My lack of practice really paid off today. The friends from work and I had our first band practice. Yes, a real band. We had picked 9 songs to cover as our first attempt to make music together. We played seven of the nine (and we played Gouge Away twice). I only played one solo among those seven songs. It was a weak attempt to play a dumbed down version of the solo in The Middle. We didn’t play I Know What I Am by Band of Skulls and we didn’t play Peace Love & Understanding as performed by Elvis Costello. Why didn’t we? Because I still haven’t got I Know What I Am down and we forgot about Peace Love & Understanding until it was too late.
The other interesting thing I discovered is that I was not happy with my amp and effects. Why? Because I haven’t played these songs during any of my practice time through my effects and amp. I’ve been playing acoustically to the recorded originals. I got a decent Message in a Bottle sound with my reverb and flanger (I know, I need a chorus). I got a good distortion for The Middle with the help of the volume control on my guitar when I wanted to clean things up. I was most happy with the channel switching I did for Undone – the Sweater song. I felt like I nailed going from clean to distorted and back to clean (my timing was even pretty good for the changes in the song). I was not happy with my distortion for our cover of Social D’s cover of Ring of Fire. I also need to dial in a good distortion rhythm channel and lead channel for Joan Jett’s cover of I Love Rock N Roll. I got a good rhythm sound, but not a good solo sound. The worst one, in my mind, was the lack of tone…or just plain sucking that my guitar sounded like on Gouge Away. The second time we played it was ok, but that first time through just sounded weak to me.
I did enjoy playing my Warmoth project guitar for all the songs but The Middle (I used Wolverine for that). I didn’t use all the different switches, but I did go back and forth between the P-90 and the series humbucker settings of the bridge pick up. I’ll have to play with it more as I practice in the future. Having both guitars was nice. They were easy to change out with the Schaller strap locks I’ve got on them. One strap, many guitars.
The important thing is we had a blast making music. My wife even said the songs were recognizable. My daughter had a blast being our “dancer” and playing the tambourine. The one weak link was my son. He wanted to play the drums with the drummer, so my wife was kind enough to take him outside to play while the band (& my daughter) jammed!
I will readily admit that I am the worst player/musician of the three of us. The drummer is awesome. He hasn’t played in three years and he was laying down some amazing beats! The bassist is better than me even when he’s singing songs he’s never heard before. So I think this will be a great experience for me! Yes, I really am that selfish.
My main motivation for inviting these people over to my house after work is to have fun making music. But I also know that it will push me to get better at the guitar. I also know that I will practice in a more focused and efficient manner (sort of). This is like my first band experience. It is fun. It will take some work. I will learn a lot. And maybe we’ll get some gigs… And it really is just fun!
P.S. Did I mention we might call ourselves Nerd Wagon? Awesome! Splendid. Whatever. I like it!
Confessions of a Wanna Be Guitar Player 