REHEARSAL SPACE

1. Make sure you have a rehearsal room that is at least tidy, if not clean. Untidy rooms, as well as just not being particularly nice places to be, will lead to things getting lost and damaged. Pay particular care to how your cables, instrument and power, are organised, as jumbles of both together can lead to noise issues, and being tangled up can damage an instrument cable. Moreover, you may not realise it, but that massive heap of junk piled up against the wall might be having more of an effect on your sound than you thought.

2. Is your room a cold place? If it is, chances are you won't sound as good. For a variety of reasons, instruments don't sound as good when they're cold, and that's compounded by the fact that your ears don't work as well when you're cold. If your rehearsal space gets cold, do yourself a favour, get in early and run an electric heater for a while before you start practicing. And a few nice hot brews for everyone will make a pleasant start to the rehearsal as well.

3. Look at the walls in your rehearsal space. Bare breezeblock? Maybe that's why you don't sound as good as you could. Sound bounces as much as it can, and a lot of sound in a small room with hard walls will create your very own short echo chamber, guaranteed to muddle everything up and kill all the detail in your music. A few offcuts of carpet stuck to the walls will be cheap (or free if you find them in a skip) and will help the problem considerably - and might brighten the place up a bit as well!

GEAR

1. First of all, is your gear in good condition? It may have been fine a few months ago, but several months in the abovementioned cold rehearsal space, punctuated with a few boisterous outings to pubs and clubs, might just have taken the edge off your gear's condition. If you can't store it in a clean, warm, dry place, then you should at least endeavour to keep your gear clean (amp covers are a great idea), and get it checked at least once a year to make sure everything's working the way it should. If you get to know your gear well enough you can check it yourself, which will save you costly technician fees. Treat your gear well, it will last longer while you play it, and it'll make you more money if you sell it.

2. I don't mean to offend anyone, but is your gear good enough? Of course, we all know that a good musican can make anything sound pretty good, but that becomes quite relative when said musician is playing a cheap guitar into a cheap practice amp. You don't have to break the bank to get good tone, but you do have to spend your money on the right things. Notorious false economies are “budget” stacks (full stacks for under £400 are out there, but they're not good) and anything loaded with dozens of DSP effects. The second-hand market is your friend, but be careful what you buy. If you're trying to buy cheap, try to avoid anything too complex.

3. Is your gear the right gear? It might sound obvious, but if you're in a thrash-metal band, you may find that a Rickenbacker into a Fender Twin isn't getting you that raw aggressive chunk you're after. Think about it when you're shopping. You may have always wanted to own a top-of-the-range Ibanez RG with a 24-fret neck and a Floyd Rose, but there's really not much point in all that if you're going to be playing Oasis covers. Take a look at the pro bands in your genre - what gear do they use? What gear do they NOT use? What gear wouldn't they use even if it came with a free blowjob?

4. Don't get duped by the notion that such-and-such a piece of gear is an open door to a whole new dimension of playing. In fact, most gear advertised on that basis tends to be inferior to gear advertised on its own merits. Good gear, some talent and bags of practice are what make a great performing musician, and in the vast majority of situations you will be able to get by using just that, so think long and hard about what you really need before putting down any money on that Digigadget UberFX-o-Tron 3000.

SETTING UP

1. Think about your position in the band, and the position of your gear. The drums and bass are the backbone of most rock sounds, so have them in the middle, next to each other. If you have two guitars, put one on either side. Arrange your PA to have an even spread. And everyone should stand in such a way that they can hear pretty much what everyone else is hearing - and try to get that as close to what you'd want to hear from a stage as you can.

2. A rehearsal is a live situation, so you need a soundcheck. You have to make sure the drums sound right, and then the bass with the drums, and then each guitar with the bass and drums, and then lastly the vocals. Don't rush it, take your time, really listen to what's going on. A good balance now will save your ears and make you sound so much better. And soundcheck here is not just “how loud”, but also “does it sound good”. A guitar on its own needs good bass to fill the bass end. But in a band, there's already a guy playing bass - so maybe you can turn your bass control down a bit? Hey yeah, the sound is clearer, and I sound louder! Magic!

3. Turn down. You play too loud. Yes, you do. Remember that this is a rehearsal, you're not playing Wembley (yet). You need a bit of ballsy volume so you can get a good vibe, but is there really any point in deafening yourself? Right now you need to hear not only everything you're doing, but also everything everyone else is doing. The best way to do that is for everyone to bring their volume down a notch. And do it BEFORE you start playing, not after. If you do it after, when you turn down it will seem too quiet.

PLAYING

1. Talk to each other. I know we're all hairy manly men and all that, but we have to communicate to get stuff done. Few and far between are bands that make it without discussing their common goals and how to achieve them every now and then. You don't have to hold a conference or anything, but just keep in mind that there are other people in this with you, and they want things too. If you care about what other people want, they'll care about what you want, and chances are the middle ground will be good music.

2. It's about the song. Not your lead playing, not your bass solo, not your amazing drumming. Whether it's a piece of music you wrote or someone else wrote, people will always know if you chose it because you love the music, or because it gives you a chance to show off. Forget your ego for a minute, and just enjoy the fact that the music is good without trying to be the best thing about it.

3. Take breaks. Smoke cigarettes, have coffee, drink a coke, rest your ears. Get some perspective on what you've just played. You won't achieve much by tearing through your set in record time and then going home. You rehearse to improve, so take the time to think about how to do that, and then try to do it. This is your ideal chance to iron out creases in your songs, a process that is infinitely more difficult if you've just played seven songs in a row.

4. Stay away from that volume knob. “But I can't hear myself!” Stand closer to your amp, then. Stand more in-line with the speakers. Move around a bit. If you turn up, you'll be too loud. Then other people will have to turn up, too. Hey presto, volume wars. You don't want that.

AFTER PLAYING

1. Pack your gear down. Be nice to it. Take the extra time to make sure it's all squared the way you want it to be - it'll save you more time at the beginning of your next rehearsal.

2. Make arrangements for the next rehearsal. If it's tomorrow night or a month away, talk it out and make sure everyone's on the same page for when you're doing it and what you plan to work on. If you can't make it, people will thank you for giving them plenty of notice, as opposed to cursing you if you let them know an hour before you're due to turn up. Your band may not be your best or closests friends, but even if theyare, it's a good idea to remain businesslike. Keep money matters and such until the end of rehearsal - starting a rehearsal with an argument over rent owed is a sure-fire way to have a bad jam session. But do keep tabs on who owes what, to avoid resentment and misunderstandings down the line.

3. Make mental (or physical) notes to yourself about where you felt you could do with some work. It's easy to criticise others' failings, but not so easy to identify your own. But this is when it'll be freshest in your mind, so think about what you could improve about your playing, and do some work towards correcting it for the next rehearsal - you may find that just seeing you improve is a much more effective way to make your bandmates try to improve also, instead of just telling them where they're messing up.

4. If it's been a bad rehearsal for whatever reason, don't dwell on it. Dwelling on it will lead to making rash decisions in a panic. For most of us this is a hobby, it costs us more than we make from it. So don't feel like if something's gone wrong you have to fix it immediately or it's the end of the World. Always take your time over things like that, talk to the other band members about it, and see if they have any ideas of their own to improve things. Firing people or quitting are absolutely last-resort decisions, and there's almost always something you can do to avoid them.

5. This is an obvious one. Practice outside of rehearsal. As much as you can. Rehearsal is not the time you spend improving your playing. Rehearsal is the time you spend working on performing music. Improving your playing is what you do on your own time, and the more you do it, the easier rehearsal time will be for all. Take that same time to come up with new and fresh ideas to bring in to the band. They don't have to be finished items, they can be just little riffs or chord progressions or lyrics or whatever - as long as when it comes to writing a song with the band, you're not all stood in a circle with nothing to work on.