Tonefiend Forum

Took my bass player to an open mic Sunday and got tossed into the deep end pretty much unable to swim.Crazy group of seriously great musicians and all of them from the same neighborhood , as kids went to high school together. Anway , I am pretty much a hack, way too many notes for no reason and overly aggressive. The band leader is a guy named Jay Usher and he has been around the block a few times, incredible world class player.Band is 3 plus pieces dependent on who is in town etc,bass player and drummer were in perfect sync with everything. Jazz,Funk and R&B would be the mainstay but they are flexible. Pretty funny seeing the long haired guy with a V playing with them I am sure. Jay worked me over hard putting me through the test of fire and then some.Oh yeah he made sure to impress on me after I did some flashy , aggressive stuff that there was only ONE guitar master in the house.Pretty sure he threw in the 64ths just because it was funny to watch my eyes bugging out of my head. Here is what really kills me , he was playing through a SS Behringer combo with 10s in it, built in effects with midi control and it sounded fantastic.He played a couple Zion guitars with Floyd Rose on them. Here is a link to something I found online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ueuI2BsWg there is another video there old stuff bad video but sound is ok. So now I have to learn me some Funk Rhythm skills and get groove oriented since I was asked back (not sure why ). Had some real fun later when I hooked up another guy ( from same neighborhood) into my amp to play midi sax, he had a Parker Fly tuned like a 6 string bass into a Roland GR 55. Oh yeah the guy has a 20th anniversary Alembic that is 2 of 20 made, did I mention he was a smoking hot bass player? He ripped up the bass for a good 15 min in a song and then Jay did his thing just to keep up to pace and show his stuff off. Did I mention I was in over my head? Later in the night a guy got up and they did 3 and 4 part harmonies stuff like Just My Imagination and some original Funk. It was a ton of fun and now I have to get back to 13ths and 7#9 chords with some 16th note strumming yeesh.

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