It’s funny how reminders come from odd places.
“So, I guess I shouldn’t practice singing?” “I thought you were a guitar player?” “I am…”. That was the conversation with my dentist when talking about some lingering pain from the recent dental work. It turns out it was a reminder I needed.
I mentioned a few posts ago that I have been feeling a little hampered in the development of my guitar skills because I had taken on singing and have focused on trying to learn songs that I can sing and play. Which, with the other stuff I do, leaves little time to really work on developing as a guitar player. Something that is a little frustrating for me.
I like to sing, don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving it up. And of course, if I need to, I’m happy to take the mic and fill in. However, I very much enjoy playing and am even happier to back up a good singer, or even an ok singer who just wants to have fun. I even enjoy learning a song on the fly and trying to keep up. That’s some of the most fun I’ve had. Still, I would like to be better. I would like to feel like I’m at least a good musician.
That said, though I’m not technically proficient; I can’t play songs to the note of the recording, or close, I am adventurous and willing to try to learn or play just about anything. Which might make me a bit better a musician than I think I am. And that’s a really strange thought for me. It’s also one of the things I have gotten out of playing at the Charlotte Blues Jam over the last six years.
I say six years, even though I played with them for a few months about twelve years ago when I first moved here, because it was six years ago that I returned and really engaged and tried to learn from it and everyone I played with. There hasn’t been a night that I didn’t learn something, whether it be a new song, how to keep playing when I forget the words, how to lead a band, how to sit in the pocket and help keep the groove going, and even how to take a lead/solo. I’ve learned so much from the format and the environment and the musicians.
Part of what has made the blues jam so valuable for me has been the format of throwing random bands together. Even if you came with a group you wanted to play with you only got to do that once, the next time you were up, you were with whoever was around to play. I have actually told people that that experience would make them better musicians, and I truly believe it.
I had a recent experience where the group after me, I was hoping to get a bit of a random jam going, wasn’t comfortable with learning a to play a song on the fly. They felt the song had too many chords to learn and get down in a few seconds. Maybe. I think it was four or five chords. And it was a really well-known song, not some obscure thing that I like to play that has a dozen or so chords that seem to change randomly. The group is technically proficient and really good at playing together the specific songs they know. Does that mean I’m better than them or they are better than me? It depends on what you are looking for. Could I be a better guitar player? Oh, definitely, I won’t argue that for a minute. I know I could be better. Could they become better? I’m going to go with yes. I think them teaming up with and having to play with others for whatever songs were chosen would make them better, just like it made me better.
So, the interesting bit on that encounter is this, they didn’t know the song we wanted to do, I don’t know how to play the song they were going to do. While I’m not sure what their response to the experience is going to be, I can tell you my response is that I need to learn that song, and that’s even though it’s not one I particularly like. But it’s on my list of songs to look into learning at least a basic version of.
Which brings me back to my reminder. I’m a guitar player. Though I like to sing, I do it because of a need. I started singing because of a need. I started singing, really singing, at a jam, on stage, while playing because I had learned the song ‘Merry Christmas Baby’ as something to do because the jam was in December, and I thought it would be fun to do for my first time back to playing in so many years. It turned out the singer for the group I was in didn’t know the song but offered to have me sing it. I often compare the blues jam experience to surfing. Not that I’m a very good surfer. But it does give a good analogy of the experience. And I can say that first time singing was what it must feel like to catch a big wave and ‘shoot the tube’. It was an extremely satisfying experience that I will never forget and often share with my Taekwondo classmates as an example of the importance of the ki-yap in our practice (that’s the yelling part). That’s a whole other story. But my experience in Taekwondo made that evening possible. And what I got from that jam has made so much more possible. And because that experience was so satisfying, I made efforts to add more songs I could sing and play to my repertoire and got caught up in trying to expand that. Not that I didn’t continue to work on my guitar skills. They were focused more on supporting a vocal of a song as opposed to making the guitar better.
So yes, I needed the reminder that I’m a guitar player. I happen to sing. Still, I’m a guitar player first and I want to do so much more with that. And since the effects of the dental work means I need to keep my mouth shut for a bit, and the December jam is not happening this year, I guess I’ll spend some time working on my guitar skills and not worry about singing. What a treat.
And since that revelation, reminder, I sat down to work on a piece I’m supposed to do with my sister, over facetime, and I’ve got a nice accompaniment identified for it figure out and I’ve got a couple of other songs that I’m just focusing on the guitar part. One is an instrumental I love to play but I’ve struggled with the bridge for ages, and the other is a song someone at the jam keeps asking if I know how to play, to which I keep saying, ‘sort of and not very well’. I’m going to fix that. It’s kind of exciting.
That’s it for now. I’m going to go practice. I’ll have an art update for you next time. That too has been an interesting journey. Cheers!