I posted this on Facebook recently following an interesting discussion on what to do it you are leading a tune and it all goes wrong for you:
At the Nonsuch Slow Jam Zoom session yesterday we had an interesting discussion on what do you do if you are leading a tune and it all goes wrong.
If you are in a live session and can hear other people you have more of a chance of picking it up again but even then it can grind to a halt and everyone looks at you!
Thoughts were:
- Don’t stop if you can avoid it. If you have the tune in your head then get back into it at an “entry point”. try to fumble in time and then blast into it! I was taught that if you forget your lines and take a prompt, then you shout out the line to announce to everyone, “I am back!”.
- Don’t just practice tunes from the beginning every time, try starting at different points, I refer to these as entry points, then if you do crash out you can just pick it up from the nearest entry point and not go back to the beginning. This also helps when you are playing along in a session, these are my “ambush points” to get back into the tune.
- Never apologies and never explain, just smile and take the applause! Some people will not have noticed or will have thought it was them!
- We all do it, so don’t worry about it and don’t let it stop you from leading a tune. Worrying will make it happen! In golf you should never look at the bunkers when you are taking your shot or that is where you will land!
Any other thoughts?
Some of the ideas were:
- Play the pentatonic scale notes in rhythm until you find your “place” and jump back into the tune.
- I always learn tunes in phrases, working on each phrase as an independent entity, that always gives me a place to recover. Keep the rhythm going even if all you are doing is strumming the note that names the key (strumming open on an MD or hitting the first and the fifth note of the scale, on a hammer), while emphasizing the beat.
- Don’t make Wrong Note Face, instead smile delightedly as if you discovered a new passage
- Thank you for the discussion. In fast sessions I often lose my place even if I’ve started the tune so it must be much worse on a virtual session. I always ‘play all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order’. It’s nice not to feel alone.
- First of all, you are not alone! Second, there are a lot of practicing techniques. One -for sure- is to not always start at the beginning. You’ll be master of the first couple of measures but will stumble across the later ones. Always practice in groups only taking 2-4 measures.
So the overwhelming piece of advice is to learn tunes in distinct pieces and don’t always practice from the beginning. Firstly so you can get back into the tune at an entry point, not just the beginning, plus one point I had not thought of, if you always practice from the beginning you will end up knowing the start very well, but the end will be the shaky part. When learning songs or lines I often learn the last verse or last scene first, that way I don’t have to worry as things progress about the ending. Also people remember a stumble at the end but you can get away with a fluff in the middle without anyone really remembering.
The next theme was not to make your “wrong note” face, just carry on smiling and play on. As a friend of mine says “Keep bodging on”. Keep the beat if you can and re-join the tune when you can.
You really are not alone, we all do it!
