Last Week's Jam Tracks III

Here are the live tracks from last week's open jam at Petie's Place, this bar I frequent a lot.

The first tune we played was Black Sabbath's Paranoid, pretty easy song right? Well, I did kind of mess up the song last week because I forgot to come in w/ some verses and instead just went into a guitar solo, then found my place back within the song. That's how you cover up a mistake folks, go into impromptu guitar solo mode! I'm still working on bringing more emotion into the singing.

Next, we played Sunshine of Your Love by the Cream. This has been like our swansong so to speak. Sometimes hearing my voice makes me cringe hard but when I hear the guitar playing I think again (lols). My vocals are definitely getting better but its still hard to get past that speaking voice to singing voice transition. Ken, the percussionist playing tambourine (and records everything for me, thank you) is really on point with his rhythm here. With him and my friend Martin on drums its like playing with two drummers. Martin takes care of fills and colour and Ken takes care of timing with precision.

The last tune we played was an improvised version of Steve Vai's Bad Horsie. I have a habit of doing impromptu versions of guitar instrumentals by shredders (check out this version of Buckethead's Soothsayer here). The melody from Bad Horsie is pretty strong here, a bluesy funky sort of melody that runs into some metal riffing. The way we did it this time I stopped playing and motioned Martin to do a drum solo. As you can hear it sounded pretty damn good. My friend Martin is really coming into his own as a rock and roll drummer. At the end I did some tapping and held a note for what seemed like eons while Martin played some crazy rolls. That's pretty cool.

Here are all the tracks, enjoy!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/paranoid-forget-the-verse-ha
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/sunshine-of-your-love-latest-version
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/steve-vai-bad-horsie-impromtu-jam-version

Last open jam set of 2017

Here's the last open jam set I played of 2017 at Petie's Place, on Reseda and Oxnard Street. I'm pretty happy with the recordings, mostly because my vocals are a lot better than they've ever been. I've really come a long way with my singing starting last year. I'm really glad I started singing rock and roll. It's a lot smarter and easier, as I don't have to rely on other people to do vocals.

We started off with Sunshine of Your Love with this dude named Allan (a typical blues rocker long hair w/ a Strat). He did a great job jamming with me for the first time ever, I especially liked his leads on Spirits of the Dead, the second song we played. I really liked my solo on Sunshine, I was going for my Hendrix style there.

On Spirits of the Dead Allen's leads really give the piece a new dynamic melody. And then there's me doing black metal style coarse/scream style vocals. Pretty funny! A lot of people say to me that they don't expect that when they see me play. It's cool to have one death metal song, and this is my only one as of now. We played the song a lot faster than we usually do but again Allen's leads really pave the way for a great tune, especially when I repeat the chugging bridge riff and he takes some bluesy leads over it. Spirits of the Dead!

And the last tune we have for you is Blues Improvisation no.1. This tune was just a blues Allen and I called in A. I stuck to dominant and ninth chords in the key of A. I might have switched it to minor ninths near the ending too. Added a little bit of the power chord blues shuffle in there too for contrast. I think my blues solo really hits the heart strong. When I do a blues solo I always try to go for the Hendrixy emotion.

Allen's blues solo on this tune was quite something, as you can hear. He hits a lot of the common cliches but it always sounds good. He's a great player and I'm glad to have jammed with him on the last open jam of 2017. I'm going to do even better to sing better and become a better performer in 2018!

https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/sunshine-of-your-love-2
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/spirits-of-the-dead-2
https://soundcloud.com/orlando-figueroa-17/blues-improvisation-no1