Finding musicians to jam with

Hi all,

I am a beginner drummer and have been having weekly lessons for around 18 months. I got my first acoustic kit just before Christmas 2016. I am an older player at 62 but am loving what I am learning. Still very much a beginner though, I can hold a groove but am still learning techniques. I've joined Wikiloops primarily to look up drumless tracks to play along to.

My next step would be to find local like minded players to initially mess around with. How do you do this though? I have joined forums, (Joinmyband) that advertise for musicians but they tend to all want experienced players. How do you hook up with other musicians who may also just be starting out?

Cheers in anticipation :)

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First of all: Welcome to Wikiloops! :)

To get involved and jamming with people here you would need some sort of recording gear, either a room recorder or preferably a drum mic set and a recording device. You will also need to get yourself some basic knowledge about using (recording and editing) a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

But a good start could be getting a room recorder, record a beat and upload it here, and i am sure you will get adds and help to develop your beats into some cool tracks :)

If you get stuck, or need some hints about the process use the shoutbox & forum to ask for a helping hand ;)

Good luck! :)

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Hey Zimerframe & also welcome to the 'loops!

eGil covered some good points on how to make use of wikiloops, and I can only second what he said: Even if you do not want to get all into recording, mixing and uploading stuff at your current stage of getting into things, I can only recommend to start such self-recordings as you play along to something as early as possible. The cance to listen to yourself playing will give you a lot of feedback which you will be able to analyze yourself (in other words, you will feel "oh, damn, I didn't know I sucked that bad" at first, as we all did, dont worry). It will help you, and you will notice stuff getting more fluent, less edgy, more on time etc as you go on - things which you would hardly be able to judge without either a second listener or having these recordings.

Since I understood your question as beyond using wikiloops, and also including a request for help on "how to find not too advanced players", I'd like to add that I can only recommend looking for one single player to jam with. Don't start a seven heads band, just look for one bassplayer who has an interest to do what you'd like to do: Get better at playing with someone else. As long as there is only one melody player in your duo, he doesn't need to be great in harmonies or spend too much time recalling changes- but the two of you can start to groove together. Where to find such bass players? I'd recommend getting in touch with some local bass teachers and maybe giving them some sort of flyer with your contact, quite sure someone will show up eventually. If you are cool with someone who isn't all that advanced, then that might motivate someone longing to improve.
Fingers crossed you'll find someone fun to jam with... most importantly, keep it fun :)

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Hello Zimmerframe,

Just found WikiLoops. I'm just north of you in Suffolk. I work in Colchester and get around Essex quite a bit.

I've been teaching myself Bass for a year or two and its definitely time for me to play with others.

My challenge is a lack of time (and talent) but it might be good to meet to see if there is any common ground.

Cheers
Paul

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