Quote:
Originally Posted by mtown
I don't even know what songs we're playing until the Thursday evening before the service on Sunday. If I have a busy weekend it makes it all the worse.
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This is a real peeve of mine. I have scratched and clawed trying to get the director to give us the practice tracks a week before rehearsal, but it aint n e v v v a gonna happen. I decided to have a little talk with the guy one day after I literally got the practice cd out of my mailbox as I was walking to the car to go to rehearsal. That aint gonna cut it. Now it hasn't changed much, we are lucky to get the songs the Sunday night or Monday before rehearsal on Tuesday. I went thru jazz groups in college, and I told him the object of rehearsal is not to learn the songs, but to learn to play the songs as a band. Each person is supposed to know the songs before they get to rehearsal. If we showed up at jazz group rehearsal and it was clear that we had not practiced the songs on our own, we could be asked to drop out and take Sociology classes instead.
I guess he doesn't see it that way, and the way we play on Sunday mornings shows that we are not given the opportunity to give 100%. Unfortunately, most of the musicians we have operate on the "it's good enough to get by" philosophy, the people in the crowd dont care or wont notice, etc. Sorry, but yes they do notice and they can tell the difference. It's wrong to underestimate the perspicaciousness of the audience. Besides, we the players can tell the difference, shouldn't that matter?
My solution is I started saving the MP3 files in a folder on my studio computer. Then once a week or so I will select 20 or 30 of them and let them play in media player while I play guitar along with. Keeps it fresh enough in memory that when the songs do come up in rotation I dont feel like I'm relearning from scratch every time.