I have been asked literally and rhetorically time and again, Why don't horn players want to rehearse? Saxes, trumpets, trombones, etc.

Lets get one thing straight. We want to rehearse. But we want to actually rehearse productively. Nothing is worse (and from this comes the reason horn players don't want to rehearse), than a person calling a Saturday noon-time rehearsal - where the drummer shows up an hour late - and has to catch up with everyone for half an hour before taking another 45 minutes to assemble his kit. Followed by "warming up" with a rhythm section only tune, that the guitar player has to spend an hour working out a single riff in the bridge on (and never gets it) and when 4 o'clock rolls around and you have to excuse yourself because you have to drive across town to a paying gig, and the band leader gets upset because they haven't even gotten to the tunes they wanted you to play on.

Luckily I am not one to gripe without presenting a solution, and there is a solution -- rehearse intelligently. Specifically PLAN your rehearsals. We will cover that in more detail in the next blog entry.