Saturday, April 22, 2017

Jam Night


On Wednesday night I went to the open jam and met up with a musician that a friend of mine referred me to. We ended up playing together onstage for three songs of a pretty long length. It ended up being a great set, probably the most exciting set of that entire night. We did two tunes with my new friend on guitar and vocals based on blues changes and then we did a sort of sloppy rendition of Stratus by Billy Cobham (also done by Jeff Beck).

The tunes with the vocals were overpowered by the loudness of our guitars. We turned down for Stratus and sounded much better with less distortion and gain. In fact, my friend's comping on Stratus was fantastic. It would've been a great rendition but the bass player didn't know the song or the changes so when it was suppose to go to different riffs he was still playing the same old one. I was a little disappointed that my set didn't sound the best because every other time I've been there I play a set where I'm the only guitarist and I always play really well. Its when other people get in there when I get a lot more critical about the sound onstage and off.

I also did a short set with another guitarist and I swear playing with this guy is like pulling teeth. His singing voice is terrible and his guitar always sounds super out of tone and has way too much gain (distortion). Because he's so loud I have to turn up just to hear myself. Then we start playing and he starts playing so fast (like its a punk song) even if the song is a more laid back classic rock or blues type of thing. It was terrible. I know now never to play with that guy. He's terrible. Haha.

Even though my set with my new guitarist friend was only okay in my mind I still think it was a success because we played together for the first time and it was fun. Even if I play with bad musicians or I'm not satisfied with the performance I always learn something at every open jam. Some things to consider is that you shouldn't expect much musicality out of a bunch of bar musicians and don't take it too seriously.

However, I'm definitely gonna jam with that new guitarist friend again. He is much more of an academic musically trained musician than I am but I think I have a lot on him in terms of improvising and phrasing.

It was a good jam night on 420!

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