Another Friday

I don't mean that in a bad way by any means. I LOVE my Friday nights. I combine a few of my passions under one roof. Music, family, and friends. There also some crazy puppies and copious amounts of soda(for me lately) and beer(not for me lately). I usually get to my parents house a bit before everyone else, besides Dad. Tonight the plan is to talk to him about picking a few songs to learn for October. Anyone have any suggestions?
When we pick a few songs, I'll see if Dad wants to get together another day or two during the week to practice. Not just practice, but practice WITH A METRONOME! haha
One song I would like to have on the list, is Ol' 55 by Tom Waits. Not a ton of lyrics, not a ton of chords, but it's a great great song. Hopefully I'll have a list of songs we're working on, or at the very least I'm working on. :)

On a side note, if you went to an open mic night, and the person playing/singing was facing away from the crowd, would that take away from the music in your mind? Or distract you from what's being played? I know for a fact I'd be nervous as all hell and was thinking about just facing the opposite way to see if it would help... :/

Long time no see

I have a new goal, and a new apartment. Okay, make that two new goals.
1.) Arrange my new room in a manner that's conducive to practicing and easy to get to my instruments and amps.

2.) Pick 3-4 songs to learn CORRECTLY. Real bass lines, words, etc. My best friend is organizing this great event for cancer awareness and research. It involves a few bands playing and people making donations to the cause. The even is in Haverhill, MA at the Chit Chat bar, right in Historic downtown. If anyone wants to come or make a donation, let me know and I'll hook you up with directions, or whatever you need. Anyway, besides it being a great cause and my one good dead I force myself to do every year, it's a musical cause. :) There's a few different bands, starting at 9pm and goes till the bar closes. On to my goal part of this plug, she plans on doing a second show/benefit around October. I want to practice and get good enough to play it, as an opening act. That means I need to work on playing some songs correctly, and somehow learning how to sing, or finding someone who can, to play with.

That's my current goals, wish me luck.

OhGr

In short, good show. :)
As usual with every time drive into the Boston area, I got my ass lost. Eventually I got to the club, with enough time to drink a beer before the opening act. American Memory Project, was really good. Much more mellow than I was expecting going into the show. They're just as much about the visuals as they are the musical portion of the show. The band themselves who are made up of Skinny Puppy live musicians, hide behind a projection screen, where some old movie clips are played, to the live sound track. Their set was fairly short, right around 30 minutes. Definitely glad I made it in time to catch them though.

Next up after a short time for break down and such, was OhGr. In typical fashion Ogre came out in costume, with multiple masks and face paint underneath. All of which were removed as the set progressed, minus the face paint, that stayed on. They proceeded to play D.I.M.D. from beginning to end, with no breaks. Unfortunately I only knew two songs from that album as I didn't have a copy of it until after the show. After, as Ogre called it, the conceptual part of the show, they played a bunch of songs from the first two OhGr albums. With a couple song encore of course. :) Ogre made good use of the stage, and air, blowing feathers into the crowd till most people up real close were covered. The bands sound was very tight, and impressive. His vocals rarely sound exactly like the record(or cd whichever you happen to have) but he actually gets pretty close. If he comes around again, I'll definitely be buying tickets, and I'd suggest you do the same.

standing up, and laying it down...not so much

Went to jam with the big boys again on Wednesday. I played horribly. :) But at least I played. I was tripping over myself from being nervous, and playing while standing up. I keep talking about it, but I really should practice that. Playing while standing is a whole new ball game for fretting, your hand meets the neck at a completely different angle. Still had fun, I just really didn't get to play some good bass.

I'm going to see OhGr tomorrow night and I'm really excited. Last time I saw him it was a great show, so I'm expecting another good one. I'll try and get a review up of the show afterwards. This blog isn't just for my playing you know. ;)

Realization

I'm starting to realize just how much I love playing music. When I'm in a bad mood, like last night, I sat down with my bass and just started playing, within 15 minutes, I was in a much better mood. I was even playing my old Peavey which clicks and clacks because the action is so bad. Even with dealing with that, I was put into a good mood. Also on the plus side I'm starting to realize I'm getting much better. I was looking at some tabs and as long as I knew the song, I was able to play most of them. Some of the phrasing was a little off, depending upon how well I knew the song, but overall I was pretty pleased with how I played. I'm still pretty sloppy, but I'm getting better.

10 a day

Still didn't make it over to Tim's this Wed. They end up doing some recording instead of doing some jamming. So I stayed around the parents place and jammed out to a few songs with dad. Been doing quite well with the minimum of 10 mins a day practice. I have noticed my ear getting better. I'm finding it easier to not get quite as lost as I used to. Still having lots of fun with it. :)

pop it like it's hot...

...and slap it like a red-headed step child, or whatever you feel like slapping. I was sitting at home last night, broke out my Ibanez and starting messing around for a bit. Did a few finger exercises, a couple bass runs I like to play, and started in on some pop/slap technique drills. Straight octaves, on the A and G strings, and trying the much harder E and D strings after a while. I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I often to to leave my thumb out there too long so it ends up muting the slap. It's getting much easier though, my fretting hand seems to be getting a bit faster too, which is nice. I want to be able to play super fast, when I want to. Not all the time, I'm not trying to go guitar solos on a bass. Although, that has it's time and place. :)
I'm hitting up a movie in Boston tonight, then it's off to jam night.