Sometimes my daydreams reveal things about my own philosophy…
I was just daydreaming a scenario where I was coaching/teaching a band a la BandWorks.
I then began telling them about the stages of band skill development:
1 – each person mastering their part
2 – blending
3 – performance.
The first one is what most people know about, but sometimes forget – especially the homework part. Learn your part and practice it at home before you come to band practice/rehearsal.
The second one is what band practice is about: Get your band to sound good together. This entails placing amps in ways where you can hear without deafening your band mates (either angled up to aim at the guitarist’s ear, or on a stand aiming at the guitarist’s ear), keeping the attention on the parts that are important for each moment in the song, and ensuring that the band can play the piece tightly – same timing and complementary harmonics.
The third part is what rehearsal is for: fine tuning how you are going to communicate the song to the audience. This includes everything from coordinated movements of the band members to doing showy things with your instruments. Stage presence is practiced in simulation here. Stage presence comes from total comfort performing and utter confidence in your performance. And according to Caith Threefires of Pandemoneon, “It’s that level of comfort where your personality is free to come out and play, rather than focusing on not fucking up.” The homework for this would be being able to play your part while not looking and while prancing around like a manic clown. If the player can do that, they can play and still make eye contact with the audience.
So… after this daydream… I decided to write this down.
Cheers!
Azi
azicrawford
