Getting the Most Out of Your Rehearsals
We’ve all had that feeling. You just spent two hours at rehearsal and don’t feel like anything was accomplished. It’s aggravating. Especially if you have grand plans for the band. Because face it, if a band can’t get their act together in the practice room, they’re never gonna get it together on stage. So below I’m offering some ideas on how to get the most out of your band’s practices. No attempt was made to make this an exhaustive list but instead it’s the top issues I’ve personally dealt with in most every band I’ve played in. Good luck.
- Develop a rehearsal routine: All of your rehearsals should be run in a similar manner. This allows each member of the band to be comfortable and ready for the next segment of the rehearsal without a lot of discussion. Rehearsals need structure or you will end up getting too little accomplished. Basically all that is required is to have a plan. See tip #3.
- Have one or two standard warm-up songs: Always using the same warm-up songs to get practice started this lets everyone get into a comfortable place, tweak their sound, adjust their seats, etc. Generally the warm-up will sound good because you will have played the songs regularly; this gets everyone into positive mindsets.
- Have a plan: The band leader should have a plan set for rehearsal once warm-up is over and the plan should be shared with the band at the onset. This normally only requires having a current song list available, a list of songs that need to be addressed, any particular song or set related problems that need to be touched on and the order in which these things will happen. Not having this laid out ahead of time is huge time waster.
- Set the mood: If you have a dedicated rehearsal space, give it a comfortable creative feel. Put dimmers on the lighting, install colored light bulbs in place of the plain white bulbs, absolutely no fluorescent lighting, hang pictures or posters that will inspire (this can be anything that works for you), have some comfortable seating.
- Have closed practices: If the purpose of your rehearsals are to improve some or all parts of your sound, show and stage presence then having people that are not directly related to the goals of the band at rehearsal is counter-productive. If friends and family want to attend a practice politely explain to them that the band has decided to have closed practices for the time being and they will be invited to the next ‘open rehearsal’ or better yet the next gig.
- Know your part: If it becomes clear that a band member has not prepared their part for rehearsal, skip the song and go back to it next practice when the member is ready. Belaboring a song that someone does not have ready will only waste the rest of the bands time as well as possibly piss them off. The band leader should make sure that the slack member understands they need to have it ready for next practice.
- Record your rehearsals: This is critical and should become a normal part of your rehearsal routine. Once you start doing this and reviewing the results the quality of your sound, the tightness of the band and the efficiency of your rehearsals will improve greatly. I promise. A relatively inexpensive but high quality portable recorder like the the Zoom H2 makes it easy to do.
- Critique and compliment: When you have finished a song remember to Critique and Compliment. If something was not right it needs to be pointed out. This seems obvious but too many times it will seem too minor to mention or someone’s toes are being spared, this only serves to slow down your progress on the song. On the other hand if things sound good or if a member, say the drummer pulls off a particular impressive fill or the vocalist nails a note let them know you heard it. By making compliments a regular part of rehearsals it makes the criticisms that also need to take place much more palatable.
- Have a source of easy and quick music playback available in the room: This is especially important if you are primarily a cover band. Too much precious rehearsal time can be wasted discussing how a song goes when a quick cue and listen to the original source can answer the question to everyone’s satisfaction and allow you to move on.
- Keep non rehearsal discussions to a minimum: If discussions wander off track to such things as Sunday’s big game, girlfriends, bitching about your job or the cool new video on Myspace, zip it. If band related but non-rehearsal items need to be discussed, allow time at the end of rehearsal or set another date for a band meeting.
- Set the date and time of the next rehearsal before leaving: If you don’t have the luxury of having a set rehearsal schedule (strongly recommended) be sure to know when the next practice is before leaving the current session. This is particularly important to the band leader as it will save them from making a lot of scheduling calls. If everyone in the band cannot commit to a set schedule you may have a bigger problem to deal with since consistency is so important when it comes to band rehearsals.
- And finally, practice sets not songs as soon as you can: Once your band has enough songs together, either original compositions or covers tunes, write them into set lists of such length as your gigs would normally require and practice the list. This allows your band to practice keeping dead air to a minimum, your front person(s) to polish their between songs banter and allow for a much more efficient practice. You will see that you will get through a lot more songs this way.
- Bonus Tip: Come to rehearsal ready to practice and with everything you need: Nothing is more aggravating and counterproductive then to have the guitar player show up with out his strap, picks, batteries etc, you get the picture. Finish eating before you get to practice. You should be able to walk in set up and start warming up. So that neither you nor anyone else have to wait for a band member to finish their Happy Meal before you can play.
I hope you find some of the tips above useful. All bands will need to tweak this list to suit their particular situation, but over the years I have found that using some of these ideas in rehearsal are a big advantage. Let me know what your tips would be. TK
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very informative!