Jam ideas

Kalcium

My best friend and i are both guitar players but whenever we play guitar its always sort of, he plays, i play, he plays, i play. So i'm just curious, what do you guys do in ur jam sessions? ?

Bob-Dubery

Kalcium wrote: My best friend and i are both guitar players but whenever we play guitar its always sort of, he plays, i play, he plays, i play. So i'm just curious, what do you guys do in ur jam sessions? ?

I don't have any collobarations going on at the moment. I did a while back, and what we did, and what I found very enjoyable, was to look at ways of playing together without getting in each other's way, such that we were both complementing each other's parts and the piece that we were playing. Given that the other guy was a way better player I mostly did the staying out of the way and he mostly did the complemenary playing ?

Our considerations went down to which of our guitars we should use - what combination of our guitars worked well together.

Seventhson

I think the two of you should learn some songs and jam them. Or you can try and do you are stuff. Free flow jams my old band and I use to do.

ezietsman

If its your thing and you understand enough about keys and scales you can play some simple 12 bar blues tunes, that way each gets a chance to play the rhythm and lead. One step further is to come up with a chord progression/riff you like and the other tries to improvise something on top of that. I guess this is more or less what X-rated was talking about.

There's loads of backtracks without the lead guitar parts available on youtube and other places, try using that for a 'complete band' feel to your jam sessions.

Good luck, we all struggle with this at some point.

domhatch

Oh yes, that old chestnut. Some good ideas here, but it's always going to be a struggle when there are only two guitarists. You don't mention which of you is the stronger, whether one of you plays lead, or whether you're both rhythm guitarists, whether either of you is taking lessons, etc – info like this would help lots in answering your question and guiding you forward.

As was mentioned above, probably the best plan is to grab a few of your favourite songs and play them together. Breaking a song down and building it back up is an invaluable tool in any musician's arsenal; seeing which bits fit where and, more importantly – if not most importantly – trying to figure out why. It sounds like homework but it soon becomes ye olde-fashioned jam sesh with a compadre at arms in the mix. Do that a couple of times and hey presto, you'll be jamming your own tunes pretty quick too, and that's where the story really starts.

Another idea I'm thieving from above is the 12-bar blues. Scour the net for info on the basic 12-bar blues and the minor and major pentatonic scales if you don't have it all down yet, and you can take it in turns playing lead and rhythm (again, as mentioned above). Once you've done that, you can try to record yourselves. No fancy studio equipment needed, just your average hi-fi ought to do it. A lot of these things come with built-in mics or karaoke systems these days, so set it up and give it a bash. You can probably pick a system like this up for under a grand – just don't expect Nashville-standard recordings, that's all.

But backing tracks are always a good bet, especially if you can find decent quality ones. There are a few sites out there that are community-based like this one, where members post content they've created in a variety of styles. On these you will no doubt find high quality MP3s, but you will also find good quality MIDI files which will do the job just as well. When learning to find stuff to help you do good stuff, the net is your good pal. Remember to give back as and when you can though.

As with all things guitar, the best way to learn is to do. And to have fun doing. Enjoy.
dh

Dave-the-Pub-muso

Well, I've spent all of my guitar playing life in bands with two guitarists. I've played metal, blues and folk on electric and acoustic guitars and I have always lived by one simple principle: Never have two guitars doing the same thing at the same time - it's a wasted opportunity! So... Either have one person strumming chords and the other picking chords or have one person playing basic chords, the other playing the same chords in different positions i.e. barre chords or power chords or chords higher up the neck - this really helps to "fill out" the sound and makes things interesting. If you into fingerstyle picking then try the "polyrhythm" approach where you both pick the same chords but at different rhythms e.g. the first person picks a picking rhythm and the second picks at half speed or double speed or uses triplets (you still change chords together but the way you choose to pick them is different.)

Hope this is useful!
Dave

Dave-the-Pub-muso

I lost connection there for a while - to continue and I don't mean to blow my own trumpet here, but here are some examples of what I'm talking about from my album:

Different chord voicings:

http://www.myspace.com/soulfirecapetown/music/songs/Live-My-Life-27534053

Polyrhythm picking:

http://www.myspace.com/soulfirecapetown/music/songs/goree-island-58618591

http://www.myspace.com/soulfirecapetown/music/songs/Place-of-Ghosts-77596161

Basically just take advantage of having two parts and be creative!

Enjoy and good luck - Dave.

Keira-WitherKay

this is not advice on how to jam the guys above have covered it fabulously +1 to everything i read.....

my contribution ......is simple : "jam with people that are considerably better players than you "

jamming with buddy's who are of same standard or close is fun and do that for kicks with a few six packs or whatever your poison is...... but if you fortunate to find jam mates and even band mates who are considerably better than you ..is gonna improve your playing immensely cos even if they not tutoring you per se ( you could always ask " hey why did you play that note choice over that chord??? and most players will explain ) and these mini lessons and what you 'steal with your eye's" will make your own playing improve........

even me as a fulltime pro muso all my collaborations are with people i think i can learn from .and believe me i lap up any info that comes out of that collaboration and use it in my style ..... i would NEVER want to be the 'strongest person musically in any band" even when i had my band going the "Keira Witherkay project"( video's on you tube ) the band was my compositions.and yes i was the only guitarist but the drummer and percussionist were both top level jazz muso's and my singer is the now signed and on her way to being famous ...none other than the lovely and talented Auriol Hays from the "auriol hays project " who appeared at swiss Montreux jazz festival 2010 and yeah i learnt so much about feel and groove from the drummers and auriol shared some awesome jazz phrasing when she was scatting that helped me with my phrasing ...... and again recent collaboration "Duo Guitarras"( video's on youtube) vwith phenomenal player Peter Theron "evolution" on this site is a collaboration with a shredder who agreed to play acoustic music with me ....... we playing my compositions again ... but his input is awesome and gives me new vision with what i can do with my material ..... and yes i will never want to be a shredder but peter is such a fabulous muso and technically astounding that again i been learning so much .... and my music(compositions) will grow with their input as does my own musical abilities......

so yeah i don't have an ego that makes me want to be the best player on stage but my bands do kick butt ?

so yeah long story but hopefully food for thought ,

DonovanB

Keira thats awesome advice!

Kalcium

sorry i took so long in replying but thanks so much for all the input, i will definitely give that all a try. He is definitely a better guitarist than I am, but to be honest neither one of us really knows that much theory, i've never been for lessons, hes been for a few, but i do know a little bit, like the pentatonic boxes (not sure if i know major or minor, was just the 5 shapes with 1 note marked as the major root and 1 as the minor root) and iv been told what 12 bar blues is (have vids so i can look it up quickly but dont know it offhand)
i have quite a few video lessons and i've heard of a lot of sites with theory but i guess i just haven't had the discipline to go through it all, like i would never be able to tell you why i would play any note over any chord except to say that i thought it sounded right...

so yeah i guess if i were to find guitarists that are a lot better than me it would be a good thing to play with them ?

Kalcium

Dave! Your music is really good stuff!!! ? ? ? me = fan ?

Dave-the-Pub-muso

Kalcium wrote: Dave! Your music is really good stuff!!! ? ? ? me = fan ?

Thanks man! It's also good to see more guys from KZN joining the forum!

Cheers,
Dave