Why the need to gig?

[mr. beaumont]

Imagine calling giant steps in G at a jam. lol.

The ultimate asshole flex move.

[kris]

Is it time to define real jazz, so we can debate that for 10 pages.

I think I know what real jazz means for me.
I played at international jazz festivals and jazz clubs, TV, radio etc ... I recorded several albums in the jazz category with leading jazz musicians.
It was my activity in the Real Jazz category.
There is a countless amount of jam sessions.
People around say that I am jazzman.
Is that the point?

[AllanAllen]

RE: The Steve Jordan quote in the Billy Hart article. This really is some GREAT trio work.

[garybaldy]

I think I know what real jazz means for me.
I played at international jazz festivals and jazz clubs, TV, radio etc ... I recorded several albums in the jazz category with leading jazz musicians.
It was my activity in the Real Jazz category.
There is a countless amount of jam sessions.
People around say that I am jazzman.
Is that the point?

I'm not fussed on so called jazz that is riffy. You get a lot of it at jazz festivals. I think it's the non musicians that go mad over it. I like a chord progression with lots of nice improv. The riffy stuff is just continuous repetitive pentatonics.

[kris]

I'm not fussed on so called jazz that is riffy. You get a lot of it at jazz festivals. I think it's the non musicians that go mad over it. I like a chord progression with lots of nice improv. The riffy stuff is just continuous repetitive pentatonics.

Pentatonics-I am not against if the musician uses it in an intelligent way and is creative ...
I was at jazz workshops a long time ago and the teacher from US presented pentatonic as a starting point for jazz improvisation.It was very interesting and creative for everyone.
Jerry Bergonzi-great jazz musician is an example of how you can use the potential of pentatonic thinking.
'Riffy stuff"-there is such a fashion lately .... perhaps the musicians practise too much with loopers ....and this gives them pleasure.
I am open to everything that does not mean that I like everything-some things bore me.
I like it:

[RLetson]

Once again the retired-English-teacher-with-a-taxonomy-fetish gives in to his leisure-fueled reflections:

The music most people recognize as "jazz" has a history--it's a tradition, and not a frozen one. And the characteristics that lead listeners to place an item in that tradition amount to a set of protocols that can be applied to existing material or used to generate new material. And that set of jazz-friendly protocols has expanded for the entire history of the tradition.

I think that the Marsalis thumbnail description of jazz characteristics accounts for a great deal of what most listeners (and practitioners) are responding to when they call a tune or performance "jazz" or even "jazzy." The tricky bit is accounting for material that draws on protocols from outside the African-American and social-dance tradition that is the spine of American "jazz"--say, 20th-century-modernist "classical" or non-Western traditions. (Is there gamelan jazz? There certainly seems to be atonal and aleatory jazz.)

A side note on what people hear when they hear music: I never call myself a jazz guitarist--I'm a jumped-up folkie with a soft spot for the swing era--but my folk/country friends inevitably see my playing as "jazzy," almost certainly because I play standards with a swing flavor and use a bunch of chords and voicings that most folk/country players don't. I don't improvise solos (though I do occasionally try something new on the spot), and I don't do the blues (except insofar as a tune has a blues structure), but I do tend to swing, so I maybe have my toes on one third of the Marsalis formula.

On the matter of playing in non-listening environments (restaurants, bars, coffee houses): I find it hard to understand players who think that the patrons are there primarily to hear music--though the coffee house tradition can easily cross over into listening-room territory, and the music in a college-town bar is crucial to the social activities of that environment (a roomful of people in the middle of their cohort's mating period). Nearly my entire playing-out experience has been in eateries of various kinds, and even when there's a stage, the balance we've sought is between being noticed (in a good way) and not being annoying or disruptive. The party of women rather loudly having a night out on fishing-opener weekend aren't there for the tunes, and if we think otherwise, we're kidding ourselves. (Thanks to Frank Zappa for the template for that remark.) Perhaps my favorite sign of audience appreciation: the pre-schooler who gets away from the parents' table and starts dancing.

[AllanAllen]

I'm not fussed on so called jazz that is riffy. You get a lot of it at jazz festivals. I think it's the non musicians that go mad over it. I like a chord progression with lots of nice improv. The riffy stuff is just continuous repetitive pentatonics.

I get what you're saying. It's like a modern modal thing, but even more boring because instead of comping around a tonal center they just vibe on a riff.

[lawson-stone]

I think I only went to one club frequently because I knew the people there. We were friends and they had little parties after the music, etc.

But arranged sessions I found rather empty. They satisfied some people, I suppose, but I always felt like a hanger-on. I don't think anyone really listened to other acts, they were too busy thinking about their own. Some of them you had to pay to play, imagine. So I never really went to them at all unless I knew someone or got invited.

One guy I knew who ran a session/open-mike night murdered his girlfriend and hid her body in a Big Yellow storage unit. But it wasn't fun all the time, occasionally the music was quite good :-)

Reminds me of the statement by Hunter S. Thompson: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

[rpjazzguitar]

I went to an invited jam this past weekend. Organized by a friend who was back in town for a few days after having moved away a few years ago. The group was old friends and bandmates.

Nonetheless, the organizer started by saying, "let's play a tune to warm up" and then handed out charts for a tune I'd never heard of at 240bpm. Warm-up? I'll stop my venting here.

Jams can be a lot of fun, or not.

[Stringswinger]

I went to an invited jam this past weekend. Organized by a friend who was back in town for a few days after having moved away a few years ago. The group was old friends and bandmates.

Nonetheless, the organizer started by saying, "let's play a tune to warm up" and then handed out charts for a tune I'd never heard of at 240bpm. Warm-up? I'll stop my venting here.

Jams can be a lot of fun, or not.

For some cats, Jams are a way to feed their own ego at the expense of others.

I don't get that. Music is not a sport, at least not to me. I am only in competition with myself.

[kris]

I went to an invited jam this past weekend. Organized by a friend who was back in town for a few days after having moved away a few years ago. The group was old friends and bandmates.

Nonetheless, the organizer started by saying, "let's play a tune to warm up" and then handed out charts for a tune I'd never heard of at 240bpm. Warm-up? I'll stop my venting here.

Jams can be a lot of fun, or not.

Maybe the organizer did not know what Jam Session meant.
The tunes are played at Jam Session that all musicians know.
This is to be the nature of the fun for musicians, not a competition from reading notes of "creative arrangements".
Weird.

[kris]

I get what you're saying. It's like a modern modal thing, but even more boring because instead of comping around a tonal center they just vibe on a riff.

I was on such a jam session where there was such a phenomenon.
It was weak and boring,.. but it was more due to the lack of the skills of the musicians.
Playing, for example, on one chord seems easy and this is the most difficult.
Each level of the jam session depends on the level of musicians playing.
It doesn't matter if "riffs" dominate there or it is more close to the tradition of jazz.
Besides, not every session must be successful.

[garybaldy]

I get what you're saying. It's like a modern modal thing, but even more boring because instead of comping around a tonal center they just vibe on a riff.

The other one is Jules Holland's incessant boogie woogie. But you can't deny that people love it.

[Stevebol]

I was done gigging 25 years ago. I always got paid what I was supposed to get paid but I got sick of the heavy lifting keeping gigs.
I miss it and it's tempting right now but gigs are too far away. It's a 3 hour drive.

So it goes. I watch paint dry these days.

[SetPhasersToSwing]

My new band had their first gig last Friday. We played a lot of Herbie Hancock, Booker T, a few blues based numbers and some arrangements of pop songs. It was fun, I like gigging, this was the first non-wedding gig I’ve done in years and I really enjoyed getting to stretch out solos and use weird effects. I brought both of my amps out so I could get my stereo delays working properly. It was all a bit indulgent but I thought why not?

This bar wants us back in May or June to do a Sunday jazz session which will be much more straight ahead, standards based but the organ quartet have another gig booked in May which will be more of the funky, uptempo jazz we’ve been working on recently.

[pauln]

Why do people even want to do gigs?
Why do we feel the need to have other people listen if we're doing this for love?
Anyway, why do we feel the need for an audience if we're not doing this because we need money?

Reading Goethe (Faust) last night, I saw
this thinking it's good an answer as any.

Unless you feel - pursuit will be in vain.
Unless this feeling surges from your soul
With primal force of pleasure, to control
Your listeners' hearts - if this you cannot gain -
Just sit forever!

[Gilpy]

Why gig?
Because they don’t give you money for sitting at home.
Playing music is a skill that I worked hard to acquire.
I am a creative person and not really suited to a regular job. So I never had the luxury of turning down a gig. Even after I stopped playing full time and just did weekends, the money was always useful and necessary.
Yes, I’ve played some gigs that made me cringe, but I got paid!
And almost always had fun.

[garybaldy]

I can't think of anything else I'd rather do.

[AdroitMage]

I had a guitar teacher say, "one gig is worth 6 months of lessons".

I had to bump this when I read this even though it's a thread from February.

Many moons ago i read an interview with Pat Metheny, and he said that gigging causes you to improve as a player faster than playing alone.

Metheny started sitting in at gigs regularly with guys who could play when he was just about 15 years old, or even younger. Reading this thread got me wondering if that had something to do with him becoming such a world-class musician at, and accomplishing that at such a young age? I mean, in addition to him studying and practicing for hours and hours every day. It's definitely food for thought.

[Hep To The Jive]

I had to bump this when I read this even though it's a thread from February.

Many moons ago, I read an interview with Pat Metheny, and he said that gigging causes you to improve as a player faster than playing alone.

Metheny started sitting in at gigs regularly with guys who could play when he was just about 15 years old, or even younger. Reading this thread got me wondering if that had something to do with him becoming such a world-class musician at, and accomplishing that at such a young age? I mean, in addition to him studying and practicing for hours and hours every day. It's definitely food for thought.

Well it's not like you can just go out and sit-in with pros as you wish, you need to be on a good level already. Metheny's talent was obvious from the start, he could do that. Apparently he was super confident and didn't hide it, telling some regular player I'm a teenager and I already better than you will ever be. Ballsy guy, but he could back it up.

And if you can't back it up , the negative first impression will be pretty hard to change, sit-ins are tricky, you can lose more than you gain. But sure, you learn faster on stage, it's a fact.

[AdroitMage]

Well it's not like you can just go out and sit-in with pros as you wish, you need to be on a good level already. Metheny's talent was obvious from the start, he could do that. Apparently he was super confident and didn't hide it, telling some regular player I'm a teenager and I already better than you will ever be. Ballsy guy, but he could back it up.

And if you can't back it up , the negative first impression will be pretty hard to change, sit-ins are tricky, you can lose more than you gain. But sure, you learn faster on stage, it's a fact.

Here's a link to an interesting article about Pat Metheny, titled "9 Facts About Pat Metheny As A Youngster:" 9 Facts About Guitarist Pat Metheny as a Youngster

It's using excerpts from this book: Carolyn Glenn Brewer’s Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas City 1964-1972—which focuses entirely on his musical journey between the ages of 10 and 18.

Here's just one excerpt from the book: “I would literally practice and listen to records probably twelve hours out of a day. I would play every second I could, and if I wasn’t playing, I was listening to a record. I think if you’re going to deal with this general area of musical language, you have to do that….I would say there’s no way around it. The music is too hard.” That kind of commitment obviously didn't leave time for much else other than becoming a great musician.

Times are different now than they were in the 60s and 70s too. I doubt Pat could do today what he was able to do back then, just show up at jazz clubs as a teenager with his guitar and be allowed to sit in with the professional jazz bands. Back then there were not many jazz guitarists at all, so he would have been kind of a novelty. Guitar was a relatively new instrument in jazz, and times were just different, not so much about silly procedures and protocols like companies are today.

[Cunamara]

Well, there are experienced, older musicians who see the value in bringing the next generation up on stage and getting some experience- rather than seeing the up-and-comers as a threat. Whether you get a second chance depends on whether your show any ability or aptitude the first time.

[rpjazzguitar]

Well, there are experienced, older musicians who see the value in bringing the next generation up on stage and getting some experience- rather than seeing the up-and-comers as a threat. Whether you get a second chance depends on whether your show any ability or aptitude the first time.

I don't know if my experience is typical, but I've seen some great young players be warmly welcomed into the fold by some old pros.

[DawgBone]

I don't know if my experience is typical, but I've seen some great young players be warmly welcomed into the fold by some old pros.

That's how I try to be with younger guys, otherwise we're all screwed. I'm just glad there is still some interest in blues and jazz music with both younger musicians and fans.

[AllanAllen]

I don't know if my experience is typical, but I've seen some great young players be warmly welcomed into the fold by some old pros.

I’m only out gigging because an old pro started mentoring me after I mentioned I wanted to play out at a blues jam.