The Regular Friday Post

Rando Lyrics: I think you better turn your ticket in And get your money back at the door

Last week’s rando lyrics: The lyric, “I'll tell you what I want, What I really, really want“ is from the song “Wannabe “ by the Spice Girls, released as their first single in June of 1996. The song is Track 1 on the album “Spice”, released in December, 1996, written by Spice Girls, Matt Rowe and Richard "Biff" Stannard, produced by Rowe and Stannard. Credit: Wikipedia Link: Wannabe (Ed. Thanks to Mr. Steve Goldberg for the inspiration; see his post below for more!)

Spice Girls - Wannabe

Welcome to The Regular Friday post!

For Today:

Last week we started down the music theory rabbit hole and I want to sort of briefly finish that up with how we make Keys from Scales. As we saw last week scales start with a note, one of the 12 in Western music, and apply a formula for the type of scale we want (we stayed with Major and minor scales for now). We end up with 7 notes in the scale, and the interval following the 7th note takes us back to the first note of the scale, just an octave higher. So we call that (the scale plus the octave note) an….Octave.

*note 14 lines for 12 keys - two of them are represented twice: C# is the same key as Db and F# is the same key as Gb

We saw the formula for the Major scale using the C Major scale notes using whole tones and half tones:

So, we’re now going to use each of the notes in the scale above as the root of a chord. When we’ve accomplished that, our scale (made of notes) will be transformed into a Key, made of chords, in this case the key of C Major .

For the visual learners, the graphic below shows how the root (the little arrow shape) can be a variable of any one of the 12 notes, and notes are added above (higher in pitch) the root (aka “tonic”) to make a chord. The most basic chords are “triads” - chords starting on the root and adding two more tones, and the two most common triad chords are Major and minor triads. A Major triad chord is made of the root, a Major 3rd above the root, and a Perfect 5th. A minor triad chord is made of the root, a minor 3rd (you can think of the minor 3rd as a “flatted” third), and the Perfect Fifth. The notes that are left out of a triad are the second, the Perfect Fourth, the sixth, and the diminished 7th. As we add some of those notes in, the chord is no longer a triad chord and becomes one of the types of chords listed below the augmented triad.

One way to think of chords conceptually is that chords use at least a couple of notes from the underlying scale, for instance a rock “power” chord only uses 2 notes, the root and the 5th, and jazz tunes will often use only the 3rd and 7th (or higher) notes. A triad uses 3 (hence the name), but can be added to as in the chart below, or with “add” chords such as Add9, Add11, Add13 chords. When reading chords, a “9” chord such as D9 means the D triad, plus the flat 7th, plus the 9 (which is really the 2nd of the octave above), whereas an “add 9” chord need only have the triad and the 2nd of the octave above.

“As the label indicates, add9 chords are major chords with an added 9th degree note. They are four note chords, as opposed to the original 9 chord, which is a five note chord. An add9 has the notes 1-3-5-9, while the 9-chord has 1-3-5-b7-9. The add9 is a sweet sounding chord, while the 9-chord is dissonant and needs to be resolved.”
Credit  TheGuitarLesson  Link: Add9

So, the practical result is this:

And this:

Put those together with this:

…and if you’re one of those fortunate individuals who can simply play by ear, but may not know notes and chords and how they form scales and keys, you can figure things like that out from the above.

Why bother? That’s the dirty little secret about music theory. If you only want to play on your own, with no other musicians, music theory IS pointless. Have fun!! But, if you do want to play, jam, perform with others, read chord charts, play and cover songs, well, music theory is the language musicians use to communicate with one another. Simple as…

So, thus endeth the music theory rant for now…

If you have questions, leave me a note in the comments - I’ll answer your question, or find out the answer, or put you in touch with someone who can answer (for me that’s almost always a Berklee College of Music grad, just cuz I know some of them, if you happen to as well, they’re a better source than I am, but I may be less annoying about it… just sayin’).

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A Song To Play

Crazy As A Loon

“Crazy As A Loon” is a song by John Prine, written by Pat McLaughlin and Mr. Prine and appears as Track 2 on Disc 1 of the 2005 album “Fair & Square” (Ed. but you’d already know that if you were lucky, like me, to receive the double record album as a Christmas gift - thanks, Joe!!)

Writers: Pat McLaughlin, John Prine Producers: John Prine, Gary Paczosa

“Crazy As A Loon” is not a challenging song to play, 4/4 time, Key of A Major, a sprightly 120 BPM. Many of Mr. Prine’s songs are fairly easy to play, the trick is to try to come close to singing the lyrics (as with many of his songs) with the wry, side wink attitude that comes through when Mr. Prine performs it. Note the lyrics below are kind of wicked tongue in cheek commentary on the prevailing attitudes in some of Big Music’s strongholds. One reason, among many, that I am such a big fan of Mr. Prine is because he just never felt constrained by the rules. The musical accompaniment almost never had to be complicated to the point that lyrics were overshadowed - the story was more important than the medium of the telling. Three chords, and Mr. Prine lets the words speak for themselves.

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(Ed. -  I note the third line of the first verse (maybe the whole verse, even) might be a bit of a hat tip to Jim Croce - Mr. Croce’s song “Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)” has the lyric 

“Oh Rapid Roy that stock car boy
He too much to believe
You know he always got an extra pack of cigarettes
Rolled up in his t-shirt sleeve”           Credit: Genius  Link: Rapid Roy
 … and the next line is about Roy’s tattoo’s …
(“Roy” was a real person - Roy Hall, “American moonshiner and stock car racing driver” - Wikipedia).  Just sayin’…)

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Back before I was a movie star straight off of the farm
I had a picture of another man's wife tattooed on my arm
With a pack of Camel cigarettes in the sleeve of my T-shirt
I'm headin' out to Hollywood just to have my feelings hurt

That town will make you crazy, just give it a little time
You'll be walking 'round in circles down at Hollywood and Vine
You'll be waitin' on a phone call at the wrong end of a broom
Yes, that town'll make you crazy, crazy as a loon

So, I headed down to Nashville to become a country star
Every night you'd find me hangin' at every honky-tonk and bar
Pretty soon I met a woman, pretty soon she done me wrong
Pretty soon my life got sadder than any country song

That town will make you crazy, just give it a little time
You'll be walking round in circles lookin' for that country rhyme
You'll be waitin' on a phone call at the wrong end of a broom
Yea, that town'll make you crazy, crazy as a loon

So I gathered up my savvy, bought myself a business suit
I headed up to New York City where a man can make some loot
I got hired Monday morning, downsized that afternoon
Overcome with grief that evening, now I'm crazy as a loon

So I'm up here in the North Woods just staring at a lake
Wondering just exactly how much they think a man can take
I eat fish to pass the time away neath this blue Canadian moon
This old world has made me crazy, crazy as a loon
Lord, this world will make you crazy, crazy as a loon

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Other Voices:

As I was writing this I came across a post of this show by someone on Substack and was listening to it while writing. Now I can’t find the original poster, but whoever you are - thank you! What a great show! Writing with that in the background was fabulous. If anyone saw the post on here, let me know so I can post the author. When I went back to check it was long buried by everything else.

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Some Links for today:

Ed. Substack keeps track of whether and how many of these links are opened - the rate is pretty low, so if you have a second, let me know in the comments if you find these links valuable, and please, if you don’t and usually skip this section as uninteresting, let me know that too, so I can either shorten it to the “must know” things, or delete the section altogether. Thanks!!

Spotify Punks - I’m pretty much done with the Spotify and “Nazis on Substack” kerfluffles. Spotify is going to drive off their cliff or come to their senses, either way I’m probably done with them. The Nazi issue just won’t go away on Big Substack, but the endless hashing and rehashing is pointless, so, meh.

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From Carvin Audio

Using Amps Reverb When Recording Yeah, this is probably one of those esoteric things that isn’t going to resonate with a lot of readers, but if you home record it’s interesting, and if you don’t but know someone who does, send them the link, please.

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From Blues Guitar Unleashed:

Controlling Ringing - Not gonna lie here, either, BGU is mostly for folks who play electric guitar, but I don’t want to make this place so narrowly focused on acoustics that we miss stuff we have in common. Plus, I like to play the electrics too, so…

LOL - Tweedlies....

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This is from an outfit called Fullcompass.com that I must have bought something from and ended up on their mailing list. This caught my eye, but they have a lot of diverse stuff in their “Gearcast” section. Yeah, it’s there to sell you stuff, but they’re not paying me to say it, so let your leftover Christmas money be your guide….

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Thanks, New Subscribers!! This Week’s Conversation With Mika, the Cat:

(Ed. Keeping this one though, I have at least one subscriber that only reads this part of my posts, which makes me laugh, so…)

She’s a 14+ lb cat, so I sometimes forget how small she once was:

Mika: “Stop telling people how much I weigh….”

This Substack is free, I receive no compensation of any kind from companies or products I mention. Some linked or quoted material may be copyrighted by others, and I credit them. I rely on the “Fair Use” doctrine for educational purposes (Link: Fair Use). I do not use AI, things I link to might though. -Michael Acoustic

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this newsletter.

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Shameless Self Promotion Section:

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

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What I’m Listening2:

LINK»> WIL2 When It's Cold Outside- just click the underlined link, it’s on Amazon

Ed. - Yeah, “oldies”, you darn kids… (LOL) …I was in a mood….. But, although it’s squarely in the period, if you skip everything else, listen to “In The Air Tonight” - yes, I know you’ve heard it before. But that’s the legendary “magic break” - the drum break that was an accident - the audio engineer left the talkback channel on with a bunch of reverb, the rest is drum history…

Also - Tracy Chapman is more, a lot more, than “Fast Car”…..

Also again - the reason you can’t quite sound like that intro to “Dust In The Wind”, even if you’re pretty good at alternate bass line fingerpicking? That’s two guitars…..

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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…”