Wracked Backs and Jammin

Played with a rhythm section for the first time tonight. well, a bass player, anyway. Missing drums, but it was a nice baby-step towards playing with a full-on band. There’s no question i’m gonna have a band, I just don’t know when. My recording strategy right now (taking advantage of a friend’s access to a recording studio and the opportunity for him to learn recording engineering while getting to work together… it’s a good thing) is to get a disc of 5-7 songs just me and the piano such that I can give the disc to musicians to learn my songs. Then eventually, I can start playing live with a a band.

Tonight rocked. I don’t know what it sounded like (I recorded a rough mix right hard disk, and I’m working on burning a CD so I can check it out), but it was fun teaching a couple of really talented musicians my songs. It was a kick to be talking about diminished chords and flat ninths and stuff. I played with a guitar player and a bass player who’d played in a couple bands together, so they were used to playing together, and they were both super fast – they got the songs and chord progressions and changes pretty quickly. It felt like with a couple of rehearsals, we could be getting things pretty tight.

It was a pretty big challenge playing with almost-a-band. When I play solo and make a mistake, I can bluff/power my way through and get back to the song. 7 times out of 10, it’ll sound passable. But when I play with other people who are playing what they’re supposed to, and I’m not, it sounds like major crap.

It was tons of fun, though.

Sadly, my back is back. I went to yoga today, and went swimming and sat in a hot tub – thought that would’ve calmed it down, but in fact, i think not. Certainly sitting at my piano for 6 hours tonight did not help.

But it was worth it. So I say now. We’ll see how I feel in the morning.

Happy Better Saturday, everyone.