Been a week no new posts?

[guitarest]

Lets see we so far auditioned 3 bass players and only one so far makes the grade. A good friend of mine John is a drummer and we have been jamming together for years and we both auditioned for casino type bands and we both failed to get the gig. So we decided f**k them and we are putting together a project with our music, stuff we want to play. The CL ad basically mentioned we are looking for older mature bass players and in all honestly they are coming out of the wood work. The one common ground is these guys play mostly country but want to play rock although not hard metal. Thats OK with me since I love good ole preamp number 9. Last night my fav bass player so far showed up and he knew 4 of the 5 tunes we asked them to learn (American Band, Highway to hell, Aint talking about love, Whats your name, and finally Would) for the audition. We have a few really good singers on the side although what we (or I) want to do is to audition a real singer rather than continue with the same ole singers. There has got to be new blood out there for sure, or those who I have yet to discover. One thing for sure that has had a huge effect on me was the audition last week with the Casino gig. Yes I did try to learn the very new original material and while I beat out so many here on the coast one was slightly better than I am. So I have looked more closely at my playing and it has motivated me to not practice my rhythm playing but my leads. While I was speaking to John (drummer) I mentioned exactly this and he was quite happy with me saying this and then he dropped a small bomb on me. John stated while I can nail just about any David Gilmore lead with the same tone and attack this influence is so strong it bleeds into the other tunes. It was actually funny how he told me; man I have never seen someone walk on so many rose peddles or be so careful with wording. He was like Jocko your good, damn good but your leads.......... Well his feedback has pushed me further into more wood shedding back to the basics. I have always been someone who takes comments like these rather well since I try not to have a ego or be one of those guitar players I really hate. I believe everyone here has met one of those people, so good in their own minds and quite in love with themselves. While some of those guys are damn good and may or may not be better than I am the attitude is a huge turn off for me. You can't tell those guys anything and they are not fun to be around.

Well its off to work in a bit, then a jam session with another bass and a really hot guitar player tomorrow. Dammit I am going to get a f**king band put together down here. Last nights bass player is actually leaving his band although they have two more shows at one of the casinos here and they are making 2500 for two nights work between 5 people. Dammit I want those casino gigs so bad right now.... Even with my faulty Gilmore lead playing I know I have what it takes in motivation and determination all I need is the right people and a little luck....

Hope everyone had a great week, we actually got some rain last night and rain is something we need so bad here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Cheers

[Iforgotmyname]

I'd post about how great my JDM is but I won't have it until Thursday.

Sounds like you've been real busy :)

[SteveD]

Welcome to the forum Iforgotmyname.

I think you mean JMD.

[Iforgotmyname]

I really should go back and edit that out...nah lol....your right though

thank you for the welcome :)

[guitarest]

Hey Steve I'm still loving this JDM Amp........ :dance

[SteveD]

[sunking420]

Hey Jocko! I've been doing a lot of woodshedding myself lately, thus the lack of posts. Last three days doing the ampless thing trying to learn Robert Johnson stuff. The JMD has been a little idle lately,as I'm using the VM 2466 mostly. I'm not even jamming with anyone, but should give a bass player friend a call to do so. He wants to do something for fun as he's gigging with a Motown/Philly R&B Quintet, and likes doing some blues rock with me once in awhile. I want to get enough tunes together to put together something to play out,and working on lots of stuff I've never done before. As far as the Gilmore style bleeding into other things, that's pretty natural. When I used to do a LOT of Hendrix, everything I played sounded like Jimi doing it, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but not good if you're doing other covers. I purposely switched over to learning about half the Zep catalog to get away from that, and ended up now everything sounds like Page doing it, again not necessarily bad. Influences are influences. Page has got Scotty Moore running through his veins.

As far as leads, you and I are the same age I think(47) and tablature came out around the time I started learning(1979 or 1980). I've always learned most things by ear, and if I got stuck I'd pick up the tablature to figure out the missing note in a chord or some lead line. Lately I've picked up a few DVDs with Andy Aledort. He's done wonders for my playing just playing along with the video lessons. I've got my own sound and style, but he fills in a lot of holes in my playing. I wish that stuff had been around years ago. So to make the long short, tablature
and DVDs have helped me go beyond my usual playing. I'm doing some Free songs last month or so, and have stolen Paul Kossoff's wide vibrato pretty handily. My vibrato was strong doing the Page and Hendrix stuff, but Kossoff's is just a bit different and adds to my playing.

Just play to recordings as much as possible to get leads close for presentation. As long as your tone is good, and from everything I've ever read that you've posted, you're as much of a tone nut as I am, you can improvise some solo parts as long as you play the meat of the melody line as recorded. I know I did that when I used to play out and used to have people come up to me and tell me they liked my solos better than the originals. A Steve Vai quote comes to mind, "You have to learn the rules first, then bend them all you want to make it your own". That's always stuck with me. A lot to be said for originality. I've noticed some guitar players that weren't too hot, but played with enough confidence to blow out the room. Playing with confidence is key. Just look at Keith Richards....

[guitarest]

Not 47, pushing 49 real hard; lol. Loved the reply and everything is 100% dead on correct. Yeah I remember the first tabs I ever saw was in a magazine called "Guitar for the practicing musician"; I was overseas yet have almost every issue they printed due to subscribing to them. I love the JMD allot and yes I am a tone whore for sure; I have heard loads of great stuff about the VM although I am leading hard towards the JVM410 with a BV cab. Just think I would never run out of foot controllers. So far we have gone through a few more bass players and frankly some better ones have showed up. On Weds we are jamming with a friend of the band and this guy is a huge heavy weight player in this area; I am truly excited. With all this wood shedding I am also to a point where I respect singer / gtr players even more. I have tried to sing and play while auditioning these bass players and while its getting easier its still quite a task. I have a Jimi H patch on my JMD and with the Ibanez RG550 in a Strat mode with a slight over driven number 9 again (god I love that preamp).

Good luck on your quest with your bass player, I for one do enjoy playing and live for it every day.