Preparing remotely: charts, stems and homework between rehearsals

A band that meets once a week has 167 hours between rehearsals, and most bands use none of them. The rehearsal then becomes the only place anything happens, which is why a five-piece can spend a month on three songs. Remote preparation is the unglamorous habit that separates bands that grow from bands that circle.

What "remote" means for a band

Nobody is talking about rehearsing over video calls; the latency makes it useless for playing together. Remote preparation is everything a member can do alone that reduces what has to be done together:

• Learning parts from charts and reference recordings.
• Listening to last week's rehearsal take and noting what to fix.
• Practising the sections that were marked as problems.
• Preparing harmonies against a recorded lead.
• Checking keys, forms and endings against what was decided.

If those things happen before the room, the room is for playing together, and the band gets through twice as much.

One place for everything

The single biggest obstacle is that the chart is in an email from March, the reference link was in the chat, the rehearsal take is on the drummer's phone, and the key was decided verbally. Remote preparation requires one shared place, organised by song, where a member can find in under a minute:

1. The chart (text or PDF), current version only.
2. The reference recording link, the specific version the band uses.
3. The key, tempo and form as decided.
4. The most recent rehearsal take of the song.
5. Any stems or backing tracks.
6. A note on what is currently wrong with the song.

Organise by song, not by date or by rehearsal. A member preparing for Tuesday looks up the three songs on the agenda, not "files from 14 May".

Delete or clearly mark old versions. A chart in the old key, left in the folder, will be practised by somebody.

Charts

The chart is the contract for the song. It should say the form, the chords, the key and the tempo, and mark the cues that matter live: the stop, the pick-up into the chorus, the ending. One chart per song, written by one person, corrected by the band after the first rehearsal and then frozen. Formats and conventions are in chord charts, lead sheets and Nashville numbers; the short version is that a text chart is the easiest to keep current and to read on a phone.

Reference recordings and stems

• The reference is one specific recording. Name it: "the 1978 album version, 3:52, not the live one". Members learn from that version and no other.
• Stems are the separated parts of a song: drums, bass, guitars, keys, vocals as individual files. They exist for many popular songs (from official releases, multitrack packs or separation tools) and let a bass player hear the bass line alone, or the whole band practise with the vocal removed. Stems are the most underused learning tool in cover bands. A separation app can produce usable stems from any recording in a few minutes; the result is not release quality but it is more than good enough to learn a part.
• Practice mixes: the band's own rehearsal take with one part muted is a stem for the person who plays that part. A singer practising harmonies against the band's own lead vocal, at the band's tempo and key, learns the real part rather than the record's.

Store stems with the song, labelled by part, and note the key and tempo on them if they differ from the record.

Rehearsal takes as homework

The recording of last week's rehearsal (see recording your rehearsals) is the best homework there is, because it shows the band's own problems rather than a record's perfection. The routine:

1. The person running the rehearsal posts the take within 24 hours, with timestamps for the run-throughs.
2. Every member listens to their own part on the three problem songs before the next rehearsal, 20 minutes, headphones.
3. Each member fixes their own contribution to the problem at home.

A member who missed the rehearsal listens to the whole thing and learns every decision that was made. That is how a missed rehearsal stops costing a second rehearsal.

Homework that gets done

Homework works when it is specific, short and has a date:

• Specific: "Learn the form and the intro riff of song 12, at 118 BPM, with the record" not "have a look at song 12".
• Short: three songs' worth of homework per week is the maximum for people with jobs. Six is a list.
• Dated: "by Sunday evening" gives Monday for questions before a Tuesday rehearsal.
• Checkable: the deliverable is "can play it with the record without stopping". Members who cannot say so on Sunday, so the agenda can change.

Post the homework in the same place as the rehearsal details. Homework in a chat is homework that scrolls away.

A simple practice log

Not a diary; a line. Each member keeps, for the songs in progress, a note of what they practised and what is still not working: "Song 12: intro riff fine, pre-chorus chords still fumbled, need to check bar 5". Two things happen: the member knows what to do in the next session at home, and the person running the rehearsal knows on Sunday which bars will be a problem on Tuesday. A shared log is better than a private one; a practice log that nobody else sees is a private one, and it is easier to skip.

For a band of people with day jobs, 20 minutes of focused practice on the three problem sections, three times a week, is worth more than an hour on Sunday running the whole song. Sections, not songs.

Keys, endings and decisions

The decisions made at rehearsal (the key went down a tone, the ending is now a tag, the bridge is cut) are worthless if they live only in the memory of the people who were there. Write them on the song the same evening. The absent member and the dep read the song's notes, not the chat.

For deps and new members

Remote preparation is also how deps and new members are onboarded. A dep who receives the setlist, the charts, the reference links and the latest rehearsal takes a week before the gig can arrive ready. A dep who receives a list of song titles cannot. The same folder that serves the band serves the dep, which is one more reason to keep it current; see onboarding a new band member for the two-week version.

Do this today

1. Pick the three songs currently in progress and check that each has a current chart, a named reference link, and the decided key, tempo and form in one place.
2. Post last rehearsal's take with timestamps.
3. Send this week's homework: three songs, specific deliverables, due Sunday.
4. Ask every member to write one line on what is not working for them yet.

Where expert.band helps

The repertoire is the one place: each song carries its key, tempo, length and structure, free notes for the decisions, and ordered attachments for the chart (typed as text so it prints with the setlist), the reference recording as a link, and stems, backing tracks or rehearsal takes as files in EU storage that open from a phone. Homework goes in the rehearsal notes and reaches members with the time and place and again in the reminder, so the three songs to prepare are never a scroll away.