Acoustics

So, your good friend and playing partner just called and said: “Hey! I just heard this GREAT song! We should try it; it doesn’t sound all that hard. I think we’d KILL it!” 
 
So he forwards you a copy of it or maybe a link to a You Tube video of the artist performing it. You give it a good listen. And he’s right – great song, fits what you do stylistically and you can tell it will be fun to play. You listen to it again. But this time, just a hint of a shadow of a doubt creeps in. And then your negotiation with yourself begins.
 
OK, yeah the song sounds pretty awesome but can we sing like that? It seems to be a bit of a stretch, key-wise. Can we change the key and find one that’s more comfortable to sing in without losing the overall vibe? And those chords… They don’t sound too fancy but I’d better do some research on that. How about the bass and percussion? Can we do without those things and still have the song sound good?
 
And so it begins. Even though it’s a pretty new song it’s already easy to find some arrangements of it online. Trouble is, when you try what’s been posted it just doesn’t sound…. right. So you dig deeper and find another arrangement and that one doesn’t sound much better. And guess what? You’re right! Those arrangements are, at best, sketches of what the artist does on the recording. Maybe in your younger days when you first picked up the guitar it would have been OK, but those days are gone. You’ve been playing long enough to want and need to be as accurate as you can, otherwise you’ll never be quite satisfied with your finished product and even after putting in some serious time and effort you end up abandoning the whole thing. Or you default to the ol’ “That’s just my take on it! No reason I can’t make the song my own, right?!?” But you’ve been playing long enough to know that’s kind of a cop-out. Based on past experience you know the only way to make that justification palatable is to learn it as close to the original as you can, and THEN start experimenting with variations.
 
I spend a lot of time listening and searching out new songs for my students. Or new/old songs that I remember from long ago that still have something to offer in terms of advancing their skill. Sometimes students suggest songs or artists I’ve neglected or introduce me to music that I end up loving. But most of the time it’s musical detective work, which I love to do. Inevitably though, those questions I posed above are factored in. I still ask myself those questions too, as it relates to music I want to learn that has little to do with what I teach. So here are some of the answers I’ve come up with over the many, many decades I’ve been picking up a guitar.
 
I start with a foundation. That foundation is composed of determining what is absolutely essential for a song to sound as close to the original as possible. That doesn’t mean every little thing, although that would be nice sometimes. Often it’s more like including signature lines, otherwise known as “lead lines.” In many cases they are absolutely necessary if there’s any hope the song will be recognizable. Think of the classic guitar line from the wonderful Motown song, “My Girl.” It just has to be there. Or the signature line from Mark Knopfler’s “Sultans of Swing.” The intro to the electric version of “Layla” is another great example. 
 
But being even more basic, an absolute necessity is determining the meter sign. Is this song in 4/4 (it usually is) or perhaps ¾, 2/4 or 6/8? For me that’s pretty easy, but I know for many people it is not. I tap my foot and count beats. I can hear instantly where measures begin and end but I know most people struggle with that, especially when they first start learning guitar. Why? Simply because most people have never thought much about the beat of a song and even fewer people have ever tried to count beats. It’s not their fault. I’ve said many times in this space that rhythm is the most taken for granted musical skill of them all. We all have natural rhythm in the form our heartbeat beating. Some people are fantastic dancers (not me!) and they are most certainly responding to the beat. And most everyone can clap and keep time to a song. 
 
Unless you have previous experience with a musical instrument you’ve probably never thought about rhythmic structure at all. But when you play the guitar, or any instrument for that matter – and I’m including your voice – you must be locked in to the beat. When you discover that not only must you count beats in the beginning to give each chord the correct amount of time, and then count identical groups of beats that we call measures it can be really, really frustrating. So your first task in learning that new song is determining just how long you need to stay on each chord before you change to the next one. 
 
Here's a hint. Try to ignore just about all other musical elements and listen to the bass. In most popular music the bass plays many notes “on the beat,” that is, assuming you’re in 4/4 time (four beats to each measure) you can depend upon the bass to play one note per beat, or sometimes in certain types of music like traditional country music, on beats one and three. Of course they often do much more than that, but in the beginning stages of working out a new song count the beats by way of the bass part. Bass players often play the “root” of the chord (the single note that is the name of the chord) on the first beat of a measure. When you hear that note again, assuming you’ve counted with beat one assigned to that distinctive note it’s not all that hard to determine where a measure begins and ends. Then it’s a matter of determining how many rhythmic sequences – measures – a chord receives before a chord change occurs. 
 
Even though those basic sketches of songs you can find online are often incomplete (or sometimes, outright wrong) you should use them as a starting point. Write out at least a verse and a chorus or enter it in a word processing program. Then put in the chords you see right above words where new chords are found, at least according to the person who posted the version of the song you’re trying to learn. Next, put a number next to each chord name to indicate how many measures you’ve counted out for each chord to receive. Now you have a basic sketch of the song. But naturally, you want more. Don’t get discouraged. What you’ve done is put together the skeleton of the song. We’ll put some meat on the bones in my next entry!
Peace & good music,
Gene

In the last few years, a trend in live music has become almost ubiquitous: so-called “tribute” bands. For example, this year’s season of acts at the Cape Cod Melody Tent included a total of EIGHT tribute bands. The CCMT is a nationally recognized live music venue and they often feature groups or single performers who are very well known; some of them are and have been truly legendary. I can’t tell you how many fantastic musical performances I’ve experienced at the Melody Tent. So why do they book so many tribute bands?
 
I guess I just didn’t realize how many music fans are out there who are perfectly willing to pay big bucks to hear music by a famous group played by impostors! 
 
“They sounded JUST LIKE (fill in a name) and every song was just like the original!” say some of my students and friends. And I have no doubt it is true. There is certainly an undeniable justification for tribute bands. In many cases the original musicians are either unwilling or unable to do what they did (gulp) fifty or more years ago and some have passed away. But the love of their music has hardly diminished and in some cases has even grown. As regular readers of this blog know, I am as hardcore a Beatles fan as you could find. I’ve heard quite a few Beatles tribute bands that were absolutely fantastic, down to details that only a guitarist would notice. The use of period-correct guitars and amplifiers is something that puts me on their side before they’ve played one note! 
 
For me, that’s where my interest in tribute bands ends. I respect the talent of the musicians involved; many of them are truly world-class players and singers. So how do we account for their obvious popularity? I think it comes down to basic emotional responses to the music. Most of us of a certain age have no trouble remembering how the music made us feel when it was fresh and new and we want to recapture that. Tied to that are memories of wonderful experiences we had while a certain band or song provided the sonic background. Those memories are very, very powerful and precious. 
 
But I have a different outlook. Last night Kathy and I and our friends Rick and Ellen had the pleasure of seeing and hearing The Buckinghams at the Barnstable County Fair. There is usually at least one act in the yearly schedule that was famous back in the 1960s and we’ve seen all of them for the modest cost of admission to the Fair. I’m always psyched that in all those acts there has been at least one member of the original group; last night it was the lead singer and the bass player. 
 
However, as is usually the case the other band members have been with the original members for a long time so they easily fit in. Having at least one original member accompanied by long term “new” group members is what separates these oldies acts from tribute bands, to my way of thinking at least. 
 
This leads to another question, which is quite obvious. Just why are they doing it? Money is certainly a primary element. Back in the old days very few bands owned the publishing and performance rights to their music so beyond revenue from singles and album sales and live shows there might have been zero compensation from their record companies but bills have to be paid, so on the road they go. 
 
But I have to believe there is another element that is even more compelling. Based on the joy I see when an older band plays songs they’ve been doing for decades I have to conclude that they just happen to love the music they are playing. They know they are giving their fans a respite from the overwhelming and scary reality of today’s world. It is a wonderful circle in which the crowd and the performers can bask in the emotion of the other. 
 
When I started playing my objective and the objective of those I played with was to sound as close as possible to the recording of the songs we loved. Even with the primitive gear used (by today’s standards) that was a very difficult task to duplicate what we heard but then as now we needed a way to measure our progress. As time pased I realized it was perfectly fine to put a personal touch on my finished product. 
 
Making a song my own became my objective. It’s actually a LOT more gratifying than being note-perfect. Plus, I accepted that no song I play is actually “done” and there were always more possibilities to explore. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t but approaching a song in new and different ways broadens my perspective. Plus it keeps the old hard drive on my shoulders active, not exactly an easy thing these days! 
 
When I’m tackling a new/old song the first thing I do is determine if there are any must-do elements to include. Think about the little reverse diatonic scale played on the bass strings in “Landslide,” which I’ve been teaching for decades. Without it would the song still sound right, whatever the heck that means? I think not. Also, that little scale is present in many other songs like “America” by Simon & Garfunkel, “These Days” by Jackson Browne, and “Mr. Bojangles” by Jerry Jeff Walker. So it’s definitely worth using and learning. Many Beatles tunes are almost untouchable in terms of familiar lines. “In My Life,” “Birthday,” and “Lady Madonna” are prime examples. In my arrangements I wouldn’t even consider dropping those signature lines.
 
Tribute bands take those requirements to a whole different level. Interestingly, I’ve heard famous bands that have tribute bands doing their music make some fairly shocking changes to their very well-known songs. Of course they have every right to do that; it’s their song, after all. James Taylor has played “Fire and Rain” roughly a bazillion times but he sticks to his very first version pretty much note-for-note, at least until he gets to end of the song when he often tries some interesting variations of the vocals. I read an interview with him a few years ago where he stated that he would probably lynched by the audience if “Fire and Rain” and “You’ve Got A Friend” were changed or heaven forbid, omitted all together. But he went on to say he’s perfectly fine with that; audiences can count of those two songs each and every time he performs and he seemed totally grateful that his songs are part of the fabric of his fans’ lives and they still want to hear them. 
 
So, whatever floats your boat is just fine. Tribute bands aren’t going to disappear anytime soon. Beyond the emotional attachment that people have to certain artists and songs there is a totally different aspect to the popularity of tribute bands faithfully reproducing songs that are 50 or more years old to not just oldsters like me but also to much younger members of their audiences. It’s all about solid melodies and lyrics. Does that speak to the overall quality of todays pop music? I’ll go down that deep rabbit hole in another column!
 
Peace & good music,
Gene