The Value of Jamming
By Kevin Phillips
Don’t forget to have fun with your music! It’s good to be productive in your rehearsals, as us artist types are often fairly distractable, but don’t be afraid to go off on creative rabbit trails at times. Whether you play all original or mostly covers, the ability to jam can be incredibly useful. It can help you with coming up with new songs, or assist you in creating interesting arrangements of things you already play. At the very least, it will strengthen your ability to listen to each other.
On our recent album, You Know That You Want To, we have an original song called "Pick It Up", for which the arrangement came from the band jamming over a progression our bass player Jared was playing at rehearsal. It’s one of our favourite songs to play!
It doesn’t have to be stuff to record or add to the live show, either. Take a song you’ve been playing for a while, and play it differently…. Try to play a punk version of a ballad, or reggae up a fast song, not to add it into the set that way, just to have fun and keep getting better at listening to each other.
Play around with the way you play… if you usually play a song with open chords on guitar, try playing higher on the neck. If you are on piano, and normally play arpeggios, try just hammering chords… just try different things sometimes. For sure, some of it may not work, but you may be inspired.
Try stuff in rehearsals that you may not be able to do yet, but that you might want to do eventually. Let everyone sing harmonies. Some may start off rough but take to it over time. There was a meme on Facebook some time back that said something like, “It’s time to go home once the guitarist sits at the drum kit”… and I understand what it meant, but switching instruments can also be inspiring. You are unlikely to start switching around much at live shows… though Sloan make it work just fine… but just doing something different can sometimes really stoke the creative fires.
Kevin Phillips is a member of Redhead Mack Band
Website: www.redheadmack.com