Silent rehearsal

[Nebulous]

So, with all the great resources and gear available to us now days has anyone ever used electric/ MIDI drums, DI guitars and bass with real time amp sims to feed headphones for a near silent band practice?

The idea has been playing in my head lately. No more heavy/ loud amps, ringing cymbals in your ears for days, feedback in the vocal mic, etc. You could have band practice in the comfort of a members house, without going into the garage. Even if the initial set up costs were great, the savings could out-weigh that set up cost. A common rehersal space here costs $60/ 6 hours. In 20 weeks (1 session per week) you would save $1200! That's barely half a year

I would love to try this one day. The only thing that would be "loud" might be from the sticks hitting the pads and obviously the vocals. It would also be great to be able to record it for playback at a later date. Much better than the popular "single 57 in the middle of the room".

Has anyone tried this or can see any negatives?

 

[laszlozsolt82]

i was thinking on this to... technicaly it is possible!, but i wonder if it`s somebody here who actualy rehearses in this way and can share his experiences and a good setup doing this.

 

[arvoitus]

It exists:

 

[Lasse Lammert]

yep, and while we're at it we should as well get rid of the noisy girlfriend and get one of these instead

then we go home, produce music with POD and slate samples.
later perhaps have a nice meal with the new silent GF

then we play some guitar hero and go to bed

and dream of ...(I almost said the band who must not be named)

 

[StefTD]

I did this with a few friends once.
Guitar and vocals went directly into the interface (alesis multimix or something like that),
bass went through a behringer bddi copy, drums were an e-kit with an onboard sound in one channel, too.
Guitars went into Reagate, TSS, Wagner Sharp and Voxengo Boogex.
Nothing on the bass track, a bit compression and reverb on the vocals.

We just made a "soundcheck" or about 10 minutes, everything was fine, the master signal
went into a behringer headphone amp and everyone had his headphones one.
Pretty good sound and the only thing you really heard was our singer.

 

[Nebulous]

Lasse - Lol wat?

StefTD - that's pretty much what I had in mind. Anyone with a decent interface + the legit free programs could do this. For me it would be a case of everyone getting to hear EXACTLY what the band is playing, none of the "cover ups" that we have to put up with in a normal practice situation.

The only negative I could think of here is that less time would be spent in getting the right sound with the gear that would be used at an actual gig.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

Lasse - Lol wat?

haha, yeah, that was just my complicated way to say
"I think it would lack the feeling I need from a rehearsal, in regular intervals I need to stand in front of a cranked stack and feel the air pressure massaging my back, only that way you really get in the mood to "rock".

for detailed practise before recording etc a silent recording might be cool, but I think lots of the fun would go and I personally I'd just miss that.

 

[Terminus]

You could hang a coat on those nips.

 

[DivisionByZero]

We are rehearing like this for more than 4 years now.

Setup:
- Roland E-drums => Roland TD-12 => Mixer
- Guitar => Boss GT-8 => Mixer
- Bass => Boss ME50B => Mixer
- Vocals => Mic => Mixer

Mixer is a Phonic MU 2442X. Output goes into a cheap Behringer headphone amp and straight into our ears.

While this may not feel like a true Rocker's heaven, I can just recommend rehearsing that way:
- No more deaf ears
- You REALLY hear what you and the others are playing. Our tightness and our arrangements have improved a lot.
- We can rehearse weekdays at night
- Each member can have his own monitor mix

Price is really not an issue (at least for us). We basically use all of this stuff for shows as well, so we didn't have to buy too much gear just for the rehearsals. And you save a lot of money, time and nerves with dirty rehearsal places and stupid other bands.

I can understand people that just need it loud and ugly, but in case you're more into the actual music than just the sheer wattage power from your amp, I can absolutely recommend it! If you spend some time for tweaking you can rehearse with CD sound.

 

[kev]

That doll looks amazing. Sign me up!

 

[Mea_Culpa89]

Done that with my band, recently.

We don't use MIDI, headphones and shit, we kinda "soundproofed" the whole drumkit with pieces of carpet and cloth, so that we can only hear the attack of each element. Small amps for the guitars/bass, and vocals coming out from a PA in a really low volume.

We did all this because the room is located in a block of flats, BUT: The result turned out REALLY great, we are able to hear each other in normal volume, and play even at midnight without anyone knowing! Thus, we can improve on tightness and overall rhythm playing. Only drawback is the "muted" drummer, but we do rehearse in proper studio 1-2 times a month to "remember" what metal should sound like!!

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

I write with my drummer like this all the time. Recording is a snap and easy to fix errors. It sounds great with one guitar. When we bring in 2nd guitar things get a little muddy.

I tend to cut out the mids on the drums and boost the mids on my pod.

 

[Flat Fifth Fury]

It can be pretty cool actually. My old band for a while ran all the instruments direct to the mixer and we each had a headphone mix and a talk back mic. For rehearsals it was great. No ear problems, great instrument separation, we could easily record our practice and the neighbors never heard a thing.

Then we lost the drummer with the cool V-Drum kit and we had to use amps again. Boy was that a rude awakening!

 

[aortizjr]

I think it is the hardest for the drummer. The E-kits feel weird and they are expensive. You can get a pretty killer kit for the same price. They are really limited by simultaneous cymbal choices. Then the kicks feel weird. They are almost too loose feeling and the sensitivity settings either make them lazy and hit weakly or wear out slamming the hell out of it.

At least that is the feedback I have gotten with my E-kit and jamming that way. We will meet and write, jam goofy stuff, even running through studio monitors you can get it quiet enough to not disturb neighbors or the rest of the house. But to get show ready, we still rehearse full out. For drummers, the feel is and regular practice on the kit I think is important and hitting technique for good tone is important. So if they practice on their own, probably wouldn't be a problem. But almost every drummer I have played with only had 1 kit, so they rehearsed with the band and that was pretty much it.

With my TD-9, my philosophy was to help those that have such shitty kits and no budget to use it, since I would be sample replacing 99% of it anyway. But those guys found it too weird and couldn't perform in it properly. Then the guys that were really good, had great kits, and understood the need to save for properly recording drums... actually preferred the TD-9. Go figure.... and they were the guys I wanted to actually record their live drums.

+1 on the feel. It would be fine for getting ideas together and working out parts, laying down demos for arrangement. As a regular thing, man there is something special about having the loud instruments making your bowels move. I could see this being an issue for singers too, so many need to be in "the moment" to deliver and scream.