It's hard to not be as excited as I am after having such an awesome practice last week. Things are coming together nicely and I think we're starting to gel and have some real chemistry. Dan and I have different approaches to playing guitar, but we seem to compliment each other well. I think he took more of the "classical approach" to learning guitar that most kids take when he was growing up - finding guitar heroes and doing everything you can to mimic them. You learn to play their riffs, licks, and solos and you go from there. While I had my guitar heroes, Slash and Jimmy Page are the reason I even picked up a guitar, I immediately fell into the rhythm guitar player role instead of the playing the leads. I never found soloing to be all that important to me on guitar; it was never a natural thing for me to do. Playing saxophone, however, I felt more comfortable with soloing and it was really a great form of expression. I think you give more of yourself when playing saxophone. With the guitar you just use your hands and, indirectly, your arms but with the saxophone you use your hands, lips, tongue, cheeks, teeth, lungs, and diaphragm. You use your entire upper body to play the saxophone. With the guitar I just use my hands, so I think I take a more primitive approach and I enjoy banging on the strings more so than trying to produce a pretty solo. Given the context of certain songs, however, I've been forced to learn some solos and I've even asked Dan if I could play solos on certain songs because I particularly like them. So because of this, I've had to practice playing these solos and licks and whatnot. At first it was very frustrating, but I've become more comfortable with it and I definitely feel it has improved my playing overall. I still consider Dan the "lead guitar player" but when you look at the songs we do and how we have them arranged, the lead work is pretty much split up 50/50 I'd say.
Anyway, back to chemistry, there really aren't any ego issues, which I thought might be a problem early on. Given that Dan was both the lead singer and the lead guitar player, I was a little leery that there may be some conflict in that he'll want to do all the lead work all the time. That hasn't been the case at all. Pretty much the overall credo between the two of us has been whatever needs to be done to make it sound the best it can sound, needs to be done. If it's a tough solo that Dan could probably learn in a couple days that might take me a couple weeks and there aren't any real demands for the vocals at that part, then Dan plays the solo. If it makes more sense for me to play the solo in a particular song, then I play the solo. We do what we need to do to get the job done, and I really like that work ethic.
My dad's been playing drums for 30 years now so, needless to say, he's been around. He's been everywhere from playing in a basement to having his record playing on WRIF, so earning his respect and trust as a musician has been great. I think early on I earned his respect when I was playing saxophone in high school and he saw my accomplishments, but I feel like this is a different setting and it's a "that was then, this is now" situation. I'm constantly excited about this band, so to see him grow more and more excited week in and week out and to have him call me and tell me that he's excited is, well, exciting.
I've learned that early on in forming a cover band you've gotta make everyone that you're bringing in feel like it's worth their time and effort. It's not just showing up and sitting down and jammin'. People have to take time out of their week to make it to practice, lug heavy equipment, take time to learn songs, etc. A lot of it is trust too. A chemistry has to be built upon well enough to establish trust and confidence between the members. I have to trust that the other people I'm playing with know their parts and can recover if something unforeseen happens. Murphy's Law is real and it seems to have a prediliction to situations where everyone's watching you. Strings and sticks break, picks get dropped, monitors go out, batteries die, electronics fail, and everything else can happen besides someone just losing their place in the song. Right now I have confidence in each member of this band that things can move forward if something like that happens and I hope they have confidence that I can recover as well.
Being that Nick was the only "outsider" that came into this project, it's taken more time for me to feel him out although I've liked him since day one. He's solid and he's always up front about the parts he's shaky on and he'll want to work things out before diving into something he's unsure of. He also improvises nicely; if a song needs something that can be filled out by the bass, he'll play it. He has good instincts. I think he fits in really well.
I think the reason this is all so exciting is because we've only had four practices together and there's a pretty strong dynamic between us. I'm sure my friends, my roommate in particular, get tired of hearing about "the band" all the time, but I honestly don't care because I'm so geeked about it. It's really the only thing in my life that makes me happy right now and it's what I look forward to weekly. That being said, the majority of the work for next week's practice lies with me and I'm
not that excited about it this time. People are depending on me though, so I've gotta do my job and get it done. I'll be really pumped once the practicing for these two songs is done and I can just play them with ease and move onto the next songs.
Wow, this was an incredibly long blog entry and I'm surprised you're still with me. Until next time...
P.S. I have a crush on Made Out of Babies' singer, Julie Christmas. I constantly write in my diary "GM+JC 4ever" and "Mr. Gino Christmas" all over the pages.
She's so dreamy...
