How I Joined a Band in Japan with Absolutely No Experience

You’ve just turned 40 years old, you live in a rural prefecture in Japan, and instead of buying a new car or getting hair plugs or maybe even starting a fancy new plastic-collecting habit, you’ve decided, “I want to play in a band.”

The feeling is overwhelming, and despite having played piano off and on for years you decide drums are the way to go. This is an instrument you have not touched since one day in elementary school, when they let you hit the giant marching band bass drum. To your credit, the teacher assured you that “You certainly hit it a lot!”

So you order the next-to-cheapest electronic drum kit you find online, set it up in your house, and ask yourself the million dollar question: “Wait, how do I join a band out here?”

I was confronted with that question a couple years ago, but I was thankfully able to work my way into two solid, live-show-playing bands (and a number of bands that just fizzled out or went different directions). I’d like to go over my experience not only in joining a band, but getting involved with the live house culture.

Hopefully you’ll be able to take away something from this, and achieve your own dreams of playing in front of others!

What you need to know about me

To give you a bit of background on me, I’m 40-ish years old and have lived here in Japan for nearly 20 years at this point. While I have a sheet of laminated paper that says I got the N1, if we’re being real I’m N2-level at best and somehow tricked the system.

I came out here knowing no instruments, and dabbled off and on with piano for years using both Youtube and in-person lessons. Then suddenly I switched to drums and didn’t look back.

I have a job, a marriage, a house, a kid, and two cats that need three snacks a day each (the cats, not the wife and kid). I’ve still managed to slot this music into my life, and I hope I can help others do the same.

How do I find a band in Japan?

The common advice here would be, “Go to some live shows! Talk to the people playing, get to know them, make some connections, and then maybe you can see about joining a band.”

I think people who give that advice 1) don’t go to live shows and 2) are the type that say you should just walk up to a company and hand them your resume. It’s a nice idea, and while it may work out for you sometimes, there are better ways to go about it.

Live houses are loud as shit. There’s just constant noise, either from people talking or from people playing or from some DJ trying to mash together two songs that have no business being on the same playlist. Unless you are really good at the type of Japanese that requires you to half-hear-half-intuit what others are saying, this isn’t such a great way to meet people.

Don’t get me wrong, you absolutely should go to live houses and shows and get to know others. But while networking is the best way to join bands, it’s not the best first way.

To preface, I should say that some Japanese ability is going to be required here. You don’t need to be perfect at the language, nor do you really need to know all the particular vocabulary associated with music and instruments. To some degree, just play the music and people will be able to follow along and get the meaning.

Here are the two sites I used to find bands:

1. Oursounds.net: This is a great website where you can make a profile, list the instruments you play and the genres you like, and give a bit of an introduction to yourself. If possible, absolutely attach a link to a Youtube channel or video of you playing your instrument of choice!

Since this website is dedicated 100 percent to people trying to find bands or find members, you’ll probably be able to spot something that catches your interest. I got a lot of messages out of nowhere from people who saw my profile, watched my Youtube videos, and wanted me to drum for them. The Beatles cover band I eventually joined, for example, was just a random translated-to-English-via-ChatGPT message one day!

This site should be your first stop, especially since it’s free to make a profile. But get an ad blocker, because the design of the site with all the ads really is annoying.

One thing to note about Oursounds however is that it’s a country-wide board; many of the ads will list a bunch of different prefectures where they are searching for bandmates. This can lead to you messaging a band that’s a prefecture or two over without even realizing it!

2. Jimoty: This is also a great place to find bands. Jimoty is a lot like Craigslist used to be back when it was popular, with “for sale” options, jobs, etc. While you can make a profile, no one is going to message you out of nowhere to ask if you want to play with them. But there is a section for “Looking for Members” (メンバー募集, menba-boshuu), and in that section there is a dedicated board for bands.

Jimoty has a leg up on Oursounds because it’s broken up into different geographical areas, so if you navigate to the top page that corresponds to the prefecture you’re living in, you’re guaranteed the ads you are looking at will be from your region. The downside however is that, because it’s so localized, you’ll see fewer bands overall.

The types of bands you are likely to meet

The vast majority of ads on Oursounds and Jimoty are from people in their 30s and 40s, with a few in their 20s and 50s or 60s. Young bands tend to form naturally out of school and university relationships and friendships, but the older you get, the harder that becomes. This is especially true if, like me, you moved here after university!

Nearly every single band I’ve seen looking for members online and then met in person all had one thing in common: they are doing this just as a hobby. Once in a blue moon you’ll see an ad mentioning that they want to go pro, but the vast majority talk instead about how they are accepting of newcomers and those with no experience, or those who used to play and want to get back into it. I found that kind of ironic, because every single person I’ve talked to in those various bands all had around 10 years experience of playing.

But, even coming at this with no experience myself, I found lots of different ads I could respond to on both Jimoty and Oursounds, even if I wasn’t really confident in my drumming ability. The overwhelming majority of bands just want to get together, jam out to some songs, and play live shows sometimes.

I also never felt like bands reached out to me or agreed to meet so I could be their “token foreigner” or anything like that. As a white American, I stand out in a crowd, but the bands I’ve played with never made it their selling point. I’ve been asked if the singer’s pronunciation is right, what some lyrics mean, or if I can provide some backup vocals during the chorus, but nothing crazy that made me feel like I was out of place.

That first meeting

Unless you’re playing acoustic guitars or are joining a New Age drum circle, most bands will want to meet you for the first time at the studio so you can all play together.

This is especially important for drummers, since having your own set of drums is almost unheard of! Outside of famous bands on tour, I’ve never met a drummer who had their own drum set. Some of us are lucky to have electronic drum kits, but even those are loud and you’ll have difficulty keeping one if you live in an apartment on anything but the ground floor or basement.

Studios have as much character as the different bands that go to them. I’ve been to studios that reeked of cigarette smoke, with walls covered in old band posters. I’ve practiced in tiny little studios that could barely fit me behind the drum kit. I’ve even visited some that had great recording studios attached so you could make your debut CD, if you were so inclined. And while the flavor of studios may vary wildly, they usually have the same amenities:

• An assortment of amps and speakers
• A sound board where you can plug in mics and play some background music if you want
• The aforementioned drum kit
• Often, a long wall-length mirror so you can watch yourself play!

I suggest when first talking to a new band, depending on your ability, to try to set up three songs you can all play together. Three songs, played together for the first time, is a good way to fill an hour, and learning three songs should hopefully not take you more than a month.

If you’re doing cover songs, you can find sheet music or tutorials online. If the songs are original it can be a bit more difficult, but three is still a good number for an hour-long first-time meeting. If you only pick one or two songs, you’ll end up playing them over and over, and will probably get bored of them by the end of the first hour.

By the way, be punctual about times at studios! Often studios are booked all day (especially on weekends), so you should start packing up your things 10 minutes or so before the end of your time. It’s considered very rude to overstay in the room packing up your things, because it eats into another band’s play time and wastes their money. After all, they are paying for time just like you.

Learning just enough to join that band goes beyond musical ability

So how good do you really need to be to play with the band you just found? The answer is, of course, “It depends.” Your mileage will vary based on the band’s goals, the style of music they play, etc. I play the drums myself, so I can’t really speak to what you need to be able to do as a guitar player, but the common advice for drums is “Keep the beat.”

This is why I suggested having a Youtube channel or video of you playing, so you can show where you are ability-wise, and others can decide if that’s “good enough” for what they want. It definitely beats getting into the studio and realizing you have no idea what you’re doing and wasting everyone’s time.

You can always learn from Youtube videos (I personally used Musora/Drumeo for some time), and getting an in-person teacher is, while more expensive, very helpful. It requires more Japanese knowledge most of the time, but you can often find ads at practice studios for teachers. Take a look and you might be able to find someone who fits your budget.

If you can swing it, I definitely suggest the teacher. They point out things you would never notice yourself, and can give you a better judgment of your abilities and if you’re “ready” to join a band.

The band’s expectations

A band is of course going to expect you to be able to play your instrument to some degree. However, there are other expectations that you should be aware of going in.

Bands will expect you to communicate

Nearly every band has a LINE group, and depending on the vibe there can be a lot of chatter, but often the conversations are focused: what will we practice, where, when, for how long, etc. Bands expect you to keep up and reply, perhaps not within minutes, but at least within 24 hours, especially if they are trying to set up studio reservations. So expedient and clear communication is key. If you’re busy, be up front about it, but don’t just leave people “on read.”

You are expected to practice

You don’t need to be perfect, not by any stretch, and playing with others is just a different animal than playing at home and annoying your wife in the other room because your “electronic drum kit” is still in fact a physical object that you are striking a million times a minute with a literal stick.
But you need to put in the effort and try.

I’ve been to rehearsals where it’s clear a member hadn’t practiced at all between sessions. Sometimes life happens and you’re too busy, and that’s fine, but be upfront if that’s the case.

Provide your own gear

For guitarists, that’s the pedals you need or a specific amp you want for your sound. Most studios will have a “house drum” setup for drummers. So as a drummer, I bring my own kick pedal and drumsticks. I also recently got my own snare drum, so I bring that along, with some mute gels. But even if you go into a studio with only your drum sticks, you should be fine. The only thing you usually don’t need is a microphone, as studios will supply those.

Bands in Japan will expect you to speak some Japanese

You don’t need N1 or even N2 or N3, but enough for basic conversation, getting your points across, and understanding the plans that are being set up. Most bands try to keep up a pretty friendly environment, and it’s helped that I can join in with casual banter here or there. It’s allowed us to enjoy a bit of camaraderie, even though we are in essence three or four strangers who only get together to make noise.

What you should be looking for

Finally, I want to talk about what I usually expect from a band when I join them. Of course, the points above still stand: I expect good communication, everyone to practice, etc. But there is one more big point that I absolutely expect—if the band has a leader, they need to act like it.

I’ve found that if the band doesn’t have a strong leader in the studio, you will end up wasting huge swathes of time as people screw around on their instruments and do a whole lot of nothing. Tuning guitars and setting up the drums does take a bit of time, but without a leader to say “Ok, let’s do Song A. That was good, let’s try it again though. All right, let’s do song B now,” you absolutely will just sit there as people faff about with their instruments.

Further, you need someone who gives honest feedback. If they didn’t like how a certain part sounded, they need to say that so you can practice it again. This seems like a very obvious thing, but I’ve played with bands where half the time was just sitting around waiting for someone to say what to do.

Every band’s vibes are a bit different, but if you’re joining a band as an adult, you absolutely should expect someone to lead the practice. And if no one is, then that burden falls on you!

What does being in a Japanese band look like?

For the bands I’ve been in, we try to meet up once a month at the minimum. Sometimes we manage a little more often, but we are all juggling personal lives and jobs. When we do meet for practice, it’s usually for two or three hours at a nearby studio.

Choosing music

When you get to the studio, it’s time to play some music. So how do you choose? Well, that’ll depend on the band.

One of my bands is a Beatles cover band, and since the Beatles have about 1000 different songs, we usually decide the 15 or so songs we are going to want to do for our next live show and stick with those. Sometimes we start throwing in some new songs to begin getting them “live show ready.”

My other band is a punk band that plays exclusively original songs. We tend to just play everything we have because we only have around 10 songs at this point. In fact, for a lot of smaller bands that play original stuff, if you see them multiple times they are likely going to be playing the exact same songs you heard them play before!

When will you be ready?

Speaking of live shows, how do you know when you’re ready? It’s hard to say, but probably when you just feel confident enough.

With the Beatles cover band, we practiced for a few months before we did our first gig together. Same with the punk band, but mostly because the other two members were busy with other things (most people who play in a band are, in fact, in many bands, so schedule conflicts are bound to happen). But I think once you can play for 30 minutes, you’re probably ready to go! At all the live shows I’ve been to, each band usually plays about 30 minutes.

Age does make a difference

In closing, I think I should mention that joining a band as an adult is a lot different from making one when you’re younger. Like I said before, we all have lives and jobs we are managing, so the chances of you actually hanging out with your bandmates might be a little low.

In my Beatles cover band, there is no interest whatsoever in meeting in private. In fact, our Line conversation group stays almost 100 percent on the topics of when/where/what for rehearsal and shows.

With my punk band, on the other hand, we are a bit more friendly while chatting. However we don’t really meet in private much either. The shared goal is to play music, but from that alone friendships may or may not bloom.

Live house culture and shows

At my first live show, I was nervous. Very nervous.

It was a tiny little venue, a bar with some seating and a small stage hidden snugly in the corner. The bartender was double-billed as the sound engineer and drink pourer.

I nervously went over the songs in my head as other bands were playing, trying to remember for which songs I needed to count us in, or where I needed to come in on others. Then, it was our turn.

We went up and started playing, and before I knew it, my first live show was over. I didn’t feel like a rockstar that time, but I did feel a sense of profound accomplishment.

The cost

Live houses come in a variety of flavors, but in my experience you can classify them into two, the bar live house and the studio live house. Both will have the same charge system: for customers, there is a set fee plus one drink fee. So you might see 2500 yen + 1D, which means you’ll be paying 2500 yen + another 500 or more, and will receive a free drink ticket.

As for the performers, until you get famous you’ve got to know this game is pay-to-play. Either you’ll pay the same amount as a customer (and get your free drink ticket!) or the venue will have a quota (ノルマ, noruma) system. Essentially, you’ll need to invite enough people to cover the charge or pay it yourself.

For example, the venue charges 30,000 yen, but for every guest you invite (and who mentions your name as the band they are there to see), they knock 3,000 yen off. So if you can get 10 friends to come, you can play for free.

What if you invite more? Well, I couldn’t tell you, because I’ve never had that problem!

The set-up

For the bar live house, you might have a stage or you might not. It might just be a section of the seating area reserved for playing. There will be a drum set, of course, and speakers and things for you to set up everything you need. There might be some sound engineer involved, or there might not. Drums are by and large not miked, so you’d better play loud if you want to be heard! These venues offer customers seating, and food along with their drinks.

For the studio live house, the music is taken a bit more seriously. There will be a basic lighting system (maybe even a fog machine), and definitely a sound engineer who can help you with more volume from your monitors and things. The drum will be miked and the kick will rumble through the entire venue.

Here it’s standing room only, with a tiny bar counter area stuck in a corner so you can order some drinks. The music is going to be much louder here, and the band will be on a stage of some kind. This is probably what you think of when you think of a “live show” more than a bar live house. It’s a little less intimate, but still a lot of fun, because the music often sounds better since there is someone mastering it as it comes out of the speakers.

Getting in

As for setting up your live shows, it’s very simple: let someone else do it! With the bands I’ve joined, everyone else has been playing here for years and years. They know all the live venues in the area (way more than I do!), know the owners, and have probably played for them a bunch of times.

Really, a network of connections is the best way to get gigs. In talking with my bands, they’ve all mentioned they often just receive messages from friends they’ve played with in the past, asking if they want to play such-and-so live house on some date. But it’s also very common for bands to email live houses directly, asking if they are looking for bands to perform!

The answer, almost always, is “Yes,” because live houses often have all sorts of different themed nights. Just recently, I went to an all-Beatles cover band night, and it was absolutely wild! Everyone knew the songs, and someone had their own cowbell and played along while I rocked out “It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night!”

The crowd

There’s a movie from the 90s called “Airheads,” and it has a quote from the main character that has summed up my experience both playing at live houses, and going to see live music:

Do you know what it’s like to be on the bill and to play for 15 minutes and the only people there to see you are the other bands and their girlfriends? Don’t talk to me about rock ‘n’ roll! I’m out there in the clubs and on the streets and I’m living it!

Especially if you live outside of Tokyo, 95 percent of the people at the show with you are just waiting for their turn to play. Sometimes you’ll see friends of the band, but it’s very rare to see someone there just for the love of live music.

But before you give up hope, it’s precisely because everyone at the venue is a band member that the atmosphere is so much fun. Everyone there knows and respects what you’re doing. Everyone there wants to make the show fun and exciting. People will clap and cheer, and when you get off stage, they’ll chat with you and show you pictures they took—pictures of you!

Live shows are very intimate affairs because it’s usually just the other bands watching, but the community that they foster is very supportive and friendly. You end up getting to know all the people in your area, because (outside of Tokyo) there are only so many venues. So you’ll end up seeing the same people pretty often!

Is it worth it?

When I got off the stage at my first show, my wife and son were there to cheer me on. The other bands whooped and clapped and told me we had a great show. We then sat down, listened to the next band, clapped in time, and cheered them on too.

I’ve played at a variety of venues around my town and in nearby areas. I’ve gone and soaked in live music as much as I can, not knowing any of the bands, but just for the love of the game. I’ve not once experienced a “bad show.” Music I didn’t like? Sure. But the energy is always supportive, if sometimes a bit subdued.

I’ve seen drummers lose sticks, guitarists play a wrong chord, and singers who miss the mic, but I’ve never seen or heard someone yell “Boo!” What I have witnessed is people living out their dreams to be a rockstar, for 30 minutes at a time, once a month. Now, I’m one of them.