Hello folks!
I hope your week is going well. I finally got some antibiotics for this plague I've been suffering, so I hope to be in the pink next time I see you.
Here's a great rockumentary you can watch for free on YouTube, "Mayor of Sunset Strip" :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EDp2oHQaRI
As the description reads--"Rodney Bingenheimer, born December 15, 1947, is a radio disc jockey on the long-running Los Angeles rock station KROQ who is notable for helping numerous iconic bands become successful in the American market...He was the subject of a documentary by late filmmaker George Hickenlooper titled Mayor of the Sunset Strip which told the story of a groupie-turned-kingmaker with a knack for making friends in the music industry."
I've seen is a couple of times. It features Kim Fowley, whose book I recommended recently.
Onto recaps!
Guitar 4Evar worked through Elvis Costello's "Alison" (which has absolutely nothing to do with his wife, Diana Krall, and I don't know why anyone ever would've made that connection :p)
There are some quick-change chords, and some funny timing things but you guys really rocked it. Andrea took better notes that I'm able to recount verbally, so I invite you to head on over to our facebook group and download the PDF she so generously provided! For the record--I'm not just buttering you up. I think you all nailed it and I was super impressed! I hope you find that 4-chord measure as satisfying as I do to pull off.
In Guitar 1, we met up with Am, a very complimentary chord to the C we're getting used to. "Mad World" is great for practice. Just memorize that one chord progression: Am, C, G, D (I think that's what it is--though I'm at the day job and don't have the sheet in front of me...) and play it over and over again until it's time to play the chorus, which is just Am and D! There was never an easier tune to memorize. The strumming is the same John Denver combo of two quarter notes, and two pairs of eigthnotes: Down Down DownUp DownUp. We added some "Stop" chords at the end of versus, which you may have written in with an exclamation point, as well as one towards the end of the chorus before the 'mad world' repeated section. We also looked into D7 and G7 chords, which are tense and bluesy sounding, and can often be swapped out for their major chord counterparts in the right contexts. Try it out with tunes from the songbook and see how you like the results. We've added New River Train to the mix, so start there. And give another go at Mellow Yellow. It was a lot of heavy brainning to do at the end of class, but it does have the word "mellow" in it so let's work towards that tune being something relaxed and fun to shuffle through.
And in Guitar 3 Rep, though it pained me to skip over Tom Jones, it was straight into The Association's "Never My Love," which has some modest riff work. If you remind yourself that the C-shape (or Fmaj7--both work) is home base, and you simply
make minor modifications inside that shape, you should be good to go.
Also remember that the riff starts on beat 3, so you've got to count in
"1 and 2 and" BEFORE you start. Inside the song, you'll be strumming
either a C chord or an Am for those two lead-in beats, but in both
cases, your fingers are already where they need to be to play the riff
(because the C and Am chords are so closely related!) so you don't have
to change anything to step right into the riff. We threw in one little
walk, just to keep things spicy, and we're using the Golden Strum. It's a
lot of work but the song is too pretty not to put in the effort! I hope you'll sing it for someone you love some day.
Keep on strumming, friends!
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