HOW TO REHEARSE WITHOUT A FULL BAND. the record fills the empty chairs

A band needs everyone in one room at one time, and that is the hardest thing in music to arrange. The drummer works late on Thursdays. The bass player is away for a month. The keys player only makes Sunday mornings. And if you play on your own, a singer with a guitar or a pianist at home, you may not have a band at all, only songs that were recorded with one.

Practising alone has a gap in it. You can learn your part, but not how it fits. You never hear whether your strum sits with the hi-hat, whether your fill lands where the bass expects it, or whether you know when the second chorus comes round. Those are the things a rehearsal is for, and they are what goes wrong on the night.

The original recording can stand in for whoever isn’t there. Split it into its parts, take out the players who are present, and the record plays the rest: the real drummer, the real bassist, the real keys. You rehearse with a band that never cancels.

This works for one player at home or for half a band in a rehearsal room. The idea is the same: mute what you have, keep what you don’t.

In the screenshot the demo song Coming Home is split into six stems with Vocals and Guitar muted, the way a singer who plays guitar would rehearse it. Drums, bass, piano and the rest play on, and the section cues are on, so each pill in the Cues lane is a spoken name with a count after it.

On your own. Mute your part and nothing else. A singer who plays guitar mutes Vocals and Guitar, as in the screenshot. A keys player mutes Piano, and may want Other down too, since pads and synths often land there. Our guide to making a backing track covers single-instrument set-ups in detail.

A rehearsal with a missing player. Turn it round. If the band is all there but the bassist, mute everything except Bass, and the record’s bass player sits in. No drummer tonight? Keep Drums and mute the rest. Play it through the room’s speakers, at a level where you can hear it over the band.

A rhythm section rehearsal. Drums and bass working on their own mute Drums and Bass and keep the guitars, keys and vocal from the record, so they hear the shape of the song they are holding up. Singers can do the reverse: Instrumental takes the lead vocal out, so the vocal team rehearses over the full band.

Don’t mute all the way if a part is new to someone. Pull its fader down instead, so the original is a quiet guide they can lean on, and mute it once they have it.

A record is one arrangement. Your band may play it in a different key, slower, or with the bridge twice. The Studio can follow some of that.

Key. Move the song up or down, up to 12 semitones, and every stem moves with it while the chords re-spell. Set it to the key your singer uses, and the record’s band plays there too.

Tempo. Step the BPM to the speed your band plays it at, from half to double the song’s tempo. The pitch stays put, so the band stays in your key.

Cues. The section cues say each section’s name a bar ahead and count you in, the way a band leader would. Drag in the dynamics your arrangement uses, such as Build, Break or Last Time, on the beat they belong. A rehearsal with cues runs like a performance: nobody stops to ask where they are. The Guide Track Maker has the full list of what the voice can say.

What the record can’t do is change its structure. If your band repeats the bridge, the record won’t; loop that section instead, or rehearse it separately.

If someone wears in-ears, switch In-ears to Split L/R. The click and the cues play in the left ear, and the record’s band, folded to mono, plays in the right. Send the left side to the in-ears and the right to a speaker: the drummer hears the count, and the room hears the band.

Split L/R works when the Studio plays its own audio, which means a split song or your own file. The metronome has its own row too, clicking on the record’s beats, if your drummer wants a click under the cues.

Keep the record a little quieter than you would at home. In a room with live players, the kept stems should sound like one more player, not like a record everyone is playing over.

Splitting runs in your browser on a computer, in Chrome or Edge. Free splits a 2-minute part of the song that you choose, and the cues play inside that part; Premium splits up to 8 minutes and Pro up to 12, with the cues for the whole song. Spoken cues are in the Studio and the Mac app, not the Chrome extension.

Chord Lens works one song at a time and has no setlist; keep the order of your set in your band’s plan. On Premium you can download the mix as the mixer plays it, as MP3, and Pro adds WAV, for your own personal study and practice, not to share, sell or publish.