I've always gone with the notion of two or three rehearsals and go and do the gig... but I've seen bands spend 2 years in the practice room before booking a gig..

Okay, you might have to play by the seat of your pants but at least it keeps it fresh.

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I've always gone with the notion of two or three rehearsals and go and do the gig... but I've seen bands spend 2 years in the practice room before booking a gig..

Okay, you might have to play by the seat of your pants but at least it keeps it fresh.

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Rehearsals? What are they? One, if you're lucky! Can't you READ music? :-)

I can actually... I'm half way through a music degree

yep, I agree!

rehearsals are a luxury!

anyway that's what a soundcheck is for

Back in pre-history (late 1960s) two of us could read and two couldn't. We'd rehearse maybe once a week. A quick blast at something we knew really well to get us in the mood, then a look at some new material, and finally, depending on time just a verse or two of some numbers we hadn't done for a while to keep us fresh.

As for actual gigs if you're having to look at the dots you're not looking at the other players so not really getting it together as a team - you're also not interacting with the punters. Make eye-contact with a girl who's looking a bit down and you achieve instant hero status

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It wasn't me!
(Well, actually, it probably was)

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As for actual gigs if you're having to look at the dots you're not looking at the other players so not really getting it together as a team

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How DO the LSO manage? :-)

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I can actually... I'm half way through a music degree

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Great! Do you play anything that doesn't plug in?

As much time as you can get would be the best option. My band practice once before a gig and that's it. Though there are 2 new memembers out of 5 so gotta learn the songs. It's pretty much dependant on how competant you are with your instrument.

I joined a band 1 week before a UK tour. I asked for one night in the pub (vital for getting to know the other members) and two practice sessions, one at the beginning of the week and one at the end.
I also spent about 12 hours practicing and learning the songs on my own. It all went rather well.

Depends upon the experience and competence of the band members.

When I joined my current band a couple of the guys were complete novices and in seemed to take an age to master the first half dozen tracks or so. It took 15 practices to get us to the first gig (18 songs) and I'm quite sure that the bass player would have liked 150 pracs if we'd let him. Now the same band can go into a rehearsal room and just rattle off new tracks for the fun of it (learning the lyrics is sometimes the bottleneck).

With inexperienced bands its partly down to musicianship i.e. do you need to just know what key a song is in and maybe remember to throw in that stop at the end of the 2nd verse that isn't on the original or are people thinking G . . . Em . . . etc. The other thing is confidence. I think that first gig is like taking your driving test - that's the point at which you start learning. Some bands just don't want to leave the nest and they carry on practising way beyond the point where they're making any forward progress.

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http://www.random-thought.co.uk/

I don't think a Rock or Pop band should read on stage. You should know your lines and changes. If you forget a sequence then provided you know your key and scales you can wing it. Some of my best solos have been by the seat of my pants...

Bass players are the key I reckon. If he messes up then it throws the whole band out.

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Quote Folderol:

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As for actual gigs if you're having to look at the dots you're not looking at the other players so not really getting it together as a team

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How DO the LSO manage? :-)

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When I work with them there are two (long) days of rehearsal. Plus they do constantly work on the material for upcoming concerts. They NEVER sight read at a gig or a recording.... in the studio there are sessions purely for rehearsal.

Rehearsals are crucial, in ANY genre, to get a finely honed performance. Even for people who are good players (there aren't many of those!!) as it's the playing relationship between the members that count.... Without rehearsal how can you sort out the nuances? Whether the drummer should be playing a flam on beat three before the second chorus? that sort of thing..... cuz that's how it's done in major acts.

i've done gigs in the past where i had NO rehearsal at all..... and had never played with the band before.... all i got was "it's in G , and it's this fast, 1,2,3,4 " before launching into a song....

4 1.5 hour sets later, no one in the audience was any the wiser..... all had a great time....


i would admit to being a little frazzled by that stage.... thank god there was always at least one number i vaguely knew in each set.....


but personally, i like a band to be rehearsed so they can perform tighter than a very tight thing...


i don;t HAVE to do it that way, but i LIKE to do so...

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

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Quote Folderol:

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As for actual gigs if you're having to look at the dots you're not looking at the other players so not really getting it together as a team

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How DO the LSO manage? :-)

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When I work with them there are two (long) days of rehearsal. Plus they do constantly work on the material for upcoming concerts. They NEVER sight read at a gig or a recording.... in the studio there are sessions purely for rehearsal.

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But they're still looking at the dots :-)

yes, as an aide de memoire, but most could still perform without them, largely they're paying attention to the conductor.

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

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yes, as an aide de memoire, but most could still perform without them, largely they're paying attention to the conductor.

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Have you ever played in an orchestra?

yes. I also play Bassoon.

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

Quote Max!:

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yes. I also play Bassoon.

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OK. Next time they put up (say) a Beethoven symphony, attend the rehearsals (probably only one for such a standard work, and that will be a top-and-tail) but don't open your book at the performance. How far do you get? What about if it's one of those modern "squeaky gate" pieces that grant-aided orchestras are compelled to perform?

(I've done it too. Trombonists get far fewer notes than bassoonists. But I'd still like to have the music:-)

My experience of it is that you learn the meat of a piece outside of combined rehearsals....adding it to your personal repertoire... then the combined ensemble rehearse to gel all the individual parts together, and take direction from how the conductor wishes to direct the dynamics and timing.....


if it's a new piece to the repertoire, then during the first few performances you will probably keep one eye on the score, and the other on the conductor.... but after that, the score is there for "senior moments" only.... and the conductor is really all you need to look at...(and LISTEN to the players around you)

or at least that's my experience.... i suppose if you don;t bother learning the regular repertoire , it might be different, but i suspect that would lead to a very short career....


there is a difference however, between new pieces and "old standards"

but even new pieces, you should attempt to learn outside of main rehearsals....

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

Quote Max...if it's a new piece to the repertoire, then during the first few performances you will probably keep one eye on the score, and the other on the conductor.... but after that, the score is there for :

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enior moments" only.... and the conductor is really all you need to look at...(and LISTEN to the players around you)

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You obviously have a MUCH better memory than I do!

learning the piece is a tiny part of rehearsal. It's about understand the rhythmic flow of the piece and getting the group of musicians to play as a unit. I've been to soooo many gigs where a band is "playing the right notes" but they're just terrible. They're not listening to each other.....

I've worked with acts who are just "reading the dots"..... not good. Sight reading is impressive but nothing without rehearsal.

For a typical rock or pop set I like the band to be rehearsed to the point where everyone at least knows what they're supposed to be doing (ie not reading the dots or needing to be prompted about what comes next) and, assuming they're good players, can put a bit of a personal stamp on the songs.

Beyond that I don't think there's much more worth doing in rehearsal as it's getting out and doing it in front of an audience which really brings it all together. Rehearsals don't involve the same levels of adrenalin and nerves as performing so can't accurately reflect what it's going to be like doing it for real (like nailing a tricky solo at home and then finding your fingers turn to jelly on the night).

Obviously different scenarios require different preparation (ie 'old standards' of whatever genre may need no rehearsal at all) but if you know your sh*t and are good at what you do you can keep wasteful rehearsing to a minimum.

I can understand with a lot of pop or rock type music once you learn the chorus verse and bridge it's just repetition for the rest of the song, so not so much rehearsal necessary. I recall reading that both Dylan and Marc Bolan would just turn up to studio recordings with the chords on a piece of paper and Bolan liked the edge it gave to his work, which I do believe you can sense in early T.Rex numbers.
I discovered though that because I change the odd chord in chorus and verse as the song goes on, it is much harder to remember the whole song and the musicians need far more rehearsal. So I guess it depends on the complexity of your work

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www.myspace.com/shambolic-charm

Personally I'll go for polished over fresh most days. Given my standard of playing I know I owe it to an audience to put in rehearsal time! And as a member of an audience I always feel I have been given a better show when I see an American act, or an act that can cut it in the States rather than the slightly British 'let's busk it and hopefully nobody will notice' approach. That may sound like a generalization and for sure American's love raw Brit acts, but I suspect you will find those acts tend to have polished up more than a bit before they try to win over the wild west. A higher standard of performance is expected.

In any case its hardly one or the other. Polished, done right, should sound fresh. If you haven't put the time in it will show. The audience might not mind but the more discerning amongst them will notice. There isn't a bona fide impresario out there who won't admit that 10,000 hours of practice constitutes 90% of their talent. Why then should a collective performance, i.e. a band be any different?

In the real world the question should be 'how much rehearsal time do you need and how much do you get'? Answer probably more but not immediately before the gig please, because that likely would take the edge off the performance.

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Strictly project and just for fun

Rehearsals are only going to get you so far, it's gig experience as a band that counts the most in pulling the band together. Learning to play through and ignore live mistakes only come through experience. After a few times through of a song in rehearsals, I find the band start to get a bit tired of it and stop making a real effort to play it well.

Unless you have the luxury of a large rehearsal space there is normally not enough space to set up as for a gig so everyone is normally arranged in a circle. When you are strung out in a line, often on impossibly small 'stages' with barely enough room to move, it's then you really learn to work as a group and listen out for each other and look for the cues as to when the song ends or whether another chorus or solo will be thrown in.

With rock and pop stuff I used to draw a distinction between rehearsals and practices.

Practices would be sitting around on someone's living room floor, guitars unplugged, drummer using a pair of sticks on the carpet. And we would learn the song structures... key, chord progression, tempo, rhythm, and so on.

Then everyone would go off and work out their own parts over the next few days. And we would generally have a basic part, a thinned out version, and a busy version.

Rehearsals were treated seriously. We set up as a full band, and played the songs as if we were gigging. So we would play each song through a few times without stopping. Because we had already done the hard work on structures and parts, we could concentrate on listening to each other and seeing how it all fitted together.

With one practice and one rehearsal each week (a couple of hours each), we could usually get a band from scratch to a full set fit for gigging in 4 to 6 weeks. And that was with a mix of original songs and original arrangements of covers. As long as everyone puts in the effort, it gives great results. The only problems come when you have someone who thinks they can just busk it, but aren't as good as they think they are.

Being prepared means you can concentrate on putting on a good performance, and having alternate parts prepared means that you can match the performance to the mood of the audience, extend songs that are going down well, come up with an interesting encore, and juggle your set list for subsequent shows and keep things interesting for the audiences.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

We're still looking for a drummer that can tell one song from another after a year of rehearsing!

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We're still looking for a drummer that can tell one song from another after a year of rehearsing!

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That makes things easy, just turn to the drummer and say 'we're doing the one that starts 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4...'

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Quote _ Six _:

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I've always gone with the notion of two or three rehearsals and go and do the gig... but I've seen bands spend 2 years in the practice room before booking a gig..

Okay, you might have to play by the seat of your pants but at least it keeps it fresh.

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Twice is one time too many :-)
I played a tune last night that I've never played or rehearsed (sp?) before. Went down VERY well indeed with the audience! (since I didn't know the lyrics, I just improvised lyrics to whatever they were doing on the dancefloor :-D)

Two years practising? Insane. The best way to practice is to play live in front of an audience (assuming the band members are more or less proficient musicians)

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* wossname * ...if .sig's were fish, this would stink *

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We're still looking for a drummer that can tell one song from another after a year of rehearsing!

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That makes things easy, just turn to the drummer and say 'we're doing the one that starts 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4...'

Andy

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In my old band, I used to throw new songs live on them this way:
"This one is in G", and then start playing :-D

SURE made them focus!

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* wossname * ...if .sig's were fish, this would stink *

It depends on the individuals concerned. My duo I'm in at the moment don't have time to rehearse, but we gig a couple of times a week and know each other fairly well.

I the band I played with before, the guys (better, more experienced musicians) wouldn't go out without one.

Anyone that's heard both seem to prefer my current duo, which seems to be down to the level of audience interaction.

Each to their own.

Bazza

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This time next week, who'll give a sh*t
http://www.podcastrevision.co.uk

I think it depends a lot on the situation... sometimes an audience are attuned to and expecting unrehearsed. Of late I've been keeping a promise to myself to play some blues and to get my confidence back up/network/find gigs etc I play at a lot of blues jams. Once I remember a three piece band getting up who'd talked the host into allowing them to perform together... they played a beautifully arranged cover with extreme competence and it left the audience utterly cold... in that environment the regular punters (yep I'm amazed but there are people that actually love to come and listen to jams!) seem to prefer musicians improvising so long as they listen to each other and play sensitively with regard to dynamics and taste....

Equally there are plenty of other environments where I think acts really benefit from some rehearsal... even at the same venues on other nights when there's one act playing the whole evening I feel rehearsal/lots of previous gigs is important... at a jam the audience get to hear lots of different musicians with varying styles... if one act are doing 3 sets they need to work more on pacing/arrangement to avoid rapidly sounding very samey over the whole evening...

I think skill level, proficiency, material and chemistry are some of the things that need to be addressed.

Different genres require different skills. You can't expect death metal precision from acoustic folk gig or acoustic feel to a death metal gig, as these don't usually work that way.

If cracking cover tunes - doesn't really matter, we've done some of these without rehearsal or maybe a rehearsal or two to get the tempos right, etc.

On original material we've had to do longer rehearsals maybe a month or two before a gig (if we haven't played them recently) of two rehearsals per week.

It has been different with different bands.

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www.descentintomadness.com

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Unless you have the luxury of a large rehearsal space there is normally not enough space to set up as for a gig so everyone is normally arranged in a circle.

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Which is a mistake. If you're not practising in a way that's representative of how you're performing, then you have a significant element that isn't practised. Watching the drummer for cues is a classic gotcha there!

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Rehearsals are only going to get you so far, it's gig experience as a band that counts the most in pulling the band together. Learning to play through and ignore live mistakes only come through experience.

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That's two utterly separate things. The second part there is keeping playing through mistakes, which comes from the personal experience of each band member. It doesn't matter if they've been playing lead guitar in your band or busking penny whistle and kazoo in the underground - it's just down to time spent as a musician.

But the first part, a band only pulls together when (a) they know the music inside out, and (b) they know instinctively what they're each going to do. That's a function of hours spent playing together, and the more hours, the better they are. If you're not practising outside the gigs, you won't know the music as well and you won't have spent the time with the other guys to feel what they're going to do.

Unless you already *have* put that time in. If you've been playing together for years, then it's a bit different.

I know some bands, especially cover bands that do their rehearsals live, basically start with the material already learned and then polish the idiosyncrasies as they play along.

As far as original material is concerned - I think you need to rehearse it well before taking it on the road but from what I read some of the great rock n roll bands such as Aerosmith, Guns, AC/DC, etc. took to the pubs with some cover tunes and worked in half rehearsed originals that they later polished. It worked for them back in the day.

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www.descentintomadness.com

More practice makes perfect. As long as the the group performs the music they play perfectly. I agree 2 years is enough.

Excuse me, but could you tell me how do I get to Carnegie Hall?

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Excuse me, but could you tell me how do I get to Carnegie Hall?

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Take a flight to New York, then a Yellow Cab will take you straight there

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.