Don't be afraid to take it down, have the whole band just lay low,
play real soft, real basic, then when you charge back in, it's
exciting it's fun. Changes are what makes music music.
My seven year old son is a budding performer. He's been after me all
year to bring him to a jam session to sing. I told him that he'd
have to practice every night for a few weeks before I'd consider
taking him. In the meanwhile his birthday came around and my wife
bought him the American Idol PlayStation game. This thing is
something else. It's not just glorified karoake. It has voice and
pitch recognition. The program gives real-time feedback on lyrics
and pitch. On the first night I helped him learn the words for
"Stand By Me" and did what dads do observe from the fringes. After a
couple of weeks of playing the game and idle Idol prattling, I
finally went and listened to him. Lo and behold, he knew the song,
was on pitch, and demanded that I take him to the next jam session--
which I did.
We went up to the bandstand, I got the big guys organized and the
little guy belted out a pretty credible rendition of "Stand By Me."
On the drive home he talked about volume without any prompting from
me. I just asked, "How do you think it went?" He replied, "The key
of the song was too loud. It ruined the softness of the song." So I
said, were they out of tune or too loud? He said, "Too loud."
When a seven year old with no formal musical training can look at a
bunch of seasoned pros and, based solely on intuition, make that kind
of judgement what it tells me is that those guys weren't paying
attention to the song, what it meant, how it needed to be expressed.
I think we do this in general, whether it's in a jam session or with
our regular bands. As individuals I think we just stop listening to
each other and we worry more about "our" individual sounds than the
song and its message. What is a song anyway but a moment of
emotional energy converted into sonic waves for the shared enjoyment
of the musicians and the audience. When we do our jobs right there's
no separation between instruments, voices, the band, the audience, it
is a shared moment. When we do it wrong, it's too loud, the solos
are too long, and the audience treats us like background noise.
:-p What a load of hooey. I can't believe I just wrote that. The
point is little kids don't have preconceived notions about how things
should be, they have the beginner's mind. The bright ones pay
attention and behave accordingly. We could learn a lot by observing
the children in our lives and we could accomplish more if we acted
like them more.