How Hourly Rehearsal Studios Ruin Bands

There are a few things that are indigenous to the Los Angeles musician culture that are so bizarre and backwards that there should be numerous psychological studies done to properly understand them.

• The Showcase: The ever-popular idea that doing a single, properly-timed live performance will be enough to launch the career of an aspiring, lazy songwriter/band. Savvy musicians know what these actually are.  They're excuses for venues to demand ticket sales from up-and-comers and ensure that bodies pay the cover charge to get in the door.  Call a concert a "show" and artists will want to just show up and play, call it a "showcase" and they'll bend over backwards to get on the bill; oftentimes fronting hundreds of dollars for pre-sold tickets.  There's always some kind of vague promise of "industry" folks showing up to these events, chomping on cigars, saying words like "moxie" and "exciting new sound", but they never do, because those people do not exist.
• The Industry: Is this a thing?  What industry?  You mean the industry that loses money every year?  The industry that is shrinking faster than a cinder block thrown into the L.A. river?  Yeah, get your hopes up young songstress and handsome pianist.  The industry and the "industry contacts" you've accrued are coming to give you money, any day now.  They want your money, not the other way around!  The thing is, that most, if not all, aspiring musicians will come in contact with a music industry in their careers, it's just not the industry of selling music to the public; it's the industry of making money from the young and aspirational musicians.  The instrument retailers, the recording studios who make your demo, the photographers who shoots the band, the video producers who make the promo videos, the PR people who bomb blog sites on your behalf, the session musicians whom you pay to play in your showcase and on your records, and last but not least, the hidden dragon in the L.A. music world, THE HOURLY REHEARSAL STUDIOS.

For those who aren't familiar with these establishments, hourly rehearsal studios provide a small, instrument-furnished room to play music in.  There will be a drum kit, amps, microphones and a P.A. to use, for a fee of anywhere from $15-50 per hour.  Many bands practice there.  Every night, the dozens of these places will be filled to capacity with Angeleno bands practicing.

What do I have against hourly rehearsal studios?  It's not the buildings themselves, they're quite nice and seem to be adequately priced for what you get.  Hell, I could recommend a few really nice ones where you'd delight to spend an evening.  The owners and employees seem to be nice, genuine people.  Even the business model makes sense.  Bands need a place to play, and L.A. is a place where rents are really high and people can't really afford to dedicate a room in their house (which they likely do not have) to setting up band equipment.  Also, monthly rented lock-out rehearsal studios are really expensive!  So what's the problem?

The problem is the psychological effect it has on a band, and the premium it places on rehearsing less.  There's nothing more important when renting an hourly room than rehearsing as little as possible.  You sure as hell don't want to spend more than 3 hours there if you can help it.  At that point the rehearsal is pushing $100.  Even split 4 ways it's a pain in the ass to spend $25 each to work on your songs one time.  But it inevitably will not be split amongst all band members.  These are band-people we're talking about; some are broke outright, and all are tight with their money.  So one person usually shoulders most of the load. 

At some point, subconsciously, a group will decide that it needs to rehearse as little as it can get away with.  The idea of rehearsing 4 times per week is completely out of the question, and rehearsing once a week becomes the norm.  When a band rehearses once a week, or four times a month, it's really three.  Someone will inevitably cancel one of those for some work-related issue.  That becomes the new normal.  The bare minimum is now the modus operandi.  With this new mentality in place the band trudges forward.

What happens to a band when they rehearse 3 times per month?  They start die a slow death. New songs are rarely introduced, ("We have to rehearse our set for the show next week! There's no time for new songs!"), and without a base-level of creativity fueling the band's desires, the feeling in the air changes irreversibly.   Rehearsals now lose any feeling of spontaneity, impromptu jams are cut short to make way for more important matters.  A song cannot be developed from scratch because the clock is ticking.  Rehearsals become an exercise for dead-eyed, bored musicians who are now daydreaming of being at home watching Battlestar Gallactica with their girlfriend.  Alcohol and marijuana creep in as a necessity to feeling good about the proceedings.

An interesting phenomenon occurs when the bassist cancels at the last minute, and the band plays without him/her...I mean, there's a 24-hour cancellation policy, it'd be stupid not to go ahead.  Without Mr. Bass, the band feels comfortable taking some mild stabs at him and his contribution to the band.  The bored bandmates who have now come to secretly hate these rehearsals have found a better use of their time: gossiping.  The playing becomes secondary to just hanging with friends. The gossiping becomes more or less acceptable, and the band proceeds to individually pick each other apart for no particular reason other than boredom.  All flaws and inadequacies are exposed, and openly discussed when the offender isn't there.  At this point, replacing faulty members gets discussed.  In reality, no one needs to be replaced, the band simply has run it's course.  The criticisms of each other are too deep, faith is lost and will never be coming back.

Unbeknownst to the collective, kept as a secret vice in the back of each member's mind, cancellations are godsends, shows are chore, and new songs are a burden.  Everyone wants out.  And then one glorious day, the scheduled rehearsal day passes by and no one receives a phone call about it, the day has come and gone and no one bothered to inquire about getting together.  The band is officially, unceremoniously over.

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Of all the negative things that face a band, it just seems silly to introduce an element that rewards a band for playing less.  Playing as much as possible is the only conceivable way to be a tight group who writes good songs and performs them well.   I would venture that it's smarter to practice in dank, subhuman conditions in the basement of a glue factory than to do an hourly rehearsal at a pristine studio.  At least at the glue factory, you can play until you're exhausted, writing and jamming until your brains are dead and your fingers are sore.   That's the reason we like playing, right?  It's a satisfaction that you cannot get any other way.  So don't cut out the thing that makes being in a band fun and noteworthy, keep it alive by any means necessary.  In this case, convenience now can only lead to disappointment later.