song building - loads of fun

[the_hook]

I started learning and playing bass about 2 years ago. From reading magazines and forums I quickly learned it’s good to also get into a band or jamming with people to learn things you never would just practicing alone at home.

So over the past few months I've put together a 3 piece (guitar, bass, drums) jam band that only meets at a rehearsal space (or my place if it's just the guitarist) once a month. We all enjoy Rush and felt there's more than enough songs to learn and challenge us for a good while, and we've had a blast playing them together.

We’ve covered songs like Xanadu, Natural Science, Freewill, Limelight, Something for Nothing and various others cool ones. But recently I've wanted to learn how to build actual songs, there's just so much more I could learn than working with existing tunes.

I felt the best way to do that was ask the guitarist (who has 20 years experience) to come up with some songs. We like Rock, Prog, Fusion and some Metal, so he went away for a bit and sent me some ideas he had, but I also asked that he provide a chord sheet for each song. I got the stuff last week and worked on it all week.

First I started off by listening to each song, get a feel for what it's about, then I just worked with root notes. I would then work the rhythm to whatever feel, mood or tone the song seemed to have. After that I did the chord tones, and/or a 5th, octave, or whatever worked within the context of that song. One was really sad sounding, another was chirpy and quick, another very heavy metal like, etc.

Another thing I did was give each song titles. I found once I had a title the song took on its own ‘shape’, and I instantly knew which chords and rhythm I had for each song.

We all met this weekend and the guitarist was curious about what I came up with. I don't have a facility yet to record my bass into my laptop, or sandwich my audio file with his guitar file and send it back to him, so I'm figuring out the cheapest route to do that. The drummer hadn't heard any of the songs, and he's fairly new to our group but also has 20 years experience.

All I can say is things turned out great. The drummer listened to us playing the songs and he quickly locked in with my bass rhythm and chord changes to create his patterns and fills.

On one song we were doing opposite beats to the guitar (like staggered beats) that turned out great, on another the drummer did these fast fills and then stop while the bass/guitar continued, then he’d jump back in. It took some concentration to continue past his stops, but it worked out. The guitarist never asked for any changes, he liked everything the way it developed. In all we did only 2 takes for each song.

I had a friend there listening to us and he said we sounded like a band that's been together for a lot longer than a few jam sessions. I'm pretty happy with the results, as was everyone. I asked the guitarist to work on a longer Prog song for us to hash out at our next jam.