckers to single coil is interesting", he goes "huh? what? I've
got humbuckers in this baby!". Of course when his guitar comes out it's
just stock Squire stuff :P
So I bring out the chord sheets and
he says "I can't read music". I go "that's ok, I can't either, these are
just chord sheets", he says some stuff about learning from youtube,
basically he's "monkey see, monkey do" (his words not mine). His
technique is shit. He can only up-pick and is out of time. It takes
about 15 mins to explain a 4 chord song to him. I don't know whether his
guitar is in tune or not because he always hits the wrong notes. I ask
him "is your guitar in tune?". He goes "well it was in tune when I left
the house". :P
Now, I thought this guy may have the chance of
being good, so I arranged for my bassist to come over. I originally
thought that we'd get 3 easy songs down, then try them out as us 3.
So
we're "attempting" to jam out the songs, it's not going well. I'm like,
"have a solo dude!" and he cranks out really random notes. If it was a
scale, I'd say it was the "accidental" scale. He seemed to catch on to
the random times when he came in key though. He didn't like being loud,
so it was hard to hear him. Whenever I turned the volume on his amp up,
he'd turn the guitar down. Obviously a sign of someone who is not
confident in themselves, or doesn't really like the sound coming out of
the amp. I'd like to think both.
Near the end (my bassist was suppressing his laughter/hate for me for bringing him out) I suggested we
play a 12 bar blues with me on drums. My point was to make him really
hear himself, and perhaps realise that he wasn't that great. Bass starts
off, I join in with bass, guitar goes on some tangent, a lot faster
than the beat, not really knowing what he was doing. He had a solo with
that song too, it wasn't very fun.
And you know, that's a real
pity. Cause he was a nice guy and really keen. All he needed to do was
play the chords. But he doesn't know chords so fuck that.
