Let's Jam

The distortion didn't sound well with the Signature acoustic with the pickup. The music shop guy said it was a problem of feedback and pickup and the only way out was to get an electric guitar. My colleague from office hesitated for a moment and started trying out a few electric guitars. After one hour we came out with a 3 input Stranger amplifier, a Zoom distortion and a decent enough electric guitar for my friend to begin the transition from rhythm to lead playing.

I knew that I could sing decently enough along with my guitar and a few friends to listen to and that was my primary motivation behind learning to play the instrument. Yes it was cool and all that too! So when the chance to sing in front of the entire company came up I was hesitant to start with. But something inside me always wanted to do it. Sing on stage. All my life I had either played the tabla for someone or strummed a few chords in a song. So I thought that it might actually be nice to have people play for you while you sing. At least once. Finally, the company outing happened. I sang Aashayein from the movie Iqbal and Woh Lamhe and guess what, we had to do it "once more".

Coming back to yesterday, we had four songs in mind. Free Falling by Tom Petty, Kya Mujhe Pyar Hai from the movie Woh Lamhe, Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Greenday and a medley of a few songs by Atif. We got the guitars to my place and from around 5 in the evening to 10 at night we played music. It was exhilarating. Almost like college days. While singing Aadat, I discovered I could get my voice pretty high without cracking and that was a revealation. I got to practise barre chord progression thanks to my friend who totally rocks at playing rhythm guitar. He picks up things very fast, can change scales at ease and play continuously for hours without getting tired. I was so happy, I was so free. We perform next Friday and will get to practice only on Thursday night with the instruments. Till then I will have to listen to the songs a million times to memorize the lyrics and get a feel of them. I think playing the tabla was easier. But that could well be because I actually spent a few years learning it. But as long as we get a 'once more', nobody's complaining.