bubinga5 Posted November 3, 2018 Share Posted November 3, 2018 Ok so I got a message asking if I could come along to a rehearsal/jam. Funk/disco etc. Im thinking cool, I love a jam, my favourite genre. Set up and the guitarist and drummer ask me how many basslines I know on the spot. I say, well I know Chic's good Times, For Once in my Life, Patrice Rushen's Forget me Nots. 3 was enough for 2 hours I thought. I know them like the back of my hand. Start with Good times, open strings etc. The song has a rhythm guitar all the way through. The guitarist had some sort of effects board that was a meter long. 4 bars in the guy starts soloing. So I stop playing. I ask in a polite manner, Nile Roger's doesn't play a solo on this. They then ask what else do I know. So I start the slap part from Forget me Nots. He's playing the keys part on the guitar, and low and behold he starts soling again.. They then said lets just have a jam, so I'm like ok lets play over a C minor. a simple as simple is. Hugely awkward. The drummer had no timing at all and played like a wet lettuce. There was no groove going on. IMO I played everything required, with a few light fills here and there. Left the building sharpish. Then got a call the next day saying I wasn't right for them and didn't know enough material for them to get going live. Really.? I think you both shouldn't be playing music. Im not offended and was glad I got out of there.. I was totally baffled by the whole experience. Probably the worst musical encounter ever. end of rant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skidder652003 Posted November 3, 2018 Share Posted November 3, 2018 Dreamers, perhaps they know this one Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul_5 Posted November 3, 2018 Share Posted November 3, 2018 Sounds like you’ve dodged a bullet there Bubinga5. Onwards and upwards. 😉 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kusee pee Posted November 3, 2018 Share Posted November 3, 2018 The drummer and guitarist are probably posting about their worst ever rehearsal on a different forum 😋 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bridgehouse Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 That sounded more like an audition and not a Jam. I help run Jam days for another well known guitar forum - I’ll learn about 20 bass lines preagreed and play them on the day a couple of times through. We get ability range from total beginner to very competent (one guy did a cracking job of the guitar solo in Beat It) At the end, without fail, I get 20 or 25 guitarists who are very happy and all personally thank me for coming along, playing, and putting up with their playing. We usually have a good drummer and a keys player so it always holds together. It’s all about expectation I think... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phil.c60 Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 ^ This. And auditions where someone says "let's just jam" have never gone well for me. It simply means that there aren't any songs that everyone knows so it just disintegrates into endless widdling. Did they not tell you beforehand what they wanted you to prepare? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonBassAlpha Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 Coincidentally, I recently had a similar sort of jam, where I was the new guitarist, drums and bass already played in a different band. We just jammed some grooves, I played rhythm, and gave the bass room to extemporise, and i played a few melodic lines and tried to avoid widdling, for the most part . The drums just played funky with very little in the way of fills and certainly no solo! We gave each other space and it was really enjoyable. Was kinda nerve wracking for me as I hadn't played guitar in a band for 17 years. One of the bands they like is the New Mastersounds, and the resulting recording wasn't too far off, for a first time jam. So, it can be done! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bassfan Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 (edited) Better off staying away. If they don’t recognise Good Times you’re on a slippery slope, worse still, you knock out forget me nots and they don’t recognise it.... bullet well and truly dodged my friend. Sounds like the guitarist needs a rock band. Kudos on FMN by the way, top bass line and not easy! 😃👍🏻 Edited November 4, 2018 by bassfan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluewine Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 (edited) 20 hours ago, bubinga5 said: Ok so I got a message asking if I could come along to a rehearsal/jam. Funk/disco etc. Im thinking cool, I love a jam, my favourite genre. Set up and the guitarist and drummer ask me how many basslines I know on the spot. I say, well I know Chic's good Times, For Once in my Life, Patrice Rushen's Forget me Nots. 3 was enough for 2 hours I thought. I know them like the back of my hand. Start with Good times, open strings etc. The song has a rhythm guitar all the way through. The guitarist had some sort of effects board that was a meter long. 4 bars in the guy starts soloing. So I stop playing. I ask in a polite manner, Nile Roger's doesn't play a solo on this. They then ask what else do I know. So I start the slap part from Forget me Nots. He's playing the keys part on the guitar, and low and behold he starts soling again.. They then said lets just have a jam, so I'm like ok lets play over a C minor. a simple as simple is. Hugely awkward. The drummer had no timing at all and played like a wet lettuce. There was no groove going on. IMO I played everything required, with a few light fills here and there. Left the building sharpish. Then got a call the next day saying I wasn't right for them and didn't know enough material for them to get going live. Really.? I think you both shouldn't be playing music. Im not offended and was glad I got out of there.. I was totally baffled by the whole experience. Probably the worst musical encounter ever. end of rant. Sounds like you got involved with guys that perhaps like funk but can't play it. Funk can mean different things to different people. In my neck of the woods sadly no one is playing funk. It's not an easy genre and a lot of guys don't understand don't have the feel for it. IMO play a guitar solo on " Good Times" is an example of not understanding and removed from the genre. Blue Edited November 4, 2018 by Bluewine 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ead Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 2 hours ago, MoonBassAlpha said: One of the bands they like is the New Mastersounds, and the resulting recording wasn't too far off, for a first time jam. Great band, love what they do. This rather surprised me as it's not a genre I normally gravitate to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JapanAxe Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 This is a well-known thing - a guitarist who wants other musicians to play so that he (and it is invariably a he!) can go widdly-widdly-wee to his heart's content. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcnach Posted November 4, 2018 Share Posted November 4, 2018 (edited) 6 hours ago, JapanAxe said: This is a well-known thing - a guitarist who wants other musicians to play so that he (and it is invariably a he!) can go widdly-widdly-wee to his heart's content. Yup. Too many of those. Delusional fools. Earlier in the year a couple of guys from one of my bands and I were trying to put a new project together. We found this guitarist... oh god, it was painful. All he could do was bluesy licks and not very well. Horrible tone, horrible control. He really wanted to be the 'star' and when we moved away from the songs we had agreed on and thought we'd jam a bit to see how we play together, all he wanted was solo. Painful. When our drummer contacted him the next day to say thanks but we didn't think he was what we were looking for, he had a real meltdown and started posting to the group chat we had set up, accusing us of being threatened by a superior player and this and that, and how we clearly have no experience and we'll never play in front of an audience (? we have been, regularly, for years, in multiple bands... he knew that!). It was pretty amazing. Ended up blocking him in all social media. Edited November 4, 2018 by mcnach Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monkey Steve Posted November 5, 2018 Share Posted November 5, 2018 what was discussed ahead of the "jam"? Were you expecting it to lead to something, like forming a band and lining up gigs, or was it just to hang out, play a bit and see what happens? Probably doesn't help that "jam" means different things to different people. For me it's always meant going off script, seeing what you can come up with, just playing for the fun of it and not to worry if anything comes of it or not. Currently playing with a death metal band and having to intensely learn their songs ahead of a couple of gigs. Last week we had a reggae jam and last night a 20 minute bluesy hard rock jam, neither of which will come to anything more than that time in the studio, but worked great for a bit of light relief and getting to know the other musicians. Then back to work on playing their actual songs - wouldn't have mattered if I was amazing or awful in the jams themselves, they meant nothing tangible. But I know others who think of anything other than playing gigs as "a jam" - there are no auditions, only jams, even if you are sticking to a rigid set list. The "sorry, not for us" sounds a bit like dumping you before you could dump them, when they know it hasn't gone well. I wouldn't read too much into it. Seen way too many average guitarists reach for the extended guitar solo at every chance, usually when they have a vastly over-inflated opinion of themselves 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacDaddy Posted November 5, 2018 Share Posted November 5, 2018 TBF they called after your audition to let you know. That's more than a lot of bands do. But as it wasn't actually an audition, then 😕 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bubinga5 Posted November 5, 2018 Author Share Posted November 5, 2018 An audition is when you know what your auditioning for. What songs do you want to play. They wanted a juke box on the spot. I tried to jam they couldn't. I'm out 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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