The Maximum Musician Newsletter for 3/27/2002

In this issue:
- Playing changes
- How many changes and songs to play?
- Which changes to play?
- Great advice on improvising
- The V-I progression

=== Playing changes ===

Spring is here, and spring is all about change, so let's talk about changes from a musician's standpoint: Chord changes. What can we do as musicians to play the changes with greater skill and feeling? What can we do to give new life to the chord changes we play, if we've been playing the same songs in the same way day in and day out?

First, if you're a beginner, the chord progressions and songs you may be playing now are only a glimpse of what you will be able to play if you stick with it. You'll want to have a large repertoire of different kinds of songs to help you grow as a musician. A number of resources come to mind to help you learn these different songs. One is the free ebook Playing Guitar: a Beginner's Guide, which you can download from www.MaximumMusician.com. Another is the new ebook Guitar Chords: a Beginner's Guide, which goes into more depth to teach you chord progressions and how chords and harmony work, plus lots of other related topics.

Another resource that focuses on chord changes and harmony is Rich Scott's MoneyChords.com. Rich's site offers lessons on chords and chord progressions that musicians at every skill level can benefit from. His chord links have led me to a web site based in England that features a deep, academic-oriented book that relates chord movements to natural language. I don't know how Rich digs up this stuff, but I'm grateful that he has.

Another thing we can do as musicians to invigorate our chord change playing is to get more jazz into our hearts and minds. Jazz is all about playing things in a new way, and in a way that encourages individual expression. Mark Levine's excellent Jazz Theory book drives this point home, and offers many, many ways of adding variety to playing the changes. There's an entire section devoted to chord substitution. This section shows how to swap the V for ii, ii for V, precede the I with its V, and many other approaches for substitutions.

==== How many changes and songs to play? ====

Edwin Gordon, the great music educator, says learning as many songs as possible is important to building true musicianship. The more variations you can get in your ear, the more possibilities you can hear. So, the more interesting your playing will be to you and others.

It's interesting when you're playing along on one song that you half remember, and another song intrudes, and you start playing the two songs combined. This shows one way in which knowing lots of songs can reinforce your performance and fill in memory gaps.

==== Which changes to play? ====

Which songs and chord progressions should we play? Obviously, if you're in a band you need to learn what the band is going to perform. But what do you do when you're able to choose which tunes you'll perform?

I like to keep things simple. I'd like to choose to learn a tune that I like and that swings, instead of a tune that's "important" for me to know, or a tune that others call a "classic." There may be lots of songs I like that no one will remember ten years from now, but if learning these tunes keeps me interested in playing, I'll go with the favorite tunes.

It *is* helpful to reach beyond yourself, and learn a tune you wouldn't normally choose to learn. A good time to select such a tune is when you've just finished learning a tune you do like. You're feeling great that you can play a complex tune you've loved to listen to for years, and you're feeling like you could learn anything. Choose a tune that makes you stretch as a musician. You may surprise yourself by becoming interested in it, and even developing an affection for it.

There's one song I play over and over. I won't tell you I can always make it sound fresh each time I play it, but I'm getting better at doing that as my skills improve. The song is based on the changes to Sam Cooke's classic "What a Wonderful World." How did I choose this song to use in my guitar curriculum? How does anyone choose a song to use as a learning tool?

Start with a tune that grabs you, a song you can make sound good. Wonderful World is that song for me. When I figured out the changes to Wonderful World, I felt like I had achieved something important. And that feeling comes back, even just a little, every time I play changes based on that tune.

Here are some tips for picking out a song to build your skills with:

Pick a song you like
Pick a song that has changes that can be found in many songs. When you do this, you're learning many songs for the price of learning one.

How do you know if a song's chord changes are found in lots of other tunes? There are lots of books and web sites that can answer this. If you look on the web, your search term would be "popular chord progression." Doing a little research will help you dig up chord progressions that appear over and over in many tunes. The new ebook Guitar Chords: a Beginner's Guide, is one place that describes popular chord progressions. It gives examples of progressions used in Rock, Jazz, Blues and other styles.

==== Great advice on improvising ====

Here are some great thoughts on improvising, from guitarist John Abercrombie. This comes to you from AllAboutJazz.com:

"My approach [to teaching improvisation] is to make it more compositional.

"I try to get students to

- play more what they hear,

- play very simply, play less notes,

- concentrate on the sound they're making,

- follow their own train of thought.

I encourage them to write. Writing and improvisation are really the same thing in a sense."

While the new book on guitar chords at MaximumMusician.com doesn't go into improvisation, it does offer tips on creating your own chord progressions, which can be as emotionally rewarding as improvisation and which can help you improvise harmonically. These tips include substitutions, such as the I chord for the iii chord for the vi chord. Substitute the ii for the IV chord. Treat chords that need more emphasis with this approach: precede them with their V7. More substitutions and much more about other aspects of playing the changes will soon be available in the ebook Guitar Chords: a Beginner's Guide.

==== The V-I progression ====

Probably the most common chord movement in Western music. It's a show stopper. When you hear a V-I, the music comes to a standstill.

A fella named Olav Torvund echoes this belief. His web site, including the page http://www.torvund.net/guitar/, is full of this and related information for guitar players. His pages emphasize teaching chord progressions. Included in this is a large list of songs that use common progressions. He also talks about the progressions themselves: when and how to use them, and other matters. I encourage you to check out his pages. He has one page that's highly inspiring: it's the story of how he came to learn guitar, his struggles in particular. I find it encouraging when I see that someone has gone through the struggles I'm going through, and has come through successfully. This is true of Olav. I only wish he'd put some of his playing up on his site, through MP3s or other sound files.

There's more info on V-I, I-Vi and other chord goodies in my new ebook, Guitar Chords: a Beginner's Guide. Check it out at MaximumMusician.com.

That's it for this week. Look for the next issue of the Maximum Musician newsletter next week. Have a great week. Hello, new subscribers! Remember: *write* your music goals, focus them, make them more compelling by rewriting them. Make practicing *fun.* Okay, off the soapbox.

Thanks for reading. I wish you joy and fulfillment in your playing and living.

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