Playing just for the fun of it

[fatt-dad]

<snip>

You don't HAVE to become the next Chris Thile or Monroe. The purpose it to provide pleasure and expression for yourself.

Jamie

Last year's quote, "On the journey to excellence, enjoy mediocrity." It's my new mantra and I dreamed it up myself!

In the decades to come, I may be Thile-like. . . Who knows, but the Angel band?

f-d

[Charlie Bernstein]

Mostly. But I do love jamming and gigging.

Unplugged electric guitars are the best thing for stealth woodshedding.

[DavidKOS]

After over 45 years of playing gigs, I'm taking a break and playing music only for my own fun.

It's really cool! I can play what I want for as long or as short a time as I want, and no responsibility other than to amuse myself.

[catmandu2]

I've done my share of scuffling for gigs in popular idioms hoisting drum kits and electric gear in/out. Ensemble playing certainly is a wonderful thing - I've been hooked on it since elementary school..

Yet there is another relationship with music, highly personal, and not intended to be cultivated for performance. Like poetry, or prayer, does personal music fail if not "shared"? Music has been used for "self-cultivation, meditation, mind purification, spirutual elevation, union with nature..."

http://www.philmultic.com/English/Chinese_music.html

These days, I've little ambition for other than playing music in gardens, with my kids, the occasional passers-by...there's a wonderful old oak tree nearby.

[Astro]

Last year's quote, "On the journey to excellence, enjoy mediocrity." It's my new mantra and I dreamed it up myself!

f-d

Sorry, I'm stealing that one !--Great quote F.D.

[HonketyHank]

Me.

When I have the confidence, I may well start with jams or sessions. Who knows, maybe even a gig. But right now, the only public things I do with the mandolin are 1) the monthly video for the Newbies Tune of the Month, 2) the stray tinklings that may escape my window as I enjoy the journey to wherever I am going.

[Charlie Bernstein]

PS -

As I said, I do love woodshedding, but it's hard to play at home much because I don't live alone and don't have a woodshed. So I welcome every excuse to get out of the house and play with others.

[Capt. E]

To me, playing at home (or alone anywhere) is a sort of meditation. I will sit on the back of my car in the garage and play a while before driving home, relax a bit from a busy day...or out on the back porch enjoying a pretty day. The problem with solo play, is you can get song rhythm and speed all wrong so that when you go to jam etc, you have an adjustment period. It is good to have a recording when learning a new song or even playing something old out of your music memory.

[red7flag]

Most of the time playing music, I have been involved in a long standing jam with good friends. For a variety of reasons, we rarely get together any more. When jamming fairly frequently, much of my practice was to improve my repertoire of grass tunes. Since the jamming ended, I have joined the Praise Band at church. This is my first time playing in a performing band and really enjoy the collaboration. I have learned a lot, not only about playing with people, but also playing for people. I mostly practice the songs s at church with the band. So now, most of my play time is just for me. It is not by surprise that the last two instruments that I bought are strictly non-grass instruments, the Nyberg mandola and the Martin Style C mandolin. Now, most of my playing is for my own enjoyment or focused writing which is also pleasurable. My wife seems to enjoy my playing more now not playing grass and prefers more melodic tunes.

[sbhikes]

A long time ago I was a closet flute player. I would play to some of my Journey albums. I never every played anywhere else. I had to quit because the guy upstairs worked the night shift and I didn't want to be rude.

I'm not a closet mandolin player, but of course I do play at home alone a lot. I also sometimes take my mandolin to the park and kill a few hours playing everything I can think of. I also have a strumstick ukulele that I re-stringed and tuned in fifths so I can play it like a mandolin. I bring it on backpacking trips. What a joy that is to be out somewhere with nothing else to do, no technology at my disposal and a great view to look at just playing tunes and whiling away the time!

[mandroid]

after 30 years.. of couch playing.

Now I have a weekly tune swapping Jam at the Local Moose lodge, and the Senior Center. on Wednesday and Thursday nights .

Wednesday with a Bartender-audience , Thursday is Dry.....





.....

[farmerjones]

I play anywhere I can, any time I can. I don't make much of a distinction between playing alone or not. Maybe I let myself be a little sloppier, alone. One of my last posts on another thread said it, and in a way it's kind of selfish, but once I found such a warm/loving, supportive bunch of players, and audience, it's hard not want that. Money's never a factor. I've had just as much love, if not more as a volunteer, than at a pay gig.

[Jess L.]

... Unplugged electric guitars are the best thing for stealth woodshedding.

True, for solid-body guitars anyway.

I use headphones instead of the amplifier's speaker, I can hear it just fine through the headphones (including reverb! woohoo), but it doesn't disturb anyone else.

And I tune it in 5ths. Octave lower than mandolin with a bonus high B string, GDAEB after putting a capo at the fifth fret. Works out to about 19-inch scale length (48.2 cm) on this particular guitar (cheap strat copy).

So it's basically serving as a nearly-silent GDAEB short-scale 5-string tenor guitar.

(At one time, I used the lowest/bass string also, for full fifths tuning CGDAEB, but the excessive ringing (sympathetic resonance) from the unplucked low C string was annoying more often than not. So I just stuck a little piece of foam rubber under that string and proceeded to ignore it.)

This is the instrument I use for nearly all of my practicing and working out new tunes. I actually prefer its sound to my other instruments, and the light-gauge electric strings are super easy on arthritic fingers. You don't get the disadvantages of light-gauge strings like you would on an acoustic instrument (loss of volume), volume is not a problem with electric, there's a knob for that.

So, as to the topic of "playing just for the fun of it", this electric guitar tuned in fifths helps me to have lots of fun that I didn't even know was possible prior to "going electric". You can make it sound sweet, or not, your choice. I use an older Roland Micro Cube amplifier to get some different sounds, ranging from an acoustic emulator to rock-n-roll distortion. The Cube has a place to plug in headphones, which automatically shuts the speaker off, for private practice. It also has a "line in" if you want to jam along with a backing track or YouTube video or whatever, it allows you to hear both the line-in and the guitar. I really like that combination of gear (cheap electric Squier guitar, Roland Micro Cube, $14 headphones) and it's helped to keep me from getting bored with my music because there are different sounds to explore, all in the same instrument.

[Beanzy]

I seem to keep getting dragged into stuff that means I'm playing with people about 1/2 the time I play. Luckily I'm away every alternate week so use that as my serious practice time. If I didn't have that I don't think I could develop the higher end skills enough and I'd have to drop a lot of the playing with others. Luckily, although there's always too much to catch up with, I have been able to get by without refusing too many opportunities developing things with others. As most are very different projects I do have to work at not letting the different genres mash-up or bleed into the others too much, otherwise I could be just a hack in all of them.

[PomMom0529]

You probably have to be born a performer to truly enjoy it.

Thank you for this, Astro. My husband says I'm weird because I only like to make music for myself. I am not an extrovert, but I play one in my job-- plus I travel all the time. Mandolin goes with me every trip. At night in my hotel room, playing softly-- I figure it's the only thing I do that's just for me. Zero interest in going public!

[sbhikes]

If you ever had a chance to watch little 2.5foot little children dancing with joy to your music, you might change your mind about having zero interest going public. I don't even like children but I love watching how happy they get. One time this cute little baby boy came walking up to us and his feet were moving but the look on his face was pure fear and horror. It was like he couldn't understand why he was dancing, but he just had to do it.

[farmerjones]

. . . I love watching how happy they get.

Amen!

Strange to us, but most pre-school children have only experienced Music coming out of TVs or some speaker.
When they see Music being made live for the first time it blows their mind.
I was playing a tune or three in a hotel lobby. I didn't realize, it was the path to the pool. Kids would stop dead in their tracks. Mouth agape. Then it's like marionettes with no strings, until the music stops. A sight one won't soon forget!

[mandocrucian]

sonny-rollins-what-ive-learned/

[Caleb]

If you ever had a chance to watch little 2.5foot little children dancing with joy to your music, you might change your mind about having zero interest going public. I don't even like children but I love watching how happy they get. One time this cute little baby boy came walking up to us and his feet were moving but the look on his face was pure fear and horror. It was like he couldn't understand why he was dancing, but he just had to do it.

I have four children, all of whom completely ignore me when I play music.

[Billy Packard]

Any musician who aspires to play their instrument will be playing at home! I love to gig and entertain folks. To reach and maintain that level of technical expertise means most of my actual time on the mandolin is at home. I love playing at home.

Billy

billypackardmandolin.com

[catmandu2]

Any musician who aspires to play their instrument will be playing at home! I love to gig and entertain folks. To reach and maintain that level of technical expertise means most of my actual time on the mandolin is at home. I love playing at home.

Ya. And too, I play whole different stuff at home than in groups. Some aspects of my at-home music making I find difficult or impossible to achieve in performances.

All those harpsichords and things...the woman who previously lived in my current house had a baby grand in the parlor...some likely don't get played out much..

[LadysSolo]

I much prefer to play at home alone - I can play what I like rather than what other people like!

[sblock]

I've always played for personal pleasure, and usually alone, for as long as I've owned an instrument to play. Furthermore, I've also always assumed that ALL my fellow musicians do the very same thing! Because if they didn't play for personal pleasure, why would they continue to be musicians? And playing well with others can only happen when you've had a chance to practice on your own, anyway. So we play to amuse ourselves, and we also play to get better. I think the nearly unanimous responses in this thread are thoroughly unsurprising, in light of all that.

OF COURSE I play for the fun of it! And when, as, and if the fun is gone, I'll stop playing. But I hope that time never comes.

[Upis Land]

I'm not a closet player. I don't even have a closet. Everyone within ear shot of my living room (read, the cats) is free to listen in.

[Craigt3365]

I love jamming the best. I think it's necessary to play with others. You learn a lot, improve your timing, and it's fun! I practice at home almost 2 hours every day, with Sundays off. LOL.

I gig a bit, but don't really enjoy it. I don't like all the equipment and pressure. And having a few drinks ruins my ability to play the more complex tunes. We jam in a few bars just for fun and it's fantastic. Here's a pic of us this past week.