So, last Sunday I attended the first rehearsal, and what a great experience it was! The rehearsal was led by four coaches, one for each section: singers, guitar players, bass players and drummers. All four coaches are true professionals: not only accomplished musicians, but also great teachers, and the nicest, most down to earth people you could ever hope to meet. As for the participants, I think there were about 150 - 200 of them.
After setting up my stuff, I chatted with a couple of other bass players, who were obviously all very cool dudes and dudettes 
We even managed to snap a little group picture. And then, after a quick introduction, the rehearsal started. They had arranged for this Golden Earring cover band (Golden Earring Undercover) to play along to. No time was wasted, and we immediately broke into “Twilight Zone”, which, to my surprise didn’t sound half bad! I was a bit nervous while waiting for the rehearsal to begin, because lots of people were “noodling”, i.e. showing off their skills, but once we started, I got right into it.
Fortunately, “Twilight Zone” is the one song out of the four I probably know best, so it was a great starter for me. As for the other three: “Buddy Joe” I can play pretty decent, but it needs more work. “Radar Love” I didn’t remember that well, but it mostly came back to me while playing. “Back Home” I haven’t even started on yet, so don’t even get me started on that one 
There’s still a couple of months to go before the concert, so I have my work cut out for me!
In the end, we played all four songs multiple times, sometimes focusing on and repeating specific sections. After that, we had another hour left, so we played all four of them in one go, kinda how we’re supposed to play them at the concert. All in all, we played for about three and a half hours, and my fretting fingers were pretty sore after that!
Based on this first rehearsal, I’m confident I will be able to play all four songs in September. I decided that I’m also going to attend the last rehearsal, which is two weeks before the concert, to check my progress. One thing I learned is that rehearsals are about so much more than just practicing and playing the songs: it’s also where decisions are made about how to end songs, if and when certain sections are going to be expanded or shortened and things like that, so I want to soak up as much of that as possible. The coaches said that basically all participants should attend at least one rehearsal, because if they don’t, they are going to be way behind on the actual day.
A couple of other things I learned:
- Even with my 40 W combo on (almost) maximum volume, I could barely hear myself
- A Zoom B1 Four is fine for things like this, but on the actual date I might bring my “real” tuner and compressor (and possibly my preamp).
- Last but not least: playing music with real people is freakin’ awesome!
Now I want to do it all the time! 
All participants just received these pictures to post on their socials… Bassbuzz is my only social 
