Workshop FAQ: Beyond Cowboy Chords?
Published: Thu, 09/21/23
There were two sliding shelves per pantry shelf, and I made the mistake of starting on them a couple nights ago when my kids were in their rooms doing homework. "Listen," I had just said to the Dauphin the week before. "Our social compact around the f-word goes like this. I will resign myself to the idea that you no doubt use it all day long around your friends. In exchange, you will continue to pretend that you don't when you're home, around me."
Of course, half an hour into my little installation project, I was burnishing my credentials as House Champion, Middle-Heavyweight Cursing Division, as first one runner and then the other would flop over or slither out of alignment before I could get it screwed properly into place. It was only after I'd caused a substantial ruckus that the Dauphin, emerging from his room for snacks, ankled into the kitchen to ironically inquire if everything was hotsy-totsy. He may have even called me "pops."
Duly chastened, I settled down. The interruption gave me a chance to stop and reconsider the entire proposition and, as the red mist cleared, I saw my mistake: I should have used duct tape. Once I had a temporary way to secure all the moving bits, I got the first couple shelves rigged up satisfactorily, and called it a night.
The next afternoon, the following four shelves took half the time and involved no f-bombs, because I'd figured out the process. I spent a totally chill hour or so laying out hardware, taping things down, drilling in screws and testing things out, all while listening to early Count Basie with Lester Young. (Discoveries: "Pound Cake" turns out to just be a twelve-bar blues with solos over a positively foundational sequence of saxophone and brass riffs, and the Jimmy Rushing vocals are some of my favorite tracks, which I wasn't expecting.)
For some reason, whether it's a manual, hardware-based project or a cerebral, software based one, I often reach the sputtering, cursing-at-inanimate-objects stage (the drill, the screws, the computer, the beachball of doom) without realizing the need to step back, breathe deeply and reconsider my pell-mell brute-force approach. I also routinely forget that the first time doing anything is generally the slowest and the hardest, and most projects get quicker and easier with repetition.
But I should remember it, as it's the corollary to my rant a few days ago about learning things in one key first. Sticking to just one key can be painstaking, it can be annoying, and it can seem limiting. But if you do so, learning the same stuff in another key afterwards will probably take half the time and make twice as much sense.
Writing in about my upcoming chord substitutions workshop this weekend, a reader named Gerard asked, "What's the best way to learn chord voicings, get away from cowboy chords, and learn chord progressions?"
I was struck in particular by the cowboy chords (i.e., open chords) part. Open chords seem so straightforward. A C chord is a C chord. An E minor chord is an E minor chord. It's only once you start wandering up the neck that things start getting weird – suddenly, there's more than one way to play everything. How are you supposed to know which version of each chord to play?
The solution, I think, is to step back from the final result – moving and grooving all over the neck with an endless supply of variations, passing chords and more – and start with the bones: what are the I, IV and V of a particular tune or progression, and what basic chord shapes do you need for those? To get started with Freddie Green voicings, you really just need a few shapes, but it can be hard to see that until you stop and think: ok, this eight bar blues in C, it basically just needs a C, an F and a G chord – just like it would in open position. What's one place I can play each of those up the neck?
As usual, this is much easier to show than to describe, so today's video is all about how to start doing this, and you can find it at the link below. I really tried to edit a gigantic cowboy hat onto my photo for the Youtube image, but it was hard to make it convincing, probably because even after twenty-three years in Austin, I remain unconvincing in a cowboy hat in real life as well:
Beyond Cowboy Chords
Registration is still open for this weekend's Minor Blues Chord Substitutions workshop; you can get the details and sign up for the single workshop or the whole series at the link below:
Minor Blues Workshop Series
More soon,
David