Well, a really good dude that I used to work with and is quite a good bass player knows that I've been learning rhythm guitar and brought up jamming to me, especially after his band broke up. I told him to give me a year or so to get my ear a bit better and to get better at what I do do. (do do? Is that right? do, do - maybe?)
So, we chatted through email yesterday and he was quite eager. My excuses were beginning to dry up. He doesn't like to play that loudly and my ear plugs don't hurt to wear for more than 15 minutes anymore. It's in the evening, so I can easily sleep off the subsequent Migraine I'll get (thanks to modern meds). No more excuses. It is time.
So, I put him in charge (experience..easy enough decision) and he had me put together a song list of songs I knew rhythm to (and how well I play them) and send it to him to pick some out. He replied back a dozen choices along with another eight to do later or if we had time. Medium Rock songs mostly, like "American Girl", "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Like A Rolling Stone". The song list has a few of my weaker songs, but nothing too bad.
So, tomorrow night (Thursday) I have my first ever jam with a bass player. I'm quite excited rather than nervous, which is a switch from Monday when it was first brought up.
Any last minute tips are welcome. :D
8) 8) 8) 8)
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
Relax, enjoy, it's supposed to be fun. But, you can still pay attention to what you're doing, look down at your handwork if you have to, it's okay to look or we'd be playing blindfolded, and just cut loose! Have a great time. :D
Like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free.
yea Roy it'll be fun especially since you already have a base of songs you know you are going to play. that's the biggest problem I've found when getting together with other people unless you coordinate what music you want to play you end up wasting a lot of time trying to figure it out.
A simple I-IV-V blus jam always works and you can take turns "soloing" while the other plays the rhythm.
I tell you though if I didn't hook up with the guys I'm with I'm not sure how motivated I would be to play the guitar. I'm not an acoustic strummer so I don't have any desires to just play by myself. It's so much more fun with other people. It's Ok to play along to CD's (I don't like BT much) but that gets old too.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
it may be hard getting things going. hang in there, the both of you. after a while tthings will relax and the jam will rtake a life of it's own. playing songs is great. one will lead into another.
also be open to letting a song happen. many times when I jam with my buddy we'll hear a note or chord and that will summon up a song. we'll play it having never played it before. it is fun working it out on the fly. be receptive to that.
do not worry about a song not happening. just move on.
I have learned so much playing with others. the thinking while playing happens fast. but in a way, it isn't so cognitive.
it's more like your hands and ears take over and introduce you to new things. you find yourself doing things you never thought you could pull off. it's a rush.
TIP: have a drum machine going. if you don't have one maybe you could find something on the net and play it loud.
having a beat really helps. especially with only two guitars.
Thanks for the tips so far, everyone.
Hmmmmm, I wonder if that electric drum set does some canned beats.
I have jammed twice before twice before with my brother-in-law, and once with a guy I used to play baseball with and has since left the area. The jamming with an experienced bassist is quite new.
Another friend and I played "together" quite a long ways back, but I couldn't even do a G-C-D then and neither could he. We traded what we knew back and forth. Never the same time and exhausted what we each new within about 45 minutes. I got better. One more embarassing moment with another friend right when I started, but we'll save that for another day.
I got through all the songs he selected except one and made sure the chord sheets were up to snuff and copies sent out. I saw him do two of them at least at a gig a few years back. I'm sure he knows most of these already. One of them is the Before You Accuse Me number that Clapton covered and David Hodges did the lesson on. (and yes, I did change the key to "A") :)
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
Rock it out, Roy! 8)
Don
Cool man! That'll be a great experience for you!! Good luck and enjoy it!!
In Space, no one can hear me sing!
Last minute tips, huh? Well the obvious one is, play to your strengths - don't try and take your playing to the next level all in one go. I'm not saying don't be spontaneous - like Dogbite said, a chord or a riff will often lead straight into another song. These days, when I go jamming, I try and stick strictly to rhythm - my strong points are timing and a pretty good chord vocabulary. I'll take a solo if I can't get out of it, but only if it's a fairly easy 12-bar blues or simple progression.
Relax, don't show all your best licks in the first five minutes, and go where the better guitarist/jam leader takes you.
Cast your mind back to the Merseyside Jam on this forum about a year ago (Gawd, is it SOOOO long ago?) - you were kind enough to leave some nice comments, if I remember rightly. That was the second time we'd played together....Dan (Laz) was the jam-master for both jams. He came prepared with song sheets - plenty to go around - and led myself and Sara (Scrybe) through quite a few songs we'd NEVER played before. Showed us rhythm changes, chord changes, etc BEFORE we actually launched into the song proper....what I learned from that, someone HAS to be in charge and Dan did a great job. Yes, we did a few spontaneous things.....but when we played songs we knew, we sounded fairly tight.
So again, relax - don't worry about the odd bum note or chord. I hit more than my fair share, believe me, but I enjoyed those two jams immensely. It was all about making music with (new) friends - none of my worst fears came to pass. No one said, "you're actually quite rubbish, aren't you!" - on the contrary, they were quite complimentary, which was a huge ego boost. I'm watching Sara improv'ing on the fly and thinking, hell, I couldn't do that - but then I thought, I don't NEED to do that, I'll just listen to Dan and watch Dan and keep the rhythm.
Jamming isn't easy at first - you'll spend the first quarter of an hour sussing out each other's strengths and weaknesses. About 5 years ago, when I used to go the acoustic jam nights in my local pub, one of the lads - the best guitarist there, as it happened - asked me to go to his house and jam with him. Hmmm - why me, I thought - I'm probably the weakest guitarist here....I asked him a few months later, he said, "'cos we've got similar tastes, and we could maybe work on some songs that'd knock their socks off in the pub!" It was mostly country and western till then - till we started playing songs like Wild Horses, Sweet Virginia, Substitute, Stand By Me (with Stu playing slide) Dock Of The Bay, Hey Joe and Brown Sugar. Then we met Ray (Darth Ordinary) through Guitarnoise, all of a sudden there was three of us jamming, taking turns on bass, rhythm and lead.
I need to get those jam sessions going again.....think I'll give Stu and Ray a ring this week. Hey if nothing else, Roy, you've inspired me to get off my arse and start playing again. I've been a bit down since the Blue Winter Jam - I've hardly picked up a guitar since. I hated my part so much, I just thought, "is that the best I can do? Hell with it, might as well not bother." In fact, thinking about it, I haven't picked a guitar up this year yet.....and feeling my callouses, they've gone a bit soft. I REALLY need to play again....so thanks for that Roy.
Jam, do your best, relax, and have fun....there's no panel of experts giving marks. Enjoy it. I'm going to get busy practising for a few days and then I'll try and get a jam session going again.....
Alll the very best mate!!!!
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
Cool Roy,
You're probably jamming right now or recently finished as I write
this so I hope all is going or went well.
:note1: :note1: :note1:
John
Thanks for all the well wishes and advice, tips and the pep talk. The playing went fine for a first time together. I was able to tell where he was most of the time and visa-versa.
I was not in top form with the Migraine/fever thing, so the evening was cut short. Truth be knownst, I had one of my worst days in a while starting at 3:00 AM this morning. Thought about postponing and probably should have, but I didn't want to blow this chance. Oh well. We will do again soon. The good thing I might not have mentioned earlier is that he lives only two streets over. Maybe 1/4 mile. This is the dude that I mentioned in previous posts for a couple of years about being to scared to ask to jam. He's a great guy, but I wanted to make sure I was at least OK and not barely learning 1/2 dozen open chords.
We did get through 10 songs 1-2 times each on before I caved in.
American Girl - Petty
Bad Moon Rising - CCR
Before You Accuse Me Eric Clapton
Bobby McGee - Joplin
Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash
Hey Joe - Easy Version - Jimi Hendrix
Honky Tonk Woman - Rolling Stones (open G)
House Of The Rising Sun - Animals
Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Mostly it was pretty good. My intention of practicing these songs more today gave way to other things, so there were some glitches here and there. Some of these songs I have not done in a while. I think my best songs were Hey Joe, Bobby McGee and 'Folsom. Maybe 'Bad Moon and Brown Eyed Girl, the latter being maybe my 5th and 6th time ever playing.
My worst was Honky Tonk Woman and American Girl. I was quite surprised. I've been playing American Girl, but I never really understood how to turn that into one guitar. Not enough to jump from one signature part to basic rhythm back to the ending. Honky Tonk has been on back burner for a while, choosing Country Honk all the time by myself.
Like A Rolling Stone was not as clean as I would have liked it to be. HOTRS I had just been playing arpeggios to for maybe a few weeks and held my own some times and fumbled it other times. I should be up to snuff soon.
All and all it was a good bit of fun playing, and I know we'll be getting back together soon. I know also that I need to be feeling better than I was today in order to do this. Lesson learned. :(
Time to crash. Have a good night, everyone!
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
Way to go Roy :D,
shame you had to cut it short, but it sounds like the beginning of something really good, keep us posted
cheers
Paul
roy,
Yea to bad you had to cut it short but for a first time jam I think you did alot. I know when I started jamming with other people it started with only 2-3 songs played over and over again.
Vic gave you some really good advice and I know how he feels I started feeling that way a week or so ago.
As you know I've been playing with a bunch of guys for a little over a year at least once a week and it' terms of learning songs I've grown considerably but that's not where I want to be. I want to play more solo's etc. I had kept that in the back burner a bit because in the situation I'm in the lead guitarist is exceptional the chances of me playing any solo's better than him anytime soon are slim and none. And when I say solo's I mean really long rockin solo's not the 3-8 bar solo's that I play now.
But I've noticed recently and it was evident the other night that I'm having some performance issues. Two of the newer songs we are playing are Day Tripper and Just what I needed by the Cars. I have been playing those solo's and when I'm by myself I can play them fine but when I get with the guys I seem to invariably screw up. Not all the time but it should be never. This has really made me think about my playing and if I can ever take it to the next level.
I haven't put the guitar down but I am starting to question what I'm doing. I don't like to do things half a@@ed and I particularly don't like doing things I don't excel at. I'm that way in golf. If I don't play well I would rather not have even been out on the course.
Just take it slow as Vic says and you'l be fine.
"It's all about stickin it to the man!"
It's a long way to the top if you want to rock n roll!
Hey Roy! Just finding this. That is great. Glad you had fun despite the pain. I was thinking, "I should find somebody to jam with" when I realized I live with a bass player and we play together all the time. Duh! I guess I was looking at the aspect of jamming with someone new. I can relate to the anxiety. Me and the boy jammed with his music teacher when he was in high school. He is a professional musician as well as a certified music teacher so I was nervous. (This dude played as a solo act at a blues festival in Switzerland and got rave reviews) I really wanted him to think I was good. I think my nerves got the best of me that day cause I couldn't remember how to play anything and it was up to me as this guy plays every instrument and was on drums that day. We did blaze through a version of Fire by Hendrix that impressed him though. If I lived closer I'd jam with you when ever you wanted. It is lots of fun. Keep it up and keep us posted.
"Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard,
grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em."
-- The Webb Wilder Credo --
Sorry, I miss this thread!
Congrats Roy! :D
that's good news. sorry about the ear thing cutting things short. playing with others live is the best.
the learning and fun go so well together. hope you both keep it up.
