Practice. Too Much, Too Little, Too Late

[Dani Pace]

This one is for all you working, or soon to be working bands. How much time does your band spend on practice? We all know how hard it is to find the time when everyone can adjust their schedules to allow everyone in a band to practice together, it's hard enough to get part of a band together, especialy if you aren;t pros and still have your day jobs, not to mention family or kids. I know some musicians are gifted enough to be able to hear a tune once and play it, most of us are not that fortunate and have to work at it. On an average my band spends one night (three hours or so) per week working on new materal, one night improving materal we sort of know, and a third night polishing the stuff we have down pretty well, and on the good weeks we go out and play one night. I'd like to have more time so we could get really "tight," any way, I am just wondering how much time others are spending on practice and if anyone has any ideas on how to find "just a little more time," after all no one wants to get to a gig and sudenly realize in the middle of a song that they don't know the song well enough.
Oh yeah, I'm in a three piece band and I realize that the more people involved, the more time it takes so everyone knows their parts.

 

[thispleasesme]

practice five times a week, four hours at a time.. It's the only way to make it happen.

 

[Track Rat]

Practice is good. But once we we're playing out 3 and 4 nights a week, we only practiced to learn new material so I guess we didn't "practice" at all. Nothing will make the band get VERY tight like playing in front of an audience 3 nights a week. I think one mistake a lot of beginnig bands make is to practice with the idea they won't come out of the basement till they're "good enough". They never get out of the basement with that mind set. Learn the material for sure but get out and play.

 

[AlChuck]

practice five times a week, four hours at a time.. It's the only way to make it happen.

Make what happen? Virtuosity?

Sounds like good advice but for the average working person it's way too much to expect and not at all necessary.

 

[lykwydchykyn]

My band used to do about 2-3 practices a week, about 3-4 hours or until the vocalist couldn't sing any more. It's not just about quantity but quality to. Record your practices. Find weak spots. Go over them. Get them right. Keep doing the songs until you get them down right. If the bass and drums aren't locking on a song, have the bass player and drummer work on it while the guitarist takes 5.
I always found that no matter how much we practiced, though, the songs never quite "gelled" until we played them out live. Sometimes a couple of small gigs are good to lock in the subtleties.

 

[Recording Chick]

Yeah, definitly record your practices. There's nothing like that reality check to make you practice more.

 

[glynb]

When my band started off 4 years ago we practiced once a week, but we added to that by then taking away a practice tape recording and playing along to that individualy at home. So you can use the joint practice to sort out your arrangemtns, then once that is nailed take away a copy of the tape each and play along when you get a few hours free individualy.

Now I must say we are a covers band, so what i say applies to us as we don't constantly write our new songs to learn. Now, with 200 gigs under our belts we no longer 'practice'. The gig IS the practice. We play once or twice a week with a weekend off every month, so we don't need to practice the covers, we all know the set (though it does vary a little each time).

We practice if we want to add in new covers, but that's rarely now. Again we take a tape of the originals and learn them individualy, then have a band practice to nail them, maybe two practices. After two practices they have either been dropped, or we try them out in the set, then we review how they went and they either get dropped or get rehearsed live at each gig from then on.

Personaly i would like to rehears more often as it gives a chance to try new variations, but other guys aren't into it (wife problems!).

So to sumarise, practice to get the set together, then get out there and gig gig gig.

One major piece of advice from my experience. Play LOW key gigs to start with. Don't invite all your family and friends to your first gig(s). You will NOT be very good for the first few times out, trust me, you'll only get good live after playing some gigs and working out how you work together on stage as a band which is a different dynamic. Don't tell family and firneds until you're good. The ywill provide your audience initialy and they won't come for long if you suck!

There are people who came to our first gig who we have never seen again! Now we ARE a good band, but they remeber that first performance and have that impression in their mind, it's very frustrating! learn from my mistake.

 

[Earache]

In my experience, how you practice is more important than how often. Set goals, make rules. If your doing covers, make sure everyone is prepared going into a practice. Learn the songs at home, use the practice to bring them together. Don't practice at stage volume when your doing this. Learn the songs without solos first and record it, then send the lead guitarist home with a copy to practice his phrasing and stomp box maneuvers.

Occasionally have segregated practices to concentrate on weak areas. Have the bass player and drummer get together to learn to take ques from one another, and guitarists (keyboards/sax/accordion whatever) should get together to work out complementary tones, solos, harmony etc, etc. Same for singers if your using background/harmony vocals.

Not getting enough live gigs? Once you've got enough songs down, have a "dress rehearsal". Walk into the practice room and play the sets just like a gig. No stopping in the middle of songs, no breaks in between. If possible, set up your gear like you will on stage, you'd be surprised how often your taking ques from someone on the other side of the stage who you suddenly can't hear when your at the gig.

 

[Dani Pace]

Thanks to everyone for your input. We already do record all our practice sessions, mainly so we can hear our weak points, playback certainly lets us know what we need to work on most. We record on 4 track and all have 4 track at home so we do turn off the track with our instrument on it and play along at home during our private practice time, I can't speak for anyone else but this is one thing that has helped me to improve my part(s) a lot faster. I also have to agree that playing in front of an audience is the ultimate practice session. We deliberately went "out of town" to some hole in the wall places for our first few gigs, playing for family and friends still makes me a little nervous. We have all been in other bands, and are trying to avoid our mistakes from the past. Although we aren't great we are better than the "average garage band," and always looking for ways to improve our sound both for the studio and live gigs. Thanks again, and I hope to be able to post some of our misic soon and give you all the chance to critique how we sound, I respect the opinions and ideas I get here, or I wouldnt ask.

 

[lanterns]

we played our first show and my drummer had only been playing one week. she did great! we've played 5 shows and she's only been playing a month.

our hearts are in the right place. that's all that should matter. but there's only 2 people in the band. that makes it way too easy to get things tighter.