Now that I\u2019m done with origami deadlines for the time being, it’s time to try and move forward with the music thing. (I still haven\u2019t gotten back to recording for a few weeks, but that\u2019s in the offing too.) Last year when I got into crunch mode on my book, I kinda let jamming with Erik slide. It was a great experience, and it definitely helped me focus and improve my playing. I\u2019ve kept on practicing and can now play eight or ten of my own songs, plus a bunch of covers I couldn\u2019t before. But the thing I crave now is human contact with other musicians. Getting a band off the ground from zero is hard work, and my main problem now is that I don\u2019t know a lot of musicians around here. I really need a bass and drummer to make my music work.<\/p>\n
So I figured I\u2019d see about trying to join a band. At least I\u2019d be meeting musicians who are into getting together to rehearse once a week. On the downside you have to fit into someone else\u2019s vision, not the other way around. I looked a couple times on Craigslist over the last few months, and it\u2019s really amazing how many kinds of music and musicians are out there that aren\u2019t really a good fit for what I want to do. And how full of egos and hustlers the New York City scene is, even the classifieds! But I looked again last week and found a couple promising leads.<\/p>\n
One is a straight-ahead jazz combo looking for a sax player, because, you know, the easiest thing for me to do is just show up and blow. I went and played with them last night and it went great and was a lot of fun. There was a trumpet and a tenor player, and a piano, guitar, bass and drums. I was playing alto. I haven\u2019t really played alto in years, so I brought my tenor along too just in case. They were mainly doing stuff from the Real Book, and they sound good. After the first tune it was pretty clear I remembered how to play and was fitting right in, so after that I began to relax. The other sax player had a couple really good solos, and the bass and drums grooved together really well.<\/p>\n
I had a couple good solos too, and started see how the group responded when I tried to influence them in one direction or another with my playing. It\u2019s funny, I remember when I was in ninth grade or so and realized I could play with incredible speed, doing Eddie Van Halen riffs on the horn. Now my style is much more melodic, to the point where when I catch myself playing fast, I soon realize I\u2019m mainly relying on muscle memory, and usually slow it down to play something more meaningful. Nevertheless I did an entire chorus in double time at point, just cuz the notes kept flowing and it sounded good. Another song I really concentrated on using space and rests.<\/p>\n
Toward the end the bassist brought out some horn arrangements he\u2019d written. It was good to see they\u2019re open to experimentation. They also talked about doing some Chicago and Blood Sweat & Tears rock numbers. So a good first impression.<\/p>\n
The other ad was for a classic rock party band, heavy on the Motown and R&B, seeking a keyboardist\/backing vocalist. They sent me a set list and it\u2019s all stuff I can handle, nothing too complex. I\u2019m jamming with them one night next week. Gives me some time to google the chords and listen to a few records for specific parts. I mentioned that I play sax and it would sound good on some of the soul numbers. Dude liked the idea of that alot.<\/p>\n
So if one or both of these pan out, then I\u2019ll start seeing about introducing some of my own material into the sets, first some covers I like, then hopefully some of my originals. I think reasonable goal is to get the point where I have a solid group that has a few good sets, a combination of covers and originals, and is playing out in bars or whatnot semi-regularly. Both these groups are comprised of guys who are about my age, so they\u2019re doing it more because they want to make music and have fun than because they want to become the next big rock star. They\u2019re also both in the early stages, rehearsing more than gigging out. Should be fun to see where it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now that I\u2019m done with origami deadlines for the time being, it’s time to try and move forward with the music thing. (I still haven\u2019t gotten back to recording for a few weeks, but that\u2019s in the offing too.) Last year when I got into crunch mode on my book, I kinda let jamming with … Continue reading “Strike Up the Band”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}