A Plate of Links
A veritable feast...
Welcome back to Michael Acoustic and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! For today some leftover links from every part of the plate as we head into the Christmas season.
The “blues” is a small word that describes a vast subject - we’ve talked about the origins of “the blues” in previous posts and how much of modern music is based on the blues, since the turn of the 20th century really, but definitely mainstream since the 50s when the rock ‘n roll era really took off. A basic form - the “12 Bar Blues” is a large part of what “the blues” are and contains the basic I-IV-V (or some combination of that) chord progression that underpins such genres as rock, pop, country, Christian, Americana, folk, et al. In this link, Mr Griff Hamlin shows you the basics of how to “own” this classic form:
https://bluesguitarunleashed.com/blog/owning-the-12-bar-blues/
From CD Baby, a link to a free .pdf on tips for promoting your own music:
- Yes, you have to download the .pdf, and if you’re not into giving away too much personal data (I think this one’s pretty minimal, though - CD Baby’s pretty good about that), choose wisely…
We’ve talked about the “Talking Blues” before on Michael Acoustic, a couple of the most famous examples are Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” and Charlie Daniels’ “Uneasy Rider”. From our friends at Acoustic Guitar Magazine, here’s a sort of primer on this subgenre that’s always a fun thing to play around with:
If you’re a songwriter, or thinking about writing your own songs, here’s a link to an important part of the craft. My own songs almost never survive a first draft unchanged and here’s my own tip: make sure you’re preserving those early drafts in some form. If you write with pencil and paper, capture that somewhere more permanently in a Word or Pages document or some word processing app in a folder specific to each song. I call the metafolder (new word, just made it up), “All Written” and each song has it’s own folder with every iteration in both Pages - cuz I use a Mac - and .pdf form. Back up copies of every iteration in the metafolder on a separate, external disk or thumb drive from your computer or pad or phone. Always a good thing to go back and look at them every once in awhile - a new song that didn’t get written previously may be struggling to come of it!
Here’s a link to a Spotify playlist that comes from a guy I get emails from, Anthony Cesari. He promotes his courses called “Success For Your Songs” (and promotes this rather heavily), but also adds some pointers that can be helpful. Anyway, on his YouTube channel (Success For Your Songs) he analyzes the songs off the playlist below. Some of his stuff seems interesting, if a little pushy (I get he’s in business for this, so no real harm/foul), so I’ve included the links here if you’re interested (usual disclaimer - no financial or other benefit to me - I just get emails from him).
Finally for today, a link on several different types of music videos (who knew their were at least 10 different types?) that may be helpful to promoting your work - I definitely found it very interesting!
See you tomorrow with our regular Friday post!
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic