Hi,
Have you ever gone to rehearsal, wrote a great song, left satisfied, only to return a few days later and realize that half the band can’t remember the song you just wrote two days ago?
In this newsletter we will discuss a technique I call the dual tape recorder method which can help your group remember everything you wrote at your last practice and help you capture all your best ideas while you’re in the moment.
We hope you enjoy this issue of the Gorilla Newsletter.
Cheers,
John Michalak
Author of “The 5 Steps to Becoming the Biggest Band in Town”
Vice President of Gorilla Music
The Dual Tape Recorder Method
By John Michalak
Years ago, I was in a hard working band that spent a lot of time writing and rehearsing. I guess we had never heard the phrase work smarter, not harder. We spent hours writing new material only to realize that most of us couldn’t remember what we had just written days earlier.
We found ourselves wasting lots of time trying to remember everything we did at our last rehearsal. After about a year of forgetting our new songs, I went out and bought a dual tape recorder. In case you aren’t familiar with what I am talking about, it’s a tape record that has two recorders built in one, and you can bounce recordings back and forth.
Once we had a recorder, we were able to record new ideas for our next practice preventing the loss of new songs or new ideas. We were able to capture great ideas while we were rehearsing. If the bass player played a new part that the rest of us loved, all we had to do was rewind the recorder and show him what he played that we liked. Additionally, we were able to record our practices and review our performance as a group and individually. So, if the drummer were missing his parts, we knew it and could focus on correcting it.
The Dual Tape Recorder Method:
1. Saving new parts or new songs for your next rehearsal
Use the recorder to save new ideas and songs for future rehearsals. Again, how many times have you written a killer song only to go back to practice a few days later and find that someone couldn’t remember their part, forcing you to start over? This technique prevents that problem from happening as it archives all your ideas for future use.
It’s a good Idea to have plenty of blank tapes, but you can also reuse the same tapes over and over and only save the parts you need for future use on another tape.
2. Capturing new ideas as they happen.
Take the tape recording device to practice, and let one side of the recorder run continuously, stopping it whenever needed to reference any part of the tape.
Anytime you’re in the middle of a new song and you hear someone write something cool, you can wait until their done and quickly play it back to communicate to them what it is that you liked.
I have been in many practice situations where someone wrote a really cool part and by the time I tried to tell them what I liked, it was lost forever. This technique prevents your group from losing cool new ideas and speeds up the process of communicating with each other.
3. Helping you review your performance
Recording your practice will allow you to review the work you’ve done. It can help you hear where you might need improvement or realize which parts are working well and which parts are not.
Regardless of how you use the recorder, it will help your rehearsals to become more efficient. This will give your group more time to work on the important stuff like writing new songs.
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