Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

286 SAD SONGS (SAY SO MUCH)

SAD SONGS (SAY SO MUCH)

"Today we're going to learn to play the blues," I said. We were sitting on the edge of the stage, our legs dangling into the security pit. "I'm betting you kind of know this already, instinctively, but it's one thing to hear it and recognize it, and another to play it."

Colin nodded. "Okay."

"So, here's the thing. You've learned a couple of chords, and you know how to strum, and how to pick two ways. That's plenty to start improvising with."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. You don't have to go to French cooking school and have five hundred ingredients in your fridge to make a sandwich." I strummed a chord. "You know any music theory?"

"Not really? I mean, obviously I know notes and I can read if necessary. School band stuff."

"No reading. This is how you learn to read with your ears instead of your eyes. You've really never done any jazz improv before?"

"Nope."

"Okay, so this works on chord progressions. You know how I taught you a folk three that go together?" I played A, D, and E7. "There's a million folk songs built on those three." I played a little of the Elvis song that was basically "Auralee" and then a little "On Top of Old Smokey." "I can also do it without the seventh, but it's the seventh and the flat three that make it bluesy."

"Flat... oh I get it. Minor key."

"Except it's not exactly like using a minor chord in, like, a classical composition. Here's the regular scale"–I played it–"and here's the blues scale. It's just a different set of paints on the palette, as one of my old teachers used to say. I can paint the same picture but it'll look different."

"Bluer."

"Well, yeah." It hadn't actually occurred to me before then that "blue" might actually refer to a color and not, well, a mood or music itself. I'm not sure if I'm too literal or not enough. "So here's the thing. There's a twelve bar progression and then there are the eight bar versions. The eight bar is way more common in rock music."

"Why?"

"Uh, I don't know. Because rock musicians are impatient as all fuck," I joked. Then I thought about it more seriously. "Actually, maybe that's true. It feels like it takes too damn long to get back to the one in twelve bars, once you get used to eight. But quit distracting me with questions."

I played through an eight bar progression. I wasn't going to explain the whole business of how the twelve bar progression is pretty standard, but the eight has a lot of variations. I stuck with what seemed to me to be one of the more common ones.

I explained it. "The progression starts with the one, the chord that goes with the first note of the scale, and the goal is to get back to the one."

"The tonic, right?"

"Right. I thought you said you didn't know any music theory?"

"I don't. Just picked that up somewhere."

"Anyway, so I'm playing, one one, four one..." Then I decided I didn't like it. "Wait, fuck that, let's do the full twelve bars. The first four measures are all on the one, the next four it's two on the four-chord and then two back on the one, and then the last third of it is five-four-one-one."

That probably sounded like word salad, but playing it you don't get confused by the numbers or what they refer to. "The twelve bar version really emphasizes the one as your 'home base.' You really get centered around that note, that chord. And everyone feels great when we get back to one, because it feels comfortable when you get back to it."