I disagree. People start learning at home yeah, but still get together. I've jammed with kids 10 years younger than me, hell, the Guitar hero generation that is coming up treat is like a party, they are used to social interaction with the experience.

You have your basement dwellewrs that try to learn the quickest, sickest riffs possible with no relation to anyone else because they don't have any #$@*&!% social skills, but they will always be there and I wager have always been there.

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i think it is as the one guy said, a sign of the way people learn now a days.

too many people nailing riffs to perfection alone.

sad really, because music is such a social/group activitiy. i think video games have replaced it. Alot of he kids who are just starting out today probably have alot harder of a time getting people together to do something creative and challenging.

i started playing when i was 13 and got serios when i was 15 (im only 22 now ) and i can remember some of the first jams we ever had. alot of 10 and 15 watt amps trying desperately to play in time lol. it was the thing to do when you were hanging out with friends. And through highschool it was what we did on the weekends. Bought pot and beer with our minumum wage jobs and spent all weekend in the basement makeing cognitive breakthroughs.

I remember so many weekend wherit seemed like people were comming in and out all day and all night . good memories , glad i didnt have a playstation.

i started playing when i was 13 and got serios when i was 15 (im only 22 now ) and i can remember some of the first jams we ever had. alot of 10 and 15 watt amps trying desperately to play in time lol. it was the thing to do when you were hanging out with friends....I remember so many weekend wherit seemed like people were comming in and out all day and all night . good memories , glad i didnt have a playstation.[/quote]

Ditto! The first amp we shared was a converted table model radio. I had a small 3 speed phonograph record player with a 5 inch speaker and wore the grooves out of my Chuck Berry records learning those riffs. Not today's technology, for sure. The next step were a clutch of Danelectro short horns and couple of Danelectro Centurion amps...vintage '59 or '60. After that came the Fenders...Concerts and Showman, the Stratocaster and the Jaguar. By then, we had already put in studio time and were working musicians and college students.

Loud is learned from the nature of today's recorded music product, the walls of amps seen at concert venues, and gargantuan techology laden rigs which are reviewed in Guitar World. This is what they think it is supposed to sound like.

Not like Sun House who would just plug it in, turn it up to 10 and go.

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"Another day in paradise!"

I absolutely agree with your definitions here...and I think that was a very important point to make. That said...and I think this was what the OP was getting at is...it's very different when you get someone in there who tries to dominate everything or even the person who is really just out of their league.

A few weeks back, a keyboard player buddy of mine gave me a call and asked me to sit in on a jam session. He had been working with a new drummer and they were having...err...some issues. He really wasn't sure if it was the drummer or him. I figured sure...why not. With all of the family stuff I've had going on, I could use a good jam session...let off some steam and such. Now in this case, I've worked with the keyboard player before and I've known the bass player for a while so there was certainly some "common ground" to work with. My wife also came along as she had worked with both of these guys as well. Here's where we ran in to problems...

Among other things, my wife is a singer...she also plays flute, bass, hand percussion, etc.. In fact she's probably been a musician longer than I have. In other words, she's not just some "karaoke wanna be". There was another guy there who was also (supposedly) a singer as well. The keyboard player had told us ahead of time that there was going to be another singer there and my wife was actually looking forward to it...usually she's about the only one who can sing so she was hoping the guy was going to be decent so she could "trade notes" as it were. The first indication of a problem was as we were setting up...this guy walked up to me and say "oh yea...I had a Strat just like that. Got rid of it a few years ago". Then he just started babbling at me and I pretty much just ignored him. Afterward, he walked up to the bass player and said the same thing about the bass players amp (which was actually my amp)..."yea...I had one of those...got rid of it". In and of itself, this probably didn't mean much...I figured maybe the guy was just nervous or something, but it really seemed like the guy was BS'ing to try and make himself the center of attention. I really just blew the guy off...this was after all, just a little jam...not a big deal. Then we started playing a bit...


Well, after getting the wife's mic set up and the volume adjusted, this guy walks over and starts messing with her stuff on the PA and finally just turned her way down and turned his own mic up so no one could hear her over him. This wasn't an issue of her being "too loud"...he turned her down so that no one could hear her. To my wife this is the same as if someone walked over to your guitar amp and just started messing with the controls then turned you down...you get the idea...and she said something about it. She wasn't rude or anything, she just told the guy "Hey...it was set right before...just leave it". Everyone agreed so the drummer turned around and turned her back up and she started singing. Well this guy just left...didn't say a word to anyone, just walked out the door. The drummer hadn't even touched the guys channel...just turned my wife back up so that she could be heard...and apparently he didn't like that at all.

The funny thing here is that after the guy left, we all had a really good time...had a lot of fun. As you say, no pressure, no expectations...we all just let it rip. We did a few tunes that came off really really well and some that we just buried! LOL! My wife sang a few, I sang a few, the bass player sang a few...wasn't really any big thing. I really don't know -what- the guy's problem was...I don't know if it was an ego thing or maybe a confidence thing and he felt "threatened" by a professional singer or a female singer or what. Looking at the whole evening though, I really just got the impression that he felt that everything was supposed to be about "him"...and when it wasn't, he got his feelings hurt and took off. The point is that sometimes that happens...even in a jam you get people like that and it can spoil it for everyone. Even with "just a jam", you HAVE to acknowledge the people around you regardless of whether they're better than you or not as experienced...you can't try and force things to be "all about you". It's one thing to walk in and say "ok...I'm not all that good compared with everyone here but I'll try" but it's another thing entirely to walk in with a bunch of potential strangers and just expect everyone to be there as your own personal venue for self expression (what was that about wankers earlier? LOL!).

Yea, Jams are all about "having fun" but you still have to keep in mind that you are working with other people and simple common courtesies should be observed.

Anyways....
Peace,
Jim

Hi Jim!

I wonder if that guy had known anything about the company he was going to be in if he would have either shown some respect or, feeling outclassed, just begged off at the outset.

Doc

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"Another day in paradise!"

This thread is great. As stated before I have a jam band....sorta "uneducated jazz" (i.e. no fancy chords or even a road map for that matter) we usually just start playing...its more often than not completely off the cuff. We sometimes do covers but that got not only boring but frustrating when the bass player would suddenly and unexpectedly get lost in the mystic vapours of outerspace during even the most simple 12 bar blues..we have mostly played at large parties
Anyways,we have had numerous guest musicians and for the most part unless they are either guitar players or singers the egos stay in check.For whatever reason most of our "guest guitarists: have been unable or unwilling to think outside the box and/or even listen to the rest of the musicians. One clown kept popping back into his version of "space cowboy" no matter what anyone else was doing..in the middle of a quiet section in a country song that was morphing into an allman brothers meets black sabbath head on freeflow....in the middle of an extended jam on "born under a bad sign"...tuning up AT FULL VOLUME during our guest flute player (professional classical)'s spotlight..and on and on..
Singers...well they are a whole other nightmare....

It all comes down to how they learn the instrument and how they practice. I go through the same thing with my 11 year old son. He watches all the top shredders on youtube and then when I come home to work with him the biggest problem I have is that he tries to play everything as fast as he possibly can.

Now I cannot begin to say how mad this gets me after telling him 50 times if you cannot play it slow correctly there is no way you can play it fast. Now he does have great dexterity but everything he does he tries to push to the limit and then it does not resemble music. In 90 minutes I must use the word slower than I do all year.

I think a lot of kids today learn a shred piece but never think of taking the licks and transposing them to other keys, so they only know that solo and those licks the way they were recorded. I think the best tool you can give someone you are teaching or helping learn once they have some scales under there fingers is 3 backing tracks of different tempos. Slow-medium- and fast. Also use tracks that are not of famous songs but just jam tracks as now they have to come up with things of there own.

George Harrison, probably the most underrated out of all of the all time greats. I mean what lead player played what was exactly needed in the best interest of the song than him. Always the perfect intro,riff,solo, chords, and ending. And maybe the first original gear hound, as George used Gretsch,Rickenbacker,Fender,and Gibson guitars in the short time the Beatles were together.

I remember Ozzy saying that when he was auditioning guitarists he got sick of these guys dragging marshall stacks in and playing at deafening volume. Randy Rhodes turned up with a small combo. Ozzy said he had the job as soon as he saw the combo, he was just so sick of people trying to knock the opposite wall down.

Myself I learned earlier on if you audition with a band quietly, they are forced to have to listen for you, you seem pretty much inconspicuous so your not treading on anyones toes either. I let em tell me to turn up.

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No no and no

[quote="straycat113"]It all comes down to how they learn the instrument and how they practice.

Actually, what it really comes down to is what I call phallus syndrome. It was re-enforced by an email which was cc'd to me by my cousin who's son is in a band. The email contained counsel by another member of the family as to what was really being held in hands of the lead guitarist as an offering to the audience. The young man was being encouraged to play up to that idea.

I offer this to ya'll for further consideration.

Doc

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"Another day in paradise!"

There are so many guitarists like that.. bassists too
I have a friend that plays bass. he can slap the bass but when I say "the key is Bb" then he says " I dont know he notes"....

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Not knowing the notes is not particularly a negative thing in and of itself if you have an ear and can tell when you're off and self correct. I know lots of monster players who don't read.

Hey Doc,
I can really only speculate on that one. I know that when the keyboard player had asked me to sit in, I asked if he wanted my wife there as well (again we have all worked together in the past). He said he was happy to have her but that there was also going to be another singer there as well. If he told us about the other guy, I would assume that he told the other guy that my wife was coming as well...but then I never asked that question and we all know what happens when you assume....LOL!!!

Knowing Donny (the keyboard player), it's very possible that he simply told this other guy something along the lines of "I got a guitar player coming over and he's bringing a singer too" and he probably didn't mention that the singer I was bringing was actually a woman, let alone my wife or how much experience she actually has. Donny knows that even though she's my wife, she's a very talented singer and is really a serious musician so he probably didn't think anything of it...in his mind, she's just a "good musician". It's possible that it was just a really stupid "macho thing"...maybe if I had of brought a guy singer over, there wouldn't have been any problem at all. Maybe the other guy thought she was only supposed to be there as "back up" or even just as my wife and was only supposed to sit on the couch or something...I've certainly ran in to those kinds of attitudes over the years. I've also worked with enough people over the years who had to be "the loudest"...guitar and bass players for example who just had to be louder than everyone else and when you ask them to turn down, they loose it and take it personally...wouldn't surprise me at all to run into a singer like that.

I suppose it's also possible that as you say, the guy didn't know the level of the musicians that were going to be there. The bass player is a bud of mine and has been playing for over 30 years...the guy knows practically any classic rock tune ever written. I've been playing for over 25 years and my wife's probably been a musician for at least as long as I have (I think she was in her first band when she was only 16). Donny (again the keyboard player)...music -is- his day job. That's how he makes his living and pays his bills...he's a full time musician. So yea...I guess it's quite possible this guy really didn't know what he was getting in to and maybe felt like he was being blown out of the water or something and didn't know how to handle it. On the other hand, we've all had to start some where and you really need to show some degree of maturity...ya know? Over the years I've worked with a lot of people who could simply blow me away and I've never taken it personally let alone just walked out of a session the way this guy did. If anything, I'm always grateful for the opportunity to work with people better or more talented than I am so I can try to learn as much from them as I can. If I can't keep up, then I just do the best that I can and just enjoy myself...at the end of the day, that's all any of us can do anyways.

So that all said, I just really got the impression that it was still more of a "center of attention" thing. I could certainly be wrong...I didn't talk to the guy that much at all...but between the way he kept getting in everyone's face as we were setting up, going on about his gear (again stuff that he claimed to have had and sold) trying to be everyone's "buddy" right off the bat and then his reaction to my wife, I just really get the feeling that it was a "Hey everyone, look at me!" type of thing...and when that didn't happen, again the guy just got his poor wittle feelings hurt and left. It happens.

Peace,
Jim

Not being able to read music is not important. Having a decent ear is learnt with practice. Knowing the key of the song your playing in, chord names and possitions and what notes your playing is of paramount importance. If you cant communicate with band members your only good for a one man band. Its got nothing to do with being able to read music, you have to understand chord names to operate at any level outside your bedroom.

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No no and no

This reminds me of a band a few years back where we had two female singer/acousic guitar players. Each had to have their own monitor. Then ensued what we would call the "Monitor Wars". Several times during setup, each one would request that they be turned up in their monitor. I had to give a lot of credit to the sound guy, as he knew exactly how to handle this. He would simple turn down the other player from the requester's monitor.

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

What really frustrates me is when someone says they play by ear, but they keep playing notes that are totally wrong and sound terrible. I don't play completely by ear, but I can tell when someone is playing a wrong chord or in the wrong key. And I think that most of the audience can too...

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