Day 6 - Abstract playing Pt.2

On Sundays, I play the keyboard at my church during Praise and Worship session. If there's anything that has thrown me in the deep end in my journey, it is playing for my church band. Firstly, not only am I playing with successful, professional musicians, but I don't know many gospel songs. The list of songs we do on Sundays is normally revealed on Saturdays, therefore the first time I would have ever heard a song is on the day before performance, and sometimes on the actual day or on stage. Of course this would make it difficult to remember a progression. Improvising and putting melodic fill-ins was a no-touch area as a result; it was like trying to form a sentence in Spanish when you don't know how the verb and noun pattern works.

I realized that if I listened more to the singers, the melody line would make it easier to predict which chord could be used at a particular point in the song. Abstract playing comes into work here. To be able to hear these changes before they take place, you need to first be able to hear the scale, intervals and chords in your head. This also applies to the bass guitar as an additional ingredient to "sound via shapes". Basslines become so much easier to create when you not only understand the physical pattern of melody and harmony, but if you can hear them before playing.

Something amazing happened in church the last Sunday, that I consider to be a milestone in my growth as a bassist and musician. Our professional and quite competent musician of an instrumentalist leader had not yet arrived during the run-through of the day's songs. Since we had not practiced the previous day, this was going to be my first attempt at playing the songs. Our band leader said that the vocalists should just practice on their own since the instrumentalist leader was not there and it was no time to start figuring out chords. Since the vocalists were gathered around the keyboard, as I sat there helplessly, I realized that with the lead melody, I could hear the chords in my head. So I tried it. And it worked. I was playing a song on the go that I had never played or heard before. Even she high-fived me. During the Praise and Worship session, our bassist was absent. As we played, I realized I was also playing a bassline in my head, a legitimate one at that, and I was so confident of my head-hand coordination, that had the bass cable been there at the time, I would have jumped up and played it. On.The.Go. I feel that to be a true musician, you have to play from the heart, and like in real life, matters of the heart are not always planned. You don't plan to feel angry. You don't plan to fall in love. It just happens, but once there, you can control the impact. I now feel I am on the way to becoming a true, heart-playing musician, as I work on my abstract playing.

Even though I felt like I was drowning in the beginning, I believe I am now learning to swim. I hereby declare in Jesus' name, that I will swim across the ocean and back.