How To Rehearse Like A Fucking Professional

[In a hurry? Watch the video at 1.5x speed to get the gist.]

Down the street from my apartment they’re building some new condos. For an entire year workers have been coming and going. But to a layperson like me, there’s been no visible progress.

Then, all of a sudden, in the last couple months, a whole row of gorgeous three story brick luxury condos sprang up out of the ground.

Of course, it’s not that the workers have been doing nothing all year and just now got their act together. It’s that the work that goes into laying the foundation is largely invisible. Invisible, but absolutely crucial for everything else that follows.

Setting your band up for quick, efficient rehearsals is the same. Just like construction, you’re “subcontracting” various jobs to the best specialists you know. It’s bad business (and a dick move) to make the painters wait around for the drywall guy, who in turn had to wait around for the guys who frame the walls, who… you get the idea.

If you want to be rightly considered a fucking professional, you need to do the upfront work before the first rehearsal so you’re not wasting everyone’s time.

In this article, we’ll talk about what goes into laying a solid foundation so that when you do convene the band to rehearse, there are no obstacles remaining in your path.

Who Is This Article For?

This is written for cover bands and/or bands returning to old material after time away.

(The band I’m currently building is designed to play festivals, corporate events, weddings, and big city bars.)

Who Is This Article Not For?

Most of this won’t apply to you if you’re in a band that’s “exploring” your way toward your sound and/or writing new tunes.

Overview

The method can be divided into 4 main phases:

LEARNING
ORGANIZATION
REHEARSAL
PRESENTATION

Phase One: Learning

In this phase, it’s mostly one person working alone. (Since you’re the one reading this, let’s just assume the “one person working alone” is you.)

Later, each band member will work on his or her own.

Your Jobs In The Learning Phase

download files¹
put the “stems” into a common DAW²
mark the song sections
create basic (or not-so-basic) charts
create a system for organizing this info (covered below in the Organization section)
share the files & info

Their Jobs Once You’re Done With That

SOLO TRACK learning: each band member will use the DAW files you provided to isolate and learn their part
MUTE TRACK rehearsing: then they’ll mute the part they just learned and rehearse it with the backing track

Phase Two: Organization

This phase is also mostly you doing thankless tasks in a room by yourself.

create a shared Dropbox where all files will live
folders are better than a big undifferentiated mess
the Dropbox will contain: charts, stems³⁴, DAW projects, & audio files for stuff not available on streaming
create playlists: Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube (ask your bandmates—probably you can get away with just one or two)
create a shared Google Docs spreadsheet
the Google Sheets contains: playlist links, keys, tempos, lengths, part assignments⁵
set (AND KEEP) a schedule for a weekly email where you let everyone know how things are coming⁶

Phase Three: Rehearsal

Ah, the foundation is laid. Now it’s time for the fun stuff.

your weekly email sets up the schedule: when are y’all available to rehearse?
Once you have a date & time, you can set the agenda.
If you need to work on harmonies or horn parts (or whatever), you should probably have sectional rehearsals first.
The agenda has 1) a limited, achievable goal and 2) a stretch goal.

Phase Four: Presentation

This is a rehearsal you do AFTER you have the songs dialed in. You’re working on sound and workflows and stage plots and such.

In effect, you’re dialing in how you’re presenting your show to the venue, the promoter, your agent, & your audience. So:

For the show, which gear do you bring vs the house provides vs gets backlined?
Who sets up where?
Have your own sound tech? Then they ought to be at this rehearsal.
Running in ears? Now is the time to dial that in (and figure out the logistics).
What’s the setlist?
When do you launch straight into the next song?
When do you talk to set up the next song? (And who talks?)
When does the band tune? (It’ll be when the singer is talking to set up the next song, but make it a specific “all tune.”)
What happens during solos to direct attention where it ought to go?
If people are tacet for a song, do they leave the stage?
How are you collecting emails/giving away freebies/selling merch?

In short, the Presentation rehearsal is about figuring out the known unknowns well in advance so you can focus on putting on a great show (and/or dealing with the unknown unknowns).

What’s Next

This is part of an ongoing series, a sort of “ride along” as we build this new band. So far, we’ve covered how to get super badass players (promoters, agents, etc) to work with you on your project.

What would you like to see next? Deep dives on any of the steps above?Video of how we run our rehearsals? Stage plots? How to build an in-ear monitor rig on the cheap(ish)? How we worked with the agent to refine the band’s concept? How we built the bare minimum band website that’s just viable enough to get us bookings (without spending a ton of money)? Something else? Let me know in the comments.

see the video
by “common” I don’t mean “popular,” I mean “whichever DAW most of your bandmates use.” If you’re the only one who’s on a Mac, sharing GarageBand files won’t be helpful for them. Ask what they use. Most people use a few.
I put the audio stems in their own folder so people can just drag the files into the DAW of their choice
google “how to save [the name of your DAW] project for sharing”
“part assignments” will make more sense if you watch the video, but basically: keeping a master document with a list of who plays (or sings) which part makes it so you don’t have to think or remember or dig through old emails.
your progress on part assignments, charts, & audio, any news about agents, gigs, rehearsal spaces, etc.