Time isn't money - time is better than money. Time just takes a little more wisdom in spending wisely.
Before this band made its move from Victoria to Vancouver, we rehearsed weekly. Usually we would work to refine and improve our tunes, but we would also spend a significant amount of time just jamming. Just after assembling our rigs, George, Curtis or I would start on some idea - often a spur-of-the-moment riff - and the other two members would join in and try to take the idea to interesting places. Ideas would flow from all of us like water from a tap, and all these ideas would inspire even more ideas. Imagine if three people could spontaneously film a movie from the combined imagery of their thoughts - that's what a good, creative jam is like from my perspective. Usually the 'movie' would pass through several moods, even genres, before we brought the 'piece' to a close. Sometimes we would record these jams, and once in a while I would add lyrics and turn one of these jams into a song (Caesar's Palace, Pretty Good Joke, Everything's For Sale are 3 such tunes, for example). It's far more fun to create music this way than sitting alone with a guitar or keyboard and a recording box, for better or worse. I've also found I write differently in the 'jam' method - my lyrics are a little less introspective, more 'here and now', perhaps a little more primal. Ironically, the only reasons I don't write this way more often are a) sometimes my lyrical/melodic ideas spring to mind first without the other guys present, and b) I've amassed a huge backlog of recorded jams! I'm a little daunted about digging into such a big library. It would be like shopping in a department store the size of a couple of football fields.
The Vancouver version of this band - now with Trevor Andres on bass - has until recently been more preoccupied with rehearsing already-recorded tunes. It's challenging by pop tune standards (especially for a 3-piece band), and it's a trick keeping it up to snuff even after years of experience with it, let along if you happen to be the new bassist. We'd also taken on a couple-dozen cover tunes for our bread-and-butter gigging in the Juxtaposers. Available time - what little there was - was put toward band promo, live prep and planning.
More recently, though, it had seemed the time to shift gears back to something more creative. We took on one of Trevor's originals 'Broken' (check out his solo CD, 'the Offering'!), and then turned on the recorder and jammed.
Ahhhhh. That's what I'd been missing. Whatever frustrations there are in the day-to-day and the business end of music, the jam reminded me why I do this, and that there's always something worthwhile to say, and to hear. I look forward to giving it a listen soon. Of course, a jam isn't fun unless you're playing with people with good chops, big ears, and bigger imaginations - and I'm hugely lucky in this band where those factors are concerned.
I look forward to the three mad musical scientists returning to our cluttered little laboratory...
Before this band made its move from Victoria to Vancouver, we rehearsed weekly. Usually we would work to refine and improve our tunes, but we would also spend a significant amount of time just jamming. Just after assembling our rigs, George, Curtis or I would start on some idea - often a spur-of-the-moment riff - and the other two members would join in and try to take the idea to interesting places. Ideas would flow from all of us like water from a tap, and all these ideas would inspire even more ideas. Imagine if three people could spontaneously film a movie from the combined imagery of their thoughts - that's what a good, creative jam is like from my perspective. Usually the 'movie' would pass through several moods, even genres, before we brought the 'piece' to a close. Sometimes we would record these jams, and once in a while I would add lyrics and turn one of these jams into a song (Caesar's Palace, Pretty Good Joke, Everything's For Sale are 3 such tunes, for example). It's far more fun to create music this way than sitting alone with a guitar or keyboard and a recording box, for better or worse. I've also found I write differently in the 'jam' method - my lyrics are a little less introspective, more 'here and now', perhaps a little more primal. Ironically, the only reasons I don't write this way more often are a) sometimes my lyrical/melodic ideas spring to mind first without the other guys present, and b) I've amassed a huge backlog of recorded jams! I'm a little daunted about digging into such a big library. It would be like shopping in a department store the size of a couple of football fields.
The Vancouver version of this band - now with Trevor Andres on bass - has until recently been more preoccupied with rehearsing already-recorded tunes. It's challenging by pop tune standards (especially for a 3-piece band), and it's a trick keeping it up to snuff even after years of experience with it, let along if you happen to be the new bassist. We'd also taken on a couple-dozen cover tunes for our bread-and-butter gigging in the Juxtaposers. Available time - what little there was - was put toward band promo, live prep and planning.
More recently, though, it had seemed the time to shift gears back to something more creative. We took on one of Trevor's originals 'Broken' (check out his solo CD, 'the Offering'!), and then turned on the recorder and jammed.
Ahhhhh. That's what I'd been missing. Whatever frustrations there are in the day-to-day and the business end of music, the jam reminded me why I do this, and that there's always something worthwhile to say, and to hear. I look forward to giving it a listen soon. Of course, a jam isn't fun unless you're playing with people with good chops, big ears, and bigger imaginations - and I'm hugely lucky in this band where those factors are concerned.
I look forward to the three mad musical scientists returning to our cluttered little laboratory...