Rehearsal is a necessity for all musicians, but most of us can never seem to get as much time in as we’d like. So how can you make the most of your time?
Practice the group.
Rehearsal is a great time to play together and to build your team. These are the people you’re going to conquer the world with, after all. But when everyone can’t come out, don’t cancel, practice your subsets. Rehearse just the solos. Just the vocal harmonies. Practice the parts of the group that make you whole. Rhythm section rehearsals have been some of the most fun, and productive, sessions of my life.
Practice doesn’t make perfect.
Perfect practice does. It’s an old adage, but man does it hold true. Practice is about working your muscles over and over again until you just know that you’ve hit it, but muscle memory is a two sided coin. Practice sloppy, and you’ll stay sloppy. You need to be able to hear your mistakes and correct them in the moment in order to get better, and when everyone is committed to practicing well, good things happen.
Listen critically.
Record your sessions and performances, listen to them as a group, and have an open, honest dialogue about what’s working and what’s not. There’s always politics and band drama when you go down this road, but the only way to get better is to know where the problems are, so be gentle, and be ready.
Don’t hide in the room.
When we point amplifiers at each other and start firing sound, a complex series of acoustic interactions begin. Waves crash into each other, splashing off some walls and sinking into others. The resulting sonic onslaught is always mud, and you quickly learn to play in it and to it. Rather than playing for tone, you play for the room. For vocalists, this can be really messy, blending your voice with the other instruments and hiding all your mistakes. Clean up the sonic clutter for a better rehearsal with much better results.
Practice more often
Making a rehearsal schedule work can be difficult if you’ve got a life outside of music. If your band is having a hard time making it out to a dedicated reherasal space, or sleeping family keeps you from going too late into the night, or the folks downstairs just can’t have all that noise today, then its time to take action with JamHub studios.
JamHub studios let you remove the PA from the equation. Plug into your JamHub studio for incredible stereo audio that each musician can mix for themselves. Use electric drums for nearly silent rehearsal in your apartment all night long. Not only will you never fight the room again, you’ll hear everything with articulate clarity that helps bring out the best in your performances.