another week

Here we are; another week means another post. I must now pump out another five hundred words about something that happened this past week. Really, not going to lie, this was a pretty boring week, and I know I say that every week, but this time I mean it; I literally have done nothing this past week.

            I guess I’ll just discuss what I did on Saturday evening. Because of Spring Fest, and all of my friends happened to get tickets, I was mostly alone that evening. The plan was for Matt, Harrison, and I to go to Ryder Hall and have a full band practice for hours that night. I spent all day being excited for it, because I want to show off all my new bass guitar skills. Sadly, Harrison texted us at the last second that he would not be able to make it due to a homework assignment.

            I was devastated, but thankfully I texted Matt and he and I decided to jam just us two. Playing alone with a fantastic guitarist as the bassist is a completely different situation than when there is a drummer in play. When there’s a drummer, especially one as sharp as Harrison, I no longer have to focus as much on staying perfectly on time, because I will naturally just follow the bass drum. That gives me the ability to have more fun and improvise more between the beats and give the jam so much more life. There’s also a whole new thrill being in a room completely filled with sounds, so loud that the jam completely engulfs you.

            On the contrary, when I jam alone with Matt, I need to make sure I keep the rhythm stable, as I am the whole rhythm section. I naturally do not have a good sense of beat, and so when I am given the role of both playing a fun backdrop melody and also make sure the jam stays on beat the whole time, I tend to fail. I need to sacrifice one for the other; when I just play the straight forward melody just to keep the beat, I get bored; but when I try to add little improvisational licks in between, I tend to lose the beat.

            That being said, I love jamming whether it’s with the whole band or not. Just having the ability to just express myself through this new instrument that I just began learning is such a liberating experience. Hitting notes that seem so arbitrary but actually often sound good is becoming natural to me, and I love seeing the tangible progress in my playing. There will be moments in the middle of playing with Matt where we perfectly strike the same notes without any planning, then go through this telepathic moment where we look at each other, and slowed down at the same rate, then we ended on queue.