January 10th, 2013

Finished a long day at work yesterday and then sprinted up home, to Hollow Way Studio, for the first jam in about three weeks. It went well, though everyone was rusty.

Rustiness in jamming can take three forms. Physiological rustiness, which is when your muscle memory needs refreshing, manifests very clearly when you haven’t played for a while. Your fingers don’t find the strings as easily as they should, and you end up looking down at the fretboard a lot to make sure of where you are. That goes away after about an hour of playing and and then stays away if you’re able to get even a tiny bit of practice in daily. Musical rustiness is tougher. That’s when you fall out of synch with which notes are a part of which chords, which polyrhythms work best in which arrangements, and sometimes even which frets are which notes (though that’s probably more a sign of my own level rather than shear rustiness). The last kind of rustiness is that of playing with other people. Being able to jam successfully isn’t easy. Without a song to play and notes to follow, the good jammer needs to be hearing his own musical voice in the context of other voices simultaneously. This involves matching and augmenting what’s being heard with what you anticipate being heard, and that’s a difficult task. In my case it’s especially difficult because we have five guitarists.

So, needless to say, there was rust, but it was fun. We jammed until 9 and people chatted a bit to catch up after having been off doing our own things for the holidays, and all of that was nice. Someone’s wife had knee surgery, someone’s girlfriend was quitting smoking, someone got a new stereo, someone sold their apartment, and so on. As for me, I shared my stories about all night parties and meeting heavy metal gods in the kitchens of friends.

Early tomorrow morning I leave for LA and then after a few days of catching up with my best friend over there, I leave for SD for some other stuff. Can’t wait. I will surf. I will swim. I will read. I will explore. I will rest… hopefully.

I’ll try to send some updates along the way but might not be able to. In the meantime, have a great weekend and week. Make the most of everything and try your best so you can have that feeling of resting easy.