The Regular Friday Post

Rando lyrics: “You know the reason I can't hurt I got a heart of stone”

Last week’s rando lyrics: "I Wasn't Ready To Go, I'm Never Ready To Go" from the song, “Let It Ride”, Ryan Adams and The Cardinals, on the album “Cold Roses”, May 2005

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Welcome to the Regular Friday Post!

Yesterday I linked to several articles on the Disc Makers Blog. This was an excerpt from one of them:

“Therefore, to achieve a gold certification, a release would need to accumulate 625 million subscription streams or 1.875 billion free streams. Of course, album sales also contribute to these totals, so the number of SPS (sales plus streaming) is what counts towards certification, and it takes all these units into consideration.”

Below is a sales report for my song, “Long Road Back” for sales from YouTube and the Apple Music Store. Yes, this was from over a month ago, and only 2 months into the release, so there’s plenty of room for optimism here…..

I may be up to 30 cents by now. You don’t know!!

Alright, Friday posts are about playing and music theory and let’s get back to that instead of how my cat won’t be able to eat now that YOU haven’t bought my song!

Kidding, of course. I didn’t go into this thinking I was going to make money. Frankly, I’ll take the 15 cents. It proves I’ve sold more than one copy of my song (the definition of “sold” may be somewhat more flexible and less traditional in the streaming revenue world. Dunno.). Doesn’t matter, I get to take the depreciation on a bunch of my stuff. Who’s grinnin’ now, huh, tax guy?… Whatever, I got accountants, pay for it all….

I think for today we’ll kind of follow yesterday’s lead and spend some time with the links, that seems like maybe a needed break after all the deeper dives we’ve been taking over the last few weeks.

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Space Saving Disclaimer!: This Substack, (not just the first one!) is free, always will be, none of the people or companies or products I link to or write about pay me a damn thing. Neither do you unless you buy my song(s) (See what I did there?). Some stuff may be copyrighted by somebody else…whatever. “Fair Use” doctrine for “educational purposes” (Link: Fair Use) applies, suckers! No stinkin’ AI here unless it’s in something I link to. So.

Michael Acoustic

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Thanks new Subscribers!!!!!! Mika, the Cat, welcomes you!!

This Week’s Conversation With Mika:

Mika: “Yeah, bring it!! What ya gonna do with those short little fingernails you play guitar with?”

Me: “Nothin’….wasn’t doin nothin’”

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Links:

From Blues Guitar Unleashed:

Clapton/Robert Johnson Riff - when Mr. Hamlin includes the names, Robert Johnson, Buddy Guy AND Eric Clapton, it probably worth paying attention to. This is a cool riff, looks reasonably easy to learn, and even if it’s not your thing to play, understanding the why of it is worth the 7 or 8 minutes of the video. Highly recommended.

Pentatonic Scales and Modes - I was really wanting to not mention modes for awhile after we spent a lot of time on them. But, this video is pretty easy to follow and may further understanding of modes by coming at it from a player viewpoint, rather than a writer/mediocre guitar player with some music theory background. That said, Mr. Hamlin does commit what I view as a semantically confusing error. He and others might disagree, but using the terms “scale” and “key” as if they are exactly the same thing is misleading. Remember a scale is a collection of ascending notes. The notes become part of the scale named for its beginning note, called the Tonic, according to a formula of whole and half tones arranged in a specific order. A Key is more properly a “result of doing something to a scale”, specifically, building chords off of each note in the scale according to a different formula. Brief recap: Scale = 7 notes in order, according to the formula WWHWWWH where W=whole tones, H= half tones (note this is the formula for a Major scale - different scales have different formulas). A Diatonic Key, as Mr Hamlin points out, contains chords built off of the notes of the chosen scale, and only those chords, none “borrowed” from other keys, in this particular order: I, ii-, iii-, IV, V, vi-, vii(dim), where Major chords are designated by capital Roman numerals, minor chords by lower case Roman numerals, and the 7 chord is always a diminished (dim) chord. Again this is the order for Major Keys, different types of keys (minor, etc) are ordered differently. Mr. Hamlin explains that pentatonic scales don’t have modes, but that you can sort of, but not really, equate the pentatonic boxes to modes. It’s interesting, but if you haven’t spent a lot of time with the underlying theory we went over a couple of weeks ago, it may be a bit, umm, esoteric…

Soloing If You Don't Know The Key - Yeah - if you’re not conversant with pentatonic boxes, this is probably one to skip…. But if you are, it’s pretty interesting.

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From Acoustic Guitar Magazine:

Cluster Chords - This is cool - made more so (at least for me!) because of all the chord diagrams. I envy people who can “just hear it”. I have to “see” it, at least a few times first, so chord diagrams are a great crutch for me. Worth the read.

Intro to Barre Chords - If you’ve been a reader for awhile, you know I hate barre chords. I understand they are a necessary thing for guitar players, I understand the theory, but understanding and getting older fingers to move and stretch and flex that way are, for me, two different things. If you’ve been avoiding barre chords, this may be the encouragement you need…

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We’ve talked about resolutions before, and noted a musical synonym is the word “cadence”. We kind of talk about how different “cadences resolve” (usually to the tonic/root, but not always, as we’ll see) and we’ve used the terms “authentic” (resolves from the V chord or perfect 5th to the root/tonic) and “plagal” (resolves from the IV chord or the perfect fourth to the root/tonic - this is the “Amen” sort of sound in the resolution). This video describes a couple of others, as well.

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Shameless self promotion section

My song is out! “Long Road Back” (click on link for streaming options)

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What I’m Listening2: 4 Chord Songs - Seriously - there’s 100 songs on this playlist… That Ultimate Guitar subscription’s looking better and better, isn’t it? Have fun!

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Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic

“It’s never really final - you just run out of things you can bear to change…”