Its This One

The Next One

A7	A9	Am	Am+5 Unknown	Am7	Bbm7	Bm7-5	Cdim	Cm7	D7
D9	E7	E7sus4	Edim	Em9	G	G6	G9	Gdim	G/B

 G  G6   G    G9       G   G6 Bbm7         D9     D7
You came a - long from out of no - where

G  G6    G   G9          G   G6  Bm7-5     E7
You took my heart  and found it free.

Am    Am+5  Am   A9    E7sus4       E7         A9    Am
Won - der - ful dreams, wonderful schemes from no - where

Gdim       A7   Cdim        A7        Am7    D9     D7
Made every hour sweet as a flower for me



G  G6    G    G9       G  G6 Bbm7          D9     D7
If you should go back to your no - where

G    G6  G  G9     G    G6 Bm7-5     E7
Leav-ing me with a mem - o - ry,

Am   Am+5  Am   A9   E7sus4     E7          A9    Am
I'll  al - ways wait for your return out of no - where



(First Time:)

G9    G          Edim  Em9  Am7  D7  G   Em9   Am7    D7
Ho - ping you'll bring your love to me.



(Last Time:)

G9    G          Edim  Em9  Am7  D7 G   G/B   Am7   Cm7    G(6)
Ho - ping you'll bring your love to me.

These are Guitar chords- Any banjo tips out there?

I should be in bed

What I really wanted to talk about

There is a lady, say her name is Hazel. She is originally from somewhere in Africa. She migrated here, raised her children and is a registered nurse and a citizen of the US. Sixty something. Came to a Square Dance that my wife and I attended, because an older white guy who knew her from church had invited her along. She knew how to Square Dance. She fixated on me because I have a a band and perform regularly. She wants to be a singer. She has had no formal musical training to sing. She works Weekends  and nights, and only gets off once a month on Saturday or Sunday. She wants to join the band. She has hired a voice teacher to help her sing. She calls me and wants to know if she can sing with the band. I tell her she can't show up when the band performs, how can she sing with the band? She wants to know how she can sing. Somehow I get volunteer to take her to an open jam in Long Beach on a Saturday morning the one morning she has free in the month, so she can try singing in this jam meetup. Its doomed from the start, but I'm picking her up on the 25th to do just what I've described. Of course, if her voice is incredible, we will reevaluate this trial.

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "What it looks like":

Dan, okay, I think there is some confusion caused by the capo.

Without getting into too much music theory, C#m is the relative minor of E, so if you're playing an Eb chord, the relative minor is Cm, etc.

Given the chord progression you've shown in your chart, all the Eb's should be E naturals. Also, a few other things could be changed to make the progression closer to the way it's composed:

In the line where it says "the major lift," there is no chord change over "lift," stay on the A chord. In the line "the baffled king composing hallelujah," there is a B chord over "baffled," and there is a G#7 over the second syllable of "composing." And on the final "hallelujah" in the 7th line, the chords should be E B E.

Play along with the KD Lang Youtube video I linked and see if these chords don't fit a bit better (-:

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I appreciate the advice, but we playing to Nancy's voice and her interpretation. I honestly don't care if the song sounds like it  should - as was recorded by someone else. Or as it was written. Sorry. I keep telling all the old men in my life, 'that I've never played a song right yet, and doubt if I ever will.'  The picture above is the way my fingers feel after 2 two hour sessions of practicing the chords on this thing. 

I'm taking lessons, taking classes, read a whole book about music theory and hope to understand a great deal more in the next few years. I write books and paint pictures. I know a hell of lot about literary theory and dramatic form and can discuss structure in Tolstoy versus William Burroughs. I can discuss dramatic structure in painting and compare Picasso to Raphael in construction. There is no "should be"  Take my word for it.

What there is: is what works and what does work, and sometimes you are forced to make something 'that doesn't work' into something that does.

The band is a group of amateur musicians that have their moments, but except for Ben, they all need their music written down in front of them. Me included, but I'm working on that. A couple of fiddle players have passed through the group that could just play, but they didn't last.

The novel I published has little sections in it where I intentionally change tense and move from third person to second person. Everyone told me not to do it. This isn't the way it should be done. Read Sevastopol by Tolstoy.

I can tell you where to find the lousy parts in Frost, Faulkner & Hemingway. I can show where Winslow Homer copied Millet. Where Wyeth copied Toulouse-Latrec.

The other night I pointed out to someone that there's a limit to Emmylou Harris's voice- a note she can't hit and she deals with by whispering the words there. Are we supposed to whisper words because that was the limitation of the big time singer? Do we really have to sing Dylan songs like he would sing them? Cohen was flat through out my teenager years listening to him. I appreciated him, because I could sing along with him. I can do a perfect imitation of Kris Kristofferson, does that mean I should?

Thanks for advice. Please respond- I'd love to have a dialog. Have you read "The Sunlight Dialogues"/

What it looks like

I got a comment from a reader that they thought it must really be in the key of E, I think its probably Eb but hot this song got here is a tale in itself. Wayne, our original guitar player/ singer found it and thought everyone would love the song. Everybody does love the song, it's a great song. So we added it to the song list in the key of D, if I remember correctly. He was in the process of leaving the band, and I was reorganizing the playlist. I had just recruited Nancy and her friend Carolyn to join the band. They came to rehearsal and working to learn all the songs we had on the playlist. We discovered that they did not know what key they were in. They would find a song they wanted to play and then capo it around to match their voices. So when we started to add a few songs they wanted to do we had to work through and figure out what key they were in so that the other instruments could play with them. Carolyn ended up not playing with us. Nancy said she wanted to do this one and so she capoed it to her singing voice and we spend a good amount of time one evening figuring out what the actual notes were that she was playing. Ben, our wise musical adviser can hear them and tell you what they are.  (By the way, those are banjo chords above, but the E isn't correct, its the same formation as the Eb, just down one. My problem is I'm still working on these two four finger formations. The banjo players generally refer to them as the D & F formations because that's what they are at the top of the neck. These form chords all the way down. 

None of us really sight read music- well, maybe Oleeta does. Ben was classically trained, but he doesn't use sheet music- he just hears it. 

Dereliction of Duty

I've been neglecting the blog this week. Sorry. Just been focusing n writing the novel which has started itself again and practicing the chords of this song in a weird key. Its Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in the key of C#m. I have the moves of the chord changes, just have to get these old fingers to move quick enough. I was going to try to show you that actual finger positions but its too hard and the chord finger I use on the web doesn't select and copy. Anyway, its Eb, to C#m to Eb to C#m to A to B to E to A to B to C#m to A to D to G to C#m to A To C#m to A to E , all in the middle of my fret board around where the fifth string starts.
The E and the Eb is the same finger formation as is the A and the B and C#m to A is moving two fingers. The entire beauty of learning this is figuring out the simplest way to do it.

The banjo teacher gave me tabs to a song Going Down The Road Feeling Bad which I've been singing and performing now for a year. He wrote them out in 5 minutes. He's a very competitive guy: wanted to know what I thought of Fred Sokoloff and Mark Shark as teachers. I didn't really have either for very long to tell. It turns out he had John Schlocker as a teacher as a kid, who I had first, but I gave up because he was an old drunk and kept cancelling me. I'm lessoning with John Rosen.


 
This is my Banjo teacher on the left. Good, huh? I ask him stuff and he tells me. Quick and good guy.