Originally Posted by MarioD
You have a friend whom is a classically trained pianist and she can jam? You are very fortunate. My wife plays piano but only if there are notes in front of her. If I say play C-Am-Dm-G7 I get the deer in the headlights look. I also knew a violinist whom plays with the Rochester Philharmonic and wanted to start jamming. She said she sometimes lands on the wrong note. I said when that happens heaven is a half step up or down. She was amazed that that worked.
This is funny and oh so common. I don't know who's brain is wired different, theirs or ours smile
My description of what took place was actually a tad too kind. The truth was I said "OK, let's try bouncing back and forth from D major to G major. So it's 1-2-3-4, D-D-D-D-G-G-G-G etc." And so we needed to spend 15 minutes for her to get D-G-D-G . . . with me providing the groove on my bass. I then said let's just try vamping on D with the Pa5X providing the backing groove; she found that a bit easier. Then we slowly graduated to more complex chord progressions led by the keyboard factory grooves.

To be sure the whole jam session was choppy but fun, and she slowly started getting it.
She definately has keyboard chops but it was as if she was shackled by some kind of chain that prevented her inner-creativity from being released.
And to be sure, I'd love to be able to fluently read sheet music but not at the expense of losing the ability to jam.

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For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.