{"id":5014,"date":"2013-05-09T16:14:53","date_gmt":"2013-05-09T21:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/?p=5014"},"modified":"2013-05-09T16:18:38","modified_gmt":"2013-05-09T21:18:38","slug":"song-of-the-day-a-lot-like-magic-josh-rouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/09\/song-of-the-day-a-lot-like-magic-josh-rouse\/","title":{"rendered":"Song of the Day: A Lot Like Magic &#8211; Josh Rouse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I was cleaning off one of my counters this morning, all the paper and junk mail had piled up. And as I was sorting what I needed to keep from the rubbage, there it was: the hand written lyric sheet for &#8220;A Lot Like Magic&#8221; that Josh had mailed me last fall. Now, to be fair, I don&#8217;t know Josh, but he had been doing these &#8220;StageIt&#8221; shows on the internet in which audience members could participate as well as donate to the artist. And the highest bidder won a hand written signed lyric sheet. So there it is.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d been meaning to get this song down. The first time I heard it, it blew me away. I was like &#8220;Damn, that chorus is as good as Van Morrison!&#8221; The music, the words, the theme of the song, everything attracted me. But I couldn&#8217;t pick out the chords by ear. Then by chance, in March, when Josh was at SxSW, Rhapsody filmed him singing this very tune. I love the production and the sound quality of the video, and what&#8217;s even better, most of the video shows his chord frettings, enough that I could pick out the entire arrangement with each chord.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re wanting to learn to play this, then this Rhapsody Video should be all you need:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z4Rc3JwwlNo\" height=\"295\" width=\"525\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As you can see from the video, he puts a capo on the fifth fret. The song starts out with a Bm shape. The opening riff, which is the same as most of the verse is: Bm &#8211; F#m &#8211; G &#8211; A &#8211; D (That&#8217;s not transposed up 5 half steps like it should be. I&#8217;m just thinking of the open names for these shapes.) There is one little twist in the verse: On the third line the progression switches to: G &#8211; A &#8211; G &#8211; A &#8211; Bm. The Chorus progression is: Em &#8211; A &#8211; Dmaj7 &#8211; Gmaj7 &#8211; Em &#8211; A &#8211; Bm &#8211; A. On the solo part it&#8217;s almost exactly the chords of the chorus, except it begins on the Gmaj7. So it&#8217;s like Gmaj7 &#8211; A &#8211; Dmaj7 &#8211; Gmaj7 &#8211; A &#8211; Bm &#8211; A. You can pick it up pretty fast from that video.<\/p>\n<p>Since I took the time to type out the lyrics (Josh&#8217;s handwriting isn&#8217;t very legible) I&#8217;ll go ahead and publish them:<\/p>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Lyrics for &#8220;A Lot Like Magic&#8221; by Josh Rouse from <em>The Happiness Waltz<\/em> album.<\/span><\/h4>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Well I met a man and he gave me advice<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> I didn\u2019t want it at first then I said alright.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> He said you live each day like a very last one<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> So I took that line and I wrote this song<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> And he said:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Chorus:<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong><em>It\u2019s all in the air it\u2019s a lot like magic<\/em><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> <strong><em>We make do with the best that we have<\/em><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> <strong><em>You sit still or you roam something\u2019s bound to happen<\/em><\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> <strong><em>So I just shook his hand, forgot about my plans&#8230;<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">So I rode my bike up to Sycamore Hill<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> I thought long I thought hard on the right way to live<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> I had a lot of fun with a long legged girl<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> And we threw our arms \u2018round this humdrum world<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Chorus:<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Forget about those plans, the future\u2019s here a last&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Solo Bars (Over Chorus Chords)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Yeah, the days turn to months and the months into years<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> My children have grown and I\u2019m still standing here<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> I still live each day like a very last one<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"> I rise with the birds and I set with the Sun<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Chorus<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Forget about those plans, forget about those plans&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">A few bars of Chorus progression end it out, and finally it end on a slow melody line over the G and A chord.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I was cleaning off one of my counters this morning, all the paper and junk mail had piled up. And as I was sorting what I needed to keep from the rubbage, there it was: the hand written lyric &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/2013\/05\/09\/song-of-the-day-a-lot-like-magic-josh-rouse\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[410,411],"class_list":["post-5014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-live-set-list","tag-song-of-the-day"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stephenpickering.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}