local musical culture

A sort of dormant musician myself, I nonetheless run into fellow travelers along the road. At work, a Corps Member asked me to jam. I have a cool green electric guitar that hangs out in my office. It's a signal.

I commented to the Corps Member, who we'll call Zekiel, that I'd seen him jamming with another corps member recently. Zekiel looked away uncomfortably and smiled.

"It's hard to find people who can keep a beat."

It's always been my worst thing as a musician: the beat. If I get excited, I tend, like a lot of singers, to kick the beat, trying to pull the band with me. This sort of habit confuses the groove. Because the person kicking the beat is the lead singer, anyone holding the actual beat appears slow. Rhythm is a cooperative thing. My responsibility to the groove is to recognize that I'm racing and correct myself.

My previous musical experience involved singing in choir, solo and duo work. The duos I shared (what does one do with a duo?) didn't prepare me for being part of combo. Duos adjust to each other pretty freely. There's always another note in the chord to take, another way to divide the beat. In a band, I had to learn to accept musical feedback.

This is all a part of trust, the other frequency in the groove. You come to trust that I will make space for you in our music, complement you the best I can, try to make you look good. If you're not aware of how your tendencies affect others within the groove, we can play at music together but we're not really playing together.

Isn't he pretty?












Dormant, but not deceased, thank you, one of my favorite things is local musical culture. Just made that up. Ha.

Every locality has its musicians lurking about. We need a little community and so quickly a local musical culture springs up. Some, like the amazingly talented Drollinger family in Iowa City, have been playing for generations.

We find each other. There is music in us that needs to escape. We need to sit down and play and recognize each other, fellow travelers of the groove.

I think Zeke probably has some music in him that wants to get out, too. We'll see pretty soon.