While perhaps not common knowledge, it is a fact that playing music in an ensemble format is one of the best ways to facilitate instrumental development and musicality. This would easily explain why band programs in schools have been (or at least used to be) a staple in our school systems curriculum. The experience of playing together with others is second to none when it comes to expanding your own abilities on your instrument. Beyond that fact, it's just plain fun.
Years ago, when this blogger was a teen (like 40+ years ago yikes) it was common place to form a garage band with your buddies to do your best to either just play for fun or possibly become the next big thing in the music world. Either way, it was easy to do back then, in a time of much less demanding extra-curricular activities and lives that were more centred around communities and homes. Fast forward 40+ years and we can all agree that a lot has changed and for so many reasons (maybe another blog post) getting together to form and play in a garage band is not happening nearly as much as it used to.
Enter our Rock Band Experience program. Over a decade ago, we recognized that there were essentially 3 main barriers standing in the way of forming a recreational or serious band. First, finding a place to rehearse was hard. Back in the day, you and your buddies lived 2 blocks from one another. Today, a modern school and thus friends can come from all over the city making getting together with your buddies a lot more challenging. If you could get everyone together you needed a house (or garage) that could accommodate the rehearsal. This brings us to the second barrier, equipment. It requires a lot of gear to hold a rehearsal and it really needs to live in one spot and stay set up to be practical. Third issue is guidance. While YouTube can teach us SOOO much these days, it can't run a rehearsal and help your band learn the art of playing together. Lastly, if you manage to get all of these other things organized, you still need a place to ultimately play. These days, the old style "Rock Bar" is a thing of the past. Finding a place to play is almost impossible and if you can find a place it is usually with 5 other bands in a spot far from your home making it hard to get friends and family out to see you play.
With all of this in mind, we developed the Rock Band Experience program, simply referred to at Kaos Music as "Rock Band". It's a simple but great program. People sign up and we put them into 3-4 person bands with one of our staff as the coach. These bands get together weekly to rehearse at a local rehearsal space which is fully equipped with equipment so you just need to show up and play. Our coach guides the band through the process of learning 4-5 songs over a 10-12 week period all in preparation for our full hosted Rock Band Showcase that is held at a (one of the last) local "Rock Bar" called the Rock Pile. We rent the entire bar for the night. Each band gets a 20-25 minute set where they get up and perform their songs for a bar full of friends and family. The showcase is the rock recital of sorts and is always a fantastic evening.
So, for those looking for a great way to improve their playing while having all of the fun that playing in an actual band provides, then this program may be for you.
It's hard to beat the feeling of playing on a real stage for a real crowd of people!
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