How to Run Better Band Rehearsals
A rehearsal that improves your band every week and one that spins its wheels usually split before anyone plays a note. The good one was planned to the minute. The best directors don't run rehearsals on instinct, they run them on a schedule, so the only thing left to think about once the students arrive is teaching. Here's what drum corps and a 200-member program taught me about making every contact hour count.
Plan every minute before you walk in
The best groups have rehearsal plans more detailed than a classroom lesson plan. Mine assigned minutes to tasks: fifteen for this, twenty for that, the whole two-and-a-half hours blocked out, from stretch and visual basics to when the run-through starts and where the water breaks fall in the hot months. The point isn't rigidity. It's that every time you stop mid-rehearsal to figure out what's next, you burn your students' time, and they feel it. Plan it all beforehand and the only things left to think about in the room are pedagogy and technique.
The run-through trap
Starting rehearsal with a run-through feels productive. It isn't. If you need the run to see what your students need to work on, you walked in unprepared. And they don't need it to build endurance, all that does is wear them out so the real rehearsal comes out flat. Start off with a purposeful warm-up and detailed cleaning instead. Maybe you totally skip the run at the end - life goes on.
Make it safe to fail
From day one I tell my students the same thing. You're here to learn, I'm here to teach, and that means you should make mistakes. I almost never show anger over one. Impatience maybe, if we've fixed it five times already. But I don't yell at kids for being kids who are learning, and I tell them that up front. The first time the room watches someone slip and sees me give feedback instead of coming down on them, the whole culture shifts. It becomes a safe place to push, and the work ethic jumps, because they know that if they reach and miss, I'll help them get there.
Less feedback, more reps
My first rep in the box at drum corps, I gave five corrections. My caption head told me to watch, they wouldn't get any of it. He was right. Give any one student more than one or two things to hold and they hold none of them. From the tower I might give three comments total, spread across the whole field, and if someone else has already spoken, I'll stay quiet. You can't fix everything on every rep, and trying to fixes nothing. Sometimes a student already knows exactly what they missed and doesn't need you to say it. Sometimes the best feedback is "let's play it again."
None of this fully works if the show itself fights you. A rehearsable show is a designed one, and music written to your students' real skill level cleans in a fraction of the time.
Dr. Ryan J. Williams (DMA) directed programs of up to 200 students and spent twelve summers teaching and calling reps from the box on DCI staffs.
A fillable plan template with time-block rows (stretch, visual basics, drill cleaning, warm-up, ensemble, run-through, water breaks) and a minutes column, so you can schedule the whole session before walking in.
Download the Rehearsal Block →A planning guide for surviving your own weeks of band camp, so you're still able to give your students your best by the time the season starts.
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