Practise

“Amateurs practise until they get it right, professionals practise until they can’t get it wrong” - Unknown

At the group level

Practice time together is critical for a band. The two biggest problems with regard to practicing though, are time and space. Having said that, there is no substitute for a regularly scheduled practice. It’s much easier to plan ahead when you know that, say, your Tuesday nights are booked up. Whether you get together once a week or once a month is not the issue, that you get together is.

The less you practice together the less tight, you’ll be when on stage. And practice time can also be used for experimentation within the group - try new songs / leads / harmonies / fees etc. The trick is to feel each other out, push each other [and by extension the band] into new territory. Open up new possibilities. But you can only do this correctly if you are working off the strong foundation supplied by a large repertoire. Too much speculative experimentation in the practice room can make a band’s presentation unstable.

Note

Tip: A metronome is an invaluable tool and you should always use it when practising. You can get these at any music shop - so do it !

As individuals

Personal improvement is an ongoing effort. It’s easy to slip into the routine of banging out the notes every night, especially if you know the material well. What you should be doing is thinking about how you can improve your part in such a way that it adds to the whole; takes the band up a notch in some small way. There are many ways to do this.

More you can do . .

  1. Record often
  2. Video the band

Butterflies

This may seem a little odd to some, but many performers, myself included, even after many years of playing live, get nervous before going on stage. At first, it hampered my performance significantly, but I later learned to use this nervous energy to my advantage.