Practice makes perfect?

Practice makes perfect right?  What part of practice are we talking about here?  I am referring to rehearsals and band practice, or whatever you like to call it.  I have practice in about an hour, and right now I am awaiting to drive over.  Some of the most important practice for music is actual practice with your band.  There is much that goes into being able to play with a band.  It's funny all of the practicing you do on your own will only reflect so much on how actual band practice goes.  Everyone in the band has to be familiar with the music and have practiced on their own.  I honestly don't do alot of rehearsing on my own outside of band practice, unless I'm not familiar with the music, but that is really only for last minute fill-in gigs.  Recently I had a fill-in gig with a hiphop artist named Micah Brown.  I had to learn 3 songs in less than a week.  That really isn't all that hard to do, but getting tight with the band took every last minute we had to rehearse together before the night of the gig.  I had a very tight drummer to play with named Brandon, he made the practice go quite smooth for me.  If I am able to lock in with the drummer with ease, then practice and playing the music will go well for me.  I learned all 3 of the songs, the night before the first rehearsal, then we had 2 other rehearsal's before the gig.  Luckily with hiphop music, it doesn't have much as far as changes in the bassline, other than not playing at all in some part of the song.  So the songs are fairly "elementary" to learn at the last minute.  The part I like most about learning new songs for a last minute show, is the amount of stimulation my brain feels.  Having to practice and "cram" these new songs in is a very tedious and time consuming process.  In addition to learning these songs, I sort of have to get used to performing them, and being comfortable rocking out on stage with them.  In other words, I don't like to just stand still on stage.  For me now, rehearsing feels like playing a show.  I'm very comfortable on stage, and I rarely get intimidated on stage.  But there are those shows, where you're just like "woahhhhhh".  The show I played with Micah Brown had between 300-400 people, and that was a very nice crowd to see.  The room was full.  It all sort of adds to the high of playing music.  My point that I am trying to make though, is that when rehearsing you need to give it your all, just as much as you would in a live setting.  If you want your shows to feel authentic then you need to make your rehearsals authentic.  I am going to be on my way out of the door soon to go jam out in a mess of psychadelia with Rainbow Bridge.  This has been another look behind the scenes of a musician's world.  Also,  I will try to have more daily blogs, maybe after christmas season is over at my other job in the "real" world at the UPS Store.

<3

-BearKnuckle
facebook.com/BearKnuckle