PAINLESS REHEARSALS
By now, you should know how long you can practice before your hands, voice or even legs give out. Time yourself, and find out just how many minutes it takes before you start feeling the "burn" or your voice begins to give out. Now, each time you rehearse, try increasing this time by one, two or maybe 5 minutes, no more. Remember, this is supposed to be painless. If you increase by small increments like this, it will be effortless, and those minutes add up over the weeks and months. This is perfect for people just starting to learn guitar, for example, so that you slowly and properly build up those needed callouses-playing until your fingers bleed may sound classic, but that just really slows you down waiting for them to heal and can even discourage you to the point of quitting. You want this to be a pleasurable experience, with positive memories, not negative ones, and pain is not a positive reinforcing agent. A strained voice can only become more and more injured, too, and even cause you to develop awful things like nodules that can end your career as fast as it started, so just don't let yourself get to that point. If you want to continue the time together with co-writers in a constructive vein, why not just try lyric writing, talking out arrangements while listening to rehearsal tapes, hashing out important details like stage gear, outfits, transportation, and if anyone has any gigs or contests lined up, yet. There is so much administrative stuff that needs to get done on a regular basis that is just as important as actual rehearsal and writing, it's always best to get those out of the way while you rest so you are ready for that next, slightly longer practice session. Before you know it, you will be able to last long enough to endure the entire rehearsal, and you will have all the irksome details already ironed out, so you can just enjoy writing and playing.
