Hot take: band practice is not as easy as they* make it sound | quality vs quantity

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-01

[00:00:07]Welcome to Aldo's opinion video. Today's topic is just me on here, not visuals or anything on the background. So, you might just put your phone away or whatever you're using to listen to this video because it's just well me talking.

[00:00:19]This today's topic uh is about quantity versus quality in band rehearsals. How much is enough and all that stuff.

[00:00:27]Basically, there are a few topics I want to mention or should I say subtopics because this is more complicated than what it originally sounds like. Now, the main challenge, the main idea, what a person I know was saying on Rout's Discord was basically a friend boasted that back in the 90s this band rehearsed at least like twice a week and made it sound like a proud thing to do. Like, hey, we were rehearsing a lot twice a week and all that stuff. Now it might not sound a lot but technically speaking it's not too little either. Now my friend was or should I say person I know not really a friend maybe was pretty much pointing out that that sounds like old people's hobbies like what you're rehearsing or practicing basketball or bowling twice a week like from 9 to 7 or whatever. My point here is, yeah, when you put it like that, it's going to sound like you're not putting too much effort into the very thing. Like, what is this 90 minutes of uh practice time and then you go back to your hobbies, watching television, doing laundry, and all that stuff. When you put it like that, it really sounds like you're not really doing much. But like I said, that is way more complicated when you really think about it. I'm going to challenge this very uh notion by a couple of examples. Now, first of all, rehearsal rooms when you want to rent one, most people cannot afford one as like own them, buy them. So, when you rent one, first thing you is going to notice is there are not too many rehearsal place available. This depends obviously the size of the city or town you live in and all that stuff. But for example, in my case, I live in uh one of the bigger cities in Finland, maybe fifth or sixth biggest city at the moment. And while we do have some kind of a culture with the city and all that stuff, supporting young people with the rehearsal room and all that stuff. I mean, I used to be a young guy, too. You know, it's not so given that when you play, say, metal music that those rehearsal rooms are out there for renting. And if they are, they might be too expensive for young students pockets. What I'm saying here, you might not be uh exactly lucky when it comes to getting your own rehearsal place. And if you are, well, there are still more complicated things. So the typical situation is you find a rehearsal place, but it's someone of a shared room, meaning there are other bands who also going to play in that very place. And then you end up doing lots of scheduling, playing with the calendars and all. Say there are two bands with yours, three bands in total, and you're like, "Okay, band number one gets Mondays and Thursdays. The second one gets Tuesdays and Fridays. The third one gets something like Wednesdays and uh Saturdays or Sundays. So, sounds good so far, right? You get those two days a week to rehearse. Not more than that, mind you. So, when it comes to this uh sports comparison, yeah, you're already kind of a [ __ ] up with that kind of stuff. You might be also lucky. Maybe the two other bands are not that active.

[00:03:39]Maybe they don't even rehearse once a week. So, if that's the case, consider yourself blessed. Meaning, maybe you can do more than twice a week. At least in that sense, shared room gives you more possibility when the other ones are not so active. If you're lucky enough or have enough money to do that, obviously you will get your own rehearsal place.

[00:04:01]But like I said, that cost a lot of money. I have experience on both occasions both kind of types of thing.

[00:04:08]For example, a few years ago when night side got back, there were no shared rooms available. Not so much anyway. So we got one that we got for ourselves, but the rent was roughly the same level as if you would rent an apartment. So, not exactly too cheap and it was kind of a far away from one another. You know, we had like five guys back then and it's still everybody had to drive at least a little bit farther away to get there because those kind of places are not exactly in the city central. Not usually anyway, but we had one like that back in mid '9s when we started, but that was a very shitty place. Didn't even have a toilet, so go figure. Anyway, those days are long gone and nowadays those kind of places aren't available and even that was more or less a shared place. So, it's almost like balance things out and trying to find whatever. Now, this brings us to the second thing. Even if you have this nice rehearsal room, which isn't exactly too expensive and maybe it's shared, maybe it is somewhere with a little bit more distance. Sometimes you might need a car. Now, back in the 90s, most of us didn't have our own cars. And if your rehearsal place is something that say resides in a more like countryside place or industrial area, whatever, you might not exactly go there by commuting. Bigger cities have more options, but then again, bigger cities more have more people who are also going for the very same place. So, what I'm saying here, these places are not that simple as it may seem. It's one thing to rehearse. I mean one place to rent an apartment and one thing to re you know rent a place where you can rehearse you know play music until whatever usually even these kind of places have some some kind of limitation how late can you practice say maybe it's up to 1000 p.m. or 11 p.m. There is a limit much like in rental apartments.

[00:06:11]You just really literally can't rehearse there 24/7.

[00:06:16]Which brings us to the next challenge there is. Say you have a typical band of four or five guys. Now try making proper schedule so it fits everybody. Most people work probably from 9 to5 or something similar. And if everybody works like that, then it's probably rather easy, assuming there are no kids or wives or whatever, pets. So then you'd start figuring, okay, me and the bass player and the drummer and the keyboard guy, we got from 5, so by 6:00 or 7, we're ready to go. Oh, but there is this one guy who works until 1000 p.m. And at the rehearsal place, we cannot rehearse after 10:00. So you're kind of a [ __ ] with that kind of situation. Of course, you can rehearse as a half a band, but is it really the same? Especially when you have gigs lined up, concerts to go to play at and all that stuff. So, you are going to be running into these problems, especially if the people in your band are actually something like workers or students. When people don't have always the same set of hours that are available, then you're going to get tricky. The other thing is of course as mentioned when there are kids to be taken care of when there are like car problems like okay my car just busted I cannot go to the rehearsal blah blah blah or maybe the person got ill or whatever there are always these things that you are unable to rehearse every time you want to like for example with night side we rehearsal once a week and my friend one of my friends were actually surprised that we rehearsed that lot because he thinks like we don't do that many gigs and all that stuff and yeah we don't which means when we have a gig booked be it like four months away we need to rehearse more often than those who have a gig every month you know to keep in shape you actually need to play often and if you play often those gigs maybe then you don't rehearse need to rehearse after that much but when you have those every now and then far and in between then you need to probably rehearse a little bit more at the rehearsal So either way, you need to play the music in order to sound convincing and good on the stage. Which brings us to the next topic. When you have an album lined up to be recorded, obviously you need to make music. Now, there are lots of so-called bedroom musicians who prefer to rehearse at home. If that's your cup of tea, things get a lot easier. Then you don't have to worry about getting to the rehearsal place every week. But that's kind of out of the scope for this video because we were actually discussing how many times you rehearse at re rehearsal place. So if you're lucky that you get rehearsed, you know, twice a week, consider yourself lucky. That seems something of a luxury after 40 plus when there are kids wipes and who knows what. I mean everybody else have other hobbies, right? So that gets also more complicated. Now it's not about suddenly work uh conflicts you know like how what kind of hours you're working and when you get those all those people to the rehearsal place like some bands might be just limited to rehearse on weekends because weekdays are for work and if those um hours when people do their work are not exactly compatible with one another then you are kind of a bump to do them on weekends. how many days you have on weekends too. Good luck if you're going to book both Saturday and Sunday for that because like I said everybody else have other things in their lives as well. Now when you start putting all these together like how late can you play, how are the work hours, how are the other hobbies and then there's random effects two times a week sounds actually quite much of a luxury.

[00:10:04]Now then there is this another matter called diminishing returns. If you're not familiar with the term, I totally recommend you to Google it up, search and understand it. Why? Because it's the very foundation.

[00:10:19]Be it about money, be it about time, but you need to understand how it works. So say first one hour you do at the rehearsal place might be more important than the next two. Why? So because people end up losing energy and focus and all that stuff. Maybe if you have say three hours rehearsal time which is quite a lot if you really think about it. Maybe rehearse actually something like two hours or 90 minutes. Why?

[00:10:46]Because there are always people who come up late whatever reason. There are people who want to drink their coffees and beers and do coips. It's fine. After all we are people not machines. Machines could probably go on for a longer time.

[00:10:58]I mean that's what drum machines are for right? But when it comes to creative minds, when it comes to putting the songs together or going through the set list, there's only a certain amount of time as long as you are like really focused and giving everything you got into the music. Now, if you have say 45 minutes of a set, you might be able to pull it off within 45 minutes, especially if you're going to make it like this is how it gonna our gig is.

[00:11:25]Clock it. But after that, you probably need a break. you kind of start feeling fatigue and restlessness and all that stuff. You need coffee, beer, beer breaks or biological breaks, going to the toilets and all that stuff. So, after a while, you kind of realize you're not going to rehearse 3 hours straight. I mean, like really rehearsing. You're going to do something else. Or maybe some people need to leave early. Maybe they have early wakeup call and all that stuff. Now this might sound like a bunch of uh excuses for a lot of people but there is also different whether you're 18 years old kid or whether you're actually someone with 40 years of I don't know life behind and some kind of uh responsibilities to take care of. When you combine all these two and consider that diminishing returns thing into the play you start to realize twice a week is indeed quite a lot. I would rather say one hour of good quality is better than two hours of less good quality. Why? Because what does it matter if you spend u seven days at a rehearsal place when you're mostly just moving your legs in the air and not really composing anything, not putting things together, not writing lyrics, not jamming riffs. For example, you might have a riff or two ready for the next song. So you show it to the rest of the guy like, "Hey, this is how the very strong." Okay, that's an intro riff.

[00:12:52]What about the second riff? Okay, I have something in my mind. And then you're like, "How about this? This is very good. This is very good." Yeah. And the drummer is like, "Yeah." So, uh, what happens after that? Is there a chorus part? And they're like, "Ah, I don't know, man. I only have these two rifts for this new song. I don't know how it's going to go. Should we jam?" Sometimes proper jamming, you know, means proper results, meaning the song might actually complete it with that one rehearsal. But sometimes you just face a dead end.

[00:13:20]You're like, man, I don't know. This doesn't feel right. That doesn't feel right. You know, something is not clicking the right. You might go after many many different kind of solutions and try this, try that with the uh result being like, "Sorry man, we don't have more than these two songs."

[00:13:39]Essentially, you get the jamming done, you put some ideas together, maybe write some lyrics, maybe you rehearse at least those couple of riffs, but in the end, you will eventually have that fatigue going on [snorts] and losing the focus, losing the interest. You start thinking about other things. Oh, what do I need to eat to lunch for tomorrow? Do I still have to go for a grocery store after the rehearsals? [ __ ] it's going to be only two hours since I have to wake up and I haven't done the dishes. What I'm saying here is mind starts to go wandering about and you don't have to be hyperactive to do that happen. What I'm saying here is the limited focus is there and once that is gone, it's gone for good until the next time anyway. So, for example, I'd rather say a proper two hours rehearse once a week is way better than just killing your time for four times a week at the band rehearsals. So, what an outsider thinks is just, oh, that's just lazy rehearsing probably tells you more about this guy is saying he never played in a band without saying it out loud. So when you're considering your time at the rehearsal place, don't listen to the naysayers. Those who have never played in a band, at least a proper band that actually made albums, made concerts, played tours, or whatever, because there are always people, those keyboard warriors, who know they know it all once they really don't know anything about at all. It's almost like having sex versus reading about sex. Two different things. And so I'm saying don't beat yourself about it when you feel like, oh, this week and the ne last week before that were kind of wasted. We never went anywhere. You probably did at least something at the rehearsal place. So at least at one hour a week probably meant much more than in some other bands who just stood at the rehearsal place for five hours basically doing nothing but smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee. So time and time, quality and quantity, they are two different things and you usually cannot have both of them. If you can, however, pull that four times a week quality stuff and record a new album every year and still do the tours and concerts and all that stuff, consider yourself blessed with a capital B. This is my take on the very topic. How it is with your band? What is your experience with your bands rehearsing and going to the place and making something actually happen? I'm looking forward to your own experience, not by your friend, but whatever is going on with you. And if you have good enough answers, maybe I'll do part two to this video. Meanwhile, go to play your instruments, keep singing, keep writing lyrics, and keep metal.

[00:16:32]Bye.