About a month ago, someone posted a general call on the kibbutz internal web site asking for musicians who were interested in playing music together. As I felt it would be better to participate than sit on the side and quietly complain that I am not involved, I put my name forward. The topic heated up during the past week and last night the musical group held its first rehearsal.
The line up is: lead guitar, rhythm guitar (me), bass, drums and two vocalists - like the Jefferson Airplane or early Fairport Convention! I don't know who chose the repertoire as this is an odd amalgam of old Israeli rock tunes, Mediterranean soul songs and the Jackson Five! The list of songs is not fixed and may change in the future.
So last night, as I say, was the first rehearsal. I had worked on the songs in the morning, so I had a good idea of how to play them. I had some misgivings about one or two of the songs but fortunately the rehearsal went well and I didn't have to air anything. The only note of contention was regarding the second chord in the chorus of 'Blame it on the boogie' by the Jackson Five: the original set of chords that I found were in Eb where the second chord was a strange construct. Later on I found a different set with the second chord being BMaj7 that made a lot more sense. But the bassist thinks that the second chord is something else, basing his stand on this video; here it's Db7sus4, followed by Db. This chord contains the notes Db Gb Ab Cb, or enharmonically C# F# G# B, or rearranged B F# G# C#, whereas the two guitarists are playing BMaj7 - B D# F# A#. Similar but not the same. The bassist's version lacks the planing of the guitarists' version, B -> C# -> D# (Eb); Db7sus4 to Db7 lacks real harmonic motion. As I am writing this, I am also having a WhatsApp conversation with the bassist: my last comment was about the (lack of) planing.
I don't think that I've ever played with another guitarist in such a setting and this is where my real problem lies. I tried as much as possible to get out of the way of the other guitarist, by playing on the off beats, using syncopation and generally playing in a different register (i.e. if the chord is that disputed BMaj7, he was generally playing the A shape barre chord at the second fret, so I would play the E shape barre chord at the seventh fret). My major criticism is that the other guitarist is playing too much: he's not leaving any room for the music to breathe. I'll have to try and find a diplomatic way of saying this.
I used my venerable SG copy guitar as this is very light as compared to the Washburn semi-acoustic. I discovered that the neck pickup doesn't work (probably a wiring fault) so my sound was very tinny and not what I wanted. Next time I'll take the Washburn. The other guitarist has a real Gibson SG!
The four songs that we worked on were recorded onto a mobile phone although I doubt that they will sound very good - too much drums and lead guitar.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 249 | The Fourteenth of May | Steeleye Span, Fairport Convention, 1971 | |
| 359 | Another database query in a background thread | Programming, Delphi, background thread | |
| 707 | Likert items | DBA | |
| 845 | Serendipity strikes again | DBA | |
| 846 | Traditional Yemenite pre-wedding ceremony | Personal | |
| 847 | Florence log 0 | Holiday, Florence, Italy | |
| 1132 | This day in history | Fairport Convention | |
| 1317 | John Martyn vs Dave Evans | John and Beverley Martin, Dave Evans | |
| 1501 | Today's weather | Weather |
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