You should organize your rehearsals before they take place. Bands should always plan out what they are going to work on before the actual practice session. You will improve your productivity a hundredfold if you list what to work on beforehand – your band will accomplish infinitely more in the long run. Make a list of all the things you want to do prior to the rehearsal and write them down on paper. Designate one band member to make the list before the next rehearsal starts and always take turns making the list. At the end of each practice session, state who will make the schedule the next time. Or if one member doesn’t mind doing it all the time, they can be the official rehearsal organizer. Here is one example of a typical practice list.
1. Warm up with two easy cover songs, say, “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream, “Paralyzer” by Finger Eleven, or other songs of your choice, as long as they are relatively simple to play.
2. Work for one hour or more on a new cover song that the band is trying to add to their set list (write the actual title of the song down on paper), e.g. it could be: “Master of Puppets” by Metallica. (Hopefully the individual band members listened to the song or practiced it beforehand, which would mean you have “dedicated” band members, a very rare type – hold on to them.)
3. Miscellaneous work. Jam on new riffs, help the vocalist add melodies to an original song, work with the bass player on nailing a difficult odd-timed groove with the drummer, write some original music, help each other with musical problems, write fantastic melodies, become musical geniuses, work to procure million dollar record deals. It could be anything, but plan it out on paper first.
4. Play two or three of the band’s favorite songs, ones that are easy to perform, as a cooling-down “fun” period; or just jam on favorite songs or riffs while the singer practices his dance moves. Whatever you want, as long as you are playing together for awhile and it isn’t too strenuous.
5. You are finished. Go home.
That is a sample list for a fairly productive three to five hour band rehearsal, depending on what you do during the miscellaneous section. (Also remember to take short breaks between segments for water and snacks.)
Making a list of what you need to work on before each rehearsal starts definitely beats everyone standing around saying, “Hmm, what do you guys want to play next? I wonder what we should do now? What do you think we need to work on today? Hey, when are we supposed to be ready for that upcoming gig in front of that Taco Stand? How come God didn’t tell us what we should be working on today during our drive over to the rehearsal space? Where did you buy those new shoes, Johnny? What time is it anyway? All right, where is that hamburger with barbecue sauce I left on this counter? Your dog isn’t going to run downstairs and clamp on to my leg again, is he? What did you call me?”
Precious hours can drift away while these absurd and useless questions are bouncing around the room.
Don’t let it happen to you and your band.
Hopefully, if you do organize your rehearsals in this manner, your other band members will retain some of what you worked on during this time. Of course occasionally no matter how much you rehearse, no matter how much you think your band members are learning the material, it still won’t do you any good, for example, once I formed a band with some friends, and we got a gig set up at another friends’ house, we started rehearsing in the drummer’s garage, the band was a trio, the drummer doubled as the singer, I was on guitar of course, and the bass player also sang back-up vocals, we rehearsed for four days a week, 1 PM to about 6 PM (two of us were unemployed, the other worked the night shift), five hours a day four days a week for about 6 weeks we practiced, getting ready for the big gig, a party where at least a hundred people were expected to show up, the friend said we would get free beer, and maybe a little cash as payment (which meant we wouldn’t get paid anything).
The day of the gig arrives. We’re ready. Been practicing our butts off for weeks. We have 30 cover songs. Pop and metal and classic rock. Also ten original songs. We are proud of them. There’s only about twenty people at the party. We start playing anyway. The drummer chokes on the first song. Forgets most of the lyrics. Then he fouls up the second song. Turns the beat around twice. He stumbles through the third song. He’s really nervous. Choking under the pressure, to use a cliche. He keeps making mistakes. Can’t stop. Messing us up. I get mad. Think about stopping and walking out and going home. But after awhile I start to calm down. Focus on just playing my best. We take a break. During the second set the drummer starts to relax. He plays a little better now. Still not very many people at the gig. I don’t care. I stopped taking it seriously a long time ago. I start giggling at the drummer’s mistakes. Who gives a shake.
Then I notice that something is going on with the bass player, he guzzled a lot of alcohol between sets. He isn’t playing the correct bass lines anymore he is also taking big shots of whiskey and drinking beer and people are passing something around and he is taking long swallows from another bottle and I have no idea what’s in it. The bass player is getting plastered I start watching him he isn’t playing any of the bass lines I taught him. Instead he starts soloing on his bass throughout the riffs of our songs, I stare at him he is really out of it. While the drummer is playing and we are supposed to be backing him up the bass player’s fingers have moved up very high onto the upper frets of his bass, he is dancing around the room not following the beat or me and he is soloing atonally throughout all of our songs that we worked so hard on. Dancing around, soloing dancing and jamming out, prancing and soloing on his bass guitar he is totally drunk. All those weeks spent cramming bass lines into his head, all that time helping him get the songs down, it is now gone. The last two sets are a complete debacle, the numerous rehearsals the abundance of hours that I could have been doing worthwhile activities such as improving my own playing, all of it is down the drain. Oh well what can you do.
I got depressed. The gig was a total failure. Not many people showed up anyway. We didn’t get paid a dime. Later the drummer got drunk and started imitating body slams and pile drivers from the fake championship wrestling matches they put on television that I despise. I prefer mixed martial arts. The drummer eventually dives onto the floor and bends his wrist backward, almost breaking it. We don’t practice for months after that. He couldn’t play his drums. It would have been useless anyway. The band breaks up. A real tragedy.
So the moral of this story is not only do you have to try to find dedicated band members, you also have to find ones you can trust to perform well when the pressure is on during live gigs. You don’t want your band members breaking under the pressure or wigging out when it’s time to perform, and you don’t want them getting drunk and soloing over the riffs to your songs (especially if you are getting paid to play). It isn’t easy to find good band members. But it is possible sometimes.
Did you notice that I broke many punctuation rules in the anecdote above? I like doing that. But I also did it to make a point. You don’t always have to follow rules. Any rules. Writing rules, music rules, painting rules, math rules, sculpture rules, any kind of rules. Even a bumblebee breaks the rules of physics when it flies. So apply this idea to your guitar playing. In solos you can play notes that are outside the scale or overall tonality, or you can use irregular phrasing or do whatever the heck you want.
There is no right or wrong.
There aren’t any definitive rules in music. Either you convey some type of emotion and produce something that somebody wants to listen to you (maybe only yourself), or you do not. Just as a person can write in many different styles, you can also play solos and riffs in numerous ways. It is fun to experiment and try different things. Remember this basic idea and use it in your solos, riffs, and anything else you play or do. Good luck and enjoy yourself.
Source:
“Organizing Band Rehearsals,” How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007.
