Not the Songquest

I blew it again this week. I've got no licks pulled out, and I don't even have an anniversary as an excuse.


In the June 2010 Guitar Player (Jeff Beck cover), Andy Ellis has a lesson where he demonstrates how easy it is to go From C#dim to the F7, B7 D7 and Ab7 chords. That's cool, really, and it's in my head if not in my hands, but there's a key piece of information he fails to bring up.


Consider a chromatic scale.

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B

We'll start from C#, as this is where Andy started.

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B

A diminished chord uses a minor third, so E.

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B

A diminished chord uses a flat 5, so G.

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B

A diminished chord uses a flat flat 7, formerly known as a 6 so A#. Well, we're talking flattening, not sharpening, so I should say Bb, but then I'd have to rewrite this chromatic scale.

C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B

Do you see it yet?


Give it a moment. Now?


Bold normal normal Bold normal normal. A diminished chord is a stack of minor thirds. This means that a C#dim7 is also an Edim7 is also a Gdim7 is also a Bbdim7 (and it makes me wish I could type unicode on a Windows netbook keyboard to have that written as B♭°7 instead.


... wait ...


Anyway, if that one chord is four chords, and dropping the root a half-step gives you a dominant chord, of course you can jump to any of those four chords quickly.


But Sans, you might say, we play rock. How does this help us? And that's a good question. Some time around 1960, melody went from being notes in the chord to notes in the scale, and soon we went from expressive algebra chords to root-and-fifth power chords that allow you the maximum number of choices. (Gross exageration, but I believe that's the trend.) Diminished chords are elegant weapons for a more civilized age. But they do show up on occasion. Take "This Wheel's On Fire" from the Basement Tapes.

The chord is the second chord in the verse. "Meet again and wait". Take whatever diminished chord form and move it up a minor third at a time, 1-2-3-4, to get some cheap drama into the progression.

Considering going through "People Get Ready" to get Songquest on track.

You learn something new every day

Today, it's Jayhawks. "Take Me With You (When You Go)". I have played that song for nearly twenty years and just now figured the intro lick ended D to Dsus2 and not Dsus4 to D. Wow.

I For One Welcome Our New Staff-Wielding Overlords

I play in a band that backs a choir. Or fronts, take your pick.

(I think I've made it obvious what my gig is.)

And, think of it, most of the time, they back us. The songs where they take the lead, they sing to tape. But we're changing that.

This means we're going from chord sheets to staff. Well, I think the term is lead sheets. Not full orchestration. Which trends toward me needing to learn to read.

I can mostly get pitches. Counting sharps and flats gives you key, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, and such. But I fail to understand the rhythm of the dots.

I'll have to hit the scanner to go to the example I have. Listening, I hear seven notes. I see ... nine? (I don't have the music in front of me.) I may put up specific examples later but right now, I need general guidance about reading the rhythm of music. Anyone have good pointers?

Man, That's ...

Long time readers of this blog might remember me mentioning Steve Kimock. Specifically, back about two years ago, I wrote about a then two-year-old article in Guitar Player about intonation. I wrote about it then and I think about it on occasion because I thought and think it was very insightful. Not going to do Steve the injustice of restating his theme in my words. Kinda did that 2 years ago anyway.

Anyway, Steve wrote this about three months ago, then abandoned his personal blog. That's a well-written piece by an engaging author, about his inability to reconcile his ears with music theory.

Although it was perfectly clear to me that if the answer to the question, “What is a D Major chord?” was “D F# A”, and if the answer to the question “What is D F# A?” was “D Major”, that I hadn’t learned anything at all about that D Major triad.

I thought the ‘music theory” bit was going to explain to me why I felt the way I did when I played and listened to music,
but instead it just churned out a bunch of circular logic bullshit, perfectly protected by the really not so diabolically clever Catch 22: DON’T ASK WHY!!

I must disagree. I really think he's asking music theory to do something it was never meant to do. Music theory to my mind is about establishing an instruction set, a shorthand to allow the composer to tell the musician what to play. It establishes a vocabulary, a way of talking about what we expect to play, so we can say "D major" or "D" instead of "Put your index finger on the third string second fret, your middle dinger on the first string second fret, and your ring finger on the second finger third fret". Science is to be involved in explaining that, and

I confess, my ear is not nearly as developed as his is, and with the ringing I hear when I sit in a quiet room, I'm quite sure that it will never be nearly that good. (Curse you, Ramones.) Considering that guitarists, as a class, think of intonation as something you do with a screwdriver whenever you change strings, I believe it's well worth considering these issues, learning more. I don't think that the language of music theory is able to contain the question, much less the answer, but he starts this as a young learning guitar player, and that's a bit much to expect someone to understand. But recognizing a chord by the notes is as circular a logic as recognizing poison ivy by the number of points on the leaf. Far better to recognize than to have to count.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom Captive Israel

By the hymnal, that's what we have here. The melody note and a harmony note, in most cases. Consider "come", the first note past the pickup. That's an E and a G. That implies an E minor chord, which, as the staff has one sharp on it, meaning G major or E minor, should come as no surprise. But that isn't an easy thing to fret. So, inspired by Ritchie Blackmore's recommendation to follow the horn players because they can only play one note at a time, I dropped the harmony and just played the melody notes.



If I was Ted Greene, I'd play more than the chords, but in context, I'm one voice among many, so it wasn't crucial to bring the whole of the song to life. I will tab that out and append that later, but I have some stuff to pack so I'll do that later. Santa brought a video camera to the household, so I'll show you how I play it later, too.

Also, Merry (belated) Christmas and a Happy (premature) New Year!

Give You Some More Flacke Some More

This is a fretboard map of the A7 chord near the fifth position, showing the roots [A] in yellow, major thirds [C#] in red, fifths [E] in purple and dominant sevenths [G] in light blue. There's a growl, for lack of better terms, that I'm beginning to get when I play it that's the specific tone I'm going for. It's the low string growl that, to me, is the signature of a country guitarist. And, for the life of me, I don't get it.

New Chord Form

E ---0----0----0---
B ---0----0----0---
G ---11---9----6---
D ---12---10---7---
A ---10---8----5---
E ---12---10---7---

This is a chord show to me tonight as I played. Those are a few places where the movable parts don't sound too bad with the ringing B and E. This is a jangly clean-tone chord, but give it try.

Looking just at the EADG strings, first, notice that we have the root, minor third and dominant seventh. It would be easy to say Emin7, Dmin7, Bmin7, but that doesn't bring in the G string. In the first case, that's an F#. That's an octave up from the root, so that's a 9? Emin9? We'll assume that someone, somewhere, will fill in that fifth. Come to think of it, the open B string gives us the fifth. So, yes, Emin9.

Drop down to the second chord and you see that's a Dmin9, except the B and E become a 4 or 11 and another 9. So Dmin9sus4?

When we get to the B, that's root minor-third dominant-seventh ninth root fourth, so again a Bmin9sus4.

A Gatton Chord

This is from Danny Gatton's Telemaster! video.

E ---5---
B ---5---
G ---5---
D ---7---
A ---8---
E ---6--- 

Bass to treble, Bb F A C E A. But what is it? If you just take the high four, A C E A, and you got yourself an A minor. Add the F and you get an F major 7. But that Bb, in the root no less. What does it make it? Bb is the 4th. Normally people shove the 4th in high, not low.

But go play it. Give it a shot.

Connections James Burke Would Have Missed

This is "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" by Blind Lemon Jefferson.


Notice the last verse. Blind Lemon uses the low E to stand in for the tolling of a church bell. I was sitting, playing around when it struck me that this concept was part of "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC. So, I started trying to pick it from memory. Turns out that they used the open A.

E -----------------------------------------------------
B ---3---1-----0-----1-------3---1-----0-----1---------
G -----2---0-----0-----0-------2---0-----0-------------
D -----------0-----0-----0-----------0-----0-----------
A -0-----------------------0--------------------3-2-0--
E -----------------------------------------------------

I am not 100% sure on that, but that's at least a start. What I find interesting about it is that it implies G major ( D C2 G ) over a droning A.

What amazes me was that I wasn't going over and over on the record. I was able to think it through. Then again, there's not a bad song on Back in Black.

One More, and the Truth, and You're All Set

This is a little bit of the µ thing. We're talking a 2 or 9 chord. Well, add9, as when you talk a numbered chord, you're usually talking all the odd numbers leading up to it. A 13th chord should have the 7, 9 and 11. Here, we're just tossing in the 2/9, so we're getting the root, 2, 3 and 5.

C2

E -------------
B ------1------
G ------0------
D ------0------
A ------3------
E -------------

F2

E -------------
B ------1------
G ------0------
D ------3------
A ------3------
E -------------

These are a pair of nice chords that work great together, being root and 4th/5th of each other. You can nail a lot of jam to the wall with those chords, and they sound groovier than non-mu cowboy chords. With that C, you play either of the open Es and it comes off as an add2, while it's a sus2 if you don't.

While I'm at it, I came along this B minor in an open position that's nice. Playing acoustic, I'm always on the lookout for open-position chords, and this is useful. You don't have the fifth, and if you don't really want the seventh (and who doesn't want the seventh?) you can just mute it and have the root and third. You can always grab an F# on an E string if you really need the fifth. It isn't the prettiest B minor position, but it's a fast way to get to it if you need to switch chords quickly.

Open-position Bm7

E -------------
B ------0------
G ------2------
D ------0------
A ------2------
E -------------

Well, that's three chords. Don't know if you could use 'em together, but there you go. Truth? That's something you're going to have to work out for yourself. Sorry.

All Songs Have The Same Chords

I am sure I've posted this before. But it is timely.

Stratoblogster posted a link to Axis of Awesomeness proving that a third of all popular songs use the same I-V-vi-IV progression.

Another third is all on Pachelbel's Canon, which is D A B F# G D G A. (Thanks guy in vid.) Goes to D A Bm F#m G D G A for chords, to I V vi iii IV I IV V. A big more complex, so it's good to only have to learn one five-chord progression. B)

Dragging Bleachers Out In The Sun

I emailed Customer Service at Fender with my disappointment with the Phosphor Bronze strings. A representative emailed me back, apologizing and promising replacement strings. When they arrive, and the current set gets replaced, I will be certain to post. Thanks, Fender, for the good customer service. I will gladly give these strings a second chance.

But, in the mean time, I still need strings, so I pulled off the Phosphor Bronze and replaced them with Ernie Ball Earthwood 80/20 Bronze strings, running .013-.056. I've been happy with EB Slinkys, be they Super Slinkys or Not Even Slinkys, so I figure the acoustic sets should be OK. They still have the new string clang, but I've always been one for reasonably heavy acoustic strings. Without bridge cables, I tend to bend too much. They keep me in check.

Since we're revisiting old posts, I'll point out the start of my investigation of the "Allman Brothers lick" in "Bootleg Flyer" by Mudcrutch. There are precisely two things I missed on first pass.

First is a chromatic note, the major seventh after the dominant seventh at the end of each octave. In layman's terms, that means we throw in a G#. Second it the fact that it's in triplets. Here's the first octave.

E -----------------------------------
B -----------------------------------
G -----------------------------------
D ------------------------5---5-6-7--
A --------3---3-5-3-5-7-5---7--------
E --5-3-5---5------------------------


Do the same with the second and most of the third and you'll have it. I have it. I just don't have it to speed, nor without errors.

Also, it's a bit from the first song off the first album, called "Don't Want You No More". Look at about 1:28 and 2:00. But I'll post the audio bits tomorrow.

Strings full of Jelly, Head full of Pain

Ever heard of Jimmy Bryant? He and Speedy West were a Tele/Steel guitar duo sitting firmly on the fuzzy line between jazz and country. Here's a bit of them backing Tennessee Ernie Ford.



They did lots and lots of instrumentals, many of them re-released on Razor and Tie. Look up Stratosphere Boogie. Specifically, track 7, "The Night Rider".

I'll wait.

Here's the first five seconds of it.

"The Night Rider" (Intro)

Ever heard of Jim Campilongo? He's an uptown Tele slinger, known most these days for backing Norah Jones as part of the Little Willies. Slings a 1959 top-loader Tele, and recently a Fender Custom Shop copy of his '59. He also stands firmly on the fuzzy line between country and jazz, and he worked out the intro.


E -----------6-----------6------------6--6--6--6--6--10---
B ---6--8----8----6--8---8----6--8----8--8--8--8--8--8----
G -----------10----------9------------8--8--8--8--8--8----
D ---------------------------------------------------7----
A --------------------------------------------------------
E --------------------------------------------------------


Thanks, Jimmy, for playing it, and thanks, Jim, for transcribing it. There's more, but there's enough here to write.

Now, lets do some analyzing. I see four chords. I will switch to hexidecimal (8, 9, a, b, c, d, e, f, 10, with hex10 = dec16) for writing chords, so that'a xxxa86, xxx986, xxx886 and xx788a.

xxxa86 is, low to high, F G A#. A# and F are root-fifth for an A# chord, with the E, we can call it an A#6 chord. Changing inversion and we get a G minor dominant 7. Going with F as root, we get what? F9sus4? A#6 seems simpler to think about.

xxx986 moves the F to a E. A# flat 6?

xxx886 is easy, and it clears up the other three. D# G A# is a D# major, so, that makes the first three essentially D#2, D# flat2 and D#. Ornament notes over a chord, kinda like the earlier "Closer To Fine" example, albeit much cooler. Very chromatic, very jazzy.

xx788a. What? 88a is D# G D, which makes a major seventh. "Makes" doesn't fully mean makes, as these are all partial chords, not full. The 7 is A. The flat five. Don't often see that in chords. The more I think about it, the more I think it should sound awful. But, clearly it doesn't.

So, clearly, because I don't remotely understand why this works, I never would've come up with it. But man, isn't that cool?

Landing on Water, Landing on Sand

Years ago, Tom Petty had a band called Mudcrutch. They were a fairly big thing in Florida, but never made it to the next level. He moved to guitar from bass, moved from Florida to L.A., and started the Heartbreakers. Which, as it turns out, shared a guitar player and keyboard player with Mudcrutch. So, decades later, after making a career retrospective box set and movie, he called up the guys left in Florida and got the band back together.

The album is good. Mike Campbell is all about the B-Bender on this one, and there has never been a recording which the addition of Benmont Tench could not improve. Great take on "Lover of the Bayou". But my favorite, the song that electrified me, is "Bootleg Flyer". And the bit that got me is what I call the Allman Brothers Lick, because it sounds like something Duane and Dickey would do in unison.

Allman Brothers Lick

This is what I think is going on. (MIDI file)



That is roughly a three-octave pentatonic minor lick, going from the 6th string 3rd fret G to the 1st string 17th fret A. That was done in Finale Notepad, and here's my file.

I don't know a good way to get from near-the-nut G to near-the-pickups A. I can get the first two octaves staying around the third fret. I can get the second two at the fifteenth. But I'm sure they're sliding up as they go. Mike Campbell and Tom Leadon, I mean. I know that Mike tends to move up and down the neck; one of the first licks I learned is the opening lick "Breakdown", and that slides back.

I've been putting "learn the scales up and down the neck" in my practice-time list. I think getting this to speed will be interesting.

Guess I'm Expecting Rain

I have a Pee Wee Les Paul. I have a nut extender. Now I have a guitar in open G. That is, open G as if it was open D and capo'd up five. GDGBDG. It's a Pee Wee, built for the little ones, and the little ones have never taken to it. So, it is my lap steel #2.

This makes me think about tuning.

The standard guitar tuning is a bit of a mess. Scales lay out beautifully when you tune in fifths, as any mandolin player will tell you. It's hard to see the parallels and overlaps when you tune in fourths, like guitarists do. And then there's the bump, the major third between the second and third strings. Or fourth and fifth strings. It works. It makes chording fairly easy. Easier, I say, than in fifths like a mandolin, and as easy, in a different way, as everything put out in front of you with a keyboard.

But where did it come from?

Richard Lloyd describes the tuning as coming from a pre-decided use of an E as the low string and fourths and trying to find something more useful than the C and F resulting.

It is a reasonable take, and as a "here's why, now go away" explanation, it works as well as any other and better than most. But it doesn't compel me. It sounds like a maker came up with a problematic design (EADGCF) and eventually a compromise (EADGBE) came about. It starts with E, but the E bass string is probably the last string added to the modern guitar^*, and thus it makes it unlikely that the tuning started with the deification of the E.

* The low B string, actually, is the last string added to the modern guitar, and it's still not universally accepted. But it is used for the same reason the E was at first, to give a deeper ringing bass note there.

Bob Brozman argues for the centrality of the G tuning (DGDGBD), saying that's the first open tuning every guitar goes for. Not just "Open G", but that tuning specifically. That tuning shares a G chord - D G B - with standard. Other stringed instruments, like the ukelele and the banjo, share a standard open G, although one might wonder if there is a standard banjo tuning, and the other members of many bluegrass bands wonder aloud if you can tune a banjo and how could you tell if it was tuned.

So, is the G-B third a compromise, or is it built in? What's your take? And, incidently, if I say the sixth string, which string would you count that as, the high E or the low E?

Remedial Songwriting 102, or Pray for the Thunder and the Rain

Consider the first verse of "Sweet Child O' Mine". Not lyrically. The lyrics are a scary, scary place. "Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place where as a child I'd hide"? No. Let's consider it musically.

Guns 'n' Roses tuned down a half-step. If they played something that looks like a G, it's really an F#. Or, since we're flattening, a Gb. It makes it a bit easier to assume they didn't, even though Slash's opening bit sounds wrong tuned standard. So, going by our fiction, the verse progression is D C G D. It starts in D, so we can say it's in some sort of D, but if it was D major, it would be C# major.

Why?

This is two octaves of D.

D E F# G A B C# D E F# G A B C#

Chord theory says that a chord is made up of the root, third and fifth. For a D chord, that's

D E F# G A B C# D E F# G A B C#

For the G, that's another major

D E F# G A B C# D E F# G A B C#

And, for the C#, that's

D E F# G A B C# D E F# G A B C#

That's a C# diminished. There's no place in D for C.

Unless we think modal and call it D mixolydian, which is essentially playing G from D to D instead of G to G.

D E F# G A B C D E F# G A B C D

D E F# G A B C D E F# G A B C D

D E F# G A B C D E F# G A B C D

We have our major chords and we're happy. We have a wistful, nostalgic verse. Now it's time for our chorus.

And it's A C D.

Sounds like something you diagnose in an uruly child. But let's go back to that D mixolydian scale.

D E F# G A B C D E F# G A B C D

A C E. That's an A minor. And they play an A major. (Ab major, but remember our agreed fiction.)

What happened? In what theoretical universe is there an A major and a C major next to each other? Do we skip temporarily into D major for one chord and switch back for the next one?

Somehow, theory can explain it, I'm sure. Someone can bend theory to say "this actually does work". Thing is, it does work. Listen to "Sweet Child 'O Mine", knowing what you just heard. Pull out the acoustic and strum a few bars. Then try it with an A minor.

Music theory shouldn't be used to proscribe your creative impulse. It's a way to communicate it, and it gives a set of rules you can follow if the element in question isn't your primary focus. But if you can make it work, make it sound good even when theory says it doesn't make sense, then you have something.

Because, as Duke Ellington said, if it sounds good, it is good.

The Results Are In

And it seems we like our Allman Brothers, many of us like CW and his B-Bending, and we think there's a GP biopic in our future. Interesting.

I knew I liked you guys.

Netflix came through again. Nashville Chops and Western Swing. Brent Mason on HotLicks. Evidently Brent is unhappy with it. Less, I guess, with it than with the financial dealings with Hot Licks. I get the frustration; you don't get to be the Nashville superpicker by doing things that don't pay. And I get the other side; It was Arlen Roths' wife who handled the business, and when she died, it fell apart.

But I shouldn't get into the middle of the financial disagreements of the Telemasters. I haven't seen all of it yet, but I've seen parts of it. But I do like what I see. Danny Gatton's Telemaster vid is a mindbender, something that'll drop your jaw before it's done. Johnny Hiland's Chicken Pickin' Guitar is about a few licks without much underlying information. The best I had seen is Albert Lee's, but with him it's very much drinking from the firehose. James Burton's video was most useful, the first one that give me more than a clue about chicken pickin'.

This is good. Better than most. I'll (of course) have to get into it with a guitar in my hands to pick up more. But it's a fine, fine thing.

The one thing, and I think this is more general abut I'll deal with these specifics, is that Brent has one heck of a rig, one which allows him to switch between four or five amps and and four or five cabs, not just turn on and off effects. It's like Rick Nielsen's five-neck, where unless you know what you're doing, it's beyond your abilities to understand. There's a lot less "this is when I use the this effect, here's why, and here's about the settings I use" in everybody's instructional videos, I think.

I'll tell you more as I see more.

Speaking of more, have any of you heard of Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story. To my mind, if you want soul, you want Stax. I thought the bad end, with the original studio torn down, was where things ended. They've rebuilt it and made it a working museum, it seems. I have to make it to Memphis one of these days. Beale Street, Stax Records, and not Graceland.

One thing I didn't know that I learned from the video: The Lorraine Hotel was one of few black-owned hotels in Memphis, and it was a common hangout for the Stax players and writers.

Watch Booker T and the MGs play "Time Is Tight". When are we gonna get the Colonel's instructional video/

And another Netflix hit, Fallen Angel. A documentary on the life and death of Gram Parsons. In the greater sense, he's a minor player in the late 60s and early 70s LA music scene. People get into the story because the last bit, where Phil Kaufman took the body to Joshua Tree. To me, that's the small part. There's a big story there, straight out of Tennessee Williams, and that's before you get to the music. Which is great stuff.

(I get most of my videos at NetFlix. I had owned the Telemaster! and Danny's rhythm guitar video, and the Masters of the Telecaster DVD is at my local library.)

Remedial Songwriting I, or How to Make the Young Girls Cry

This is me learning by doing, and if I'm doing it wrong, please tell me.

And what we're learning is the process of songwriting. Songwriting as in composing music, not composing words. Although they do kinda connect eventually, unless you're all-instrumental.

In this case, we start with a melody, which makes us very old school.

If you don't read music, you still know that song. I guarantee it. (Or your money back!) It's "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". And the first step is to figure out what key to put it in. That # symbol means there's one sharp, which puts it at G major. Well, it could be E minor, but we're starting with a G, so G major is a good assumption.

So, we have a melody and we have a key. Isn't that good enough? No, not quite. We need to create harmony. Simply put, chords. So, let's put some chords in for a first pass. First two measures only.

G G D D E E D | C C B B A A G

Try it. Doesn't it sound bad? There are reasons for that. We'll try a few more ways.

First, go back to the key. G. The G scale is G A B C D E F#. So, let's pull a few chords. G is G B D. C is C E G. D is D A F#. Between those, we have all the melody notes in the chord. Going back to the first measure, it was the E major that sounded bad. The E note is in the C chord, so we'll use the C chord. Bs go to G, and As go to D.

G G D D C C D | C C G G D D C
D D C C G G D | D D C C G G D
G G D D C C D | C C G G D D G

That's a way to do it. This is why there's 3-chord rock. As long as you stay within the key, three chords is all you need.

But not necessarily all you want. Woody Guthrie says if you use more than three chords, you're just showing off, but why are you playing in front of people if you aren't gonna show off? That second measure goes C C B B A A G, right? Drops like that are everywhere, and I'd likely play that like this:

C C G/B G/B Amin7 Amin7 G

You get the C. G/B is just the G chord with the B, the 2nd fret of the A string, as the root note. We could write Amin7 as C/A (except that's a bit weird, as A isn't part of C), then G.

You can do similar things with the rest of the chords, too.

I said this is old school, and now I should explain. You listen to traditional Irish music, for example, and you hear lots and lots of "tunes", melodies to work from. The backing musicians choose how to play along with the melody, and it isn't written in stone. Listen to John Doyle and you'll hear improvisation and variation in the harmony playing that's just great. And, if you're anything like me, you'll lose track over which part of the melody is "The Kitten and the Cow", which part is "Fredrick's Jig", which part is "The Greater Storm" and how they all connect. But you'll like it all anyway.

We get into more modern music, we find that musicians don't like memorizing dozens of chord structures. As we've established, the harmony is established in relation to the melody, so when you improvise over (older) jazz, you have to choose a chord note. (Consider the big jazz chords. Then consider Freddie Green's chords, which are three notes at best. They write A13 to give the soloist more choices, and choices in the second octave that aren't in the first, not as much so you play a chord with A C# E G B D and F. There aren't enough strings to play all that anyway.) Take one chord structure, like the 12 Bar Blues or the Rhythm Changes or Pachelbel's Canon, throw different melodies on top, and you've got yourself a new song, but something that's recognizable and easier for musicians to remember. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is also the Alphabet, remember. Bob Brozman has a page where he talks about the evolution of the blues form from the early and rough stuff to the very sophisticated and jazz variations, which is very interesting.

There are big books and websites of stock changes. Song recycling is still a thing: "Knocking On Heaven's Door" became "Helpless" became "Fade Into You" without even a tempo change, but I'd be hard pressed to name anything that goes I bIII IV bVII besides "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

I'll do Remedial Songwriting II once I teach myself more. I don't have a clear handle on chord resolution yet.

He Likes To Make A Livin' Runnin' 'Round

I have the Country Boy Albert Lee instructional video out from Netflix, and I have had it for a while, because I haven't had the time to sit down with guitar, amp and DVD player and get it into my hands yet. Parts are in my head, to be sure, and those parts will continue to be useful, but they're not in my hands where they can be useful.

One thing I do kinda have if the Floyd Cramer lick. In A:

E ---------------------------
B --------------5-7-5---5h7-5
G ----4h6---4h6-------6------
D --7-----7------------------
A ---------------------------
E ---------------------------

Or something close to that. Floyd's piano is one of the few bits of countrypolitan that I can dig. It's a guitar hammer-on style that Floyd borrowed for guitar, so it's OK that we take it back. The central deal is on the G string, a hammer-on from the second to the major third. And of course it sounds more Floydish if it's up higher.

I also got Fallen Angel, a biographic documentary of Gram Parsons. It's really interesting. You get his family from Florida going into all the detail of the home life he ran away from, Chris Hillman wanting so hard to say nice things about Gram the artist but always going back to his barely-contained contempt for Gram the flighty druggy Keith wannabe, and the back and forth between Phil Kaufman and everyone who hates him and thinks he's a putz.

What really made me stop and rewind was the passing mention of Clarence White. Regular readers of this blog will know that mentions of Clarence White will always make me stop. And since his death and funeral, Gram's singing "Farther Along" and making a pact with Phil are crucial to the story of Gram's death and cremation, it kinda has to be there. I wish there was more. And I wish there was video of the country rock super-tour with Clarence and Gram and Emmylou ending the show together. And, really, I wish that Clarence was never hit by a drunk driver. Less sure with Gram; if he never died, would Emmylou have blossomed into the incredible artist she became? And if it wasn't that night in Joshua Tree, wouldn't it have been some other night at some other place?

Anyway, upside is, the one that came most recently is going back so that my eldest can get a Jimi documentary for a school report, and the one I've been sitting on will stay at home.

Beg for Software Pointers

One way to learn something is to try to teach it. If you have a fuzzy knowledge of something, it has to be sharpened in order for you to teach it. And, as part of my How To Not Suck series, I need to get into talking about music. There's words for it, but there's also a written language, which I have a very fuzzy knowledge of. I want to sharpen it, and having to think things through and write about it will sharpen it.

So, I will want to be able to make images of staff notation. Unless there's a way to write it in HTML. So, please, are there good Free or Open or even just free ways I can write out something in musical staff? I'll more than likely be doing it on my work laptop (don't tell anyone) so XP-friendly choices are preferred, but not required.