Soundtrack to this post: “Fire in the Sky” by John Butler Trio, from the Grand National
Today I just have a quick thought on reluctance and its negative effect on music. More specifically, two of my friends and I have discussed being a three person for literally years. We’ve tried different to name the band before starting the band, we’ve had websites for bands for the three of us that never occurred, and so on. The one issue that has held us back the most is organization of instrumentation. We’ve been an electric guitar, bass and drumkit blues trio, we’ve been a five piece where I played a uke and a drummer and keyboardist joined us…. More or less we’ve tried way too hard for way too long to figure our band out before we were a band.
Amidst our busy weeks and hectic lives, the three of us always just end up jamming acoustically (Alex and Ben are both great guitar players, and I switch between hand drums and uke), and up until recently, we looked at raw, honest acoustic jamming simply as a palet upon which we could build songs for another format. However, Ben recently came to Alex and I and posed a great point. All he basically had to say was “why don’t we just be exactly what we are, and just play already?!”
With that in mind, the three of us played open mic night at Founder’s brewing Co last night with no setlist, no predetermined setup, not even an idea of what it might sound like. The result was actually a ridiculous amount of fun on our end, and a shockingly large applause on the end of the beer swelling patrons.
I guess the point of this isn’t to glorify an experience of mine or even to say “look out for my new band!” It’s more along the lines of this: Worrying about what art will be, before the art actually IS, can only hurt art. This goes for all modes and genres, and other areas of life as well. Just get it all out there, put all of your heart into something and if it sounds/looks/tastes/feels like mush, then its mush. However, the more we do it, the better it becomes. So, long story short, just jam!
Here’s a real fortune I got out of a fortune cookie my sophmore year of college: “Stop wasting time stringing and tuning your instruments… start making music now!” My response was “Touche, universe. Touche.”
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