Continuous rehearsal

[Quilly]

Ive started in a band with other guys in their 40s with the usual work / family commitments. So it’s not always possible for us all to meet regularly . However I feel rehearsals should go ahead even with individuals absent. Even just for the sake of staying tight. Not sure if my band mates feel the same . Ie ‘theres no point in band practice with X missing’ . What do other bands do ?

Edited July 4, 2018 by Quilly

[Woodinblack]

We don't bother if someone is missing, we continually adjust when we can get together on  a day by day basis and then turn up together or don't bother.

I guess it depends, if you are a 13 piece with horn section then it is probably easy enough, but if there are only a few of you, there isn't much point

 

[DaytonaRik]

I've tried in the past but with a twin harmony/lead guitar band it's just not worth it - use the time to go through material at home so that each member know's their parts inside out when you rehearse next you can be sure that you're all as good as you can be.

[discreet]

It's bloody annoying, but if at least the drummer, guitarist and myself turn up, there's usually something to be getting on with.

And we can talk about the others (and how we're going to replace them). 

[redbandit599]

Depends who's missing. I've practiced without drums and found it beneficial as I have to boss the rhythm and time keeping.

I also think in a two guitar band getting them to practice without bass smoothing the edges seems to tighten them up a bit. 

No singer is harder, but equally helps you tighten up without vocals to follow.

Wouldn't want to make a habit of it,  but the above helps if you have short notice changes to availability and one person has to bail.

[discreet]

18 minutes ago, redbandit599 said:

Wouldn't want to make a habit of it, but the above helps if you have short notice changes to availability and one person has to bail.

Yes, this. Also a good way to check who is a dead weight, dead wood or just a dead loss. 

[fleabag]

I maybe all 3

 

[chris_b]

5 hours ago, Quilly said:

. . .  I feel rehearsals should go ahead even with individuals absent. . .  What do other bands do ?

I'd rehearse if something can be accomplished, otherwise I'd reschedule. 

[Staggering on]

2 hours ago, redbandit599 said:

Depends who's missing. I've practiced without drums and found it beneficial as I have to boss the rhythm and time keeping.

 

 

 

Agree.Even in our jazz quartet it really lets everyone hear exactly what the other players are doing when the drums aren't at the rehearsal.It is also a good situation for us(vocals/keys,horn player and me) to work on new songs and try some ideas without boring the drummer with endless repeats.I have a bad habit of speeding up and without the drums I really have to concentrate to keep things steady and that is a good workout for me.

This is in no way being negative about drummers,ours is a great player and is very sensitive to what we are doing. 

Edited July 1, 2018 by Staggering on

[SpondonBassed]

I only ever get to practice on my own.  Sometimes even I don't turn up for that.

[Phil Starr]

My greatest bugbear, apart from people who, when they do show up clearly haven't looked at what we are planning to rehearse. I understand people are busy and sometimes things come up which we can't control especially with young families but in the end if you can't rehearse you can't be in a band. If breaks between rehearsals get too great then you lose the advances you made last time and end up constantly rehearsing the same songs over and over. Most of us are just weekend warriors and family/relationships and work usually have to come first but then there are other priorities and being in a band is quite a commitment. For us music is a team sport and there has to be at least some sense of not letting the team/band down. I still play cricket from time to time and if I commit to playing on a Sat I know I am letting 21 other people down if I don't show, 21 people who have arranged their weekend and their families weekends around the game. If I fail to show or cancel at the last minute for a Tues rehearsal it's the same thing multiplied by the fact that four other people have spent the weekend finding time to practice/learn whatever we are going to rehearse. Generally it's the same people each time and what they are basically thinking is that their busy lives are more important than other people's busy lives.

You can tell this is a recent experience

Anyway, a couple of practical suggestions:

In the end the only way I've ever known bands to work is to have a regular practice day. In the end there is always someone who cant do Mon, Tue, ….. or weekends. If you pick a day which suits the majority it is surprising how people rearrange if the alternative is leaving the band. Once you've settled on a day they'll book their pilates class another day and all will be fine, the band stop booking things in on a practice night because they know Tues is the day we all meet. Moveable days don't usually work as people forget and book something in, or their partners do.

Bands work best IME when two people form an engine room driving the band. If you turn up and two people have been quietly working away together at new material it generally goes well. It's relatively easy to jam along if two people at least are solid, they'll end up sorting out chord sheets and the like and will generally pick up on most of the organisation and drive the band. If those core members get together maybe with a singer or guitarist as well it can be really productive. a random meeting of three musicians out of five less so. It takes organisation and a decent musical brain to isolate little bits of a set or song to work on, not three people who have all either not picked up their guitar or put the kit together in the intervening fortnight. Only 12 bar hell can emerge from that.

If you are working with band members missing an acoustic workout sometimes goes well IME, sitting down where everyone can hear each other can really give you a different insight into songs and your role in them, and people get to talk when they aren't competing with a kit or a guitarist widdling away in the corner through a 4x12.

Bitter, me????

[uk_lefty]

We try to as a minimum go for a drink to sort out set lists and so on if someone is missing. We have had practice with just bass and two guitars, no singer or drums before and that was really productive. But generally we sort out the next few Thursdays in advance, everyone knows Thursday night is band night but if partners are working away or there's something of a one-off that has to happen on a Thursday night we try to give at least two weeks notice. 

I like my band, we are all on the same level of commitment and respect for each other.

[mrtcat]

We only really rehearse once every couple of months and, as we're just a 4 piece, if someone is unable to make it we cancel and rearrange. We gig 1-2 times a week tho so rehearsal is purely for adding new material. We usually add 10 songs in a single rehearsal to make it worthwhile. I don't mind rehearsal if it's productive but could never be in a band that rehearses every week or more often than it gigs.

[gjones]

I was in a band with a continuous revolving membership. People would join, not be able to get to rehearsals due to family commitments, then leave. Over the 3 years I was with them they had 19 members. We never had a full rehearsal, with every member present.

Not surprisingly, the gigs, what there were of them, were crap. 

Eventually, after a long 3 years of this malarky,  I gave up on them and left the band, which ceased to exist not long afterwards.

[josie]

We're more of a collective than a band, there are seven of us (I think!) from time to time, and usually three to five of us at a practice or even a gig. We just adapt the playlist and style a bit depending on who's there. If we needed everyone to be there every time we'd just have to give it up.

We're playing this Saturday and Sunday at Southport Marina Festival - the drummer can only be there on Sunday, so we're doing softer stuff on Saturday and more blues-rock on Sunday. Any punters who are there on both days get a bit of variety too.

[martin8708]

It's no big deal if the drummer is not present , it gives myself and the guitarist time and space to work out all the nuances of some of the more difficult songs .

Without a vocalist or guitarist , not much point in rehearsing .

[SpondonBassed]

9 hours ago, josie said:

We're more of a collective than a band, there are seven of us (I think!) from time to time, and usually three to five of us at a practice or even a gig. We just adapt the playlist and style a bit depending on who's there. If we needed everyone to be there every time we'd just have to give it up.

We're playing this Saturday and Sunday at Southport Marina Festival - the drummer can only be there on Sunday, so we're doing softer stuff on Saturday and more blues-rock on Sunday. Any punters who are there on both days get a bit of variety too.

I like the sound of that.  If there are enough band members to make that possible it must make every gig exciting and a little bit special.

[thebigyin]

_{We used to get together at a mates house Guitar, Bass and Vox without the Drummer just to run through bits when we introduced new songs....not the same as full blown rehearsal but helped out in ways.}

[dmccombe7]

Depends on the band really. Current band is only a 4 piece singer, guitar, bass and drums and we won't rehearse if someone can't make it.

Last band i was in was a 6 piece band and we would still rehearse if someone couldn't make it. There were a lot of harmony vocals that they would work on or twin guitars we would work on their parts or simply try a few suggested song and run thru them to see how they sounded before adding to set list. For this particular band yes it works ok.

Would have to say that most bands i've been in would normally cancel as it was usually quite rare.

My current band is made up of guys that already play in reasonably successful bands and this was a side project so there are gaps in rehearsals however we just learn new songs at home and all being pretty competent musicians it works out well.

Dave

[HengistPod]

Only time we rehearsed without a member (me) was when we had our first gig coming up on the Saturday and the singer wanted to run through the tunes.

I, of course, had dutifully nailed all my parts and so wasn't missed at all. That's the reason I have in my head, anyway.

[Muzz]

The Rawk Band I'm in haven't rehearsed for months, due to scheduling commitments, and is consequently staggering a bit, and the number of gigs we've done is a one-hand-count, but it's good fun to get together. I wouldn't like it to be my only band, tho...

The main gigging band never actually rehearse, other than every blue moon to do a 'technical rehearsal' to get the sounds and patches set right (we're an in-ears, triggered drums, Mainstage and Helix kinda setup) and maybe once every three or four months we might get together at the singer's house with a minimal trigger kit and the in-ears to run through a couple of songs, but that's it - we put new material in by emails (with a YouTube link to the 'definitive' version, just in case), usually in the week before the gig. We've been playing together long enough for that not to be a problem...

[Monkey Steve]

It depends, and varies from band to band

I'd echo Phil Starr in agreeing one time and day that is the regular rehearsal slot and set a level; of commitment and an expectation that everybody is going to turn up unless they have a really good excuse.  I have had some experience of bands who would spend days trying to round everybody up to agree on the date for the next rehearsal, and they've never lasted very long, simply because the one person who spends time herding the cats/spoilt-toddler-like-musicians gets fed up, stops doing it, and nobody else picks it up and it all falls apart. YMMV

Having set the ground rules, anybody who can't make it has to let everybody else know in plenty of time so that the band won't get charged if we don't turn up (in my experience, usually 48 hours notice).  For one band I was in the rule was that if you dropped out too late for the studio's rules, and we cancelled and owed them a week's money the next time we went in, you had to pay it. 

As long as people give some warnings then you can at least make an informed decision of whether to show up.  I'm usually more annoyed by people just not showing up or ringing to cancel on the day, and have plenty of experience of turning up to find that we're going to be a man down, and the whole rehearsal is wasted.  And I've done it too - usually when rehearsing in London and only finding out that my train in from Surrey isn't running when i get to the station an hour before rehearsal.

It then comes down to practicalities - what will we get out of a rehearsal if somebody doesn't show up?

• If it's practising to get sharpened up for live shows then we need a drummer, but can possibly live without one of either a guitarist or singer.  And the band can make do without the bass player if I'm the one who has to skip it.
• But if we're writing stuff we can do without the drummer (albeit that if we're writing stuff then we possibly don't need to hire the studio to do it)
• One band with two guitarists had one who was more prone to skipping practices than everybody else (often for perfectly valid reasons) so we used the time to go through and work out arrangements for one guitar.
• In general I can usually make do without a singer, either with somebody else standing in, or just working on arrangements and playing without them

But for some bands it just didn't work without everybody there and it was better to skip that week if somebody couldn't make it.  Alternatively, a mate of mine in a signed band will rehearse three times a week regardless of who is there - he was telling me that he had a rehearsal a few weeks ago where it was only him (lead guitar) and the bass player, and he wasn't going to skip it because they were playing a couple of big festivals the following weekend and he hates cancelling practices

[Woodinblack]

16 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

I'd echo Phil Starr in agreeing one time and day that is the regular rehearsal slot and set a level; of commitment and an expectation that everybody is going to turn up unless they have a really good excuse. 

Works fine if everyone is 9-5 with regular commitments. Doesn't work if they aren't.

16 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

I have had some experience of bands who would spend days trying to round everybody up to agree on the date for the next rehearsal, and they've never lasted very long, simply because the one person who spends time herding the cats/spoilt-toddler-like-musicians gets fed up, stops doing it, and nobody else picks it up and it all falls apart. YMMV

Ours does. We send a thing out on the whatsapp group, like 'practice on thursday' (or sort of most regular day), 'no, can't do thursday, can do tuesday or wednesday' sort of thing.

Almost every week we find a compromise and if not we skip that week.

[Monkey Steve]

11 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Works fine if everyone is 9-5 with regular commitments. Doesn't work if they aren't.

Ours does. We send a thing out on the whatsapp group, like 'practice on thursday' (or sort of most regular day), 'no, can't do thursday, can do tuesday or wednesday' sort of thing.

Almost every week we find a compromise and if not we skip that week.

It might work for some if everybody is committed to it, and I have had a band who worked like that for quite a long time and it was fine, but sadly my experience is that it quickly turns into a nightmare where even one member of the band isn't playing the game.

For instance one lead guitarist from an old band would never reply to texts/emails/phone calls asking him to confirm the dates that he could make.  When we did hear from him he would complain that we hadn't had rehearsals for ages, assuming that the magic rehearsal fairy would know when he was free and book the practices.  Never once occurred to him that he could/should book the practices, his only involvement was to complain that somebody else should have been doing it, and simply couldn't understand that the person who had been doing it couldn't book anything until he confirmed when he was free (I have a much longer rant about those who see "being really committed" to a band as meaning "as long as I don't have anything else to do that day").  These are the sort of band mates I can live without, and in this case, started living without quite quickly because the band ground to a halt.

But I have had better experiences - one band would only book week-by-week, but we would rehearse every weekend, either on the Saturday or Sunday, and in either the early or late afternoon slot at a particular studio.  Everybody knew to keep the weekends free for it so in general we could agree on a time each week and as long as the studio has a free room when we could all make it, it worked out fine.  Again, comes back to the question of commitment.

[mikel]

We always postpone if someone cant make it. We all learn and practice our individual parts at home, band practice is for putting it all together and working on dynamics and being tighter than a very tight thing.