On Jams

   Today I played guitar for a senior citizen's hootenany. Since I haven't been able to find my glasses for several weeks, I could only just vaguely squint at the chord charts for the songs. I was late to the punch a lot, and to be honest it didn't sound very good. Except for the songs that had very simple chord prgression, I eventually just decided to forget it, wing it, and improvise backing on the bass strings. That sounded much better. This proved to me two things:

1. Cailin's job is really easy, and
2. Jamming is easier than it looks.

   Jamming, right? Jam sessions. All playing together but improvising at the instrumentation. Right. Why is he discovering this just now, you ask yourself. Wouldn't he know how to jam already? Ahh, but no, see. Comrade Helicopter are not a jam band. We just construct the ssoundscape very carefully to give it that feeling. With only three members but a lot of instrumentation, we have no choice but to overdub.

   With jamming, though, I realized something: you all know what key you're in. See, I always wondered why those didn't sound horrible. I guess there's still the chance you get too close to someone else's pitch to- well, I don't have spellcheck right now, so I really can't spell it, and I don't have time to look up the proper spelling, but you know what I was going to say. The rest of the band pulls the sound away from that, though, so it's overshadowed by the actually good playing. Barring that, even, you know that you sound bad, so you kind of correct yourself. Counterpoints make it sound deliberate. And everyone knows that that's nothing new.