Thank you to all who checked out the “Retrospective” series, they’ll all remain in the The Archive, along with the posts since around the first of April that I haven’t included in the Retrospective (and everything else of course, some of it was just hard to find without an index of sorts). One reason I stopped at the end of March is that’s around the time the Thursday “teaser” posts became less teasers and more like a “lite” version of the Friday main posts. I’ll be returning to the Thursday/Friday format in October, with the Thursday posts being more oriented towards links to other SubStack writers and some of the publications that offer useful information on all of the subjects we cover on Michael Acoustic.
Before we get to last week’s Bonus Round I want to share some extraordinarily great news for artists, songwriters and especially those that are independently writing their own music (and copyrighting it), independently publishing their own music through their publishing business entity, and recording, and publishing (through a publishing admin service), and distributing their music through a distribution service. Story here:
Streaming Royalties Increase Over 15%
Money Quote: “Songwriter and publisher U.S. mechanical streaming royalty rates are going up — slowly — to a headline rate of 15.35% of total revenue from 2023-2027.” Credit: Billboard.com
This chart shows a rapid rise in the percentage of royalties paid to artists/songwriter/copyright owners between 2018 and 2022, so rightsholders received an incrementally larger piece of the pie. What it doesn’t reflect is the exponential growth of the streaming services, i.e., the “pie “ itself, and the growth of the numbers of rightsholders themselves, along with the proportional decline of other sources of rightsholder income such as CDs, vinyl, etc. Still, good news.
Last Week’s Bonus Round: We talked about the “Travis Pick” (really just a more complicated version of the common alternate bass line pick) that became identified with Merle Travis.
"Sixteen Tons" is a song written by Merle Travis about a coal miner, based on life in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.[2] Travis first recorded the song at the Radio Recorders Studio B in Hollywood, California, on August 8, 1946. Cliffie Stone played bass on the recording.[3] It was first released in July 1947 by Capitol on Travis's album Folk Songs of the Hills.[4] The song became a gold record.
The line "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt" came from a letter written by Travis's brother John.[2] Another line came from their father, a coal miner, who would say: "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store."[5] Credit: Wikipedia
The Tennessee Ernie Ford cover is far more widely known, but here’s the original Merle Travis version. Listen for the alternating thumb pick on the low E and the A strings (pretty “thumpy” in this old recording - sure enough, looks like a Martin - if you know, you know).
Last week we expanded on the Travis picking theme a little and that’s a good place to return to: some of the basics of the “other hand”, the one that does the other stuff, and for today, especially strumming. I mostly fingerpick songs but it’s always good to go back to the basic strumming patterns, and especially this one:
“The calypso strum is a basic syncopated strumming pattern that’s commonly used in some form across different genres of music, including Rock, Folk, Blues, and of course Calypso.
To do a basic calypso strum, all you need is this pattern:
Down, down-up, -up, down-up.
This is where it’s important to use your beat-keeping skills.
Those two up strums in a row look and feel a little strange at first.
To get the calypso strum to slot properly into the measure, make sure that you tell yourself to drop your strumming hand in between those two up strums.
You can even say it to yourself: down, down-up, drop-up, down-up.”
Credit: nationalguitaracademy.com - link to the entire post below, which is pretty cool (yeah, they’re going to try to sell you their courses, which may be worth a look, based on the quality of this free post - no financial interest on my part).
I include this because of a discussion I had with my guitar instructor a few weeks ago about this strum (See my interview with him here: Mellad). Interesting thing - that strum is his (and mine) “go-to” strum. If you’re playing (or writing) a new song, or off of a chord chart and there’s no particular strum pattern, or you haven’t decided on one yet, this is the “old reliable”. One reason is that it’s especially effective (as Mellad pointed out) for any song that folks in your audience may want to dance to, because of the syncopation between beats “2 and”and the “(3) and”. Back to that in a second, stay with me.
In a 4/4 (common time) song, the quarter note gets the beat, counted as 1 2 3 4, and if you’re playing some eighth notes in the same measure, you count them on the “and”, as in “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and” - now there are 8 notes in a measure, with the 4 eighth notes that fall on the numbers getting the beat, and the 4 extra eighth notes in between the numbers getting the “and”. You still have to fit the 8 notes into the tempo set by the (quarter notes) beats per minute (BPM), so if it’s a measure with all eighth notes you have to play them twice as fast as a bar with only 4 quarter notes.
With this pattern it’s a combination of quarter and eighth notes, and the “3 beat” isn’t there at all, it’s “dropped”, and because our feet want it to be there when dancing, we tend to move on that beat in order to fill the beat we’re used to and account for it not being there. Kinda weird, but true. If the strum is “down, down-up, (drop)-up, down-up” - let’s count that out as “1, 2 and, - and, 4 and”, where “-” is the dropped, unplayed 3 beat. Here’s what it sounds like in an iPhone voice memo played on my trusty Yamaha practice guitar strummed at a fairly slow tempo in a I-IV-V-I pattern in GMaj (2 measures each chord - G G C C D D G G) with the the 3rd beat drop exaggerated in the first 2 measures so you get the feeling, then as normally played: Calypso Strum
It’s also my go-to fingerpicking pattern (this is especially useful as a flatpicking pattern as well, because you can keep the same pattern and switch between flatpicking arpeggios and strumming): Calypso Pick
And it’s widely used in lots of ways - here it is in the opening riff and in the instrumental break later on from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Up Around The Bend”
This is in the Key of DMaj and only uses 2 chords, D - A (the I - V), 2 bars each, 129 BPM, but it doesn’t matter what key, tempo, or chord intervals are played, it’s the same strum/pick pattern, usually one full pattern to the bar, and that’s why it’s useful and much more interesting than a simple unsyncopated up-down pattern.
Link to the Strumming Techniques full lesson on nationalguitaracademy.com described above.
Electronics - if your acoustic guitar doesn’t have installed electronics and you want it to, or you’re thinking about a different type, here’s a great primer on the subject from Acoustic Guitar Magazine.
Yes, everyone has their favorite Beatle, and mine is George Harrison. He was a great musician and songwriter and often wrote for other bands and artists. This story from the article in American Songwriter Magazine cracks me up:
“2. “Badge” Cream (1969)
Written by George Harrison and Eric Clapton
Written with Eric Clapton, “Badge” was released on Cream’s final album, Goodbye, and initially never had a title. When Clapton misread Harrison’s handwriting on the song indicating a “bridge” on the track as “badge,” the title stuck.
“Each of them had to come up with a song for that Goodbye Cream album and Eric didn’t have his written,” said Harrison. “We were working across from each other, and I was writing the lyrics down and we came to the middle part so I wrote ‘Bridge.’ Eric read it upside down and cracked up laughing. ‘What’s a Badge?’ he said. After that, Ringo [Starr] walked in drunk and gave us that line about the swans living in the park.””
I’ll never hear that lyric the same way again..
Bonus Round: …in the USA
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic
Great Mike! Our family's been singing "16 Tons" around the campfire ever since I was a little kid. Hilarious about how the lyrics of songs arrive in their final form, now with "Badge" it makes me wonder where this one came from: "Then I told you 'bout our kid, now he's married to Mabel"
Like a Cowboy Cookie (I had a couple today!)....filled with all kinds of good stuff! Congrats to writers for uptick on streaming royalties (but, I'm not surprised how, out of a bigger corporate pie, the slice isn't near big as it could/should be)! Cue Homer: "Mmmmm, pie......!"
Dug the "Badge" info and vid. Did you know all-girl rockers, Fanny, covered it in 1970? One of the first all-girl bands (who played their own instruments) to record for a major label (Reprise/Warner Bros., and mid-'70s moved to Casablanca Records). In fact, as a 15-yr-old in '70, Fanny's cover was the first time I heard "Badge," not quite being into the "hippie" bands like Cream at the time (and getting free Warners promo albums every week from radio sales guy, Dad, including Fanny's debut with "Badge" certainly helping sway my allegiance)!
Ironically, when I got into FM rock radio, mid-'70s, Fanny's album was never in the control room, so the Cream "Badge" was all I ever played, on-air, anyway! I think you'll dig the Fanny version. It's on YT, and on one of them, guitarist June Millington has a comment from a year ago about sister, Jean (bassist) having suffered a stroke. Not sure if she's better.
Anyway, well done, Michael!