andybaylor
Silver Supporting Member
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Brazilian rosewood didgeridoo?
Yes, please!
Yes, please!
You mean, like a singer?What I would recommend next time it happens is put your didge right on that guitarist’s ear and just blow as hard as you can. When he reels away in shock, yell “next time, listen to other people”. Then storm off the stage in anger. He should get the hint.
Not as odd as it sounds he’s in NZ home of all the famous didgersWhat on earth did you expect when turning up with that didgeridoo? That random people would get your point and provide an ambient soundscape for your drones?
Dont get me wrong, nothing against you or your music. But it seems so niche that the last place you would possibly cook up a good jam would be an open mic night.
My band hosted an open mic jam for a couple years. Sometimes you get to play with great musicians and other times not so much. Sounds like your experience was the later. Don't let it discourage you. I have jammed with plenty of musicians who don't have the ability to listen to what is going on around them, this skill separates the men from the boys imo.I've been playing Didgeridoo between a year and a half and two years now and while I'm not super advanced with it, I'm good enough to get some attention from it for sure (can do circular breathing etc, etc). I'm also doing it alongside guitar in a new band where we are still set building.
Tonight I decided to take it to an open jam night at a venue I really like. This guitarist said he'd jam with me (realized when we got on stage that his Fender was a 4 strong model, built to be more banjo like apparently) and then at the last moment this guy who had opened doing a singer songwriter type thing with his electric asked me if he could do drums.
With that being said, here is what happened: I launched into a sort of ambientish drone with overtones etc, etc only to have the guitarist dude burst into this fast paced bluesy funk sort of playing that I felt completely ruined the vibe. The drummer also just jumped into this fast paced really basic 4/4 beat that I felt didn't fit the feel of what I was doing any more than the guitar did.
Now I know this could all kinda make me sound like a Karen seeing as I'm not the band leader of people at an open mic night and it isn't like something that is so informal matters all that much. Also, I know that someone might ask why the Didge playing should dictate the feel of the whole jam but if you've played or heard one much you might not ask that question, plus they did want to jam with me because of it.
If you've ever jammed with musicians who you felt like just didn't listen to what was going on at all then you probably know some of the frustration. It might be that I'm also just annoyed because the venue owner was really enthused about me playing it and I feel like an opportunity to show him what our band could potentially do might have got spoiled. Then again, maybe it sounded good to the audience.
Flame away if you must...
Well, that sure explains a lot of it.Not as odd as it sounds he’s in NZ home of all the famous didgers
Oh snap.Please don't take this the wrong way, because I think the didge is a cool-sounding instrument, but playing along with a digeridoo is like jamming with an idling dump truck.
I just meant that the digeridoo is what it is. It kind of just gurgles away endlessly, like an idling dump truck. Neither of which I find objectionable-sounding, I just find it hard to extract musical phrasing from the sounds they produce. I'll admit that maybe I haven't played with someone good enough to do melodies on the thing, but I believe you are limited to literally one note on the thing. And because circular breathing is the whole point of the thing, there really can't be any pauses in the sound, hence very difficult to produce rhythm (other than the 'yelps'). Like an idling dump truck.Oh snap.
Why on earth would anyone take that the wrong way..?![]()
Translation: They are professional musicians. In the sense that, they know when to shut up and let someone else shine. Ever wonder why Open Mics SUCK? That's the reason most of the time.The guys I've been playing with in the new band are both top tier musicians so maybe I've been spoilt a bit and need to be more realistic.
Before you give up on the open mic, maybe just give up on bringing a nontraditional instrument and expecting people to dig it. Surely there are digeridoo jam circles or something. If I showed up at one of those with a full stack set to play some metal, even if the people were generous enough to let me sit in, I bet I probably would ruin it for them. I'm all for contrasts and innovation but I feel like that's an instrument to figure out how to work into music not intended for it with likeminded folks rather than experimenting in front of a live (I assume) audience.I guess that is one way to look at it and I do feel quite mean-spirited for writing this thread honestly, it just ruined my night is all. I think I'll stay away from open jams in the future.
I just meant that the digeridoo is what it is. It kind of just gurgles away endlessly, like an idling dump truck. Neither of which I find objectionable-sounding, I just find it hard to extract musical phrasing from the sounds they produce. I'll admit that maybe I haven't played with someone good enough to do melodies on the thing, but I believe you are limited to literally one note on the thing. And because circular breathing is the whole point of the thing, there really can't be any pauses in the sound, hence very difficult to produce rhythm (other than the 'yelps'). Like an idling dump truck.
I haven't tried jamming against Didgeridoo, but I would suggest treating it as "non-harmonic", more like percussion, so basically you set the harmony as the guitar.Those 2 digeridoers sound great, definitely very rhythmic! But what chords am I supposed to play with that? I'm not trying to be a jerk, just an honest question from someone who's tried to accompany a digeridoo before. Another scenario "Ok, this one's a blues in A, are you ready on the digeridoo"? It's definitely an interesting sounding instrument, but certainly not able to fit into very many musical situations, other than 'endless tribal trance jam'.
I still don't understand where this is coming from. If you heard the droning I was doing then I can't imagine how you would associate it with a fast, hammering approach. It makes me wonder how much Didge music the people that keep making this argument have actually heard because you clearly hear what I was doing was slow tempo based.you keep bringing up "if he'd played slower it might have worked" you are centering on tempo but gave no direction for the tempo. If you played me only a drone and asked me to accompany I could give you back many different ideas with wildly differing tempos and all would fit, none would have been created by having a clue what the unrevealed groove was in your head