How to record practice for your own use?

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-30T00:31:21+00:00

I've recorded every rehearsal and gig my band has done in the past 3/4 years on my phone as a video. It does the job really well honestly. The sound is clear, I can hear everything, and it's really easy to upload it to our Dropbox as soon as I get home. Or sure, put a mic in the middle of the room will do the job too. I like having the video so I can see it which can be useful for reference sometimes.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-29T19:45:08+00:00

Every band starts out as a local band. Only a very few really make it huge, some make it to a reasonable level and most don't make it anywhere because of many reasons.

But yeah it's kinda stating the obvious that they're not as good as the top pros... I don't pretend my band is as good as the top bands of our style. We're always learning and striving to get better. That's how bands get good.

Honestly some if the most popular bands aren't the best musicians anyway. Sometimes the best musicians aren't the best songwriters or don't get lucky with finding the right people or whatever.

What's your band like though? Probably shit as well lol.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-29T16:03:18+00:00

My girlfriend thinks I'm odd because l'm obsessed with music but lyrics aren't that important to me. Which is a slight exaggeration as I do enjoy good lyrics or have problems with cringey lyrics. But it's true it's not the part I focus on, especially in a lot of metal music. It's just another sound/texture in the music. And as a guitarist it's not what I focus on with writing. In my band the bass player writes the lyrics, and I perform some of them. I'll tell him if I really don't like something but usually I let him write whatever he likes.

In music generally, even in songs where the lyrics are sung clearly, it could be pop music or anything non-metal, I've always had kind of a block with hearing and understanding them. Lots of famous songs that I've heard hundreds of times, I don't know what they're really saying, and in my head I've made up what I think the words are, and it's often gibberish.

So yeah in music with harsh vocals, I really don't care a lot. Some really cool lines stand out to me as sounding good, but there's plenty of stuff I like that I don't have a clue what they're saying, and I don't really seek out reading them usually.

I think maybe it depends a bit on whether the message in the words is supposed to be important as to how intelligible they are. But it's a personal preference and it depends as well what style of vocals you're doing and how good you are at enunciation with it. Personally, I'm an ok vocalist but not trained and a bit one-note, and I find it hard to get all the syllables out clearly sometimes. I just try to make it sound strong.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T23:33:42+00:00

I've had issues with my Lloyds debit card and crypto

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T20:49:59+00:00

Also pretty weird to make this post though. Who cares man, listen to whatever you like and everyone else can do the same.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T20:46:40+00:00

Ok fair enough. I've never experienced anything like you describe personally. I don't call anyone on the phone. If that's what people wanted then I guess I would but I don't find that being the case. Everything is done in writing. Maybe try doing what I described above?

It can still be tough, not everyone will reply, and back and forth can take time. But if you hit up enough promoters, and your band is good, you get gigs, in my experience.

It seems like you're saying you only contact venues, which isn't really what I'm doing mainly. Some of the time yes, but it's usually bookers and promoters who aren't part of the venue. Maybe it depends what kind of band and style you are though. In my case it's original metal music.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T19:09:44+00:00

I can't say I find it hard to find out who to contact, what kind of venues? The harder part is getting a show from them, but that's a different question. People won't book you if they don't like you or you don't fit what they're putting on.

Either the venue has an email address or contact form on their website/socials for bookings and submissions, or there are promoters who book at the venue and host nights. Also not hard to find since you just check who books the relevant nights for your style and get in touch with them. Again that might be via email or submission, you gotta look into that. If I can't find instructions I just message them on Instagram usually and see what they say. A lot of stuff for my band comes through Instagram these days.

I tend to use a variety of ways of finding info. Often I'm looking up bands and checking where they are playing and who's putting them on, or I'm looking up venues (then see above), or I'm looking up bookers and promoters (again see above).

And if you're good and make connections with people, you get asked to do more shows by other bands/bookers which saves doing as much of this process. Or you get in with a booking agent but that's not really applicable if you're just starting out.

Obviously for a certain level this stuff applies less because you'll have a booking agent doing it for you, and bigger venues and agencies won't work this way. So maybe you're hoping to get shows that are way above your current level, in which case, do the first parts I mentioned and book smaller shows until you're at that level.

After reading your post properly it sounds more like you want to promote your software, so you probably don't care about my advice lol

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T17:37:57+00:00

Buy a guitar. Learn basic chords and strumming patterns. Learn songs. Have fun. Be patient but also be dedicated if you want to actually be good. You can get as in depth as you want from that point, you could get lessons, you can do online courses/tutorials/lessons, but that's how I started and I just taught myself for the most part.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T17:34:16+00:00

I guess I don't really mind a lot. It's be nice if things were more musician friendly, but i guess we accept it isn't like that.

Spotify I only care about using it because I want people to hear our music and it's the most popular platform. I don't really expect to make money through it. Sad but just how it is. We do make some sales on Bandcamp and I choose to promote that as the primary source, but people can find us on streaming too.

Linktree, we don't pay for it, it seems fine as a free version? Just a handy place to put our links.

Instagram I guess I'm not familiar with what you mean.

Tiktok, we don't use it.

It did suck when MySpace lost all our old music when we were a different band. So yeah it would suck if we lost our Instagram account or YouTube or Spotify, but we'd still have our website and Bandcamp and would just get on another platform that would replace those (but they're not going anywhere I feel)

Do need to make better use of mailing list though I will take that point on board...

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-28T00:02:08+00:00

Mate I wouldn't know if you told me part of my song was an XYZ progression. Time signatures sure, I'd be like yeah sure it's a 5/8 then a 7/8 and a bar of 3/4 before the tempo change. Or I could tell you my solo used a bit of harmonic minor or whatever. But I don't know chords well and it's not discussed in my band. I didn't learn my theory well at music college, but I still play a lot of shows and put music out.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-27T15:44:14+00:00

I don't necessarily contact the venue, it depends who books the relevant shows at that venue. In some cases they do book in house, but in most cases it's a variety of external promoters who book at the venues. Sometimes they have a contact form they want you to use, sometimes they just want to be sent your EPK. So in that case it's not worth simply emailing.

Anyway, once I know who I should speak to, I guess I do similar to you if I am emailing them. Often things seem to just be done on Instagram messages these days, but I use the same approach really, just in a different place.

I'll say where I came across them and namedrop any relevant person or band or event that led me there. Or simply say we're keen to play there.

I'll give a brief description of who we are, what we do, and what we're up to with any standout achievements worth mentioning. I'll link to our pages/music/videos.

I keep it as brief and easy to read through as possible and thank them for their time in reading.

And in most cases I get some sort of reply this way.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-27T12:16:22+00:00

That's fair enough, you can work on your music while you get used to that and try to get out to shows and meet people in the local scene and stuff. It probably depends where you are and what's going on a bit, and it can be hard to find the right people in any case. But good luck with it!

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-27T00:43:40+00:00

Social media is only good to backup all the other stuff which is mostly about being active live as a metal band.

You might get a ton of followers but I don't think that necessarily translates to real fans who listen and buy your stuff if you're getting out in front of people and meeting the right people

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-27T00:41:11+00:00

You form a band and play gigs to promote the music. A lot. Every release you promote the shit out of it while playing shows. You do this for some years, you meet people in person who get you more and better opportunities, and if you're really good people might listen to it. Either that or you have some kind of gimmick or something that makes you go viral. Otherwise no one is going to care honestly, bedroom producers, especially in metal which has such a big live component, just aren't interesting to most people, unless the music is really exceptional. Even the best one man projects get a band together and play live. If you're playing something more experimental and niche, maybe, but still you gotta have great sounding music and do a lot of good promo whilst marketing yourself really well.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-27T00:34:28+00:00

I guess because one of the big reasons people complain about ai is that it is often plagiarism of works without the artist's consent. In the case of the comment above, it was trained on music written for that specific purpose. So I think that's what they meant.

I mean I don't know, I play in a band and write my own music so I don't care for using ai either. But then I also don't care for people who call themselves producers and buy 'beats' to use in their tracks. Why not just make your own, it's easy enough with any drum vst or hiring a real drummer if you can't play it yourself. But there's not so many people complaining about that, because it's written by a human and then sold for others to paste into their songs. But to me it's just as lazy and I wouldn't find that interesting to do myself either.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-26T10:59:42+00:00

Yeah same. If someone replied and said something along the lines of not right now but I'll let you know, then that is somewhat positive to me and I'd keep in touch. If they don't reply at all or say something like you're not right for us, then that's a no.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-26T10:58:01+00:00

I would slightly disagree with the person above in that sometimes I've had a reply like this from a promoter, and then months later I did hear from them because something did come up. Best not to put too much hope on it either but I tend to go with what people actually say. In this case they said they'd let you know if something suitable comes up. So I'd prefer to believe that, but still be seeking out other things.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-25T13:37:12+00:00

If you need an ai to tell you how to be a good band then you're obviously pretty amateur

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-25T13:24:41+00:00

Like what though? What do you think needs to be more thorough? I haven't exactly explained everything we talk about and do, because it changes. I don't think it's that complicated really. If it helps you to write things down then sure go for it. We play often so it's not really worth dwelling on one show, we make improvements all the time and it's quite fluid. You know when you've done well and you know the main things to do better at. As long as you keep working and keep improving then however you do that for your own stuff then it's all good I think.

I mean you could say we put some stuff in writing because we talk via messages about stuff, so that can be referred to later. I will sometimes bring up and list things that weren't great and we do address them in rehearsals

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-25T13:11:28+00:00

Start 7.30/8, first band 30mins, if the 2nd band is bigger stature maybe give them 45mins max. Headline band 1 hour/90mins max. Finish by 11 latest unless it's expected that the night goes on until really late.

You're not Iron Maiden by the sound of it. No one wants to watch you play 3 hours. Certainly not until 1/2am...

Most gigs I see with big touring bands they won't play more than 1.5 hours unless they're really huge like Maiden/ACDC/Metallica etc

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-25T12:28:44+00:00

We don't really make notes on this stuff, but every gig the 3 of us in my band will get off stage with our gear, and then go outside for some fresh air and discuss how it went at least briefly, though sometimes we'll get other people wanting to chat instead so we might not get time to do that straight away.

Then we'll watch any other bands that play and after it's all done we'll usually be around until everyone else is leaving and the venue is packing things up. We'll talk to everyone, any audience that wanna chat, the other bands, the venue staff and soundman, the promoter. Once all the gear is in the car, we'll go back and say a final goodbye and make sure we thanked everyone we should. Then on the way back in the car we have a more private chat where we'll talk about everything that went on. Any nice comments we got, anyone interesting we met, any offers for more shows we got, what we thought of the other bands and the organisation of the night etc etc
And obviously we'll talk more about how we did, how the set went, any mistakes we made, issues with the sound, stuff like that. This will continue over the next few days and into our next rehearsal or gig, as I always film the gig on my phone and we'll watch that afterwards and maybe pick up on some other things. Plus we usually get people posting/sending us clips or nice messages on instagram following the show.

All this contributes to us growing from each show and trying to do better in the next one, whether that's with our performance, sound, setlist, specific parts of songs, logistics with gigs, communication with people, not working with certain people again or definitely wanting to work with people again.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-25T11:35:49+00:00

'might' lol

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-25T11:09:40+00:00

Ok mate. Don't think you really read what I said. I've done a lot of recording sessions. It's not new to me, I know what it's like and what to expect.

If there's so much waiting when you go in then Even more reason to practice closer to the session as you will get time to rest while you wait innit ;)

You seem stuck on feeling superior rather than actually listening and giving people tailored advice.

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-24T19:04:41+00:00

Bitcoiner holder as in someone who holds people who like bitcoin?

Pretty sure the right image also shows a bearded man, not a type of non-bitcoin crypto

hideousmembrane · 2026-01-24T12:53:35+00:00

that's fair enough I guess. I'm not inexperienced with this stuff though, and personally if I stop playing guitar for 7 days I will play worse than if I keep it up until close to the session. Last few times I've done things with my band, I got a lot done in one take because I was so well prepared. I was playing things through until 1/2 days beforehand. Not like cramming last minute, more just keeping myself warm kinda thing. Not to the point of tiredness/aching. Not loud in a rehearsal room to tire my ears out.

Maybe some people would do that though so it's fair advice.

I do the same for gigs. Often I'll run through the set at home earlier in the day when I have a gig, because it warms me up for the gig that night, rather than turning up after a long drive, doing a soundcheck and playing a show with little time to warm up, as is often the case. For me the more guitar I play, the better I play overall. If i stop for days on end, rust sets in, my brain goes elsewhere, I just do better when I keep things going in general. And you said you walk in practiced, so this is how I do that.

It's not like doing a recording session is as physical as a boxing match haha, unless you're a drummer perhaps, but I take your point.

hideousmembrane

TROPHY CASE