What made me write this thread is that I am in the process of starting up a new rock band after a one-year hiatus.

Is it just my social bubble or are musicians especially bad at connecting digitally? I’ve been looking for bandmates for half a year and I am VERY happy with the mates I am with now, but the process was again tedious. In that timespan I found two drummers, one singer and two or three guitar players. The one drummer I’ve continued meeting with fortunately had a bass guitar player friend, phew.

Either I am too dumb to find them or there are almost no sites that connect musicians locally on a big scale. I’ve seen something called “Vampr” which was like Tinder but instead of fucking your fingering a minor together. Unfortunately that site was more or less dead in a 250 km radius around the area I’m in, as it just seems to be a thing in the states.

Then I tried to look for local Telegram groups that are for connecting between musicians, but those were also more or less dead.

Social networks like Reddit (rest in piss) or kbin.social do have communities around music, but they tend to have a global focus.

So do you agree that there isn’t a consistent thing to connect with local musicians rather than walking around looking for jam sessions or similar stuff? I would be so happy I we musicians would be more connected through discord, kbin, mastodon, whatever. I’d love to hear your personal stories about this.

This thread might be a little ranty, but I am genuinely curious about the topic and a possible solution. Maybe I’ll start a small magazine for my scene here, but god knows when this would take off.

  • bstix
    2·
    1 year ago

    I think it’s difficult because musicians are a somewhat small group. Throw in different taste and seriousness and it’s very limited who is actually available locally.

    Collaboration online is tedious, and it limits the scope of what is actually possible as a group. Like playing gigs is difficult.

    I’ve long been wanting an app to connect with locals, but even with those that exist it’s unlikely that anyone knows of it. There ought be just one well known app for it for it to succeed.

    I still think the best way currently is to look at billboards in music shops. Or join some courses or choir where other musicians might be.