Here are some of the most important things to practice:
Your Sense of Time
How deeply and accurately you feel this underlying heartbeat determines how strongly everyone else will respond to the music.
Your Sense of Tonality
I cannot tell you how many times I have been in a rehearsal with someone who does not have a clue what key they are in. It’s critical that you know this, because everything you play comes from a key whether you know it or not – and if you don’t know, you may find yourself being that guy in the band who seems to have five heads.
Your Sense of Harmony
Once you know the tonality you are in, you can use the pitches and interval relationships inside it to create harmony. Harmony is created anytime you make the listener hear two or more pitches at the same time.
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