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To continue on with what Larry said about "vowing not to play a wrong note - but not necessarily playing every note".
I had a session a couple of years ago with a very large mixed ensemble - horns, strings, perc, rhythm section, conductor, etc. One of the cues was alternating sections of 5/8 to 6/8 and a bar of 3/4 at the end of every five bar phrase. It wasn't slow and it wasn't just quarter notes and it wasn't very tonal - you get the drift. There was NO WAY I was going to nail this even with a few run throughs but ... my experience told me that I was #1) basically in unison with most of the group, and #2) what they needed from 'guitar' was muted 'thunks' on the bottom of the ensemble (palm mutes) with bass, piano lft hd, bari sax and guitar. I just made sure that I hit the 1st and last note in each bar and played muted clicks on the rest of the rhythmic stuff I could grab. I started right and I ended right and nobody noticed that I didn't play even a third of what was on my page (they were too busy worrying about their own parts which were extremely difficult as well). The only guy that really nailed it was the percussionist (Bob Zimmitti). That day made me sweat. It also made me see that I needed yet more practice. Actaully I see that every day (sigh).
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