Jam in G - A rockish song I made.

Recently I composed a called Jam in G. And yes, the title is very true because it is infact a jam in the key of G. It uses real guitars, however the bass and drum track are soundfonts. In this song I basically improvise on my guitar to a backing track I made in the key of G. Tell me what you guys think of it.

SoundClick artist: OCRMike - page with MP3 music downloads

I don't know if this is the right place to post a simple 'jam', despite that this is the jazz/rock section. All the classical guys won't bother with it, and it is very very simple. Basically all it was a two chord vamp, not in the key of G, but pentatonic minor. It was a neat little riff but you're going to get slammed for it; this doesn't remotely resemble traditional composition technique. There are however many bands who do demostrate traditional composition technique in a jam rock medium you should definitely check out; Frank Zappa, Phish, Jethro Tull, ELP, Deep Purple, King Crimson, Soft Machine, etc. If you want more specific suggestions pm me, hope this helps.

I would advise you don't hang onto the C for so long, the fourth is the one note in the minor pentatonic is really doesn't sound good to end phrases on. You sound a little out of tune at times, especially the B string. THings start to get a bit boring and meandering by the end, it's important for a solo to have structure; unity and variety - if you care to post the track without the solo I could maybe recordf a few takes over it and give you a bit of an analysis of what I've done, in terms of scales, modes, structure, arpeggios and so on.

Steve - you're being a bit harsh. He's not going to get 'slammed' for posting anything, he might get 'slammed' if he spams the shoutbox about it, but that's an entirely different matter. We're not all here to be brilliant, we're here to improve and help others improve.

I don't know if you do this or not, but before you imrpov, try to come up with a few awesome riffs/melodies/licks that you want to get in there, then throw it in with all of the other spur of the moment stuff.

Also, I think the solo lacks direction, but I'm too much of a novice myself to know how to fix that...

It might be easier to solo over some chord changes (G-F-Eb-F).

I think it could do with more bass, but I'm listening to it on a laptop, so I could be wrong.

Nice playing....

~Kal

Mark: I wasn't being harsh, I was only warning him. This is a forum geared towards classical composers, some of whom are just slightly pretentious about their classical elitism, and may be perplexed by a simple two chord vamp and have no advice to offer. And actually he did post in the shout box, (but not spamming) I replied here because apparently nobody could or wanted to say anything. Where did I say anything about being brilliant? I said it was a "neat little riff." I am too a huge rock fan and can appreciate a simple riff. And if I didn't want to help him improve, I wouldn't have named off those bands for him. I figured maybe it would inspire, or even make it easier for him if he made a conscious effort to use the compositional knowledge he's got toward his writing, and all the while it would still come out sounding rock n roll. Young Prodigy, I hope you understood the post, my apologies if you did not.

If they have no advice to offer they won't post. I think you over-exaggerate any potential hostility towards rock music, most folk here are pretty open-minded - and those that aren't certainly aren't going to be popping up saying "this isn't as complicated as Rachmaninoff so you're shit".

Have a nice day

Okay Mark perhaps I am wrong, you've been here longer after all. Sorry. On a lighter note though, in response to your Rachmaninov sentence, it's funny I have seen this a couple times here: "(Youtube link) Whoa, there goes Matt Bellamy doing his Rachmaninov/Lizst thang...Muse is so sophisticated." Young Prodigy, hope you get to check out some of those groups.

In my view, anyone elitist towards any genre of music should take their head out of their ass. As in, don't magicly ignore a piece of music or put down a piece of music just because it's a certain genre. You're really limiting yourself as a musician saying "CLASSICAL IS BEST!" or "ROCK MUSIC ROCKS AND EVERYTHING IS ELSE IS THE SHIZNITS!". Listen to all genres. Besides, who cares about traditional composition. Forget that, compose what you WANT to compose. Don't care about staying within boundaries of "traditional composition".

YP - People sometimes like it when you acknowledge them when they leave comments and advice about your music.