Practice, practice, practice.
Entry posted by Doug
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Practice? You are talking about practice?
No way around it. You need to do it, both individually and as a group in order to improve. Our band gets together about once a week and tries to tweak our arrangements, learn new covers, write or define compositions we are working on and generally just play together. There's really no substitute for gathering and working on our craft. What is often more difficult for me is working on my playing individually. I have a busy life - or at least I use that excuse - when Its hard to find the time to play alone. My personal practicing often strays from the disciplined structure that would likely help me most. I tend to just noodle around and head back to the same familiar territory.
Maybe it is because I have a regular job and play music mainly for the enjoyment and sheer joy that I experience when gathered with my bandmates, making music together. When its right we all know it and we all experience that "Deep Rich Happy" together... Ooh, this is starting to sound weird. It takes a lot of time and energy to dial in our sound and levels and get it just right. Working out arrangements and fitting the different parts together so they all work and allow for individual space is tricky. I have found that I just don't really have a knack for it - let alone the patience. I just want to plug in and play, not having to worry about the technical details that are vital to creating quality sound and tone.
The playing is what I enjoy and when our former lead guitarist and musical mentor travels the long trip up from West Virginia to join us we'll practice once then hit the stage for a gig. We haven't played together in probably seven or eight years, but he has the chops to be able to jump right back into it and not miss a beat. He's more of an instinctive, improvisational player than we are used to playing with and he'll take us places we don't normally go. More of a jazz player, he tends to really listen and play off what each of us are doing rather than adhere to a predetermined structure. We'll have to be ready to go there with him and that will take practice, both personally and as a "team".
Can't wait.
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