How to run a rehearsal that is worth everyone's evening

Five people gave up a Tuesday evening, drove across town and paid 15 EUR each for a room, and the band spent 40 minutes setting up, 30 minutes playing songs it already knows and 20 minutes arguing about a bridge. Rehearsal time is the most expensive resource a band has, and most bands spend it like it is free.

Count what a rehearsal costs

A five-piece, room at 60 EUR for three hours, an hour of travel each way per person, and a modest 20 EUR an hour value on each musician's time: that evening costs roughly 60 + 5 x 5 hours x 20 = 560 EUR. Say it to the band once. Rehearsals get shorter and better when everyone knows the number.

The agenda, sent 48 hours before

A rehearsal without an agenda is a jam with parking. The agenda is one message, sent two days ahead, with:

• The songs to be worked on, in order, with what is wrong with each ("ending is ragged", "second chorus dynamics", "new song, first pass").
• The songs to be run once, for maintenance.
• What each person must have done before arriving (learned the form, checked the key, listened to the reference).
• Start time, playing time and hard stop.

Six songs is a realistic number for a two-hour rehearsal: three to work on, three to run. Twelve is a list of things you will not get to.

Sending the agenda early also tells you who has not prepared. If the guitarist has not listened to the new song by rehearsal, the band should not learn it that night; move it to next time and use the slot for something everyone can do.

Arrival rules

Set them once, enforce them always:

• Set-up is not rehearsal. If the rehearsal starts at 19:00, that is the first downbeat. Arrival is 18:40. Whoever arrives at 19:00 sets up in silence while the others start without them.
• Tune before you plug in. Tuners are silent. The PA is not.
• Phones on the amp, face down. Not in hand.
• Drinks and chat happen in the break, not between songs.

Rehearsal spaces are usually booked by the hour, so being 20 minutes late costs the band a third of an hour they paid for. The wider set of habits is in rehearsal etiquette, and what to do about the chronic offenders is in reminders, no-shows and the cost of a missed rehearsal.

A two-hour format that works

Time	Block	Notes
0:00 to 0:10	Warm-up song	Something everyone knows, gig volume, mix check
0:10 to 0:50	Work song 1 and 2	Sections, not run-throughs
0:50 to 1:00	Break	Ten minutes, timer on
1:00 to 1:30	Work song 3	The hardest thing on the list, while ears are fresh after the break
1:30 to 1:50	Run three maintenance songs	Once each, no stopping, record them
1:50 to 2:00	Decisions and next agenda	Who does what before next time

The pattern is work, then run. Working means stopping; running means not stopping. Mixing the two ("let's run it... wait, stop, the bridge") is what makes rehearsals feel endless.

Working a song in sections

Playing a song from the top until it goes wrong, then starting from the top again, spends 80% of the time on the parts that already work. Instead:

1. Name the problem section. "Bar 5 to 12 of the bridge."
2. Play only that section, at a slower tempo if it helps, three times.
3. Play it in context: from eight bars before to eight bars after.
4. Only then, run the whole song once.

Ten minutes on a section fixes it; five run-throughs do not. A shared vocabulary for sections ("second pre-chorus", "the tag") saves time here; see song structure notation.

Who leads

One person runs the rehearsal. It does not have to be the band leader; the musical director role can rotate by song. The person running it decides when to stop, what to fix and when to move on. Everyone else can suggest, but the decision on "again or move on" belongs to one person, otherwise every stop becomes a committee.

Use the two-suggestion rule: when a section is stopped, at most two people say what they heard, in one sentence each. Then play it. Diagnosis by discussion is slower than diagnosis by playing.

Record it

Put a phone on a stand at the back of the room, or a recorder on the desk, and record every run-through. Do not listen in the room; listen the next day, on your own, with the setlist in hand. What sounded fine on the night will show you the rushed intro, the muddy keyboard part, the backing vocals that are 30 cents flat. The next agenda writes itself from the recording. Details in recording your rehearsals.

End on time, with decisions

The last ten minutes are not for one more song. They are for:

• What was fixed, and what is still open.
• Who learns or writes what before next time.
• Any setlist or key decisions made tonight, said out loud so they are heard.
• The date and time of the next rehearsal, confirmed with everyone in the room.

Then stop. A rehearsal that ends at the promised time is one people show up to. A rehearsal that runs 40 minutes over "because we were on a roll" is one people start arriving late to.

Do this today

1. Write the arrival rules and send them to the band, with the cost-per-rehearsal number.
2. Draft next rehearsal's agenda: three songs to work, three to run, homework per person, hard stop.
3. Decide who runs the next rehearsal.
4. Put a phone or recorder in the gig bag and add it to the rehearsal packing list.

Where expert.band helps

The rehearsal planner schedules the session from the band's availability heat map, sends the details by email and a reminder by email and SMS before it starts, and carries the agenda in the rehearsal notes so "songs 4, 9 and 12, learn the form first" is in the same place as the time and the room. Each song's structure, key and tempo sit on its repertoire entry, and a "Needs work" label is a quick way to keep the working list visible to everyone between rehearsals.