Help with jamming...

[Zack]

My friend and I are going to jam on some tunes tomorrow. We're gonna improv over spme 12-bar blues and rock, and do a few covers. My question is: caan anyone give me some cool cover ideas? We could use a few ideas. Thanks.

[The Fonz]

spoonful always works. you can keep it going ad nauseum so it gives everyone a chance to get their fill of masturbatory soloing.

[Jason Hoyt]

Some really fun/easy/good potential for morphing tunes are B.B. King's "The Thrill is Gone" and "Why I sing the Blues"... Actually, anything on that album (Why I sing the blues) is great fun...

[Jason Hoyt]

Also, a couple of Jimi Hendrix's songs like "Red House" "Train(?)" and "Hey Joe" are fun/simple too... "Manic Depression" is a blast, but sometimes in a jam situation, it loses something... just my 2c's

[The Fonz]

oh, and state of shock. lots of fun.

[patrick_dont_fret]

Widespread Panic and Phish are always in demand at a jam session. At least at my jam sessions! If you have no idea who these people are, then do some blues stuff, and you're set. Sorry.

[Connie Z]

Green Onion - Booker T. and the Allstars

[Will Kesling]

Take each number on one die (singular for dice?) and make that number a music style. For example.

1= Jazz 2= rock 3=Reggae 4=country 5=funk 6=death metal.

 

Then take a song you all no and take your chances with it. It is a great way to have fun and grow a musician. One time we had a country version of master of puppets and a funk version of Sweet Home Alabama.

 

have fun.

 

Will

 

One Life.... One Destiny...

Thirteen Colvmns

[davebrownbass]

Kodachrome

[davebrownbass]

Hey, just kiddin.

 

Actually, when I used to jam with friends, we used to appoint one guy to stay in the jam area while we went out for...refreshments.

 

That guy had to come up with a riff on the spot, some changes, a bass lick, whatever.

 

Then when we got back, he'd have to play it for us, and we jammed on it...sometimes for a half hour.

 

Oh yeah, tape was rolling.

 

I've still got those tapes, some of the most disgusting sounds I've ever heard, and a helluva lot of fun.

[_Sweet Willie_]

If ideas start getting stale at a jam, I usually break out a James Brown line (like "Super Bad") and that returns the fire to the session. A lot of great JB stuff tends to pretty much have two sections -- the "verse" and the "bridge" -- making it highly jammable. And if you really lock into that groove, the jam will take you higher and higher!

 

All the best from one super bad brutha,

--Sweets

[Zack]

Hey, thanks guys. We jammed yesterday, and it was pretty cool. Once the guitar player got over the fact that not everything we were gonna do was laid out in front of him ("You mean just 'make it up???' ), it went very well. We ended up doing "Hey Joe," and that was an excellent suggestion, Jason. "Spoonful" carried on for 11 minutes, thanks to Bastid. We ended up using your dice idea, Will, and came up with a reggae version of "Hit the Lights" by Metallica and a heavy metal version of "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuckie Berry. Needless to say, Dave, "Kodachrome" did not make an appearance. However, your idea about making up a lick while the other's away made fro an 8 minute blues jam. Thanks. Overall, here's the stuff we played:

 

- Johnny B. Goode: Chuck Berry

- In the Flesh: Pink Floyd

- Hit the Lights; Metallica

- Stairway to Heaven: Zeppelin

- Pride and Joy: SRV

- Spoonful: Willie Dixon (ours was much closer to Cream's version, though)

- Hey Joe: Jimi Hendrix

- Domino: KISS

- Sure Know Something: KISS

- Improiv over blues tunes in various keys.

 

thanks to all who gave ideas.

-

[davebrownbass]

You know, Kodachrome might work after all...hmmmm.

 

You reminded me, we used to love to do "Comfortably Numb" by Floyd. A Great rock ballad without the slightest bit of syrup.

 

In the spirit of "free form jamming" check out some Oregon live material...they'd come up with a riff and just talk to each other in weird musical ways for 20 minutes.

[g.]

davebrownbass: In the spirit of "free form jamming" check out some Oregon live material...they'd come up with a riff and just talk to each other in weird musical ways for 20 minutes.

Yeah, we've teased the Oregon thing haven't we, dbb? (man, that O album with Elvin Jones really takes this a little farther out of "classical"-feeling territory and further into Afrika and jazz!). Also, other groups with jazz and music-educated backgrounds are able to jam for hours with the sense of both improv and well-formed compositions. And the biggest crossover of the past few years between them (and including other more obvious jazz cats), and rawk "jam bands" like Phish, et al... is MEDESKI MARTIN WOOD. {Some kül bass groovin', that : }

 

I love jamming in rock/blues/originalfusion styles when everybody can hear - knows how to listen and interact. One can just introduce grooves, themes, beats, and take it into outer or inner space, thematically morphing, paraphrasing songs that are similar, piling it all together! I also enjoy using singing as a tool to gain apparent compositional stucture - often coming up with really decent lyrics and delivery when the rest of it seems to be kicked in right; it can be an incredibely satisfying tightrope to walk!

 

...And when it isn't it's often because someone is too limited in their listening habits, or playing habits, or on an ego control fear trip or living in a straightjacket mindset - or is just afraid. That's always such a pity. Because REAL MUSIC can be made this way - music that makes one smile and percolate emotionally and intellectually for days or weeks.

[davebrownbass]

Jees, GB, I've missed you.

 

I did make a random reference to the contrabass sarrousaphone a couple of weeks ago, but no-one caught it (I think it was the worse basslines thread.)

 

I simply can't keep up with your ears...I've never heard of anyone you mentioned, except Phish.

 

But it is true; from Ornette Coleman to John Cage, absolutely extemporaneous music can be really fun.

[g.]

Surprised you haven't heard some Medeski Martin Wood, dbb - it's stayed quite hip for the last few years with all ages of urban informed sorts ; }  (Yeah - I know: there really is a lot more music out there than some generally give credit for.) Wood often plays a pretty mean upright too. Think Soft Machine meets Hawkwind having absinthe and espresso with Sextant-period Herbie just as Headhunters is getting fleshed out on the drawing board ; }

 

And O! - some of that double electric rhythm section Ornette is wiiiillld right about when one lays head to pillow!

[davebrownbass]

Gawddam!

 

Nobody can't hijack a thread better'n when me and you get together.

[g.]

Hijack?!? - why, this is just the normal average streamofconciousness lateralism I usually spout - that's gotten me fired I kight add, when working with normal people - but has dropped many a jaw on bandstands and in clubs, and many a set of drawers in backroo - oops! Better keep it rated G here. I guess that pulse was racing again ; }

 

Seriously, though, those kind of musicians are very good examples for people who truly want to learn how to make jams sound like music. funky, profound, funny, exptrapolative landscapes and mind movies that just keep on giving. Yowp!

[g.]

...I guess I'm kind of stoked today, waiting with anticipation for one of my creative jam pards /bandmates to return from a couple of weeks in Ohio, posting a fair amount and having managed to do some fall yard stuff in between writing and playing with a couple of multifex patches - the kind that just beg for epic musical odd(!)ysseys! One would think I'd had an extra cup of French Press Sumatran {and one would be correctomundo ; }...

 

In keeping with that, I think of early Pink Floyd when Syd Barrett was still stirring the pot fantastic: cuts like Interstellar Overdrive, Saucerful of Secrets, Careful With That Axe Eugene were just rife with improvisational use of live sound treatments and one or two key riffs that made for memorable instrumental jam space rock masterpieces!

 

That brings me around to some of what I witnessed at local outdoor festivals this summer: a couple of reggae acts (notably Clinton Fearon) who by LIVE DUB effects and drop-and-add methods extended songs and jammed mightily. And then there were Portland's bluegrass rockers THE BUDS OF MAY, who could take something like Paul Simon's Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes and effortlessly squeeze more than ten minutes of crowd-pleasing pharaphrases, sprawling musical quotes, banjo guitar and bass solos in different styles in between the verses and choruses of the tune... and come back and do it again and again using trad Appalachia or an Eagles tune or -

 

And that brings me around to a very cool album by MC900FootJesus: One Step Ahead of the Spider. He actually took his cult popularity and made some inroads on MTV with this one, employing minimal structures and some rough character plots as the basis for lyrics, he and his crew of jazz- and funk-versed musicians managed to parlay jam grooves into very long structurally sophisticated kaleidoscopes that are great templates for learning and enjoyment.

 

...Did I leave that weedwhacker out in the garden?

[Greg A]

I you know some Zeppelin, you can morph in and out of all kinds of stuff: The Lemon Song, Black Dog, Communication Breakdown, Good times Bad Times and on and on and on. Tempos change, but all good grooves to jam on (well, alright, Black Dog is confusing even when everyone knows it, but Zep stuff is so much fun).

Its cool to pick a key and allow someone different to take the lead at different times and suggest a new direction. For example you could be playing Sabbath's N.I.B. and after it's gone on for twenty minutes, just start playing the bass line for Superstition. I too have tapes and tapes of this kind ridiculousness interspersed with moments of musical genius.

Too much fun!

[g.]

Maybe one of my fave models for jamming out in a rock context is still Hendrix. No particular songs - just the whole trip of stretching, use of effects, waxing and waning intensity and places where Jimi changes "voice" for another solo or ensemble lead by switching pickups, stomp boxes, and mindset/mood. I don't care that I'm playing bass or was playing electronics with bari/tenor sax - when the mood is Purple or some other cloud, I get on the footswitches and the hand twitches, and though association kind of remember all those album versions and concert footage bits, and dig how a woof woof yeah I see what you mean can turn from raining chrome to scorched, distressed proto-metal. His comping was the greatest too!

 

Oh, and bring on the Jeff Beck!

[g.]

...For me it sometimes seems appropriate along the way to break into the opening lead figure for "Purple Haze" on distortobass and then start belting the lyrics for "Green Acres" as I kick in on a slightly transmogrified bass line...

[BenLoy]

Greenboy's in fine stream-of-consciousness form, ladies and gentlemen. Try the veal.

[BenLoy]

Surprised you haven't heard some Medeski Martin Wood, dbb - it's stayed quite hip for the last few years with all ages of urban informed sorts ; } (Yeah - I know: there really is a lot more music out there than some generally give credit for.) Wood often plays a pretty mean upright too. Think Soft Machine meets Hawkwind having absinthe and espresso with Sextant-period Herbie just as Headhunters is getting fleshed out on the drawing board ; }

That's gotta be the best description of them I've ever heard, greenboy.

 

I'm going to see them this Holloween in NYC. Wood's sliky, gut-strung, Mingus-raising upright's gonna shake the walls, and I can't wait.

[Tom Capasso]

Zack,

 

Glad to hear you had some fun. Sounds like you got to do some exploring. My band often starts something in rehearsal (2 chords, max) and we go!! People trade solos, and the drummer and I do what we can to change the feel or rhythm. We recorded one, and it's not bad !!

 

dbb, yeah - I caught the sarenghettiphone reference - and loved it. Sometimes I just let things go (yeah right).

 

greenboy - you still talk about people I don't know (though I've heard mmw). Nice to see you participating!

 

Tom

[patrick_dont_fret]

You guys really need to check out Phish for some phat-jammin' jam sessions. They, like the Grateful Dead, will go on for 30 to 45 minutes around a jam. Back in the day they used to play in a circle and pass riffs around, until they came up with something cool. Same goes for Widespread Panic (hats off to Mikey Houser R.I.P.). They can jam for a extended period of time exptremely well. And both of these bands have excellent written songs, as well.

[TKE96]

I tossed the idea of the rollin of the dice. The other guys loved the idea! We even talked about letting some lucky lady come up and roll the dice for us during a gig...might make the gig more interesting! This could become a regular part of our show!

[Zack]

It's true what they say about not knowing what you have until its gone... fuck, it's great to hear from you greenboy! Like a mint-tinted Burroughs or a green Ginsberg, you let consciousness and your thoughts flow like utter, otherworldly truths, and I'm so glad they do. Keep them coming, greenboy!

[g.]

Zack,

 

When first I moved to these mountains I met by chance a guitarist from bands an incredible distance ago: the first ones ever, for me. And when I came to re-know him, there at the core was the same person. But many crusted layers of loss, disappointment, despair, had accumulated, there was now only a dim lava glow. It was clear he lived with a severe drinking problem.

 

Later, as I first took up bass, I began stoking him with memories of what it was like to really be freed by music, and how much we had seen and learned together on all our early travels. It was hope, really - and there was a chance to play together. I already had a jam band situation, and it needed his spark. Thus I managed to get him involved.

 

It was heaven and it was hell. These other two guitarists were horrible listeners, had very little to work with really, and yet were inveterate wankers. As Lonnie packed his old Twin down those stairs and plugged in his volume pedal and '59 Strat I wondered what would happen; he had to fortify his courage before we came down. Still, Lonnie had prime taste, even on the worst of days. And when he heard those chatterbox distorted voices saying nothing his first struck chord was a windmill of emphasis and a bell of recrimination. He wavered the whammy a little and gulls shifted their positions on ocean tradewinds. He sliced a couple of suspended barre chords, sustained again as to float on thermals, dropped below to view the beach - and when the wind was as right as it could be there, began to sail from a slow cry to a moving outpouring of confessions and pleas and shattered dreams.

 

The other two guitarists began to dimly perceive that their monotone bashing was a very poor breeze indeed. This new guy had said more in a few well-placed chops and a well-shaped tone than they had ever accomplished with all their loud macho flailing, and then he had soared even above, now a whisper, now a roar.

 

There was much more of that in months to follow. We got together often with acoustics, exchanging ideas, me trying to get him to dare to dream again, to let enthusiasm heal and replace the deadness. He would excitedly talk of dynamics and texture, space and time and flow. And when we would go to jam, sometimes he would flounder in drunk paralysis, and yet he still brought music to the others and they began to hear.

 

Lonnie had moments of transcendence, flashing bright as the sun on the blade of a scimitar. But I am sad to say he could not fully believe that music could help him find the way back, and for the most part we have not been able to get together. But he for those handfuls of time in between his binges and depressions could feel it pulling him sunward, and we were all lifted too.

 

Zack, never let the gift I know you have be wasted, never let the spark be dimmed.

 

<-- greenboy ---<<<< the music i dreamed, my cup doth overflow

[Zack]

Greenboy- your advice is taken directly to heart. Your story was a truer-than-true tale of not letting the flame burn out. I thank you for it; it made me think and gave me new perspective. Thank you.