I’ve been jamming with my housemate Jared.
He was a famous DJ in a previous life.
In this life, he still loves music, but as a private affair.
When we jam, he plays guitar, I play keyboard, and we both sing.
We have good creative chemistry.
We see the world in similar, compatible ways.
And we are both doing it with such joy and devotion. So much aliveness comes through in the music we make together.
Today while we were jamming some clarity came to me.
I’m in an era of my life where I’m really benefiting from making things legible, explicit.
Especially in social, relational contexts.
I realized that could help us in our jamming too.
I hopped up and asked Jared to look at the house whiteboard with me.
I drew a 2x2.
I initialed them with letters, L and B on one axis, I and V on the other.
I explained: “In any song we do, there’s four options: lead Instrumentals and lead vocals, backup instrumentals and backup vocals. I propose we pick two before we start, and see how that goes.
I’m happy to do any of the four roles, in any combination. But I think we’ll make really good music if we try it this way.”
Thankfully, Jared received my bid quite gracefully, and was willing to try.
We just gave it a go for the first time! The music we were making was already really good, but I felt this really took us up a notch. And I suspect this little bit of structure—beyond picking a key, which we were already doing—will set us up for success to do even cooler jams and musical collaborations in the future.
I’m excited! I’m grateful to be learning to jam. I’m grateful to have a housemate as eager to jam as I am. And I am grateful to have a piano keyboard here that I am able to play.
I’m grateful for music.