Scheduling rehearsals when everyone has a day job

A band of five adults with jobs, partners, children and one who works shifts has, in a typical month, about three evenings when everyone is free, and the band finds out about them by asking "who can do Tuesday?" eleven times. Scheduling is the quiet reason semi-professional bands rehearse once a month instead of once a week.

Why polling fails

The message "who can do Tuesday or Thursday?" asks five people to reply about two options. Two reply, one says "either", one says "not Tuesday, maybe Thursday, will confirm", one says nothing. So you ask again with a new pair of days. Each round takes two days and reveals nothing about next week. After three rounds the rehearsal is in ten days and two people have quietly given up.

Polls fail because they ask the wrong question. The right question is not "can you do Tuesday?" but "when are you free in the next four weeks?", answered once, in a form that can be overlaid with everyone else's.

Collect availability, not answers

Have every member mark their free hours for the coming three to four weeks, in one shared calendar, the same way they would block a work calendar. Then the leader looks at the overlay and picks a slot. Nobody answers a poll; the answers are already there.

Three habits make this work:

1. Paint ahead. Members mark the whole coming month in one sitting, 5 minutes on a Sunday evening, and update it when something changes.
2. Mark free time, not busy time. People know when they are free far more precisely than when they are busy, and free time is what you are looking for.
3. Include evenings and weekend afternoons only. Do not ask people to mark 09:00 on a Wednesday; nobody is rehearsing then.

The overlay is where the value is. A grid of days and hours where each cell shows how many members are free (a heat map) tells you in ten seconds which evening has five of five, which has four, and which has nobody. Compare that with the chat.

The "good enough" quorum

Waiting for a slot where all five are free means rehearsing once a month. Decide in advance who must be present for a rehearsal to be worth holding:

• Full rehearsal: everyone, or everyone but one with a specific purpose (the singer is away, so it is an instrumental tightening session).
• Sectional: rhythm section only, or vocals only, with two or three people. These are often more useful than full rehearsals for fixing specific problems.
• Minimum: four of five, as long as the absent person is not the one whose part is the reason for the rehearsal.

Write the rule down. Then a slot with four of five free is a rehearsal, not a compromise, and the fifth person gets the recording and the notes. Between full rehearsals, the absent member prepares from the recording; see preparing remotely.

The recurring slot

The single most effective scheduling decision is a fixed weekly or fortnightly slot that exists whether or not everyone can make it. Tuesday 19:30 to 21:30, every week, is a rule that lets members plan the rest of their lives around it. The quorum rule decides whether a given Tuesday runs as a full rehearsal, a sectional or a night off.

Picking the recurring slot is where the heat map earns its place: look at four weeks of availability and choose the evening with the highest average count. In most bands it is a Tuesday or Wednesday. Fridays and weekends are gig days; Mondays are the day after.

Review the slot twice a year. Jobs, shifts and school terms change, and a slot that worked in March is empty by September.

Shift workers and parents

Two members with different constraints can make a band unschedulable unless you plan for them:

• Shift workers usually know their rota two to four weeks out. Ask them to mark their availability the day the rota is published.
• Parents often have a fixed evening when the other parent is home. Build the recurring slot around that evening if you can; it is the most stable constraint in the band.
• Commuters need a start time they can make. 19:30 rather than 19:00 can add a person to every rehearsal.

If two people can only ever make different evenings, that is not a scheduling problem; it is a line-up problem, and pretending otherwise wastes a year.

How far ahead to schedule

Schedule rehearsals two to four weeks out, in batches. A month's rehearsals confirmed on the first of the month is easier for members than one rehearsal confirmed four days before. Around gigs, schedule backwards from the gig: the pre-gig rehearsal 2 to 5 days before, and a working rehearsal a week earlier. See the pre-gig rehearsal.

For a band gigging twice a month, a realistic rhythm is:

• One fixed weekly slot, used as full rehearsal roughly three weeks in four.
• One sectional a month for the rhythm section or the vocals.
• One pre-gig rehearsal per gig where the setlist is new; none where it is not.

That is 5 to 6 evenings a month, and only one of them needs everyone.

Confirming and reminding

Once a slot is picked, confirm it with the time, the place and the agenda, and send a reminder the day before. Members who marked themselves free three weeks ago have forgotten; the reminder is what turns a painted cell into a person in the room. Twelve hours before is a good default for the reminder; the morning of a 19:30 rehearsal is ideal.

Do this today

1. Ask every member to mark their free evenings and weekend afternoons for the next four weeks in one shared place.
2. Write the quorum rule: who must be present for a full rehearsal, and what counts as a sectional.
3. Look at the overlay and pick a recurring slot. Announce it as fixed for the next three months.
4. Schedule the next four rehearsals now, with agendas to follow.

Where expert.band helps

This is what the rehearsal planner is built for: each member paints the hours they are free over the coming weeks (drag on a computer, tap and hold on a phone), the band view merges them into a heat map, and a tap on a cell shows exactly who is free at that hour, with the members who have not painted anything listed so you can chase them. Clicking a slot creates the rehearsal, members get the details by email, and a reminder goes out by email and SMS a set number of hours before, 12 by default. The wider picture is in the rehearsal planner explained.