General Music Chat

Kinda curious . . .
Play with others once or twice a week.
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And - why do you play with others as often as you do?

Assumed this included the members of the band.
We get together weekly.
Like to do it twice weekly but employment / family obligations interfere.

Often wonder what we could accomplish if sequestered for a month.
Other than possibly getting on each others last nerve. LOL

I play in a flute choir on Tuesdays, wind symphony on Wednesdays. Sometimes I can include a jazz combo or rock band. I play cuz I wanna be playing and most of my rehearsals are to prep for performances.

It's been a pretty rare occurrence for me in the past year...Now it looks like I'll be jamming a couple times a week.

Played last night with new band for first time.
Very satisfied. It felt good to let it all out vocally.
This is gonna work.

That's great, KlUGMO! Seems like we are both having a little luck...long overdue.

Kinda curious . . .

And - why do you play with others as often as you do?

It keeps me fresh ... and on the edge out of my comfort zone .... that's where I play best ...

I got a damn tendon problem right now. One behing my left thumb and one in my right wrist. I haven't played in two weekd and it's driving me nuts. I'm sure I'll get better soon...not soon enough though.

So playing in general is out of the question right now.

Do you wear a wrist watch when you play Krul ?

If so ... don't.
Worst thing in the world for the ligaments of the wrist and fingers.

Some constriction at the musculature of the forearm can be beneficial in the healing of these issues.

Common injuries in the martial arts world.

Always warm up. Just like any exercise, you must stretch those muscles and ligaments prior to using them.

Do you wear a wrist watch when you play Krul ?

If so ... don't.
Worst thing in the world for the ligaments of the wrist and fingers.

Some constriction at the musculature of the forearm can be beneficial in the healing of these issues.

Common injuries in the martial arts world.

I used to wear one on my right wrist. (I'm left-handed, but play guitar right-handed.) For a while, when I was playing with a lot of distortion, I could hear this annoying ticking noise through my amp. It came through in every situation with gain I could do, regardless of guitar, amp, cables, room, anything. Stumped me, stumped the local shop.

One day, I finally realized... my pickups were detecting my second hand.

RhythmMan wrote:
'Kinda curious . . . And - why do you play with others as often as you do?'

Prevost82:
'It keeps me fresh ... and on the edge out of my comfort zone .... that's where I play best ...'

Yeah, Prevost82.
It's good to play with others for that very reason. Some musicians are overconfident (and I never want to be one of them).

I play all originals, and I play my songs solo, in duos, trios, and in a full band. And every time it's a little different, and keeps me on my toes for different reasons

For performing: full band is the easiest, probably.
But it can also be quite distracting if somone is speeding up, or singing off-key, or drowning out my guitar or vocals.
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The hardest thing for me is performing fast & intricate solo instrumentals in public. Gotta watch where my head is at.
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The 2nd hardest thing for me is full-band rehearsal.
Rehearsals are easy, you say?
Well, it CAN be easy - if you just don't pay attention.
But, during rehearsal I DO pay attention - and quite closely.
My attention is evenly split among my tempo, my rhythm, my chord changes, my singing, the bass player and his vocals, the harmonica player and his vocals, and the vocals of the 2 girls.
I went back and counted - that's 10 things I'm trying to pay attention to simultaneously.
See, in this band, I encourage feedback from every member; everything from tempo to harmonies to volumes . . .
When someone makes an obvious screw-up, no one needs to say anything. But I'm always asking them to be creative and risky, and to expperiment and push their own envelopes. Sometimes they succeed and come up with a great new twist on a song. But they're not always sure if it worked or not.
Someone's gotta tell them it sounded great. (Or - ocassionally, not so great)
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Playing in public with the band is much easier. If they've made it to performing in public with me, then they've learned the song - and earned the right to be a part of the song. And I can trust them to handle their own parts.
So when I perform, I concentrate on my guitar and vocals, and they're on their own.
I pay attention to 'me,' but I let their sounds soak into my being, and I flow with it.
After a short while, the song is fully alive. We're all part of one song, all feeling it, and feeding off of each other - and it's a joining together of our spirits.
And THAT is a wonderful feeling.
The songs don't always come alive during rehearsal - too much thinking.
Oh, they sound technically good and all, but they don't always have a life of their own . . .
But performances have much less thinking - and much more feeling.
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For those of you who don't get what I'm saying . . . no words can adequately describe it.
Just hang in there, and it'll eventually come to you.
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And - for those who do understand - you're part of the reason I come here.
And keep playing with others.
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Performing in public is great.
There's nothing quite like performing an intricate song, and hitting the final chord, and listening to those last notes bounce off the walls and fade . . .
Then there's the momentary hush in the audiences - and the expressions on their faces . . . somewhere else, still lost in the song . . .
Then theres the applause.
it's all good.
But, for me, it's about that communal momentary hush between the last chord and the applause that I like.
It's a unique shared experience.

Yeah, Prevost82.
It's good to play with others for that very reason. Some musicians are overconfident (and I never want to be one of them).

That's a bit of a unusual statement .... because I only play with very confident players with player that can get the job done (no egos, rehearsed and ready to go, being able to critic his work, etc). I want to know that if I put off a syncopation rhythm and pull the beat with it, that the drums and bass will be holding the one beat so when I come out of it they are there and not get pulled of the beat and confident player s know how to drive a groove and make it huge.

Most of the stuff I do has no band rehearsals ... we learn the material on our own and go play a show and it comes off with a deep groove and tight changes and sounds like the band has been together for years ... but you need the right people to pull this off. They are pro players, have their EARS ON (intensely listening to everyone in the band, driving the groove and playing out of box) and also be playing in a HEADS UP (looking for queues)
We always get asked ... "wow what a tight band ... how long have you been playing together" ... me "aah ... one set"

I was in the studio (I was the MD for this project) this past weekend laying down 12 original songs for a artist. I put together the 3pc rhythm section for this project all pro players.

We got setup around 7pm on friday night and I started playing some stuff off the cuff and calling out the cord changes and movements as we went though the song ... it went from fusion jazz to Prog rock to a ballet and back to fusion. I usually do this sort of thing with new players to see how quick the musicians can feel the changes coming, how well they execute the changes and how well they can play out of the box.

The bass player and I have been playing together for 3 yrs and we communicate, musically very well (it's uncanny how well he reads where I'm going next, when most of the time I don't even know). The drummer jumped into the song with both feet, hit every change as tight as a nuns c**t and could play so far out of the box it made my head spin, in the fusion section he moved the 1 beat over to the "and" beat, as the bass player and I held the 1 beat, then the drummer came back to the 1 off a fill, that in my book is way cool. The drummer fit in as if we've play together for years, excellent musical communication and a driving groove and that set the stage for the weekend.

None of us had rehearsed the songs because they was no recordings to practice to. We had 4 hrs of pre-production (engineer setting us up for recording) on friday night where we ran through the material and I did some minor arranging changes to songs and we went through the intro, out-tro's, heads, turn arounds and meter of the songs.

Saturday we started tracking around 2pm. Of the 12 songs, 8 were done with a click track, we'd rehearsed the song once, then recorded the song 3 times. Four of the songs we couldn't be record with a click because of the syncopation and intentional meter changes and these had to be recorded right though with no mistakes. The overall majority of the songs, the 2nd take was the best ... for drive of the groove, dynamics and creativity. We were done recording the 12 songs in 8 hrs (rhythm section only) the guitar and vox will be tracked by the artist this week and it's going to be a smoking CD. The raw tracks sounded great ... very tight and clean. The artist was happy with the raw tracks, the sound engineer could believe we got though all the songs so fast and the rhythm section (bass drums and me on Hammond) had a blast playing with each other.

We were way out of the comfort zone all weekend and that is where good music is made IMHO

Man, I envy you doing that stuff, Ron!

I miss doing the open mics, too...they were great for keeping my chops up...now I hardly play at all.

Reading this stuff makes me feel like a kid still trying to get on a little league team. All I can think about is playing again.

There's nothing like being busy doing what you love to do.

As for my hand issues to the other posters: I don't wear a wrist watch. Usually, I warm up my forearms before playing. Maybe I should warm up my fingers? I dunno, but thankfully I'm better today. Maybe I'll be able to practice again this week...I need to. Not being able to pick up an instrument is pschologically disturbing. Makes me nervous.

Not trying to hijack your thread RM.