That guy doing the ten finger and ten toe tapping hangs out in a few GCs that I've been in I think.

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

I don't understand the virtuoso crazy tapping/arpeggio thing. It has no rhythm and no soul to it. It's not even music, just a technical skill.

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That has to be one of the most entertaining live shows I've ever seen. Hope they get to the UK.

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No no and no

I like that Pity there isn't the equivalent of an incurable sexually transmitted disease to burst their balloons and send them crashing to the ground.

Doc

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"Another day in paradise!"

It's called failure. Not a whole lot of money to be made sitting around in Guitar center annoying people.

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Show offs get nowhere fast except a solo career. That's why it took Satriani over half of his carrer to be part of a real band. The same for Yengwie Malmsteen or however it's spelled. Their kind are too good technically to fit into a band that plays pure music with feeling. I refuse to play with anyone like that. It kinda reminds me of Jack Black at the first of the movie School of Rock.

LMAO!!!
I know exactly what you're talking about! It nevers ceases to amaze me just how many people can whip out a song (or solo) note for note but have absolutely no idea how to play with others.
Maybe its laziness or something else but personallly I was always more concerned with learning to play the guitar (and making cool squealley noises, learning to control feedback etc.)than to play songs by someone else. This really seems to have given me some sort of edge when it comes to playing with others in whatever situation or style or whatever...
Love that clairinet part! My jam band has on different occasions featured(on top of the usual trio + 2nd guitar player) : clairinet,flute,organ or even all 3 plus an extra drummer (full kit) and second bass player.

I haven't read through all of the other posts so please forgive me if any of this is terribly redundant. Also, as always these are just my own personal opinions.

I've played both sides of the subject over the years...people who have simply blown me away and people who were just simply awful. Over the years (especially in my earlier years of playing) in various bands I have indeed had to turn people away because they were too good. That said, more often than not I/we have auditioned a lot of people who were...well...really bad jokes. We just auditioned a bass player a few months back for example...the guy showed up with top of the line gear...Warwick bass, Ampeg bass amp...couldn't play a freakin' note. Just for the sake of the jam I even tried to show the guy a couple of things note for note and he just didn't get it. Once years back we even auditioned...are you ready for this? A DEAF drummer! The guy said he could "feel" the bass...had -1- beat, no fills at all and then after the audition, the guy wouldn't leave! Oye! We're a classic rock cover band for the most part and we had one guy who thought "classic rock" meant Donny & Marie and The Carpenters! Then there's the proverbial person who was "classically trained" who can't play a single note without sheet music...you take the sheet music away and their hands stop moving. We also had one guy similar to yours a few years back who had no clue at all about the key he was playing in...his so called teacher had taught him the number of the frets.

Yea...you get all kinds.

I think that part of it is that yea...you get a lot of guys sitting there in their bedroom or basement "practicing" and they get really good at -one- thing but they don't have a lot of experience working with others. You also get a lot of folks that are just really full of themselves as well...the proverbial "ego" where they seem to think the whole band is about them and that the band should cater to how and what they're playing as apposed to being able to work with the band for a common goal.

The thing about "a band"...even if it's just a jam session...is that it's (hopefully) about like minded people with similar tastes, similar talents and similar aspiration's. There is of course usually some degree of compromise...for example it's hard to find enough material to fill 3 sets that everyone in the band is going to love...but that's more a matter of being a little pragmatic. In my 25 years + of playing, the single hardest thing about putting a band together had nothing to do with the gear or finding gigs or anything else...it's finding "the right" people. Now I really do consider myself to be fairly open minded...I'll jam with just about any body and if someone can show a degree of aptitude and has the right attitude, I'm willing to work with them a bit. But when it comes to a band, I do have certain expectations as well. Unfortunately what I run in to the most is either people who want to learn 6 or 8 tunes and start playing next weekend (usually because they haven't gotten laid in a couple of months) or the posers who really think they're something that they're not. I've also had more than my share of people who would rather drink and party than play...I don't have anything against that but I'm simply past that at this point in my life. As far as band practice goes at least, when I have my guitar in my hand, I'm ready to play NOT sit around getting stoned.

The only real advice I can offer you is patience and persistence. Sadly, as you get older this seems to become more and more of a problem...maybe it's just because we older folk have different tastes in music or maybe it's because after a while those numbers start to add up but with each new band I put together, it seems harder and harder to find the right people. It's frustrating but you just have to stick with it....and once you do find the right people, it's all worth it in the end. Just try to have a little fun on the way

Anyways, as I said before just my own personal opinions.

Peace,
Jim

My altime favorite guitar solos...Eric Clapton on Forever Man...and GE Smith on Your Kiss is on my list by Hall and Oats... both are outstanding examples IMO of how to play great solos with feeling and really not very fast..

Yes, or look at Jimi's solos, something like VooDoo Chile(Slight Return), not fast or super-technical, but absolutely sublime. Or SRV's Texas Flood, pure groove, not about how many notes you can put in a second. Music you can $@!& to.

Versus something like Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Caprici Di Diablo. Just noise mostly.

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[My altime favorite guitar solos...Eric Clapton on Forever Man...and GE Smith on Your Kiss is on my list by Hall and Oats... both are outstanding examples IMO of how to play great solos with feeling and really not very fast..[/quote].

.....and the engineering on that Clapton session doesn't hurt either. Go to his solo in "Rambling On My Mind"....live....'.EC Was Here.' No shot at a retake on that one, and right down the pipe.

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"Another day in paradise!"

I wonder if it is a sign of the way many people are trying to learn to play now.
By watching videos, viewing web sites and howto books while all alone in their cave.

Rarely come up for air and to mix with others.

Used to be the books were there, but you had to go out and sit in with others to really learn anything.
So you had to learn to play with others, even if by osmosis.

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Keep on Truckin, Going full speed ahead down the highway to hades.

Interesting observation. Back in the day it was "first one on the block to learn the new guitar solo"...I mean we're talking Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, that vintage. Then we'd 'wood shed' together and share our take on it, and get into jamming on the thing...and I'm talking 3,4,5 guitars at a time.

Now its "In My Room", I guess.

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"Another day in paradise!"

One point I haven't really seen yet in this thread, is the difference between a "Jam Session", "Rehearsal" and "Practice".

Practice is what you do on your own or with maybe one or more band members to learn your part and basically own it.

Rehearsal is where you take those parts that you have "owned" in your practice and get together as a band to hone out the finer details for the song(s) you will be doing for your set(s).

A Jam Session is basically a group of people getting together to play around at some basic stuff and not get particularly serious or trying to accomplish anything. A scene from "Eddie and the Cruisers - Eddies Return" comes to mind where he is in that shack with several famous musicians and they just jam all night is a good example.

A few weeks back, I got together with a couple family members. One was on his first year playing guitar and knew how to keep a decent rhythm going on an acoustic. The other played regularly in a worship band, (like me), and was pretty good. During our jam session, we just laid down some basic rythms in various keys and styles and took turns playing leads over them. That was a lot of fun. No expectations, no pressure, and no attempt to accomplish anything. We just played for fun.

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Calling an illegal alien an undocumented immigrant is like calling a drug dealer an undocumented pharmicist.

I didn't actually see this until after my other post, but I just gotta add another $.02 worth here.

What really gets me about some of these guys is the volume. I'll admit it...I've been known to walk in to Guitar Center myself and just "play with the new toys" from time to time. A couple of weeks back for example I sat there and played around with one of those new Roland VS Strats for close to 45 minutes just slipping through patches and such. I'll probably never buy one of those things but hey...I didn't really have anything better to do and it was a really cool toy. That said, I had the thing turned up just enough that I could hear it clearly but not so much as to drown out everything else in the store.

Now if I'm seriously considering an amp or something then yea...sure, I'll crank it up a bit to see how it sounds. I did this not too long ago with a Fender Blues Jr amp...I really wanted to see just how far you could push that little 15 watts (which is surprisingly quite loud). Even there though, I only played at that volume for a couple of minutes...just long enough to really get a feel for it. But yea...you get these guys...the proverbial wankers...that will sit there for hours just making really loud noise. It's almost as though this is the -only- way some of these people can find an audience (and it probably is). What's more is that it always seems to be the same 3 or 4 guys every freakin' time. The one guy at my local GC seems to be there virtually every time I've walked in for the past year...I was really starting to think the guy worked there or something.

And why is it these guys always seem to be playing through the crappiest amps in the store? I never seem to see one of these guys sitting there on the Fenders, Marshalls or even the Bugeras or Egnators....they always seem to be playing (shivers) the Raven amps? I'll be the first to admit that the gear doesn't usually make -that- much of a difference but those Raven amps...jeesh...even I have my limits. I -really- don't get that at all...

It really makes me wonder if these are the guys that when they hit their mid 40's are going to be running around in parking lots late at night wearing over coats and flashing anyone who is dumb enough to look at them.


Oye...
Jim