Best "just want to noodle" album?

Z

zionstrat

Well-known member
I bet you guys are like me and occasionally just want to put something on in the background and jam over it. Seems like I do this every couple of weeks and this is probably the main way I consolidate new riffs and thinking that I picked up since the last time I jammed.

And something I've learned over the years, is it's very nice if there's a bunch of great songs in a row so you don't have to rewind or think :-) so I'm interested in albums that have multiple tracks in a row that all scream "jamable".

My nominee, in the strat heaven category, is the first half of Making Movies by Dire Straits. Obviously, I'm ancient, but Romeo and Juliet, Tunnel of Love and Roller Girl have tasty lick after lick after lick and leave so much white room that it's really easy to solo high, low or in between.

This is the band and the album that got me into strats but I later learned that my thick guitars love this one just as well.

Interested in your catagories and nominations!
 
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I like it, as it is a challenge due to having lots of space, and long periods of one key...it is difficult to not repeat yourself.
 
Mincer said:
I like it, as it is a challenge due to having lots of space, and long periods of one key...it is difficult to not repeat yourself.
Click to expand...

That definitely makes sense. I'm assuming another challenge is Miles often goes in directions you can't imagine.. having heard it enough, I'm imagining I'll figure those out but again, can't wait to try.
 
Dark Side is pretty good for that. Several of the songs contain long vampz like Breathe here with the E-7 to A7 vamp.

 
Demanic said:
Grateful Dead Live New Years Eve.

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Click to expand...

Ooh that's a new one for me!, But it sure makes sense. Willl have to try it out. In a somewhat similar vein, it's kind of fun to drop into the center of the Last Waltz.. doesn't really matter where..
 
Glad to report, everything was fun!

Mincer- as a classical composer from a jazz school, I always imagined Freddie Freeloader would be easy, because it's blues based, and that So What would be hard. But it turned out to be the opposite. With Freddie I had to be very careful not to drop into mundane pentatonics, where I kind of went freeform in mixolydian and So What was actually easier- Of course if I try it next week, I'll hear it a different way and am likely to crash it.

Didn't get to any Floyd this week, but they are already one of my favorite jams.

And I was happily surprised on 2 counts with the Dead- when listening to them, I hear a lot of Garcia and expected to find it hard to layer in. But he uses that extreme clean sound a lot and a quacky strat pairs nicely and crunch also works well.

And as you would expect, Chambers and Lesh are such different bassists that they forced me into 2 different directions. As expected, Chambers never really gets you in a corner, so lots of different harmonizations are possible, but I forgot how melodic Lesh was! There were multiple times where I stopped my ramblings to parallel or counterpoint.. again, i doubt I would play it the same a second time, but what great tunes (and whitespace).

Thanks for great recommendations!
 
So What is easy to get carried away and forget the change in there. I approach it a few ways...playing super sparse like Miles, or imagine if John McLaughlin had played on it. Chord-wise, the whole album has so much space that you can actually do chord solos if you think about it (and like me, fail the first 100 times trying).
 
Yeah, it's so harmonically sparse that a few times I realized I'd missed the change but it hadn't made a tremendous difference;)

Love the idea of chord solos, will definitely let you know how it goes!
 
zionstrat said:
Glad to report, everything was fun!

Mincer- as a classical composer from a jazz school, I always imagined Freddie Freeloader would be easy, because it's blues based, and that So What would be hard. But it turned out to be the opposite. With Freddie I had to be very careful not to drop into mundane pentatonics, where I kind of went freeform in mixolydian and So What was actually easier- Of course if I try it next week, I'll hear it a different way and am likely to crash it.

Didn't get to any Floyd this week, but they are already one of my favorite jams.

And I was happily surprised on 2 counts with the Dead- when listening to them, I hear a lot of Garcia and expected to find it hard to layer in. But he uses that extreme clean sound a lot and a quacky strat pairs nicely and crunch also works well.

And as you would expect, Chambers and Lesh are such different bassists that they forced me into 2 different directions. As expected, Chambers never really gets you in a corner, so lots of different harmonizations are possible, but I forgot how melodic Lesh was! There were multiple times where I stopped my ramblings to parallel or counterpoint.. again, i doubt I would play it the same a second time, but what great tunes (and whitespace).

Thanks for great recommendations!
Click to expand...
Jerry was fanatical over having the cleanest, loudest (potentialy) sound that he could get. He ran with a massive amount of headroom.

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Wow I would have never thought of that one... Makes total sense.

I tried Yes as young person but I just destroyed everything.. The only lines I could relate to were Squires but I always wanted to understand Howe. I liked Asia because they greatly simplified everything,

But I think I may have matured enough to go back and take another look, thanks for a great idea.
 
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