The Ham Jam band

We are a high school band from Minnesota. Our school, Breck, gives its 11th and 12th grade students an opportunity to create a major project in the last 12 days of school. This blog and our music are a part of that project, showing our process and development over these 12 days.

[thehamjam-mpls-blog]

Here is our attempt to write a song without Rebekah!! Holden and Jack were able to play a bass line and drum part together and record it, which is playing on a speaker in the background while Jack tries to play some power chords to it. This helped us realize just how much you need all members of the band to get any work done.

[thehamjam-mpls-blog]

Here’s more work on Closing Time, just working out the kinks and moving it towards a full song.

[thehamjam-mpls-blog]

Here’s our work on Semisonic’s Closing Time. We want to make this a more intense, punked-up kind of fight song version of the original. This is just the preliminary work on it. The first time all three of us have gotten it done!

[thehamjam-mpls-blog]

Tomorrow’s list today (5/31/17)

- Record a scratch track of Damned 2 b U

- Re-record Reb’s guitar in Gone Daddy Gone

- Record Reb’s guitar in Black Sheep

- Finish composing Closing Time (record scratch track?)

- Performance at 12:55 !!

[thehamjam-mpls-blog]

Tomorrow’s list, today 5/24/17

Rebekah is a sicken chicken!!! So this is work for Holden and Jack

-blog posts *cough cough* Holden. Also edit our latest recordings and post themmmmmmm

-review each part of each song together

-practice our parts individually and together to cement them. We need to know the whole song by ourselves for recording next week

-write some lyrics (SOS??)

-Rebekah, sleep

[thehamjam-mpls-blog]

Here’s our first recording from day 1! A cover of Gone Daddy Gone by the VIolent Femmes. We started the day with just some general shoptalk about our goals, deciding that we want to get a recording of our work from that day each day. Our advisor, Mr. Birrow came and talked to us to give us some tips on how to stay productive and how to stay on track for the next 10 days. He suggested we make a list each day. We didn’t have a list for this day, but we had a clear goal in mind: bring Gone Daddy Gone to a point where we feel confident performing and recording it, which we met (thank god)!

We brought this song together from basically learning the tabs (from online tablature) to playing and singing it together and recording it. It took hours of intensive work! We didn’t realize how much work and how many hours go into each recording of each song, and that every artist out there does this. We probably did like 17 takes of this song... hopefully it’ll get easier in the future.