Interesting train ride

Interesting train ride

Last night what normally would have been a relaxing gig, turned into an interesting train ride. I can sort of describe it as a train ride that's speeding down a steep mountain pass, lurching over to one side on the corners, while we all hold on and scream wondering what will happen.

So this is where a bit of hard earned stage experience comes into play. Just play your way through it.

All the musicians agreed afterwards that it was one of the most interesting artistic cooperations any of us had in a long time.

Here's the scenario: My band is called the Retrosexuals. We play have-a-good-time, funky jazz tunes from the late 60's. During that time you had influences from funk, rock, go-go, and of course jazz. Most of the groups were organ based, and generating a funk was the most important aspect of the evening.

Anyway, last night we had a couple guest players, all very strong musicians. Gilles from Paris sat in on keys, and Mark from Toronto sat in on second guitar. Gilles and the bassist, Ashley were on my right side, while the two guitarists were on my left. Gary on drums was behind me, so he got a good view of all the mayhem.

The interesting part come later, after a few drinks, and when the songs got a little harder. Mark (on the left) had charts to all the tunes, and was following them to a tee. So he and our main guitarist, Greg, were locked tight. On my right Ashley often started tunes in a different key, and a lot of the times took the change to the 4th like a blues, but a lot of our songs don't do that. Gilles was following the bass, but knew something was completely amiss, so being a fantastic musician, he created an independently foreign "Gilles space" deciding to play whatever he thought the song "should" be, regardless of what left or right side of the stage were doing.

Now this left me with a bit of a dilemma because I was standing in the middle. What the hell key was I supposed to play the tune? If I played in the original key, it wouldn't fit harmonically. If you're a musician, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Nothing sounds right. So I just sort of plundered ahead in the key that felt right at the time according to the pallate of sounds presented at any given moment. This often was quite amazing, as we all headed for the same musical ending from different places, and remarkably got there at the same time. That was some serious listening.

Image the left side is in F, but the right side is in G, this creates an interesting suspended sound in the tonality, and when Gilles heard this, he might alter it to be something like Eb/C, just to make it out there. So everything is related harmonically and this makes for interesting possibilities on the stage to play solos and do weird stuff.

I glanced up in the 2nd set to see an audience that was either totally into it or looking like we stepped on their cat.

But we definitely grooved the place.

Posted to Music by corbett at 03:33 PM
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