Adapting to other player's skill levels

[IDontNotDoThings]

(this may belong in the Musicians subforum, just move it if it does)

First of all, before I start my question, I just want to say that I don't want to imply that my own skill level is on a grandiose level that's at all worth a damn. I'm (at best) an intermediate-level bass player who sometimes plays tolerably.

That said, I've been working on some original material with my brother, who's about a step beyond a beginner guitar player. We've mostly wrote our first song together & right now we're just trying to practice it over & over until we can play it the best we possibly can. Despite this though, my brother has been struggling with the higher tempos of the song (140-150), as well as some of the more rapidfire strumming patterns we came up with. He's been practicing & I respect him for it, but I'm not sure if I should make adjustments to the song to make up for his skill level.

I have tried modifying the tempo to around 110-120, but while it isn't unlistenable, I feel like it takes a lot of the "punch" away from the song & I feel like it may become boring or feel drawn-out if we make it too slow. Another instance is in the solo section. The first solo I wrote for him (which I posted in the Musicians forum), I basically just wrote what I thought sounded cool with no consideration for anything else. I pretty much immediately realised that he wouldn't be able to play it, so I scrapped it. Then we wrote a slower solo together, which sounded great at the time we wrote it, but now it feels like it doesn't fit the speed of the fast-paced backing. If anything, it almost sounds relaxing. I wrote a third version of the solo, which basically consists of the second solo in double time with some more variations of the patterns to keep the same length. I feel like it's the best solo that's been written for the song, & it's nowhere near as difficult as the first solo, but I wasn't sure if it'd be unreasonable to expect my brother to be able to play it, considering he already has trouble keeping up with the regular riffs of that section.

Of course, I could just stop working with him until he improves as a guitarist, but I feel like that's a bit unfair since he wrote a good portion of the riffs & was a major part in helping the song flow together. Hell, us writing a song together was his idea in the first place, so I feel like it'd be unfair to exclude him from the final product just because he has difficulty playing it (& even if it isn't unfair, I'd still feel pretty guilty about it). Not to mention, I don't really have many other musicians I can work with, with me living in a small town & not really having our own music scene (at least not that I know of).

I don't know, I guess I'm just torn between wild ambitions & trying to have a viable means of getting them off the ground. Has anyone else here had to go through a similar struggle? Were you able to still get your ideas of the ground? What compromises did you have to make? I'd love to know.

Here are the actual solos if anyone's interested (sorry about the watermarks) (the ending's the same in all three because we agreed on wanting that part in):
https://youtu.be/gnsMsLmP_ho
https://youtu.be/HNbkqPTLLFs
https://youtu.be/XJRdwpf1aAM

[Skeever]

Don't exclude your brother from things you've wrote together.

Do find yourself a nice "side project". The best way to get better is to play with better musicians. Decent bassists are always in need for local rock bands. Don't feel like you need to include your brother in on this, just because he's your brother. Been there, done that. You're entitled to your own outlets.

[Stadler]

Look, it depends on the music you want to make, but some of the best bands in history started like you (REM, U2... Hell, even Robert Fripp had to teach Boz Burrell how to play bass when he joined Crimson).   

I think you have a couple options.  If your goal is to play live:   
- "Dumb it down" for the time being and make the song solid.   A good song played well but straightforward is almost always better than a complicated song that is a walking train wreck.  Kiss.   Motley Crue.
- Keep the "intent" of the song, and take some of the load on as bass player.   That's what Mike Mills did in REM; he was so much better than Peter Buck, that you had the guitar playing a lot of rhythmic things and the melodies often carried by the bass.   You didn't mention a drummer; maybe the drummer can take up some of the slack on the rhythmic side of things.   Think of early Sabbath, where Iommi was playing rather simple rhythms, but Geezer and Bill were playing like lunatics.
- Just be patient until he catches up.  U2.

If your goal is to record:
- Break it down.   Play things in parts.   

It also depends on your prospects; there hasn't been a band in history that hasn't had to make a hard personnel decision at some point.  You have to decide if this is a "band" and that's more important than any one member (like Maiden, Dream Theater, Yes) or if the band is "the brothers" and everything revolves around that (like Van Halen or Kiss).

You'll figure it out, and I will tell you this:  if you are a musician that is following your muse, the levels will get higher, but you WILL encounter this question again. 

[bosk1]

Don't exclude your brother from things you've wrote together.

Do find yourself a nice "side project". The best way to get better is to play with better musicians. Decent bassists are always in need for local rock bands. Don't feel like you need to include your brother in on this, just because he's your brother. Been there, done that. You're entitled to your own outlets.

I tend to agree with this.

For the song in question, have you thought about maybe doing something like having him play the rhythm parts and asking him if he would mind you bringing someone else in to record just the solos?  Depends on how you think he might react, but he might be totally cool with that.  That way, it doesn't really take anything away from him by having him on the song, but you still get to spice up the song a bit more.  If he's on board with it, great.  If not, that's fine too--just decide together to keep it just the two of you.  Just a thought. 

[WilliamMunny]

I agree with the above posts...It sounds like to me you have a side-project (one where you write and record the music) and then you a band with your brother.

And just food for thought...a band (in my opinion) is a combination of players and should be an organic result of what those players can play.

Kiss is one of my all-time favs...Peter Criss is no Neal Peart, buuuuuut, I think that's one of the reason's I like the band so much.  They worked within the confines of their abilities and wrote some of the best damn song's I've ever heard along the way.

I think you guys should just write together...his limitations as a player might actually steer your material into a direction that you would have never gone otherwise...and more often than not, that's where the magic actually happens.

Just my two cents:)

[IDontNotDoThings]

Good advice here 

@Skeever: Yeah, I think in a sense that's where the need to try & complicate things comes from. Maybe if I had some kind of other band where I could go crazy with the ideas, then I'd be more comfortable with taking the more simplistic route with my brother. Do you know any ways to get a band like that off the ground? Like I said, there aren't a whole lot of people I know when it comes to musicians, so I'm not exactly sure how to get that sort of connection going.

@Stadler: Good ideas. For the most part the bass pretty much mirrors the guitar parts, so I think it'd be an interesting dynamic if the roles were reversed (if guitar was the rhythmic instrument & bass was the melodic). The goal for this is mostly just to record, & yeah, we've been playing things in parts too. It seems a lot more effective to try to get the different riffs rather than the whole song all at once.

@bosk1: Yeah, I actually did bring up the idea of someone else playing the solo (or possibly me playing the solo if we can't find anyone else). He seemed pretty apathetic either way, probably because he's not too confident with it to begin with, but yeah, the idea has definitely been brought up.

@WilliamMunny: I actually don't have a side-project where I write everything, though I have been thinking of starting one. & yeah, I've definitely thought about having the songs come as a by-product of his playing. I've noticed that a lot of the parts he's struggled with the most are the parts I wrote for him, rather than the ones we wrote together (which makes a lot of sense when you think about it). I guess the more straight-forward approach wouldn't hurt, it's just something I'd have to get used to (not that I'm not willing to try).