How was your open mic or jam night last night?

[rwillett]

7 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

To me, jamming along to a song you've never heard before is as good as it gets.

 

It was hard at first TBH, the guitarist borrowed my Strat and proceeded to blaze up and down the neck like a man possessed. He loved the Strat and I just looked on and inwardly sighed as he was 100x better than myself. I blame the fact that my fingers all point in different directions, please do not mention Tommy Iommi and his lack of finger ends, it doesn't help me here .

 

Once we got the rhythm sorted out, it did start to click. I started running up the dusty end of the bass and then realised the bloke on the mixer had basically cut off anything above D on a filter on the mixer, so had to move down again. I wasn't really sure what it sounded like at all. Everybody was very nice but we were also very nice to the lady who was strangling and disembowelling a cat earlier in the evening. For next time, I'll try and have the Basschat 8" speaker with me, and politely drop that in the corner. 

 

Anyway, early days, the fact that the lady got away singing with a voice like that gave me hope my bass playing wasn't too bad.

 

Rob 

[Phil Starr]

12 hours ago, rwillett said:

was talked into doing an open mic session at the Craven Heifer in Stainforth on Thursday. I tend to dislike these things as I rarely know the songs

 

12 hours ago, Rosie C said:

pick a song from a book the organisers  provide for everyone to play together. 

 

8 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

To me, jamming along to a song you've never heard before is as good as it gets.

It's a confidence thing, I've rarely jammed along to anything and I hate being out of control. I've not got a great ear either. Playing something I've never heard before without even a chord chart sounds to me about as embarrassing as appearing naked in public

 

I used to run an open mic night/jam session and was looking to build up the idea of a 'great song book' which as an organser would have helped me to get as many people as possible on stage and performing. I always liked the idea of getting sole musicians/young musicians the chance of performing with other musicians and was gradually building up a house band to support this. Sadly the pub relaunched as a gastropub just as we really got going. 

Edited 8 hours ago by Phil Starr

[rwillett]

3 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

It's a confidence thing, I've rarely jammed along to anything and I hate being out of control. I've not got a great ear either. Playing something I've never heard before without even a chord chart sounds to me about as embarrassing as appearing naked in public

As an ex-rugby player, appearing naked in public is actually far, far less embarrassing than playing something I've never heard before. Far too many pictures to prove it as well, and it's got to the stage, that Zoe, my long suffering partner, simply sighs when yet another old picture surfaces.

 

I also have a crap ear for hearing and am in awe of people who can listen to a tune and work out the chords as they go. I can't do that and suspect I never will. I'm doing a song writing course in Kendal and the lady who teaches it can listen to a piece of music and then just play it on the guitar immediately afterwards, and play it very, very well. I sit and watch her and wish I had as much talent as she has in her little finger. I have to repeatedly work at learning a song, its hard work. 

 

I do like the idea of a common song book though. Never thought of that. I would have a songbook of stuff I know and then other people can use it  Admittedly its going to be a thin songbook at the start but it is a start.

Rob

Edited 4 hours ago by rwillett

[paul_5]

I can do that stuff most of the time, but look dreadful naked. Swings and roundabouts Rob.

[Rosie C]

54 minutes ago, rwillett said:

I also have a crap ear for hearing and am in awe of people who can listen to a tune and work out the chords as they go. I can't do that and suspect I never will. I'm doing a song writing course in Kendal and the lady who teaches it can listen to a piece of music and then just play it on the guitar immediately afterwards, and play it very, very well.

 

I have a friend who is similar - I played him a song I'd written - so it was the first time he'd heard it and he was playing along by the third line. A tremendous gift. After nearly 50 years of playing from dots I've been trying to play by ear for two years now and it is just starting to come... early days I guess!  

 

[rwillett]

23 minutes ago, paul_5 said:

I can do that stuff most of the time, but look dreadful naked. Swings and roundabouts Rob.

 

I didn't say I looked good naked, merely it wasn't that unusual some many years ago  Alcohol and rugby may have been involved

 

Rob

[tauzero]

4 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

It's a confidence thing, I've rarely jammed along to anything and I hate being out of control. I've not got a great ear either. Playing something I've never heard before without even a chord chart sounds to me about as embarrassing as appearing naked in public

 

I can manage quite a lot from watching the guitarist's hands. It's even better when they have chord charts as I can sight read those (although when there's a capo involved it gets trickier).

[Stub Mandrel]

4 hours ago, rwillett said:

I sit and watch her and wish I had as much talent as she has in her little finger. I have to repeatedly work at learning a song, its hard work. 

 

Last night the band played Thunderstruck. I was talking to their singer/guitarist and mentioned that their keyboardist took over the riff... he said she'd never played it before but realised his fingers were cramping up. Incredible.

Edited 2 hours ago by Stub Mandrel

[Stub Mandrel]

I got the confidence to jam during covid. I would put on Planet Rock and try and play along to every song. Not aiming for perfectionn just in tune, in time and try to get the right feel.

[Phil Starr]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" I'm OK with technology but genuine musicians still seem like magicians to me. We had a keyboard player in one band who was classically trained. We'd finished our reherasal and were talking about female vocals and Pink Floyd's Great Gig In The Sky came up; which she'd never heard of. We played an MP3 to her once over the PA and she played it back, both hands, pretty much perfectly whilst our singer did the vocals. I know that 'it's just scales' but to see a human doing something like that in real time seems like magic.

Edited 2 hours ago by Phil Starr

[TrevorR]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

I got the confidence to jam during covid. I would put on Planet Rock and try and play along to every song. Not aiming for perfectionn just in tune, in time and try to get the right feel.

 

That’s a good approach and really helps develop the ear. It was, after all, how the old fogies among us like me learned - playing along to the radio or to records. 

 

6 hours ago, rwillett said:

I also have a crap ear for hearing and am in awe of people who can listen to a tune and work out the chords as they go. I can't do that and suspect I never will. I'm doing a song writing course in Kendal and the lady who teaches it can listen to a piece of music and then just play it…

 

There’s absolutely a degree of innate skill involved there but a lot can be achieved by practice ad studying the right things - over time, of course!  And being thrown into the deep end at something like a jam really sharpens up the skills and focuses the mind!! 🤣  When I was in my 20s I would play in the worship band at church, led by a friend of mine on acoustic guitar. He was quite disorganised and rarely knew what songs we were going to play until the Sunday morning. Often he didn’t know what songs he was going to do next during the service and wouldn’t necessarily start them up with the correct chords or in the right key. So I had to learn to busk/jam along early on and me and the keys player spent many services squinting at his left hand to work out the key and chords!

 

Also, learning to play songs from chord sheets was helpful in terms of working out how to link notes and chords together on the fly.

 

In terms of learning and developing skills, the things that were really the lightbulb moments for me were…

1. Learning the major and minor scales and, in particular the shapes related to them on the fretboard, 
2. Learning and getting an innate feel for what different intervals sounded like - third, fourth, fifth, major and minor sevenths - that just takes lots of practice and repetition, but the BIG one was…
3. Understanding the harmonised major and minor scales and how they related to common song chord structures. That is (not sure how much folk have looked at this) understanding how the standard chords in a particular key are made up from notes of that scale and that the pattern of major / minor chords is the same across different keys. Knowing that, for most mainstream rock/pop, if you’re in the key of G, the most likely chords to come up are G major, A minor, B minor, C major and D major really - or if you’re in A then it’s A major, B minor, C# minor, D major and E major - really helps navigate the way through a song you’re not familiar with. And of course, that’s where the understanding of intervals helps identify the next chord.
4. Starting to understand the commonly used chord patterns was a huge thing when combined with the above. Al the last country jam I ended up playing a few songs I’d not heard before and it was really helpful when the guitarist said, “It’s a simple 1 -4-2-5 in G…” (i.e. G major, C major, A minor, D major) and I immediately had a mental roadmap for the notes I should be aiming for to begin with. 

Edited 1 hour ago by TrevorR

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, TrevorR said:

It was, after all, how the old fogies among us like me learned - playing along to the radio or to records.

 

Paid up old fogey here... back in the day when the best you could hope for was a cassette of the setlist.