You are at band rehearsal and you have just spent the better part of an hour working on a great ending to the new blues song. The band is all charged up and you say to yourself, "yeah now that was a good rehearsal"! The big gig is next weekend so you spend the practice before the gig going over different songs.
Well after loading all the equipment and checking, and checking, and checking the sound system you are ready to play. The lights in the bar are dimmed, the place is fillin up and everybody is ready to go. You get ready to play the first song, you know that song that you start every gig off with. The song that is really comfortable so you can check levels and get in the swing of things. You look over at the drummer and he says now how does this one go again. He can't even remember the name of the thing. So you start the song off and him and the bass player come stumbling into the song. Once you get going it comes back to them and things sound pretty good. Now you are heading for the ending when you look at the drummer and he has no clue about the ending that you worked on just last week. Well, as always in the blues there are seven hundred different ways to end it from the guitar players view, and you end it! What happened to the ending you ask? Well, "I just forgot", the drummer says!
Has this ever happened to you? I am a firm believer in limited arrangements. Sure there needs to be some, but when you practice once a week and play a couple times a month there isn't much sense in conjuring up complicated timing and tricky endings. At least not in the case of the blues. Most times the band doesn't remember, or misses that "vital cue" that you designed to key everything.
My answer is to make sure and have a couple of standard blues endings and practice those on all songs. It seems to work fine.
