what are your practices like?

[Psyre]

I feel like my band is missing what we are suppose to do in practice. Nothing has really been happening, nothing new being made, just BORING. Our drummer has to drive about an hour, and it's simply just becoming not worth it for him. I mean we sound good, but there has been no progress in FOREVER.


How do your practices normally go? What do you find works to keep things moving and staying inspired as a band? Did you find certain things other than hammering out songs over and over to be beneficial?

[coldbrightsunlight]

Might be a bit different since we don't practice regularly and already have a fairly large repetoire (90% covers) that we know well, but when we do everyone brings a few songs they want to learn and we try all of them. Anything everyone likes gets tried again, ee maybe arrange it a bit differently and then on to the next.

Back when I was in a mostly originals band we occasionally let practices get pointless and monotonous, and I found the best things to do then were learn a cover but change the style, jam or write songs collectively.

[voerking]

our practices are almost always focused on writing. if we have shows coming up we will run the set once or twice & drill any problem spots.
usually, several members have new material to work on, so we learn the new parts, come up with variations, attempt to do some arranging. we also record all the new stuff so we remember what we did later.
keep in mind, the band i'm in is instrumental progressive math rock type stuff, so it's not the sort of band where someone comes in with a finished song & we jam it out. we work pretty slowly assembling all the little pieces into larger wholes.
our practices usually run about 4 hours, twice a week.

[Ancient Astronaught]

Depends on what we have coming up, we just finished recording a full length and in the process changed some of the songs we had written for it (such as adding or expanding / shrinking parts) so we have to go back and basically relearn the songs. If we have shows coming up we usually spend the first practice or two figuring out new songs we want to play live and then for a week or two before we knock out the set as many times as possible. If we don't have a show for 3 or more weeks we usually will spend a few practices listening to and working on new material that people bring to the table. When we were working on mixing the album though we spent countless hours and practice nights group mixing.

You have to look at what is coming up for your band in the near future and work towards that, if you have nothing lined up as far as shows or anything then work on writing new music and arranging songs. Gotta keep it interesting, a stale and stagnant band gets boring very quickly. Nobody likes playing the same 10 songs for months and months on end (well unless your touring for that amount of time and have a dedicated setlist)

[DADGBD]

At one point, we were productive, and we had a set and played shows regularly... but then we got bored of "structured" "practice" and decided we'd just improvise everything for a few months. We'd capture it live (we record every practice) - revisit, make some sense of it; record it properly, whip up a set and start playing out again. It seemed like a great/fun plan. And it's been great. I'm really quite stoked on our ability to improvise, but we've become lazy, instant-gratification junkies who've forgotten how to "practice". Now we just rock out for a couple hours, call it a night and spend the week chatting about how we have a ton of parts and songs... how we know none of them, and should really work at figuring some of the faves out, record them and play shows again...
Wash, rinse, repeat...

Every coming week is the week we start "working" again...
LOL

[DarkAxel]

we have a ton of new songs to practice and there is just always something new

but we simply don't keep up there's too much stuff written, really... i mean... we can easily play for over an hour, plus we have like five new songs ready for practicing, that's around half an hour,, because one is really long, PLUS we have a whole conceptional album written and we're playing like... two songs out of it

usually we play through the setlist for the next show, once or twice, throw in a little jam, play one or two covers

[dubkitty]

when i used to play in bands, the rehearsals were like an orchestra rehearsal, with me always saying "that isn't right...do it again." if i do a band in the future, i want it to be more cooperative, but it's tough to find people who share your vision if you've got material written already.

[Casavettes]

band rehearsals can get boring and stupid REAL fast
too many damn cooks in the kitchen

for me i see it as, it's better to have basically a leader
or if you luck out and find a group of people that are on the same wavelength
but you always have to be moving forwards and working on something that in someway sets you up for next practice/show/whatever.
if i'm bored about the band, or the music, how can i expect anyone else to feel different?
throw some curveballs, part of being in a band (for me) is being on my toes while having fun
otherwise you end up all standing in a circle jerking each other off. figuratively speaking. or literally, i dunno.

[zRobertez]

Mine are mostly me writing songs at home until they're completely or almost done, then at practice, we all learn it and I say what i think would be cool for drums/bass/whatever else and we try that and try their ideas and settle with what fits the best. So most practices are learning new songs but i write new stuff allllll the time
When ive been in bands where I dnot do the writing, it eventually comes to an almost standstill thing. To solve that, we would just skip out on practice for like two months and then every one has to have a new song idea when we come back to it and its got the electricity again.

[LOCOPELAND]

They're pretty laid back for us. Get there, set up, tweak a few things and go through our set. We're still fairly new, so it hasn't really gotten old yet. Most of the time we'll write a new song in the middle or work on something that already exists.

[DarkAxel]

oh and i need to point out... we don't compose on rehearsals... we practice, we jam, we do silly psychedelic soundscapes and noise jams, but we don't write. Except for CHANGING something while practicing

[Greenfuz]

get wasted

play for about 35 minutes

??????

[AxAxSxS]

They're pretty laid back for us. Get there, set up, tweak a few things and go through our set. We're still fairly new, so it hasn't really gotten old yet. Most of the time we'll write a new song in the middle or work on something that already exists.

I like how we've been doing it. A good mix of fine tuning the existing stuff and creating new
material. I feel its a good outlet for creativity and we get "work" done. I wouldn't change a thing. I'm hoping the new drummer gets up to speed fast cause I dont really like playing the same thing over and over to get someone to learn it. We've been spoiled

[Waterpilot]

We haven't been able to get together at all for most of the winter. When we do it's just catching up from the absence. So really, we're going backwards.

[behndy]

yah. Ancients is how we roll, where it really depends what's coming up. a stretch of shows booked? make sure we're tight on everything, talk about the flow of song to song. when we went in to record a bit ago it was weeks of picking through just the songs we planned to record.

but i'm lucky where it's just me and a drummer, we REALLY click, so there's been a lot of practices where me or Paul brings in an idea, we jam through it for fun for awhile, and grab onto a change and build most of a song in a night. sometimes it's just fun to fuck around with a riff even if it goes nowhere, and then we play through the set.

but since we had a 40 minute set, our singer left, we kinda started over from scratch and are just getting into having 35ish minutes of songs we like and dropping the last holdovers that don't work now, we're always verrrrrrry ok with having an all writing day at practice.