White Ripple Community Band May 23rd, 2016

Housekeeping note: There will be no class on Monday because of the Memorial Day holiday. We will meet up to make music again on June 6th.

Last Monday we went around the Circle of Fifths and did two very different songs with the same chord progression.



Song 1: I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor

     Am                             Dm                              G                                              C

At first I was afraid I was petrified Kept thinking I could never live Without you by my side

                 F                                               Dm                                                 E
But then I spent so many nights Thinking how you did me wrong And I grew strong

                      E                                                                                              

And I learned how to get along... Annnnd repeat as needed! Now try the same chords and swap out the disco beat with something a bit more swingy.


Song 2: Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra.

Am                Dm                     G                       C

Fly me to the moon     Let me play among the stars

F                          Dm                          E                Am
Let me see what spring is like  On a, Jupiter and Mars


Am, Dm, G, C, F, Dm, E. Amazing. We talked a little bit about music theory (not enough to hurt) about why those chords sound good together, and why is it that those same chords in the same order sound very different from one song to another.



 

P.S. Sarita totally rocked Frank on the sax. 

                                        

Songwriting class February 3rd, 2016

First off, I want to say Thank You to Shellie, J.B., and Tom for sharing their songs this week! 

Last Wednesday we got to have the rehearsal space at Munster South Shore Arts. Oh, what a difference a piano makes-- not that Rich is a slouch on the guitar or anything, but when demonstrating the full tonal range of an E-flat minor 9 chord, 88 keys will always trump 6 strings. It's back to the Board Room next week.

This week we began to tackle the question of putting music to lyrics, so this makes it the second time in a week that we've touched on the Circle of Fifths (we talked about it here for those of you in our Monday night's White Ripple Community Band class).

Here's the Circle of Fifths in all its glory:

If you have lyrics and are unsure how to add music to them, a good place to start is with the Circle of Fifths. Let's say we want to put our song in the key of C, at the top of the circle. Look left, look right, look underneath, and you have F, G, and Am. There are so many songs that use those four chords. As Rich pointed out in class last week, nearly every song from the 1950s uses C, Am, F, and G-- Sherry Baby, Stand By Me, and Teenager in Love are just three examples. They all share the same bones. It's the skin-- the lyrics, how we arrange those chords together, that makes the song your own.

Another source of music inspiration is to move counter-clockwise around the circle. Say we start with our key of C again. Going counter-clockwise around the circle gives us C, F, and B-flat.

B-flat + F + C = With a Little Help from My Friends

C + B-flat + F = Taking Care of Business

A good way to find music for your song is to sing to the lyrics you write. Or, if lyrics give you trouble, sing the melody before you have the words. Searching for words? Keep your ears open, especially for conversations. It's hard (not impossible, because nothing is impossible) to rhyme irreconcilable differences, and so much easier to sing it just didn't work out. That's the way people usually talk.

See you next week! Mark and Sherry, hope you're both feeling better.

White Ripple Community Band February 1st, 2016

It's not January anymore! I don't know why that puts me in such a good mood-- we have a couple more months of winter weather no matter what the groundhog says, but turning another page on the calendar means warmer days are coming.



Last class we warmed up with Roadhouse Blues before going into Wild World by Cat Stevens. Rich chose it because it goes around the Circle of Fifths, pictured below:

We start at Am-- Am is the relative minor of C. Then we move to D. From D we go counter-clockwise around the circle.

Am, D, G, C, F, Dm*, E, G

Going around the circle counter-clockwise turns the Circle of Fifths into the Circle of Fourths. It's weird, it's confusing, but it'll make more sense the deeper you go and the more you get into the theory of it. The chorus is C, G, F, G, F, C-- do that two times, then back to the verse.

We finished up with Don't Pass Me By by The Beatles, written by Ringo Starr. The song is in the key of C and uses 3 chords: C, F, G. The interval from C to F is a perfect fourth. The interval from C to G is a perfect fifth. In music there are exceptions to just about everything, but a good rule of thumb is, when you know a song is in the key of C, you can safely assume that you're going to run into F, G, and the relative minor, Am, at some point. It's because those tones, perfect fourths and fifths, they sound good to our ears.

Next week I made a request for kid's songs because playing for anklebiters is fun, darnit. There may be whales, ducks, and dragons in store for you all...


*F is a good substitute chord if you want to play that instead.