Week 2

4 Terms:

Empathy:

Empathy means so much and has so many different definitions depending on the field of study. It generally means to put oneself in someone else's shoes and feel what they feel emotionally. It can range from simply to setting aside your own feelings all the way to sitting and dealing with whatever the other person is going through. While working with musicians whose skills and backgrounds consistently contrast my own, empathy is a good way to see where they're coming from musically. It almost always ends with a newfound appreciation for their perspective and musical ideas because you see its context and how that essentially effects the process and product.

Meditation:

I like to pretend I know anything about the subject of meditation but I truly don't have a clue other than that I know it's tremendously important. Meditation, at its core, is shifting focus from phenomena to the observer of that phenomena. It shows people that all the feelings, urges and memories are transient in nature and leave you as fast as they approach you. To me and in music it allows people to leave all their stress, anxiety, anger, etc. at the door. It allows them to focus on the project at hand and to create freely without the baggage getting in your way.

Jam:

To jam is to get with musicians, performers or whoever and just play together. Jamming is one of my favorite things to do because it forces you to think on the spot and to stay in the moment. For me it relieves stress and allows me to discover thing musically about myself and the people I'm playing with. Some people take this seriously enough to where they form a 'jam band' and do it in front of people. For whatever reason, people respond to this stuff positively and take it so far they follow these bands around the world.

Is it a jam band or improv ensemble?

Going to a music school in a conservatory environment comes with a lot of stigma around the phrase 'jam band'. The jam band does not receive as much prestige as an ensemble that includes improvisatory moments. This is partly due to the rather basic instrumentation of the jam band that usually involves drums, guitar, bass and occasionally a synth. I would say that jam band is a reductive term that keeps the idea tied down to its 60's southern rock influence. Whether it has that label or not, jamming is ridiculously fun especially in front of an audience.