One of the best ways to improve as a gigging musician is to play with musicians who are better than you. It makes you level up your skills by learning from and interacting with players who have more experience, and by being put in a situation where you have to play at a higher level. These kinds of playing situations can be invaluable to beginning and intermediate musicians, and even to seasoned pros. There is always someone you can learn from. And no matter how many gigs you’ve played, each gig is a learning experience in itself, because each one is different.
Most musicians and aficionados have heard stories of people being humbled on the bandstand – in the 1930s, Charlie Parker famously was crushed by the other musicians in one of his first jam sessions, left with his tail between his legs to get his chops together, and…I think we know the rest. But in the world I live in, such occurrences are infrequent. (Whiplash was a fictional movie, not a documentary.) If you’re asked to sub for a player at a gig or sit in on a jam session, the other musicians will probably take it as a given that you have some proficiency. If you’ve been around, they’ll know your capabilities and your reputation.
In a nutshell, the real benefit you’ll gain from playing with musicians who are better than you are, and the thing to pay attention to the most is this:
Listen to what they are doing.
Seems obvious, but this is the true way to learn. Great players have a mindset, a vibe, and a feel. Listen to the way they hit and hold a note, and the way they support the groove. They instinctively know how to regulate their overall volume and vocal levels, either by adjusting the controls on their instruments or by moving closer to or away from the mic. It’s hard to describe, but great musicians play with an intent that makes the band groove and swing and rock on a more intense level that you should be able to pick up on. When you play with musicians who are better than you, you will feel their level of concentration and it will vibe off on you.
As I like to say: play it like you mean it!
Of course you might be nervous if you’re playing with musicians who are better than you, especially if it’s your first time, but if you respect them and the gig, they’ll respect and be willing to help you. (As in work or life, you will encounter a-holes, but I’ve found this to be rare.)
As is the case with any musical situation, be ready and in tune, and have your gear together. Act professional. If you’re about to play with people better than you, chances are you’re not at a casual get-together at someone’s house. That doesn’t mean you have to approach the gig with funereal seriousness. Music making should ultimately be joyous, fun, and if you’re lucky, transcendent.
Remember, your main role is to complement the song and the singer. Don’t show off. You’re not there to prove how good you are and that you deserve to be on the same stage as your betters. You’re there to make music. Nothing is worse than a player who steps all over the singer and other musicians. If you are asked to solo, you’ll get your moment in the spotlight.
Be sharp. Pay attention to everything the other musicians do – what chord changes and inversions they make and when, what melodies they play, how they phrase, how the pianist and bass player lock in with the drummer, how the piano and guitar complement or get out of the way of the singer. Take note of the other musicians' licks and concepts – a great musician will play ideas and riffs and melodies you would have never thought of on your own.
Body language is important – a lot of the communication between the musicians relies on it, and it can be as subtle as a glance or as obvious as moving your entire body up and down. Do not play in your own Private Idaho! Pay attention to what the other musicians are doing. You need to play together as a band. This cannot be stated enough: listen, listen, listen. Play off of and groove with what the other musicians are doing.
One of my favorite pieces of advice is: when in doubt, lay out. You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, be playing all the time. If you don’t know what to play at a certain point or get lost as to where you are in the song – and believe me, it happens to the best of us – don’t play anything, or if you’re a drummer, just keep a basic beat. Let the music breathe and flow.
If you’re in a rehearsal situation, you’ll be hashing out parts, and don’t be afraid to speak up and ask questions about what parts or chords to play, the song structures, or bits that need to be worked out. This is just part of getting things together, not a sign that you’re inexperienced. Baseball players don’t convene for spring training and magically become a team.
Be prepared. If you’ve been given a list of songs for the gig, make sure you know what keys they’re in. Don’t assume that the band will play the songs in the same key as the record. Many vocalists have to sing in keys that they’re comfortable with, and not necessarily the one the song was recorded in. The Nashville numbering system makes it easier to play in different keys. It uses numbers rather than letters to designate chords (for example, in the key of C, 1 would be a C chord), so musicians can instantly transpose a song into any key. (I’m not going to get into the weeds; click here for a detailed explanation.)
Is there a way to find and play with musicians who are better than you? Yes, at jam sessions, open mics and song swaps, if you have them in your area. On Long Island where I live, there are many, in all styles from bluegrass to jazz to singer/songwriter, rock, blues, and everything else. If you're reluctant at first, go to a couple with the intent of just listening and watching. When you feel confident, or even if you don't, ask to sit in. Just use a little common sense. Don't come to an acoustic jam with a Marshall half stack, or a blues jam and expect to play Taylor Swift songs.
There are folk and music festivals where lots of informal playing goes on aside from the official acts and showcases, often into the wee hours. This is a great opportunity to sit with an acoustic guitar near the other players and eventually play along. At open mics, it often turns into an atmosphere where people are asked to come up on the spur of the moment and sit in with other players. In fact, you may encounter situations where the other musicians are not as good as you are, and this will give you the opportunity to be the one who the other players will look up to.
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Many times I’ve had the benefit of playing with musicians who are better than me, starting when I was in ninth grade and was asked to join the Hauppauge High School Stage Band, where I got a wonderful education in learning how to read big band music charts.
The first time I got a lesson from a master musician was in the 1980s. Our New Wave band the Lines played with a lot of famous acts (as I’ve related in Issues 229, 230 and 232). Once we were on a bill with Jools Holland. (I don’t remember where.) Now, this guy is an insanely incredible piano player. He has a boogie-woogie left hand and a right-hand feel that’s just astounding in driving a band. Typically, when we played on a bill supporting known bands, both bands would do a sound check before the gig. So, we got to see him from about three feet away absolutely pounding the piano in a dazzling display of virtuosity. Anyone who has seen him on his BBC TV show, Later…With Jools Holland will know what I’m talking about.
After seeing him play with such incredible virtuosity, I was alternately intimidated and inspired. We were going to share a stage with this guy? Well, we were young and cocky and thought we were going to make it big, and you’d better believe that the Lines played our hearts out that night. I think Jools liked us. His performance that night was otherworldly. Although I didn’t actually get to play with him, I literally sat at his feet. Talk about learning from a master. He was nice to us before and after the gig, an English gentleman giving a lesson in how to comport yourself in a professional situation.
In 2012, I got the opportunity to play at a higher level with my all-time guitar hero, Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser of Blue Öyster Cult. Leveling up? The guy is one of the best guitarists on the planet, the composer of the all-time classic “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” His solos on songs like “Astronomy” and “The Red and the Black” are astounding.
You can read the full story of how I met him in this Copper article.
I practiced every day for three weeks before getting to jam with him and a friend, on acoustic guitars.
Playing with him was a lesson in how someone can be an absolute effortless natural musician. My friend mostly called Beatles songs and the music just flowed out of Buck’s hands, beautiful chords and melodies and fills. When we did Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” Buck’s playing was so lyrical and effortless that I could barely concentrate on my own playing. Here was a guy who could blast out the heaviest of cities-on-flame rock guitar riffs, and also play perfect, gorgeous acoustic guitar. Somehow my friend and I were able to play the ideal accompaniment to what he was doing, as if by instinct, or maybe because of it.
That night, I learned that one should also strive to become a complete musician. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the very simple and fundamental fact that we are doing this to make the best music we can.
Let me talk about a couple of recent examples about how playing with better players than we are can help us achieve that. Although I have to admit I'm spoiled – I currently play with exceptional musicians who could hold down any number of gigs. Maybe not subbing in a Broadway pit band, but in any number of other situations, they could be the ones everyone else would be leveling up to.
Last July, our band had a gig at the biannual Just Wild About Harry tribute concert to Harry Chapin, where a number of Long Island artists get to play in front of an audience of hundreds of people, on a big stage, with a professional sound company. A very big deal. But for this year, our drummer, who is excellent and the kind of player any band would be envious to have, couldn’t make it. So we decided to do the gig as a four piece. We would be playing a folky kind of song, “Empty,” and figured we could do an arrangement that didn’t need drums.
A few days before the gig we found out that a substitute drummer was available. The band members who knew him decided we should play with him. Well, having played one too many gigs with sub drummers who...didn’t rise to the occasion, I was initially skeptical.
Then I was informed that the drummer, Larry Eagle, had played with Bruce Springsteen.
Well OK then.
He showed up before the gig and I could tell he was a pro. (A Grammy-nominated one.) One of the things about being an experienced musician is that you can tell when a fellow musician is good before they play a note. There’s a confidence about them, and Larry had it. He was an affable guy. No airs, no BS. We had sent him a demo of the song that we’d worked up – there had been no time in anyone’s schedules to rehearse beforehand – and Larry came with a cheat sheet full of marked-up notations, clearly having done his homework.
We started the song quietly and after a few bars Larry came in and hit the perfect flow, giving “Empty” a pocket that we could just ride with. He accompanied the song with a sparse feel that perfectly complemented what the rest of us were doing, adding fills between the verses that Ringo would have been proud of. When you’re a musician and you have a bedrock of a groove like that, it’s inspiring. I felt like I had to play at my best with a guy like him – and that’s precisely how it should be.
It was no surprise that Larry had also been asked to play along with some of the acts that followed us. I went out into the audience just to enjoy the sheer pleasure of hearing someone like that play. He simply elevated everyone.
You can watch the performance in the video below. Our band is on at 1:42:00.
My neighbor Matt is a music teacher and bass player. One night, he invited me to sit in with one of his bands. They were pros – enough that when I asked if they could play Roy Orbison’s “(Oh) Pretty Woman,” not an easy song to play, they didn’t blink. The drummer played the snare drum count-off, and wow! They played with authority. And when I hit the intro riff, they also realized I meant business. We blazed through the song. (Wish I had a voice like Roy though. Then again, no one does.)
Matt can pretty much hold down anything as a bassist and he’s a great singer also. So when it was time for our neighbor to put together a band for a block party this summer, I asked Matt to join us…with some trepidation.
Not because I was scared to play with him, but because some of the other guys in the pickup band were, let’s just say, not all that experienced. In fact, a couple of our rehearsals with Matt not being there had been pretty rough.
The day of the gig, I was hoping that we’d at least sound decent. Though we had not played with Matt, I’d sent him a list of around 10 songs we’d want to do, and I knew the rest of the guys had been practicing on their own. Well, we started off the first song, and instead of sounding like a ragtag bunch of amateurs, I heard a rock-solid bass that not only glued the sound of the band together but pushed everyone to lock in and play tightly. The drummer was grooving more than I’d ever heard him before. The mandolinist was weaving some very cool parts. The acoustic rhythm guitarist was incisive, not just trying to keep up as he had been in rehearsal.
When we came to a song where I sang harmony, Matt somehow knew the exact part to sing, and sounded a heck of a lot better than I did. At the end of the song I said, “You’re the second singer now, not me!” Our original plan was to play about an hour set, but it sounded so good that we went another hour. If Matt didn’t know the song, he called it up on his iPad and played it on the fly. After a while we were asking him what songs he wanted to play. The rest of us had never played the Cars’ “My Best Friend’s Girl” before, but that didn’t stop us from nailing it. Matt drove us to perform to a standard that we had never come close to before. I’m not really sure how we did it.
And maybe that’s the point:
Perhaps the important thing I can say is that playing with musicians who are better than you can ultimately bring out the best in you on a level that goes beyond conscious thought. The great players tap into something primal and instinctual and elemental. At its highest level, listening to and learning from and playing with musicians like that can give you the ability to go there, or at least strive to move forward.
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