Jamming advice Part Two

[Cary Fagan]

I thought that people who read my earlier question on jamming (which got some great responses--thanks) might like to know that the advice was quite helpful this week. For the first time I actually took a break on a couple of songs I hadn't played before. One was "Blue Moon of Kentucky," a good basic song to try it on. I played a simple melody with a bit of embellishment and some awareness of the chord shifts and, well, it was elementary but it was music. Fun to do and a lot better than passing on everything. So not a bad start, with the help of mandolincafe. Now if I can only add a few blue notes, a slide or pull off, some double stops...

[Flowerpot]

Great to hear that the cafe was helpful -- this is the place to come for good advice!


Since the thread title is "Jamming advice part II", allow me to be so bold as to add another $0.02. When you take the next steps in learning to take solos, don't worry about doing "fancy" things. That will come with time. Instead, concentrate on the basics of good musicianship, the 5 T's: Timing, Tuning, Tone, Taste, Technique. Technique, or the ability to do all the slides, hammers, triplets, etc., is fine, but unless combined with all the other T's it doesn't contribute to making Music. Practice with a metronome; work on getting good clean, round tone; keep your mandolin in tune; play only what's appropriate to the song and what adds to the ensemble sound. Sometimes a new and eager instrumentalist will immerse themselves into learning a bunch of hot sounding licks, and then it takes them years to learn when NOT to play them. I'm not saying that you are doing this, not at all; i'm just throwing out some advice on what is really important, having watched many new players develop over the years. Have fun!