Musicians Surround
I realized something in the music world. If you want to improve a lot as a musician and get a lot of motivation to play, here is the most important advice ever: ALWAYS BE SURROUNDED BY CRAZY MUSICIANS.
Being always in contact with musicians is good for your artistic soul and for you personal growth as a musician. Like that, you can learn from them, talk with them on some tips, how to practice, plan battles with them, jam with them, improvise with them, learn new musical styles, etc.
Musicians can introduce you to others musicians. That’s how you build a name of yourself. You build your reputation. That’s how you get cool contracts. “Hey I need to go in studio next week, do you know a pretty decent bass player who can do the tracks?” “Oh yeah! I heard this guy! People say that he’s really amazing! Here is his email”.
It’s hard for people who are not surrounded by musicians to get motivation and inspiration. Sure you can listen to any cd’s or watch any videos, but it is different from a real human interaction.
People who studies in music can find this task easy to do. But what about the law student? Engineer student? Father of kids? Who are surrounded by non-musicians everyday but they know they have a musician soul and they want to improve and have fun with their passion…
This is the question I’m asking. How can you do that? How can you develop a cool musician network to jam with any day, talk with them, take a coffee with them, share cd’s etc.
Being surrounded with musicians will improve your musical maturity and talent by 2000%.
July 30th, 2010 at 04:33
hey, i completely agree with you.
the whole idea is to be surrounded by musicians.
As victor wooten says, if music is a language, then you get better by talking with others……
But my situation is slightly different. Since ive been quite ill currently, i can't really go out and meet musicians, and new people all the time.
My answer to overcome this problem has been to always listen to new music, To some extent, its like meeting new musicians.
One of the ways i introduce some spontanity is by being innovative. For instance if i want to play the song 'cant stop' by the chili peppers, i'll not play along with the basic track. I take out random drum and guitar covers on you tube and load them. Then i jam with each one. To some extent, it simulates jamming with different people, with their peculiarities of phrasing, tempo etc. Every time i play, i realise a particular drummer's style pulls me this way or that.
I'd love to know if there are any other innovative ways of simulating playing with new musicians.