Why do Professional Baseball Players have batting practice?

[Smooth_bass88]

Yes, and the Rolling Stones are a grampa band.

as were Rush

 

[pglaser01]

If we’re really trying to use baseball as an analogy, then here’s one.

imagine the BL is the pitcher….you know what songs they know how to play but you have no set list.

Now imagine that the BL doesn’t call out songs, just goes straight into it. It’s your job to recognize instantly at any moment what song is being played and react so well that it looks like you knew it all along.

Can you do that without practice?

 

[eddododo]

They're professionals. They know how to hit! Why have batting practice? Why do professional basketball teams have walk throughs and go over play and have shooting practice? Don't they already know how to shoot?

Should pro and semi-pro or dad bands have band practice?

the difficult part for most players of most genres of music isn’t typically that they need to be on the bleeding edge of their abilities.. for the guys that do, like jazz guys or dudes holding down a dozen different gigs in the city, they’re getting their practice in anyway, and the hard part is the scheduling and lifestyle, frankly. For touring bands where you’re playing the same songs endlessly, you also probably don’t need to be adding practice to an album you wrote two years ago and play 3 nights a week

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

They're professionals. They know how to hit! Why have batting practice? Why do professional basketball teams have walk throughs and go over play and have shooting practice? Don't they already know how to shoot?

Should pro and semi-pro or dad bands have band practice?

You should have a couple rehearsals before playing your first few shows.

Then, no. Do your homework, play the show.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

Why don’t mechanics have bolt turning practice?

You can use analogies all day, but you really need to do what works for you and your band and not worry about everyone else.

 

[jthisdell]

I am in two bands, one rehearses weekly and keeps learning new material and improving. The other never gets together and steadily declines.

Last year my wife and I saw Paul McCartney and she remarked that she supposed that Sir Paul has the boys rehearse. A lot.

 

[hasbeen]

My violin teacher used to say “if I miss a day I know and if I miss 2 days the audience knows”. She was a jerk and probably stole that line from someone but I don’t know who.

— Ignacy Jan Paderewski

 

[Holdsg]

I've been playing music, of one sort or another, for more than 50 years.
I regularly gig, but I find that if I take a day or two away from any of my instruments, my skill level can drop, sometimes dramatically. Sure, the muscle memory is still there, but the musicality suffers, and songs that I thought I had "nailed" can fall apart on me, if I'm not careful and diligent at keeping them fresh.

 

[hasbeen]

They're professionals. They know how to hit! Why have batting practice? Why do professional basketball teams have walk throughs and go over play and have shooting practice? Don't they already know how to shoot?

Should pro and semi-pro or dad bands have band practice?

All skillsets are "perishable". The more difficult the skill the more quickly it declines without practice and/or continued exposure. Playing an instrument, hitting a golf ball etc. are highly refined skillsets when performed at an elite level.

 

[brianrost]

A band should rehearse if it needs to. The big names do rehearsals before tours even if they hadn't played a note together since the last tour...or maybe because they hadn't played a note together since the last tour

When bands don't rehearse, there's always a reason. It's not often that the reason is they don't need to rehearse but because of time and/or travel constraints.

I prefer to rehearse but I'm not afraid of getting on stage without any rehearsal. I do my homework either way.

Popcorn's ready!

 

[brianrost]

If there are dad bands could there be mother bands?

A good friend of mine leads a band that includes her son as a member, so I guess you could call it a mom band

 

[ChrisB2]

I'll just leave this here:

Lol

 

[ChrisB2]

So if I’m in a band performing that song, and with folks as experienced as myself, we should be able to talk it through in twelve seconds: what key, who takes which harmony. And then go and play it onstage, and do it sufficiently well that the audience cannot tell that we did not rehearse it.

YOU HACK!! (Just kidding)

 

[KidAmnesia]

Baseball players don't play the same match every weekend.

 

[Sarge79]

I hate to use this word, but practicing helps synergize the band. Make sure everybody is in synch with each other. Kind of helps to eliminate any stage fright for me too.

 

[thmsjordan]

So far in this thread this has been attributed to Chet Atkins, Itzhak Perlman, Anton Rubenstein, and someone's violin teacher.

You know I had always heard it was Anton Rubenstein, but when you posted this, I thought (insert thought bubble here) hmmm, I wonder, and I checked into it to see if there was anyone else who might have said it first. Turns out, I had the wrong guy. I had heard it in a CBS Sunday morning interview with Arthur Rubenstein! I had the wrong Rubenstein! How embarrassing. Now I was really curious who said it first.

I came up with several articles giving several attributions. I will quote from one here:

"The Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was credited with the saying in 1894. The Russian composer and pianist Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) was credited with the saying in 1905. The German composer and pianist Hans von Bülow (1830-1894) was credited with the saying in 1910. The Polish composer and pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) was credited with the saying in 1911. Paderewski receives almost universal credit today, but the early citations of others (especially in a music publication such as The Etude) probably indicate that he did not coin the saying."
From: The Big Apple: “Miss one day of practice, I notice; miss two, the critics notice; miss three, the audience notices”

As we can see, the list goes as far back as Liszt (pun totality intended) and it is uncertain where the quote originally came from although the darned thing is so universally true that it may have arisen (like the design of the humble crab) several times independently, but your guess is as good as mine. There are several other articles like this online but it seems pretty clear that this quote has been attributed to just about everyone and their cousin's kid brother too. So yep, looks like everyone may have said it at some point.

It was fun researching this. I love fact checking and historical research. Maybe I need to get out more.

 

[micguy]

This is of course true. But it is also worth adding the caveat that in music at least, and looking across all genres/styles/cultures/etc., the correlation between professional status/circumstances and abilty/talent is very weak. That is to say there are plenty of non-professional 'weekend' players that play as well as anyone, just as there are plenty of hacks making a very good living.

There are multiple skills necessary to be successful in music. In addition to being able to play, social skills (being easy to hire and work with) are far more important than a lot of people realize.

 

[mrcbass]

If rehearsals aren't helping a band sound better, there are much bigger problems.

Of course rehearsals and personal practice are necessary for the best possible product. Don't get me wrong, I love that my main band doesn't practice regularly - I'd be long gone if I had to regurgitate the stuff we play every week in a garage - it's hard enough to do my pre-gig tune up runs at home. But I do wish we'd find a way to work out new stuff together in private with occasional rehearsals.

I also do a fair amount of sub work with one band. They play so much they don't have time to rehearse and outside of my audition and then a pre-sub gig rehearsal, I've never rehearsed with them (going on two years). They simply send me a set list and I work up any new songs and we go. My only issue with this, is that I tend to progress my lines sometimes as times go on (my approach to learning new songs is: get them playable and then fine tune them). The only way I can see if it fits with them, is to do it on stage.

It's very doable to have a no rehearse band with the right people, but rehearsing does make things better if they are constructive.

 

[SteveCS]

There are multiple skills necessary to be successful in music. In addition to being able to play, social skills (being easy to hire and work with) are far more important than a lot of people realize.

Of course, and it is impossible to disagree, but even those are no guarantee of success, at least by the most common/popular measures. My experience is that a lot rides on who you know, who knows (of) you, and making the most of a few good 'shoe-ins' upon which further reputation and exposure can be built. Any number of personal circumstances can 'conspire' to ensure that doesn't happen. But yes, those things matter.

 

[micguy]

Of course, and it is impossible to disagree, but even those are no guarantee of success, at least by the most common/popular measures. My experience is that a lot rides on who you know, who knows (of) you, and making the most of a few good 'shoe-ins' upon which further reputation and exposure can be built. Any number of personal circumstances can 'conspire' to ensure that doesn't happen. But yes, those things matter.

Obviously, there are no guarantees, but skill (which means a lot of hard work and long hours), good social skills (including working well with others) and persistence will increase your chances of success a LOT. I know a bunch of guys who make a good living from music (I play with them in various situations), and the more you're around them, the more you'll notice that these themes run strong in those folks. The "who you know" thing is something that results from being nice, taking a lot of gigs with different people, and doing some networking - yes, opportunities depend on who you know, so....get to know more people.

The jump from making a decent living to "rock star/diva/your name is at the top of the marquee" status involves the same stuff plus a bunch of luck, but getting to the point where you can make a decent living from music involves a lot less luck than you'd think.

If you want to believe that it's all "luck", OK, but then I'll say that the harder you work at it, and the nicer you are to everyone, the "luckier" you will be.