How much practice before you perform?

[newwavefrank]

Totally depends on the song. Dancin with Myself, Keep your hands to yourself...one time through. Footloose, Wake Me Up Before You Go...maybe a couple of hours to learn it correctly and have it down. Singing AND Playing Dead Man's Party...Yeah more than a couple of hours lol

 

[groooooove]

depends on the music way too much...


i've spent months learning stuff, and i've also read charts at sight all night. i've done both many times.

if you are a beginner, just keep learning songs, fuel your curiosity and creativity. it's no competition, and when i was a beginner it certainly would have taken an insane amount of time to really learn a straightforward rock tune.

 

[mcnach]

No two songs are the same. I've played songs that literally a few seconds before I've been told the chords (if it's something I'm familiar enough with), and others I needed to practice it a few times to get it right. Some other songs contain parts that I've needed to work hard at getting right. It varies a lot.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

As a relative newbie and total amateur musician I am curious to know how many hours you practice a song before you typically feel like you are ready perform it? This would include both solo practice and practicing with your band.

Had to pick carrots in the poll because it totally depends upon the complexity of the song. Throw me a I, IV, V, progression, tell me the key, tell me to listen for the changes and the turn around and I'll have it down by the second verse of the song we are performing. Other songs I may have to spend an hour or two to get it down.

Getting the bass line down though and singing lead on it at the same time often takes a lot of repetition. So that can stretch out your practice time. I never did put in enough practice to play the bass for that Nirvana's "Come As You Are" while singing it. I keep screwing up the bass line on the verse. The bass line is not hard, but I have trouble singing it and playing it at the same time. So, it would take me a while to get that bassline to go automatically while I'm singing the song. "Team Spirit" on the other hand is dead simple to sing and play at the same time.

Even taking the singing out of it though, you're going to find that different songs take different amounts of practice to get them down. Don't know that I could actually make a generalization about how long it takes.

 

[bfields]

By the way, when you've got something that really needs a lot of practice: total wall-clock time elapsed also makes a difference, not just hours spent practicing.

So I could practice 2 hours a day over 2 days, or a half hour a day over 8 days. It's four hours either way, but I can tell you I'd *much* rather do the second.

Your brain needs time to rest and chew on new ideas in the background.

Especially if you're trying to memorize. In that case I'd much rather start, say, a month ahead, so I have time to learn the song, then run it through from memory, then give myself a few days off and run through it again to give my memory a real test.

 

[Yellow Bang66]

As a relative newbie and total amateur musician I am curious to know how many hours you practice a song before you typically feel like you are ready perform it? This would include both solo practice and practicing with your band.

A couple of good unintterupted hours for a brand new song especially if I never heard it before, I'm insecure about it bc when I first started, I hated practicing, so I got a bad rep for not focusing, or not knowing the song correctly, But now I realize how important it is for the bass to be on point! Ive changed my habits!
I'm so much better now I can learn a song faster if I'm famililar with it. I first get the chord progression down, & structure, then work on timing, then I really focus on the groove(where I can shine or make it move)!Lastly, I'll work on any licks or fills. Only if they are distinct or integral(signature) to the song. i really try to nail the Feel of the song! I work on it just long enough to get the "gist" of the song understood. Trying not to overwork or burn out. b/c in my band it usually plays/sounds different inevitably(lazy Drummer). As Victor Wooten says it more about making it "feel good" than playing "right notes!" GL

 

[Phalex]

It's never as much as I'd like, but it always seems to be enough.

 

[arbiterusa]

As a relative newbie and total amateur musician I am curious to know how many hours you practice a song before you typically feel like you are ready perform it? This would include both solo practice and practicing with your band.

About 3/4 of our material we've never practiced, we just play it. About 25 percent of that was just called by the bandleader out of a clear blue sky at a gig. I mean, hell, if I've heard it, I can play it.

If someone in the band decides to have us do something in rehearsal, and I've absolutely never heard it before, I'll go through once and take notes, do it once more and then I'm done practicing it.

The hardest thing we do (a medley of Winwood's "Glad" and Elton John's "Funeral of a Friend") has required about three to four go rounds at as many rehearsals just to get the arrangement down and documented. That took about an hour and a half total.

OP, don't benchmark yourself against this. I'm the youngest guy in our band with the least experience: in December I'll have been playing bass for 40 years. About ten of those years for my paycheck. It takes a while to get here.

 

[jamro217]

Completely depends on the material and the method used. Some types of music can involve literally hundreds of songs in one medley without changing the background at all. Lots of blues and old rock'n'roll is like that. The lyrics change and the melody is slightly altered, but it's basically the same thing over and over again. That takes about five minutes to learn over two hundred songs. And that's before lunch! If you're more adventurous and decide to tackle more sophisticated material it can take days, weeks, even months to get them down right. The tougher the music the longer it takes. If you use mental notes to remember intervals and lyric combinations instead of trying to learn whole songs it may shorten the process.

 

[WestyBassBob]

About 3/4 of our material we've never practiced, we just play it. About 25 percent of that was just called by the bandleader out of a clear blue sky at a gig. I mean, hell, if I've heard it, I can play it.

If someone in the band decides to have us do something in rehearsal, and I've absolutely never heard it before, I'll go through once and take notes, do it once more and then I'm done practicing it.

The hardest thing we do (a medley of Winwood's "Glad" and Elton John's "Funeral of a Friend") has required about three to four go rounds at as many rehearsals just to get the arrangement down and documented. That took about an hour and a half total.

OP, don't benchmark yourself against this. I'm the youngest guy in our band with the least experience: in December I'll have been playing bass for 40 years. About ten of those years for my paycheck. It takes a while to get here.

Don't worry I won't. I don't have any designs on being a pro. At this point I'll be happy to be bassist for the teachers band at next years school talent show.

 

[WestyBassBob]

Had to pick carrots in the poll because it totally depends upon the complexity of the song. Throw me a I, IV, V, progression, tell me the key, tell me to listen for the changes and the turn around and I'll have it down by the second verse of the song we are performing. Other songs I may have to spend an hour or two to get it down.

Getting the bass line down though and singing lead on it at the same time often takes a lot of repetition. So that can stretch out your practice time. I never did put in enough practice to play the bass for that Nirvana's "Come As You Are" while singing it. I keep screwing up the bass line on the verse. The bass line is not hard, but I have trouble singing it and playing it at the same time. So, it would take me a while to get that bassline to go automatically while I'm singing the song. "Team Spirit" on the other hand is dead simple to sing and play at the same time.

Even taking the singing out of it though, you're going to find that different songs take different amounts of practice to get them down. Don't know that I could actually make a generalization about how long it takes.

Singing while playing the bass seems to be hard for almost everyone. I can do it a little. But the singing definitely suffers.

 

[Wesley R]

We would need to define ready, and maybe even ready for who/where. ready for a record producer, the studio, the local college bar, some ultra critical friend, the local dump/house of women, House of Worship, etc.?

 

[WestyBassBob]

We would need to define ready, and maybe even ready for who/where. ready for a record producer, the studio, the local college bar, some ultra critical friend, the local dump/house of women, House of Worship, etc.?

Ready for a typical gig. Whatever. This isn't a scientific survey. Although I'm sure the carrot farmers will find it useful.

 

[dreamadream99]

It's a spectrum.

One one side is someone with no musical experience at all.
It may take them a year or two to be ready ready to perform a song.

One the other side is the lifelong professional musician. They don't practice any more. They listen to a song, write it down, and play it.

 

[brianrost]

I wasn't thinking of doing a song from memory. I was assuming you either have the music or tablature or you write the song yourself.

If I have a chord chart, unless it's super complicated, I can just read off the chart. It helps if I've heard the song before, even if I never bothered to learn it.

Although I usually play from memory (I hate music stands on stage) how I learn is different based on complexity. If the song is trivial (1-4-5 blues, bluegrass, C&W, etc.) I just memorize it by ear. If the song is more complicated, I will write out a full chord chart of the recorded arrangement and possibly transcribe the bass line (either just important parts or the whole song) as well. I hang on to the charts at home in case I need to brush up on it in the future.

BTW I've worked on a lot of originals and very seldom have I ever been given anything written down from the composers.

 

[CoffeeLove]

Had to choose carrots since the first two options were too far apart, and there are lots of variables. I can learn an "easy song" in a minute or two. However, if a song has a specific hook (pattern) then that will depend on difficulty level, but easy stuff might take 5 minutes (exp, Creedance - Down on the Corner).

Harder songs with dynamic patterns (unknown to me) could be 2 hours. And some stuff I just can't play, because it is too difficult, or would require learning an entirely new skillset/technique that is too time consuming for my busyness level. I play in bands that do classic rock, dance/funk, bluegrass, or modern top 40. None of which require me to play a song that would take more than a couple hours to learn, and most of them much less time than that.

There you have it. Too many variables to choose anything other tha carrots.

Enjoy the journey

 

[40Hz]

Depends on the song.

And it depends on whether or not you mean note for note off someone else's recording of it. I usually prefer not having to play an entire song note for note, although I have done so when the terms of the contract required it. But I haven't done a gig like that in decades.

 

[HolmeBass]

It varies extensively by song. Some songs take like 3 minutes to learn, maybe 10 to perfect. Like "Louie Louie" or "Magic Carpet Ride", with very simple harmonic structures, a simple verse and simple chorus pattern, and no bridge, intro, or outro. Magic Carpet Ride might take 20 minutes to perfect.

Then take a tune like "Terrapin Station", with 3 movements (not even considering the final one which they never played live anyway). Harmonically it is somewhat challenging, but the structure is unique, some repetition but not a lot, and a lot of very idiosyncratic odd-time measures with dropped beats, dropped partial beats, time signature changes, and an elusive feel. It took me weeks to get it down to performance level, even though I was very familiar with it, and I would not claim to have mastered it at all.

The variation from song to song is much larger than from player to player. So I did not cast a vote. This question seems to be missing the big point.

 

[Playbyear]

As a relative newbie and total amateur musician I am curious to know how many hours you practice a song before you typically feel like you are ready perform it? This would include both solo practice and practicing with your band.

IDK what type of music you play.

Especially for Americana, The Nashville Number System is a popular way to communicate and remember progressions.

The Nashville Number System

 

[Kipp Harrington]

Exactly. Another factor worth mentioning is how familiar you are with a particular song before you sit down to learn how to play it. When I'm learning a song that I've never heard before, much of my "practice" time goes into just listening to it over and over until I can hear it in my head on cue. If it's a song that I'm already very familiar with, total learning/practice time will be much less.

This is me, all the way!