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Why do we rehearse? 🎸
Musicians rehearse to learn new songs and new skills, plus maintain existing ones. Just as athletes and sportspeople need to train to improve their abilities and keep in shape, so musicians have to rehearse.
Rehearsal increases our capacity to succeed and achieve our dreams. At college, a well-rehearsed performance leads to such outcomes as achieving your target grades, achieving personal satisfaction and also respect from your peers. To a working musician or band, a well-rehearsed performance means fulfilling ambitions, such as increased financial success, increased fanbase and the pleasure of doing the job they love.
Groups with two or more musicians rehearse to decide and practise each song's key, tempo, structure, style, rhythm, balance of volumes, etc to ensure a co-ordinated group performance.
What are the benefits of rehearsal? 🎤
Rehearsal brings confidence - performing in front of others can be unnerving, but rehearsal will give you the confidence to impress an audience, earning their respect and providing a genuinely entertaining performance.
Rehearsal is also about discovery - discovering the secrets of how music you love actually works and also learning about your self. Musicians who rehearse over a period of time will notice how much more confident they feel about attempting new challenges.
What should a rehearsal include? 🎹
There are many different ways to rehearse, but it is always important to start with warm-ups to get your voice or fingers working and avoid any strain or damage. Once you're warmed up, activities should be chosen to help you progress towards your goals (e.g. learning new repertoire, increasing singer's pitch range or pianist's dexterity, etc) and you should end your rehearsals by making a note of how much progress has been made on each goal.
Set yourself 'Mini-Outcomes' - can I improve how I play this bar or sing that note?
Look for 'Personal Bests' - what have you done today that you didn't think you could do before?
Make your rehearsals goals-based 🎤
You should start by working out what skills you need to learn to play your new set of songs. You can then plan your rehearsal time with a ticklist, focusing on the main areas for improvement. As you see improvement in your progress, rehearsals should start to feel positive, helpful and even fun! Try and keep to a sensible level of rehearsal to avoid burnout or being under-rehearsed. Rehearsals should be a minimum of 30 minutes, 3 times a week to start seeing a difference in your skills. Decide where is best to rehearse, either at home, college or other music rehearsal space.
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7 top tips for making the most of rehearsals
1. Choose Warm-Ups that match your goals
Warm-ups should be chosen to help you progress your target areas, such as exercises getting gradually faster to help learn fast passages, or scales climbing higher to prepare you for singing high notes. There are routines on Youtube for all instruments and free singing apps such as Vocalizzo. Remember your goals and find the right combinations of activities to ensure you are
2. Slow down the tricky parts
Fast songs or intricate, tricky sections may be easier to learn if slowed down. Set your metronome to a slower tempo or your Youtube backing track to a slower speed, until you're accurate with the section you're learning. You can also use apps to slow down recordings, such as these apps on Google Play or other recording programs, such as LOGIC X.
3. Start from the tricky bit, not the beginning
If you keep getting stuck on part of a song, it's best to start from that difficult part when you rehearse. This is to avoid wasting time and energy always starting from the part you can already play smoothly. Once you have mastered the tricky part (maybe by slowing it down as in tip #2 above), play it three times correctly to lock it in, then perform the whole song from the beginning.
4. Singers - check your pitch with a piano or tuning app
Singers should check their pitch by comparing their sung note to a note played on a piano (or free online piano) or by singing into a pitch-measuring app
5. Create your own regular routine
Once you've set your goals, create a simple routine that is easy to repeat at each rehearsal. Make sure you plan your rehearsal activities and find everything you need before you start rehearsing. This way, you can avoid distractions that can disrupt your rehearsal schedule, such as searching for new videos on Youtube, etc. Keep a schedule, such as 10 mins of various warm-ups, 20 mins of repertoire and 10 mins of freestyle, improvisation or jamming to a backing track. Make a ticklist chart with a column for each day's date and tick off each activity to show your progress. Try sticking to the same time each day to help you keep to a regular routine.
6. Keep your instruments and resources ready
It's easier to start quickly on rehearsals if all the equipment you need to rehearse with is already set up and ready to use. Reducing the time spent setting up instruments and equipment will save you valuable energy for rehearsal.
7. Get to know your material well
Rehearsal will help you know your songs inside out, empowering you to truly capture and hold the audience's attention. Use rehearsal time to find out which lines or sections of a song require a change in dynamics from soft to loud or other expression. To really know your song well, you can print out a copy of the lyrics or score and use highlighter pens to mark up different sections, such as red for loud and blue for soft, or yellow to draw attention to challenging sections.
By Paul Tornbohm
Coulsdon College, August 2020
