Band Jamming No Easy Task for the No Prep Novice

I’ve always been a huge fan of music. It’s part of my job, but also an essential component of my life. I know that I, as we all have, have seen someone playing guitar or drums in a band and thought to “I bet I could do that.”

Recently, I had the opportunity to give it a shot.

This task actually had two parts. First, I would go to 440 Instruments in Augusta and take a few quick lessons on piano, drums, bass, and guitar. After the lessons, I would sit in with a jazz band at The Fox’s Lair. Here’s the kicker. I wasn’t going to be able to pick which instrument I was going to play. The guys at 440 were going to determine that for me based on my skill level.

Taking lessons part didn’t make me nervous. Sitting in with the band, playing in front of actual musicians, had me pretty anxious.

When I arrived at 440 Instruments, I met with Dave Mercer, Deveran Roof and Jamie Jones. These are the guys who were going to show me the ropes and get me prepared for my gig. I started with Dave, who gave me lessons on piano and drums. Dave sat down at the keys and started playing the melody to “Beth” by Kiss - showing me the keys to hit and how to form the chords. The way he did it made it look so easy. It was NOT as easy as it looked.

I started moving my fingers exactly how Mercer showed me What was happening, however, definitely sounded quite different. I realized that my fingers just weren’t moving as quickly as I would’ve liked. The coordination it takes to play piano well was something I just didn’t seem to have. However, Mercer said I did pretty good for someone who’d never played before. After butchering “Beth” it was time to move on to drums.

I’ll be honest, I thought I’d kill it at drums. I thought, I drum along with my favorite songs in the car and I nail it. This can’t be that much different.

It was.

 I’m familiar with the 1-2-3-4 beat we were using. Mercer told me to hit the kick drum and high hat on beats one and three and hit the snare and high hat on beats two and four. Simple enough, I thought. Wrong. Just like with the piano, I was lacking some serious coordination.

Trying to count in my head and make my hands do what they needed to do was proving way more difficult than I thought it would be. Thankfully, Mercer had a lesson to give an actual student and spared us all from any further ear damage. It was at this point that I realized that I probably shouldn’t be playing drums or piano in the band later that night. If so, maybe I should invest in ear plugs to give the people in attendance.

Next, we moved on to the strings. First stop - bass. Now I’m kind of familiar with bass because my brother has played since he was in high school. I really wanted to be sort-of-good so he wouldn’t be disappointed in me. Roof sat me down and showed a pretty simple bluesy bass riff. This came a lot easier than drums or piano. My main issue was maneuvering my hands around the neck of the guitar to fret the notes I needed. Once I got it down however, I felt like I had a nice little groove going. It wasn’t great by any means, but it sounded better than what I’d just done on drums and piano.

Once I was feeling pretty confident about my bass playing, I moved on to guitar.

I’ll be honest - I have some experience with guitar. I’ve taken guitar lessons on two separate occasions in my life, so it wasn’t a totally foreign concept for me. Jones sat down with me and sort of refreshed my memory on the E and A chords and a simple strum pattern. The hardest part was switching between chords. That had always proved difficult for me to when I played in the past. My fingers just don’t move as fast as my brain does. However, Jones and I got a pretty good groove going. It actually sounded like real music.

It was at this point that I started feeling a little more confident in playing with an actual band. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. After I finished my guitar lesson and everything was taken into account, the decision was made that I would be playing bass with the band at Fox’s Lair later that night.

Now the only thing to do was wait and try not to let my nerves completely consume me.

We decided that it would probably be best if I sat in with the band before the show actually started. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s good time watching actual musicians doing their thing. I got to The Fox’s Lair about 15 minutes before the doors opened and I’ll be honest, I was a total ball of nerves. It’s one thing playing instruments in a store, but now I’m sitting in with a band at their show.

I sat down, nerves and all, and Roof strapped his very expensive bass on me and told me to run through the riff that we did earlier in the day. I did just that, letting the drummer find a beat that matched up perfectly. For about a minute we jammed! I actually jammed with a drummer, and it sounded pretty decent - at least to my ears. I walked out of The Fox’s Lair feeling pretty accomplished. I did a lot in a short amount of time.

I’ve always appreciated musicians and their talent. They make playing music look so easy, but that’s the result of practice, time, and talent. I don’t think you’ll be seeing me performing on stage again anytime soon. I’ll stick to introducing bands, not playing in one.

Thanks again to Dave Mercer, Deveran Roof, and Jamie Jones for helping to prepare me for my first, and probably only, live gig. Because prior to that, I had No Prep.