tetchi blog

Tetchi's blog about life and stuff

Jammin’


This past week was pretty music-filled. On Sunday I went to The Rainbow to attend an open blues jam, hosted by local band Wicked Grin.

I was super comfortable playing at the blues jam as it was mostly 12-bar blues. I did some pretty good walking on the bass and really felt like I “clicked” with the drummer. It was also my first time playing my fretless on stage, so that was cool too. Big thanks to Wicked Grin for letting me jam with them!

Wicked Grin at the Rainbow

Wicked Grin bluesin’ it up

Today I went to jam at the Saturday Afternoon Jazz Jam that I had mentioned in the previous post. I was much more nervous for this as I’ve never been to a jazz jam before. The way it works is you decide on a standard from a book such as The Real Book, and just play the tune with the band. This of course is much more challenging than playing 12-bar blues as you need to compose & play a song on-the-fly.

Luckily I was pretty familiar with the first jazz standard that we jammed to, so that went pretty smoothly (although I really need to work on my rhythmic embellishments). The second one was a little flakey as I’d never seen it before and it was much more high-tempo. However as the song went on, I started to walk fairly comfortably.

I was blown away by the guys that organized the jazz jams – they were just incredible talented and made it all look so easy! One of the organizers Craig Pederson‘s bass-playing really blew my mind.

Cafe Pressed Jazz Jam

Amazingly talented jazz cats

Both jams were awesome and the guys who organized them were really chill and friendly. I can’t wait to play with them again! Gotta practice more though, haha.

Special thanks to Kev, Rye, and Tyler for coming out to the blues jam!

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