Everybody has their own ritual for starting to play music.  Lighting up, plugging in, rocking out.  But I’ve thought of some things to think about to keep the music flowing, and not getting stale.  I’ve been in bands before where the music doesn’t get better because people have fallen into a pattern and “hearing” the music in only one way.  And it takes a lot longer to get tighter as a band if the people in the band don’t learn to play together, which is what makes live music different and more exciting than canned music.

But rehearsing a band has its’ own challenges and skills that must be learned.  Here are some ideas.

LISTENING

The most important part of playing in a band, is listening and playing music “with” each other rather than “at” each other.  When band members spend more time listening, then the music becomes tight the music gets to another level.  This all presupposes that you know what you are going to play like the back of your hand, which I know is probably not the case.  What is probably the case is you are in your own world trying to figure out what to play over a new section or remembering the changes for another section.  I’ve often been in the situation where I had to learn a new song quickly and write my part as a bass player quickly as well.  But maybe the better way would be to slow down the process.

BREAK IT DOWN

I’m of the opinion that, especially in New York, bands never seem to have enough time to rehearse.  Making music can be time consuming, especially if you are writing original music.  You want your music to be different, creative, and good.  And that usually takes time… at least for me.  But I would always want to play sections of songs and work on them a piece at a time instead of the whole thing all at once.  If your band keeps just playing through the song, over and over, then it will cement in there at a particular level, and then no one has any desire to change things to make it better later.

So, playing the first verse and stopping and maybe someone has an idea for a way to make it better or make it tighter.  Or design a section where everyone plays a musical idea together.  Or many other creative things that you can come up with if everyone is on the same page as far as rehearsing a music in the same way.  Here’s another way to really get everyone listening…

SLOW TEMPO

One exercise that might help with training the band members to listen to each other is to slow the tempo way down to a tempo that you would never really play it at.  Comically slow.  It’s also a good exercise to help with “groove”.  So, as you count off your comically slow tempo, all of the members in the band will be listening to each other to find the next beat for the next thing that they have to play.  And hopefully, everyone lands on the measures, and the sections at the same time.  And if it doesn’t sound great, it’s really just a listening exercise anyways, and when the song is back up to full tempo, you’ll “hear” the music from a different perspective.  Then try faster tempos…Couldn’t hurt.

Good luck Rehearsing your band!