What is your experience of the last rehearsal before a gig and which would you prefer: a great rehearsal before a gig or one that leaves you with some things to think about and work on?
For context - our band doesn't do a lot of gigs. Maybe 1 a month.
We rehearse most weeks. Partly because we're good friends and it's social. Partly because none of us seem to retain songs unless we keep playing them.
Very often, our last rehearsal before a gig goes really badly. People forgetting stuff, getting timings wrong, just poor playing.
Then on the night we usually ace it. We rationalise it by saying we allow ourselves to get complacent, then the poor rehearsal focuses us and we play well.
Last night we have possibly our best rehearsal ever (and maybe the best we've ever played) and we have a gig tomorrow. Without wanting to be superstitious there is a part of us going 'oh oh' does that mean that we'll f**k the gig up?
Comments
Feedback
We just turn up at gigs and wing it. Usually seems to go down well enough!
As an aside, I've always found a good night's sleep is more beneficial than staying up late running through stuff at home the night before a gig. I might run through some of the solos and anything I find difficult but try to keep it minimal.
BAd rehearsal suggests bad gig unless everyone practices alot at home between times
I found if I set up multicoloured led mood lighting in the rehearsal room and switch off the hospital bright overhead lights, rehearsal goes much better, everyone gets really into the zone.
It's probably partly because we're all imagining we're on stage with the lights and start to feel that buzz of a live gig, but partly because we feel less self conscious since the lighting is less bright and we can focus on playing, more than what we look like.
I deliberately play different guitars and stand in different places etc. to avoid as far as possible any way to mentally hook on success/failure factors that just aren't real.
I'm with others in that playing live at a gig is different thing from practice and I approach it as such. It's way more fun
It's something that we tend to use as a way to stop us getting worried if we don't have a particularly good rehearsal "ah it's ok we always have a good gig if we had a shit rehearsal."
I was just interested in other people's experience.