Originally Posted by: maggiorIs your bassist suggesting songs? Something you could try is having each of you write down a list of 3 songs you'd like to play together in a band. Take into consideration your skill levels so they are reasonable. Perhaps you could allow one veto, but once a song is chosen to replace the vetoed song, that's it!!

You may hate the songs the bass player chose or think they are boring as heck...or way beyond you abilities. Forget all that...try them out with a positive attitude. You may be surprised at what you can do with them and you may find yourself finding something about the song that you like.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, the Bassist has suggested two songs, both of which have extremely simple Guitar-parts (as in, the Rhythm Guitar is just playing 8th notes all the way through, and the lead-guitar solo on one of the songs is amongst one of the least exciting solos I've heard in a long time... The other song doesn't even have a solo!). I'm not quite sure what you mean by allowing one veto, though. I've suggested practically every song I like that I believe is within our grasp, but apparently, there's a major genre-gap here... His suggestions border on modern Punk Rock, mine are a wide array of different styles. There's a lot of Classic Rock, a bit of newer Riff-based Rock, some "Heavy Rock", a little Hair Metal... Lots of stuff to choose from. But apparently my list of over 50 suggested songs doesn't match up with what he wants to play.

[QUOTE=maggior]I had a very similar situation and I was shooting suggestions down left and right...and having mine shot down too. I shot them down for a variety of reasons: they were too hard for me to play, I didn't think an audience would want to hear the song, I didn't like the song, etc.

However, I've changed my stance with this and it's worked out for the best. When Whole Lotta Love was suggested, my immediate reaction was to say "no way...too hard for me, probably too hard for our drummer, interlude too hard to replicate". However, I took a deep breathe and said "OK, I'll check it out". The drummer can decide if it's too hard or not...who am I to make that judgement.

So I found some youtube videos and thought "hmmm, OK, maybe...". After a couple of nights working on the solos, I could play them either exact or VERY close...close enough that an audience wouldn't even notice the difference I think. The main riff was easy enough. And our drummer has pretty much worked out the groove. With some more practice, we'll be able to get it down. I may even be able to get the solos down exact...but the pressure is off in the meantime that I have something in my pocket that is "good enough!".

So basically, it has to be some give and take. If the bass player can't even give you a list of 3 songs, well then you have another problem that I'm not sure you can fix...

Well, technically, the Bassist has given me a list of 3 songs, the first of which was before we met first time, and I accepted the first song he suggested because, let's face it, "Summer Of 69" is still a fairly popular song in Denmark, and it still gets more than enough airplay on some radio-stations, and some local bands occasionally tend to throw it into their shows when they need to play longer gigs than they have originals for. Then, he's suggested two other songs for next time, both of which I'm highly sceptical about (one of them involves Arpeggio-based verses and I usually take months of practice just to play simple arpeggios properly without screwing up), and the other is borderline Punk Rock, which I'm just not into (I did try playing that song, but it quickly lost my interest).

Right now, the plan seems to be that we'll be jamming again this weekend, but I haven't heard from him in a few days again now, so I'm not quite sure about anything anymore... If I don't hear from him soon, I'm going to find another, less unreliable bassist. I've already got a bunch of goals and I need a band to accomplish one of my short-term goals (it may sound like I'm rushing it again, I know, but it's not wrong to hope to be able to play a gig with a full band in a year or two, is it?). I'm starting to get past my primary hurdle of getting a cramped-up thumb after playing Barre Chords for a few minutes, so I'd say the future is looking slightly brighter :) There's still some problems with switching between the A Major shape and the others, but that's just a matter of practicing the chord-changes and optimizing how I fret the A Major shape... And then there's the issue of tonal clarity on the E Minor shape, since my index finger mutes the G string instead of fretting it properly...