Hey Everyone. Working through the course, and it’s been amazing.
I’m getting to the point where I’m not 100% on the workouts first try, so I will typically jump on the jam tracks and learn the riff until I feel good about moving on to the next module.
I’m stuck on the jazz “exploration”… ugh.
I have the notes, and can actually play them pretty smoothly. After a bit though, I start hyper focusing and loose track of where I’m at. I’ll be going great, and all of sudden I’m playing the wrong bar. It’s super frustrating, as I feel I have it… but just can’t sustain it for any decent period of time.
zoning out is part of the deal, happens all the time.
come back tomorrow, you might find it under your fingers.
if not, do what @PamPurrs says, and if it is, do what she says anyway.
Yes, Yes, Yes to the practice, practice, practice and I do not know why people don’t pay attention to this.
It’ not like it hasn’t been said enough.
In my jam sessions I email lead sheets out a week a head of time.
When the day comes to play 50% of them are just fumbling around wondering what to do because they did not practice. The excuses are great - I had no time to practice, my internet was down for a week and I did not get the music so my internet was faulty, I got the music but I do not have a printer, and on and on and on.
What really screws things up is when somebody figures they have a better lead sheet, in a different key but they don’t tell anybody. How stupid is that. And for a real laugh one group approached me about why they could not play ‘Me and Bobby McGee’. Turns out people were using lead sheets in three different keys all trying to play at the same time. What a hoot that was. I said to them to just sing along and I would play the music I had sent them on the lead sheet by myself. You should have seen all the light bulbs come on when they discovered, yes, it does matter if we all play in the same key.
Sometimes our jam sessions are just pure entertainment and I have come to the realization that some people are just attending to socialize, only not musically.
I remember one session where 6 people were not playing at all and spent 1/2 hour discussing where they were going for coffee afterwards.
Re. Time - Sometimes this bothers me because we old farts are definitely running short of it.
