Mar 27 2009
We be Jammin’
So last night was the first practice of the new band. One of our friends is really connected in town and was able to get us a back room behind an art framing shop that we can not only use but where we can leave our gear locked up. He also got a sound guy to lend us a nice pair of PA speakers!
I think there may have been a miscommunication somewhere down the line because this was less of a practice and more of a full on free form jam session. It was incredibly fun. I was able to play loudly enough to feel it, right next to the drummer, and once I got into my groove, I really rocked. I also was able to dial in a really killer tone this time. I used to think the best thing to do was just turn everything on my amp up to 11 and plug into the high gain input with the gain on my eq up slightly and the lows and mids turned up a bit. I thought it gave me more sustain and a thicker sound, but it was just muddy and distorted. It worked for what I was playing at the time, but I’m really trying to refine my sound these days. So this time I plugged into the normal input, turned the preamp down, turned the gain on my eq down a bit, and then turned the highs and mids down with the lows just slightly under the middle. It sounded GREAT! I still had plenty of sustain, but the sound was clean, low and had plenty of punch.
My friend who has all these songs written and got us the festival gig is trying to put a band together and practiced seemed a bit frustrated that it was more of a jam than a practice, but we definitely got to work through a few of his songs and they sounded great with a full band playing them. We’re definitely going to have to have to really work out the arrangements and dynamics together whithout a bunch of extra people noodling around, but I think we’re off to a really good start. Practices are fun but they’re work, too. This was just fun. At one point we had 4 guitars going at once. There were a couple of guys playing harmonica. There was a mandolin player. There was this one old Texas blues guy who tore it up. I can’t wait until next week. And with any luck, I’ll have the upright in time for it!
