While it has been said that there are no rules in music, in my opinion there are time tested guidelines to help people create music. One such guideline is to follow the leader in a band. This is a topic I find most beginners who play with others struggle with. When playing music with other people, at some point it is important to recognize who is the leader and follow them.
To illustrate why this is important, consider this example. Let us say a band consisting of a singer and a guitarist are performing a song. If there is no predefined leader, the singer could decide to sing in one key while the guitarist could decide to play in another. While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with doing this, the average listener would find that the music would sound out of tune or somehow “odd”. If however the leader who is the singer states the key of the song and the guitarist obliges, the song will sound more “correct” to the average listener.
Following the leader is one way to help a band sound well integrated or playing “as one”. Again, if the singer is the leader and he begins to suddenly sing softly in a part of the song, the band, by following the singer, could also reduce volume, thereby allowing all of the musical parts to be heard.
There can also be different leaders for different parts of songs. For example, lets say a band consisting of bass, drum, keyboards and guitar has the keyboardist as the band leader. The rest of the band could look to him/her for dynamic cues during a performance. However, when it is time for the guitarist to solo, he could be the leader and the rhythm section could look to him for dynamic cues, length of solo, etc. It would be best before the song starts for the keyboardist, as the band leader, to give a song roadmap to the rest of the band stating that the rest of the band will look to the guitarist for direction during his solo.
As a kid I played “follow the leader” with classmates on the playground. Little did I know that this game would teach me useful concepts in having a great musical performance.
