Open Band Leading

• Logistics: Logistics information and payment info is available here on our band welcome page.

• Leading:

  • Your role is to make the band sound like something. Think of them as an instrument. You have so many more options with fifteen people than you do with a trio, but you have to give them directions.
  • Call moods, chords, hits, give solos, give things to sections, conduct!
  • Being cheesy and over the top is fine, it's an open band, no one has a serious musician reputation to maintain.
  • If you just play your instrument and try and sound great, the band will be boring. Don't do that.
  • More on leading: Jeff's advice, more.

• Anchor musicians:

  • Generally open bands go best when there's at least one strong rhythm musician and one strong melody musician.
  • Often that means the bandleader will anchor rhythm/melody and we'll book another anchor musician for the other, but we're opening to having two anchors if you feel like that would let you concentrate more on leading.
  • Typically the leader chooses an anchor they like working with, but if you would rather we could find an anchor for you.

• Tunes:

  • We have a tune list (bidadance.org/open-band-tune-list) and generally expect to play all those tunes plus a few others picked on the fly.
  • Try to pick repertoire tunes. It's ok if not everyone knows them, but if someone works up a tune to play in the open band it's much better if that's then a tune that they'll get to play with other people.
  • We would like to update our tune list soon - if there's a repertoire tune you were especially wishing was on the list, please let us know which tune you'd like added.