When was the last time any of you got in a band and played much?

Here is something that I don't think the arrangers help much with.. learning how to interact with a REAL band, listening to what's REALLY going on, and not what you think is...

Stopping your arranger for a few songs and playing a solo piano piece doesn't really prepare you for this. And calling playing a bit of a RH melody against a held chord in your LH 'expressing yourself' is a bit of a misnomer. The person that wrote the style, the person that programmed that SMF or the karaoke track is the person 'expressing' themselves You are merely slightly decorating (for good or bad) their work...

Play out more, get in a band, at least for fun, relearn what 'expressing' yourself really means, when you have no ARTIFICIAL crutches anymore, when you play with something that actually listens to YOU (for good or bad!) and alters what it is doing depending on what YOU are playing, and also relearn to adjust to THEIR adjustments...

The only crutch many of us have is thinking that playing with a fake band is really 'playing with a band'. They couldn't be further from each other...