question for all-original bands

[MeYatch]

How often do you practice? Do you have a set schedule, or do you practice when someone has a new idea for a song, and before shows?

What do you do at practice? How long do they last?

I ask out of curiousity, not trying to start a flame war (for once) I've never been in a strictly original band, though I've written several songs, some good, some horrible. Any band I was ever in before practiced on a semi regularly schedule, and learned cover songs, and when inspiration struck, we'd work on an original.

It seems like it would be hard to practice regularly, without it becoming repetative if all you do is work on the same songs you've already written, and I've never been a fan of forcing creativity.

Just curious what you guys do, and bored with basically no posts today.

[DirtySanchez]

We (Fedup) practice every sunday.
We used to practice more but Matt is working the weirdest fucking shift 1-9 pm . If we went over the same songs all the time it would suck so we'll just do a couple older songs and we've always got something in the works as far as new shit. This past Sunday all we did was work on new stuff. Sometimes we'll sit around and drink and talk and all the sudden someone starts a riff. Sometimes it becomes a song and sometimes we never play it (or remember it) again. We actually learned a couple covers when we first started but they just don't feel right so we stay away from that. We never have to force anything it just happens (and sometimes it doesn't). Plus just because you wrote the song doesn't mean you can't fuck it up, as someone said awhile back "Original doesn't automatically mean you're good." Mostly we just have fun, practice is not very organized except for our schedule.

[Plastered Bastards]

We practice 2 times a week,Mondays and Wednesdays.We usually practice from 8pm to 10pm and then hang out afterwards.The cool thing is Dirty and Tiny Bastards always have new songs up their sleeves.
We have close to about 50 songs to choose from,so making a setlist can be difficult sometimes.
Cheers!!!!!!

[greaser]

we practice 1-2 times a week. as far as song writing, the lyrics and melody are usually already written, practice for us is usually used for arrangeing(spelling?). Sometimes it feels repetitive, but being that these songs never exsited before and we have nothing to listen to for a reference..we have to do them over and over again to get them tight.
having alot of beer at practice helps TONS!

[orangekick]

We practice twice a week for 3-4 hours at a time. We're all rather prolific, so we are writing new songs all the time. We also tend to jam a lot.

[JustinGelvin]

Your Dying Wish practices 3 nights a week for about 3-4 hours each time...
We always warm up with a few songs from our set then continue to work on new material...
The more songs you write the better they become so we just continue to write or work on stuff to make our live show better.

I think for a band to be successful you have to have every member at practice everytime. Practice should be played just as well as if you were playing a show.

The reason FromTheirEyes fell apart was because we had an asshole singer who thought he didnt need to practice. He wouldnt even help pay rent on the practice facility because he said " Im never there anyways" I mean this guy is the perfect example of " I just want to be able to tell everyone im in a band because i Look cool then " We went to record and when we got their he asked me if i had wrote any lyrics. Keep in mind we had been playing out these songs for 4 months and he still hadnt wrote set lyrics.

Also i feel that Best friends are great, but when it comes to playing in a serious band that will to do whatever it takes to make it to the next level, you should probally think twice. Whenever we kicked our old singer out, he was best friends with one of the guitar players. The singer was a little bitch and said I can't talk to you if you continue to play with those guys. He also threw this guilt trip on him saying he was gonna be looking for a new best man. What kind of low life scumbag fuckstick tells someone that. I guess that shows what kind of guy we were dealing with. So the guitar ending quitting the band and letting this little manipulative son of a bitch get his way. All in all it ended up working out for the best because im playing with the best musicians ive ever been aquainted with but still, people are fucked up....

sorry i got off track there but i just felt like telling the story....

[Jeremy]

I'm really glad to see everyone playing nice on this thread... That doesn't happen often enough.

When I was in Straight to Video, we would practice twice a week, typically wednesday and saturday... but once we had about 1.5 hours of original stuff, we just ended up screwing around in that time instead of learning many covers. In retrospect, maybe that wasn't the best idea...