New Post Tomorrow!!

Last week’s Bonus Round: The Frays hit “How To Save A Life” starts off with the lyric “Step one” - cool song, I like this band a lot. Also, listen to how the piano intro “counts” and then how that count could emphasize chord changes for an accompanying rhythm guitarist.

Last week we got kinda tied up with signature information and I dropped the Circle of Fifths (the magical music decoder ring!) on you. Tomorrow I really want to get to lyrical meter and rhythm and so I’ll leave you with some things to ponder and we’ll talk about them right off tomorrow, then get to basic practical uses of the Circle of Fifths (we’ll return to that particular abyss a lot in the future). We’ll also talk a bit about counting, a basic musical skill we need, but probably didn’t make a lot of sense to bring up until we’d introduced time signatures.

For now here is how I (!) would syllable count and phrase the chorus to “Let The Mystery Be”. The exclamation point after “I” is because it’s where “I” hear her emphasize words with what “I” hear as the beat. You may hear something slightly or wholly different and it gets a little more complicated when you’re doing the same with your own lyrics. We’ll talk a lot more about this tomorrow!

Bonus Round for tomorrow: Last year we lost a great voice in Nanci Griffith’s untimely passing. Find her acoustic cover of a great folk song about Irish emigrés off of her 1993 album which later won a Grammy.

See you tomorrow!!

Cheers, and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic