Category: Music

Man, chose a doosey today! Musically it’s easy. Just a lot of lyrics to memorize. That’s the irony: The hard ones musically tend to have easy lyrics and vice versa.

Oh well. What was the spark that made me choose this one? I was sitting around last night watching TV, strumming some chords, and out of the blue, what I thought was an original, cool sounding riff came to my head, and I thought, “Oh, finally, this could be an original song!”

But the more I strummed it, I realized it was this Josh Rouse song. Hate that when that happens. You think you’ve come up with not only something original, but also something that is actually good, and then you realize it’s someone else’s.

At least it got me interested in this song, which really I’d only heard a few times before. If it weren’t for Spotify, I don’t think I would have ever heard it. I didn’t realize there was so much material both on “The Best of the Rykodisc Years” and “The Smooth Sounds of Josh Rouse” that wasn’t on any of his previous official “albums” or EPs.

Anyway, like I said, musically it’s easy. Just four chords: Dmaj7 – Amaj7 – Gmaj – E7. It begins on a Dmaj7, and the dominant riff of the song, both verse and chorus, is a back and forth between the Dmaj7 and Amaj7. The G-E change comes in every so often as a sort of “turn around” as they call it in the business.

These are the kinds of songs I really encourage for beginning guitarists who need encouragement. They are easy enough to learn, but they’re also good and fun. They keeps you motivated to play. I remember when I was a teenager, I was going to quit guitar altogether.

And then I found Bob Dylan. Those songs were easy enough to learn, but I knew they were good, and I loved playing them. It was that spark of fun that kept me at it.

Oh, well, I’m going to get at memorizing these lyrics. I’m sure it’ll take a couple or even few days for them to “sink in.” I’ll have to come back to this post, to official mark that I’ve got them down.

Actually I’ve learned a couple others since the last “Song of the Day”, but they both took a couple or three days for the lyrics to really sink into  the “officially” memorized zone, and by that time, like the irony of life itself, I sort of lose interest in them, and end up not blogging about them. But I really do need to put them down in a blog post, or something that tells my subconscious that “This song is official. You can put it in the books. I know it by heart, and I can play it live.”

Anyway there are a ton of songs that I’ve learned in the past and I know at the present moment, say 75%. But I sort of need a spark to get me to actually learn it 100%.

Here’s an example of such a spark: I was watching the video of Daniel Tashian’s “I’m the One” song, and I was learning the chords, and writing down the lyrics. I was getting it down, but I was getting a little depressed because I actually couldn’t sing the Chorus. The high notes. That was discouraging. I’d always thought I could imitate Daniel’s voice pretty well. I hate to make excuses, but it could be that he just knows how to do “Falsetto” and I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know. Or maybe its just a bad day for my voice. Anyway that discouraged me from blogging about that song today at least. I will still learn that song and get it down 100% even if I can’t ever play it live, because it’s just such a good song.

Oh, I forgot about the spark. When I was watching that video, I noticed in the recommended videos a video of the lyrics of the Silver Seas song, “Imaginary Girl” from their 2nd album. That was one of those “75%” songs for me. And I knew I could sing it pretty well. Also, I knew there was one or two little pieces of lyrics for that song, that I wasn’t sure about, and it looked like this video had them right. So that was all the spark I needed. I’ll post that video below. I’ve gone through the song 3 or 4 times now on the live P.A. system, and I feel like I’ve got it down now, that I can put it in the “100% Club.”

I’ll probably post a video of me playing it live at some point. Until then, if you’re reading this and you would like to know the chords, let me know, and that might be the “Spark” I need to publish those.