See what i did there??

I totally missed a party/band jam... proly because we didn't manage to take any pictures best i can tell. It was a grownups-only, drink too much, jam all night party. Most of it was a lot of fun, drinking beer, goofing off, taking the boat out on the lake, all with just adults....except that i got a distressing phone call from The Little as we came back to the house to start playing, and he was all upset that i wouldn't come right home and then i didn't feel much like partying so i stopped drinking and just stressed out and developed a gnarly headache. Everything was loud, and i'm not as good at just jamming as the rest of them were. I ended up sitting on the floor because i hurt so much and it seemed all i was doing was peddling E G or A half the time. I left early and let them keep the PA i had borrowed from work and return it on Monday. So now since we cant practice again for like 3 more weeks because everyone has a life, i'm uninspired and frustrated. I have one song Match and i are learning that i'm focusing on, but it just seems to go so damn slow when i cant just hook up with him when i need to go over a part again. I just feel stuck and lost and clumsy again. ::sigh::

Hell of a Party!

It's always a hell of a party at Betsy and Marks house... they have more friends than i could ever come up with. Four bands, Outnumbered (the kids), The Marked Bills, one i didn't know, us (Supah Sweet), and then Marcelo's band. I think Mark was in three of them in some way or another! Anyway, the kids went with me, and a friend of mine who took lots of pictures of us. I could hear my Little Guy yelling "Go Super Mommy" while i was playing, but i was trying to concentrate and smile once in a while, since i have so many pictures of me frowning at my fretboard :-). We had to play w/o Aaron, and i had to play thru the Pevey amp (which i never like my sound from) so things were different all around. I think every single song got messed up in one way or another, but both kids, and my friend said they didn't hear any mess-ups. Although my friend, who's one of those people who claims 'anyone can sing' did finally admit i may be 'tonally challenged' LOL. My Little Guy said 'it was ok, your mic wasn't loud enough anyway'.

Anywayz, here's some pictures!

4th of July party coming up!

We get to play at Betsy and Marks place on the lake again. :-) If the weather holds we'll get to play outside on the patio. We wont have Aaron because he needs to work so the last two practices have been w/o him and it's been odd. The new guy is cool, but it's weird to have the guitar player (and a much better one than me) looking to ME to see where we are though. He had been watching Aaron but w/o him that's shifted a little. Interesting because he thinks in "key of"and I think in fret numbers, so I've had to turn the headstock tuner on a few times to figure out what note i'm playing for him. It's going to be weird to play w/o Aaron though.

Wee! Finally got to practice again!!!!

We've all needed to play, but we've all been busy with kids and stuff. After the open mic, we've talked a bit about adding another guitar player so that Aaron could play more rhythm and not have to concentrate so much on lead lines and solos. Especially since some of the new songs we're adding we can't find TAB for. So they had talked with a friend of Mark's who played right before us about coming and jamming with us.

He had gone and jammed with Aaron one night and Aaron was impressed so they invited his to jam with us at practice. So practice was a lot of shifting dynamics, he's good at listening and just kind of picking up something he can jam over the top of what we're doing. He does fill in quite a bit, there was at least one song it was nice to be able to drop back to 1/2 notes or whatever because i didn't have to fill the gaps too. Sometimes it was pretty different from the way we've been playing it. A little odd for me because we've been playing them really stripped down and i got used to that. but I know the songs well enough to just keep going. It was nice to be able to relax a little because I didn't have to try and fill gaps that Aaron couldn't cover.

He started into a song that I didn't know but I could follow the beat and watch his root note on the power chords so except for trying to guess where he was going next I had the 4 notes figured out and could play along. Turned out it was 'Breakdown' by Tom Petty and Aaron and everyone else know it so we'll add it. It was really cool to be able to play Breakdown just by watching him and going with the flow, that's a bit deal for me. I'm not really a 'jam' kind of player so it was cool to be able to figure it out and play along and not look, or feel, silly.

He does seem to have a lot to offer, he doesn’t have an ego, and he's cool about showing us what he's doing and not putting anyone down. He works well with moving so i can see what he's doing if he notices I’m watching him, and he and Aaron work well together. I hope he'll loosen up a bit, he's either just a quiet guy, or a little bit stiff. I cant tell yet. He's nice though and he'll get used to our goofing off. He plays a bit of bass too, so that's cool because I’d still like to play guitar too once in a while, but i do understand that I'm better at the bass now and i enjoy it too. So I guess, if he'll have US, we've added a new guitar player :-)

.

Open Mic Night!

We had hella fun! Even though i spent the whole day beforehand being overly nervous it went very well. The host was a friend of ours and he made it very relaxed and fun for us. He promoted us beforehand as a 'featured artist' on the FB page and on craigslist too!

The one song i was obsessing over i did fine, the one i knew in my sleep i fumbled but unless you really knew the song you prolly couldn't tell i was playing the wrong thing. One other the drummer launched too fast, but i have two bass patterns for that so i went with the simpler one

and was fine. It's nice to be comfortable enough to able gel and adjust. A friend who plays bass with a working band came, it was nice to have someone thinking positive for me, that i knew would come hug me and tell me i was great afterwards. For our very first time 'playing out' it was a great experience! They wants to know when we want to come back. :-)

I know, it's been a while...

I guess i haven't taken the time to write much lately, it's been quite a while. I've been making more of an effort to be off the computer in the evenings and concentrate on music and family lately. I'ts going well. Match says for the amount of time I don't practice I'm doing well enough. Part of it though, is that i just have too many things I'm working on right now and i just get distracted. We played at the Rhythm Fire Xmas party in December and that was a lot of fun...We've been adding some new songs to the band playlist and exploring different styles we're enjoying. The last one we added we didn't find much TAB online to Aaron and I figured out most of it, including a different bass line for me from what he was playing. It's been fun learning more about music and learning how to improvise on the TAB we do find. It doesn't hurt that Aaron can figure some stuff out by ear either. We finally decided we're ready to try an Open Mic night, and will be tackling that on the 8th. It's a small one, and we know the guy running it so we're hoping it will be cool.