Last week's jam tracks V

Here's the live tracks from last week's open jam we played. Here we started the show off with Paranoid by Black Sabbath. Then we segued into Steve Vai's Bad Horsie and ended everything with my original black metal style tune called Spirits of the Dead. We've been playing these songs a lot at the bar and there's a couple different variations of these tunes on my soundcloud page. However, this stands apart from all those because I think the vocals were especially well done on this night. You'll see what I mean when you hear it. Enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/paranoid-best-vocals
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/bad-horsie-most-recent-version
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/spirits-of-the-dead-best-vocals

In addition, good news everyone! So my two man band (this music is me, my friends, and house band musicians at the bar) but now we've decided to work with this metal vocalist named Alex. Its going to be a while before we have some good arrangements and until I get used to his screaming vocals (haha) but we had a practice yesterday and it went really well. I liked the whole two man White Stripes/Black Keys thing but its better off if I only sing the songs I write, and mostly focus on the guitar chords. Really excited to be working in a 'real' band now and hopefully soon we'll get some songs arranged, and be able to play our first gig really soon.

Friday 9/22 open jam recordings

So these are from the 9/22 jam session last week. I thought everything went fairly well sound-wise and guitar-playing wise. Some tracks here are actually from a few weeks earlier.. I really like the Too Rock and Roll for You tune, that woman had a good voice for that kinda thing. Check it out, enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/blues-jam-supreme
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/sunshine-of-your-love-2
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/cannon-too-rock-roll-for-you
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/move-over
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/smoke-on-the-water-2

Open jam recording, fusion set

So I've been going to the open jams and I got some more recordings. These turned out quite nicely. I ended up playing with a young drummer, a blues bass player, and the percussionist that shows up every week. I called out two chord vamps for both of the jams and it ended up being kind of a heavy jazz fusion sort of set. I thought my guitar tone was trying to do too much at times but it ended up sounding really progressive and fusion-y. I really liked that I was the only guitarist on the set, it hasn't been that way since like when I first started going. Great stuff. You can hear both of the tracks here. 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/two-chord-vamp-amin7-d7 

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/two-chord-vamp-fmaj7-cmin7

Enjoy! 

8/31 jam from Peties

So I got my last jam from Petie's Place recorded. This was more of a two guitar blues, jazz, and rock kind of night. The first tune we played was Stormy Monday but I totally improvised everything I played and went for a more round hollow body jazz sound, really jazzing up the changes. I think I did a really great job with the blues leads in this one. Then we did a simple rock riff instrumental that I created that's based off of Rock and Roll by Led Zeppelin. Its a bit faster and has more metal style riffing in it than say pure Led Zep. Then for the last piece we played Hey Joe. I actually ended up doing the solo like how it actually goes in the recording, which was pretty cool because I usually prefer to improvise most of my solos. The singer on Stormy Monday and Hey Joe is this guy named Shane that I've been working with since these jams. Tonight we played Smoke on the Water together. He's a cool guy. Anyways, enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/stormy-monday-shane-vocals
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/rock-riff
https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763/hey-joe-shane-vocals

New Soundcloud Live Tracks

So I went to a jam a few weeks ago and this is the results. You can listen to all the new tracks here.

Hey Joe (version 2)
Dark chord jam
Shuffle Truffle jam 
Voodoo Ritual (jazz version)

The whole purpose of this jam session was that I was trying to provide support with rhythm, mainly the chord progressions. I hardly ever took even a hint of solo. I was straight comping the whole night. I like to think it sounds pretty well. This older black dude played the more distorted electric guitar, I'm on my Hagstrom Les Paul on clean setting the whole time, using the Jazz/Blues Seymour Duncan Jazz Pickup. Enjoy! 

More Soundcloud tracks

Even more good news everyone! I just got the tracks from the last jam I did at the local open jam. I've already posted them and you can listen to them https://soundcloud.com/user-294063763. I'm listening to it all right now and I gotta say that this jam was particularly impressive with three guitarists (one being myself), drums, bass,  keyboards, and vocals. I held everything down together by mostly playing the rhythm guitar. The other two guys were good players but they were mostly only playing lead. On one of the jams we had a trumpet player. It sounds way 1960s rock and roll man! Mighty good jam. The new tracks I posted are Vocal Jam 1, Vocal Jam 2, and Rock and Roll by Led Zep. On Vocal Jam 1 I stomped on dominant 9th chords over a jazz blues progression. Check out the tracks and let me know what you think!

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!

Open Jam Nights

The last two nights I went out to open jam nights at these bars. Tuesday I went to this place called the Canby. Its a dive bar not too far from my house. The atmosphere there is a little more street than the other place I went to but the musicians let me jam with them a bit. They were mostly doing covers. I played my friend's acoustic dobro guitar and plugged it into the amp.

The tone I got was a pretty distorted rock and roll tone for an acoustic steel guitar. It was pretty awesome. I started improvising and we went off for a while. It was pretty good but they weren't really improvising type of musicians, they're better at playing songs by the book more so than originals or jamming. So I asked them if they knew Hey Joe and I showed them the riffs and changes in the song. Then we played a rocking version of it. It was pretty awesome.

We even had two singers and they did a good job. My guitar solos sounded pretty great even though I was playing on acoustic and my fingers bloody hurt like hell. Because I couldn't do the bends (too hard on acoustic) I resorted to doing a ton of double stop Hendrix/Chuck Berry style. It sounded pretty good. What sounded even better was my rhythm, the sound of the chords was sparkly clean yet slightly distorted. Heavenly guitar tone for a tone I just dialed in automatically without any setup.

The other bar was this place called Petie's Place and its even closer to my house. I would still classify this place as a dive bar but its a lot nicer than the Canby and it has a much cooler vibe. The people here were much nicer to me than at the Canby. It seemed like at the Canby I had to prove myself to the musicians playing there. They were a bit stand offish towards me at first before they saw me play. At Petie's it was the opposite, they were super nice right off the bat.

There was a house drummer and bass player and everybody else came through to either jam with them or with their own drummer/bass player. I signed up and got onstage and we did a fantastic Hendrix inspired version of Sunshine of Your Love. We did all the songs I played with them as instrumentals. After that I asked them if they could do Stratus and I even began teaching them the main riffs and whatnot but the bass player wasn't having it. So instead we did Hey Joe. It ended up working out great. I sounded great on my Hagstrom Les Paul and I was getting a really good distorted guitar tone. Great for Hendrix tunes. I got a sense that the drummer could play any type of rock and roll and jazz too even maybe if I could've gotten to play Stratus with him but the bass player was definitely a rock and roll only type of guy it seemed. 

Later that night I played again. I was originally planning on playing War Pigs and Black Sabbath but this old guy came up to me and asked me what I wanted to play. I told him those two Sabbath tunes and he was like oh well maybe I should get the other drummer for that stuff, he plays great on that stuff. But I noticed he had drum sticks in his hand and I didn't wanna leave him hanging so I asked him what songs he knew? He said a ton. I asked if he knew Foxy Lady and Spanish Castle Magic and he said he did. So I said lets do Foxy and from that break into Spanish Castle.

It ended up working out great. He played pretty well. We straight rocked that place hard. The bass player was a little off on Spanish Castle Magic but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he doesn't know too much Hendrix? So yeah it turned out to be a real Hendrix night of jamming for me.

I had so much fun at Petie's that I'm planning to go to their open jam next week as I'm off that day. I might even work on memorizing lyrics to songs I already know how to play so I can do the songs as its meant to be with a vocalist (not just as an instrumental). People there liked me so much. It was great getting respect from fellow musicians and love from the audience, even hot girls and women. If I keep doing this maybe I can find musicians to play in a band with. At the very least I'm keeping my chops up and playing real music in front of a live audience and enjoying it.

Open jams are awesome!