Gig story

Many years ago, when Disco first hit mainstream I was playing in a cover band.

We did a gig where we alternated sets with the DJ - 30 minutes on / 30 minutes off. The DJ also ran the lights while we were playing.

So we learned this new (at the time) song, "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine" by Lou Rawls. A nice enough "sound of Philadelphia" song. The lead singer/guitarist hadn't learned all the words so he wrote them down on a piece of paper in red ink, and taped it to the cornice right above our line of sight.

So we started the song, the DJ flooded the stage with red lights, and the words disappeared. He sang the first verse over and over again.

GuitarHacker, I don't know about you, but while many of the songs we learn are I, IV, V7 and vi, well over half of them have much more than that.

I do agree that you can get a lot of mileage with them, but the other cords aren't 'special' they are part of the family of chords in each key. IMO calling them special chords negates their important in the key. Would you call the ii7 chord special? the iii? And so on?

You need to know why the ii, iii and vi are minor and why the viio is diminished.

And that's just very basic theory.

Learn the neck, learn how chords are constructed, learn their relationship, learn basic music theory, learn to read music on your instrument, then when you learn songs you understand the songs.

Just learning songs would be like learning to read by just recognizing words without knowing how to pronounce the individual letters.

I know it's not instant gratification, but it works out to be the easy way in the long run.

And I admit, learning to read music on the guitar is more difficult than learning to read music on piano or saxophone. But there are other things on the guitar that are easier (like transposing) that make up for it.

But once you learn your instrument, learning new songs are easier, and memorizing is also easier because you understand what you are doing instead of just parroting.

That's my opinion anyway.

Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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