Rehearsing & Performing
I feel that the best way to perform anything live is to rehearse as you are performing live. Most rehearsals usually one or two musicians are learning the tunes during the rehearsal which can be frustrating if other musicians already know the tunes; or a guitar player or bass player will already know the tunes but just sit down on a amp or chair while they rehearse. If this sounds familiar you are not rehearsing the way you are going to perform live. For me, the ideal way of rehearsing is to get close to how you are going to perform in a live situation. It is always best to perform live as much as possible if your not not going to rehearse often. To perform live on something never been rehearsed forces you to really focus on your performance. By all means performances are not always perfect but the goal is to be consistently be performing at a high level and be the best you can be. Being consistent performing at a high level puts you in that circle of perfection.
Gwen Brisco show rehearsals
During my touring days when we would rehearse for a new show, we would have a learning the tunes session first. Then rehearse as if we playing live and start experimenting with transitions between songs and creating dances sequences for the dancers. The idea was to always workout the technical things first then rehearse it as if we were playing live. After a while once we were able to go through the rehearsal performances, our manager would come down and take a look at it, and if it didn’t feel right to him visually or musically, we would have to adjust to make changes in music arrangements or dance sequences. Our shows sets were basically around 90 minutes long. We usually had 3 shows sets when we were on the road. Usually our shows on the road would lead up to some important gigs (shows) to perform at. Prior to those important gigs, and if it was a new show, it would get performed constantly to work out the performance timing of the show as I would call it. I think performance timing is similar to a comedian, or entertainer when they are working on new material in front of a live audience; working out the kinks and performing interacting to a live audience is the best way to describe it before doing the important gigs.
