General Music Chat

Irmin, Yeah, "airtight" is no good for me, either. I don't like a canned- robotic sound.
Once I remembery how to play a song right (the right chords and the right notes at the right time), I don't practice it.
I only practice new stuff, or old stuff which I've half-forgotten.
.
sanshouheil,
Yeah practice whtever is needed, whenever needed.
.
I NEVER practice my best stuff. I only practice songs which I feel could be improved.
I don't need to teach me; rather, I need to teach my "finger memory."
.
. . . you guys know what I mean?

It's an activity that is fun, so we keep it fun. We rehearse 2x a week.

We never try to play it note for boring note and we drink a little etc. after we rehearse. We record the rehearsals and try to listen to them afterwards to see if it sounds like we think it should.

The people that don't rehearse sound like they don't, well unless you ask them.

I consider band night once a week almost a necessity, like some people have bowling league or whatever. Get to go to our practice room, plug in, make some noise, talk stupid with the boys....it's great.

And I play my guitar or bass for minimum one hour each day, my own personal relaxation. And seldom practice band specific stuff, just songs on my own, technique whatever.

I love it when a guy in the band says "Hey! I wrote this really cool thing that we gotta do," & he hands me a chord chart/lyric sheet to practice with until we get together. "It's sorta a reggae/blues - jam kinda thing. You'll get it when we play it."

Or someone decides to do a song I never heard of, & rams it into my head until I can remember it, only to change it or drop it later when we actually play it.

Or the singer gets a brain fart & changes the arrangement when you finally DO get the damned song on stage, dropping like 1/2 the piece & signalling the end with the last verse or tag line after I worked my butt off to get this really cool part in there.

This is why I prefer to practice. And when I do, I like to record it, & give everyone copies to study ( & then only hope that they at least LISTEN to the damned recording, if not actually practice with it ).

Once a week is fine if I'm not gigging with them, cuz I'll learn my damned part & drive them up the wall if they don't do thier part...

If we're gigging regularly, I let practice slide to once a month to learn new material, or rearrange stuff that doesn't seem to be working for one reason or other.

I'd just like to get together with a bunch of musicians that would tune thier axe & show up ON TIME to the gigs & rehearsals & not piss off ppl at the gigs & learn thier parts rather than just "wing it" & stay straight enough to remember what the hell they're doing &...

AAAARGH!!!!

I always felt it was important to get together and just play. I'm not expert, in fact the weakest part of my playing is my rhythm and ear mostly because I played so little with other musicians. But the few times I have played with others the most fun and productive ones were when we us banged some songs together. I've left a band because rehearsing just wasn't working out. If you can all play together the songs and tightness will come.

Playing a song to "airtight" status drums the spirit right out of the work, as far as I am concerned.

I prefer to perform by the old Celtic axiom: Never play the same song exactly the same way twice.

You must be related to our lead player...

3x's a week, tues, thurs, sunday....

But we usually write a new song a week or work on unfinished songs...

We still play the set top to bottom like were at a gig.