Tomo Fujita Guitar Wisdom

Thank you Rich!

That's true about you need to play with someone better than you. So you will inspired ans encourage to play better. That's why practicing with backing tracks is not so great because no reaction from other side. Perform together with other is like conversation on one topic. That convesation can go many direction within the form / topic.

Not loosely to prepare! Prepare those two songs (whatever you choose) Practce chords, melkody, triad, prepare phrases that great over those chord changes. Plesae don't forget to record yourself! That's only way to impove yourself! Just jamming itself is not enough. Reviewing your performance deeply.

Don't worry! Don't expect anything.
If you think that way...why don't you practice only melody for hours and days!
How about this? Practce melody a lot and record yourself a few times as if you are playing in front of peope (with right pressure!)

In order not to loose your solo over chord progression.
Practice many times wiith R 3 7 chords so it is very difficult to get lost over chord changes
Don't worry about what others think. In order to improve, you need to drop any pride and expectation. Broadway.... a lot of triads!

Good thing to achieve.... nothing is easy so it's better to feel all positive and don't worry!
Please go out and play LIVE!

Please don't feel that way! You can prepare things much deeply so you can feel good yourself as a player.

Thank you for posting a great topic / thread!

PS, Practice like Kurt! Did you see this thread!
https://tomovhxtv.vhx.tv/forums/general/73188-practicing-with-tomo

Tomo

I also just went to my first jazz jam ever yesterday too and bombed really really hard!! I called Autumn Leaves and All of Me (both in the key of CMaj/Amin for my sake) and even then I was lost in a deep dark forest where the sun don't reach!!

I could feel the daggers from my more experienced bandmates as I struggled to find the key even with shell chords and blasted completely out of key and didn't even land on chord tones for like 70% of the 2-5-1 resolutions. I was completely lost in many parts, and resorted to just mute strumming at times. I'm pretty certain I played the melody a whole tone up at some points too. Definetly made people cringe because I played a note way louder than I intended to :D

I messed up the head to all of me (the first song I called) so bad that for autumn leaves, the horns insisted he would take the head hahahaa.

BUT I had a lot of fun!! I was grateful for the chance to play with other people too, because there aren't many where I am. My mentality going in was: no one is good the first time they do anything. I'm expecting that I will have 100 bad jam sessions before I have one that I am satisfied with, but that's how it should be right! If we were so good from the beginning, what journey would we have to enjoy :D

Also, I noticed that even the experienced players, when they were doing the sound check, sounded very comfortable and intimidating, but as soon as the song started, they sounded more stiff and textbook-like. For me that made me more relaxed, because I realized I don't need to "sound as good as I do in practice." If they have a harder time on stage despite their experience, of course I would too! I let go of the pressure to play well, and just tried to have fun (while of course focusing on the tune and opening my ears).

I hope you can celebrate your achievement just like I am celebrating my win! And sorry to answer your question so late into my post, but if you ask me, we should go as soon as possible. Because we won't get any better at playing live by waiting!

Confidence is important in jazz after all, so why don't we be our best cheerleaders :D If you won't be, I will be! You should definitely go again Richard! Playing Blue Bossa and Broadway on your first jam is extra gutsy. If you ask me that fits the mold of a jazz man! I'm looking forward to your post a few months later where you tell us you killled it :D

Thank you Kim Sun Ho for sharing your experiece.

Jam session (beginning) is a great place to make a lot of mistakes and learn how to prepare? How to recover from that experience. You just need 10-20 sessions to understand something.

Later years, you can jam with musicians that went through many jams and learnt their foundation and musical languages so they can speakl that musical language together!

Autumn Leaves.... Start Am7 or start C-7.... need to prepare both keys.
All of me is a great song! I would do practice R 3 7 Swing everyday!!

Don't practice with backing tracks! Practice with a metronome or by yourself while imagining the band & chord progressions. Learn more triad inversions too.

Record yourself and listen carefully when you hit a wrong note... how you recover? Make sure you didnot stop that chord progression (Train) going!

For jam session, I would show up there a few weeks and record each set so that you are familiar with song choices and you can prepare better.

Blue Bossa is good!
Broadway is awesome!

Thank you for your encouragement to Rich!
Have more fun!

Tomo

Thank you Tomo.
I feel like I have practiced the heads of those two songs probably 100 times.
I was actually surprised by my ability to still mess them up. I guess I underestimated the impact of playing in front of other people.
I really went in with some ideas of what to play and unfortunately they all went out the window.

Thank you Kim Sun for your positivity and for sharing your own experience.
It was a horrible feeling for me standing on stage after bombing. I wish I could have disappeared. But I think that shows how much I care about and love music. As much as I tried to tell myself to just go up there and play regardless of how bad I am…it still hurt to let myself down. I do need to have more fun. (Would be fun to feel like I was having a musical conversation with someone tho).

Rich, thank you for sharing this with us. I believe that someday, the experience you just described will be a cherished memory of what motivated you to prepare and practice differently. Sometimes, difficult moments are necessary for us to change for the better. We all face failures many times. Don't give up. Keep moving forward. Things will improve, and we will be here to support you along the way. Quiet your judgment as much as you can and focus on what you can do now to feel better. You got this!

Thanks for responding Clay.
Your current situation sounds like a dream for me. I wish I had someone to collaborate creatively with.
I was recently in an ‘80’s cover band for about 5 years but I quit because I felt like I was just playing the songs exactly as they were written and I didn’t feel like I was creating anything. (Nor was it making me a better guitar player). We played ‘should I stay or should I go’ as well.
If I were to be in a cover band at this point in my life it would have to be one where we could take a song in a different direction.
But to be honest I don’t have the confidence in my playing to feel like I could even do that.

Thank you Clay for sharing ecouragement, your experience and very kind suggestions!

Tomo

Clay - I'm positive that if you lived near me, we'd be buddies! Should I stay or should I go was in my bands setlist! My band broke up during covid lockdown when my singer/2nd guitar moved from PA to Florida. I still give him grief about breaking up the band, lol.

Richard - I hear you. My band played covers from the 60's/70's/80's mostly. We pretty much played like the records except for the solos. Me and Mario split the solos between us, and we'd always start the solos like the record but then improvise. There were very few solos that we played note for note. Because we were all old, we only rehearsed one night a week for about 2 hours. Our thought was we'll just play it like the record because we wanted to just play and not try to make our own arrangements. Our practice time was too precious to spend other than just playing. Although some of my favorite rehearsals were where we only played one or two songs and just talked all night.

If you hit a sour note, just hit it again! It's JAZZ after all, right? The first time you hit a bad note it's a mistake. The second time, it's intentional. :-)

I didn't know this song until this video. It's challenging! I now have an even deeper appreciation for Rich's courage.

Thank you Clay! This song is a great solo training song!

Tomo

That was some AWESOME comping.
Holy crap ~ I didn’t prepare like that!
I will make a video and share with you here just to prove (mainly to myself) that I CAN play the melody.

Tomo ~ after you played the melody the first time you played something different with much more space…are you imagining someone else playing the melody at that point?

Thank you Rich! You can prepare something similar to those. A lot of preparation you can do.

Great question! I wanted my audiences attention! So I made more space between those melodic phrase. If I stop playing... people want to hear more! That was my setup idea for you!

The space is also very important part of improvisation and music.

Tomo

Nice piece to play. Cool jazz to perform Rich. Thank you for the demonstration video Tomo. This song has been in my listening genre with that rhythm, I like it :) - johno

Thank you Morey for encouragement and suggestions! Good job! Plesae enjoy more! Those are great fun songs!

Thank you so much for being a member of Guitar Wisdom!
Plesae don't forget to record your perforamnce! Make a few friends at jam session so someone can make videos for you.

Tomo

I made this video for you! Please leave your feedback on this video

Thank you.

Tomo

Is this the Mo Kanner I met at the Bitter End a few years ago? It's so wonderful to hear from you! Thank you so much for sharing. As my Mom tells Tomo, "Play your a** off!"

This is so helpful!
Thanks for teaching this!
Kurt

Thanks for that comment Kurt!

Watched maestros video (above) again.

There is a lot of concepts there!
Playing softly “inside” the reverb is such a beautiful effect!
Also, I’ve felt this notion of massive prep and “letting go” while playing (just at home haha)

(This is kind of off topic, I’ll make a video about this, triad practice now)

Last night I was practicing “hotel California” with triads:
Bm, F#, A, E, G, D, Em, F#. (repeat).

I got lazy and stopped thinking at one point after the second F#, played Gmaj backwards, and sounded good but I don’t understand why…? Is it because Gmaj has an F# in it? I will compare the notes between G and F#. Or because a G in the phrase before…?

Anyway I was surprised I did something random almost and it felt and sound “right”)

Thank you so much Tadashi!
I feel like I want to cry ~ everyone here has been so supportive and positive.
Don’t see that too much in the world anymore but you see it all the time on Guitar Wisdom.
💗💗💗

Thank you Tadashi for encouragement and a great appreciation!

Tomo

Thank you Suni for encouragement! Yes! Rich was so brave and great! I hope he will keep doing that!

Plesae enjoy your guitar playing and jam with others! Thank you so much! Very important to practice simple way! Learn & practice "Melody" "Chords" (R 3 7) No backing track!

Today I taught one of my private lesson students. He told me that he has been practicing "There will never be another you" I asled his "How to practice" He said " I practice with YouTube backing track" So I explain how to prepare / practice with R 3 7 chords & a metronome. I pulled out that backing track from YouTube and I explained why not so good. Too much information and too busy so that track itself is good sounding music so anything you add.... not noticeble. Plus comping was way too busy like chord melody.

As a player... we notice a big mistake (wrong note) but audience noramlly didn't notice that much. But if you make a sour face.. then they will notice.

No harm at all! Don't worry! Don't think too much!

Tomo

Thank you Tomo!

The most I learned from my looper so far is how to set up my pedalboard and my current dual-mono (actually three amps with the looper so wet-dry-wet?). By installing the looper I found I had one combo out of phase (just sounds weaker). ABY switch with inverted phase button makes the sound quite beautiful I think…triads sound amazing!

I learned the hard way what you have been saying Tomo, practice simpler. Haha! Everything is like that it seems.
I have started using my old metronome, again! Thank you maestro Tomo!

My pleasure Suni!

Good job on your set up!

Simple & slow is so good!

Tomo

Thank you Matt for sharing your experience. Having some experiences is so good! Thanks for encouragement to others. Best not to expect anything and don't worry anything! Keep going!

I used to play at Boston Baptist Church on Columbus Avenue in Boston. My first one gig was like... Organ player just told me "Db" and I asked him "What should I play?" He said " Play like BB King" So I did a lot of fills and started to understand those chord progressions. Then this Church made recordings of each service as audio cassette tapes so I got those and I could review songs. It was a great experience in 2-3 years. I have learned about "Feel"

Tomo