All Of Me

[CliffR]

We have a once-a-month jam in my village, and I've been working on a couple of tunes - this and an F blues - in case I ever screw up the courage to join in. (Last gig I played was with a Pixies-style band in the early 90s.) I'd love to hear your thoughts and critiques.

[Tal_175]

Nice playing. One thing I noticed and maybe I am wrong but it seems like your sense of time and where you are in the from is tightly coupled with this particular backing track. You're listening for certain events in the backing track in order to orient yourself. That could be dangerous when you play with others. Have you tried playing the tune and improvising without a backing track with a metronome on 2 and 4 (or 1 and 3)? Or even without a metronome but without getting lost and adding and dropping beats? That really helps with keeping time and following the form.

[CliffR]

Nice playing. One thing I noticed and maybe I am wrong but it seems like your sense of time and where you are in the from is tightly coupled with this particular backing track. You're listening for certain events in the backing track in order to orient yourself. That could be dangerous when you play with others. Have you tried playing the tune and improvising without a backing track with a metronome on 2 and 4 (or 1 and 3)? Or even without a metronome but without getting lost and adding and dropping beats? That really helps with keeping time and following the form.

Thanks! That's a very astute observation - that's exactly what's going on. I'll try your advice for sure.

[digger]

Nicely done. Sounds like you're navigating the changes well to me. You have some neat moments where you let the playing cross bar lines into the new chord (always an issue for me!) and some good variations on phrase length and rhythm. Were you to get up at your monthly jam and play like that I'm sure folks would be well impressed

[pauln]

What are you looking at to your right every few seconds?
Per Tal_175's observation, I wonder if "your sense of time and where you are in the form" is correlated with changing between looking and not looking at whatever that is?

You demonstrate that you can play nice up tempo triplets @0:43. The backing track is really slow; what happens if you speed it up about 50%?

CliffR, you're definitely good to go for the once a month jam!

[garybaldy]

What are you looking at to your right every few seconds?
Per Tal_175's observation, I wonder if "your sense of time and where you are in the form" is correlated with changing between looking and not looking at whatever that is?

You demonstrate that you can play nice up tempo triplets @0:43. The backing track is really slow; what happens if you speed it up about 50%?

CliffR, you're definitely good to go for the once a month jam!

At 0.43 Cliff is play 4 straight semiquavers per beat (against the swing feel) to great effect. I like it!

[CliffR]

Thanks all for the kind comments and thoughtful notes.

I mentioned in the youtube video description, but forgot to repeat it here: the second chorus is me improvising, but the first is based on a transcription of a Charlie Parker version that he recorded with Lennie Tristano. So I can't take credit for the sophistication in those lines .

Yes, the line at 0:43 starts with a pickup and a triplet, followed by 16th notes. I felt I hadn't quite got that locked in, but I'll take your compliment garybaldy!

I'm looking to the right at the iReal chart. So I still haven't quite internalised the changes. Hopefully playing with just a metronome will help fix that.

If I increase the tempo (it's 110bpm here, and the fastest I tried last night was 130) the double-time line starts to fall apart. I think I could probably, with some intense technical practice, work this up to maybe 140 or 150, but it would be right at the edge of my technical ability - probably not wise for my first go at jazz in front of an audience. I might work on turning it into a simpler line.

The other thing that happens when I increase the tempo is I pretty quickly get lost in the changes. So there's still a fair bit of me thinking 'what shall I do next', and there's simply not time for that at faster tempos. So this definitely needs work.

I saw a really good youtube guitar instructor recently say how he felt that he only played at 20% of his ability at his first jam. I get ruffled just hitting record on my computer, so suspect the live result will be a little rough around the edges .

Thanks all for the encouragement!