Wild Kingdom
Published: Fri, 03/08/24
When I say "front door," I may be misleading my constituency; it is the front entrance to the studio but it is also the only entrance to the studio. The point being, this is not a door I can stop using if the bees really establish a foothold; not only is the door the only way in and out, but these bees are potentially taking up residence closest to the part of the door I need to use the most, viz., the handle. All in all, this seems like something I need to get to the bottom of, and before the bees begin to think this is their door, and that I'm the one causing problems by attempting to swing their abode about on a regular basis.
Bees aren't the only local wildlife on my radar; as I write this, the family dog is waiting for an after-dinner stroll, and I learned some valuable things about getting a cat into a crate the other morning. When I lived in Brooklyn, I took my cat Finley to the same vet for several years, and getting him into the crate was always an issue (the cat, not the vet). This vet's advice involved getting set up in the bathroom (all tile, no fabric), bringing the cat into the bathroom, wrapping him in a towel, and so placing him headfirst into the crate.
This was never a great solution, but it was the best thing going, and I was attempting to work this system on our current cat a couple days ago when I realized maybe I had been going about things all wrong. The cat was all claws, making a perfectly justifiable racket, and I suddenly didn't have the heart to just muscle it out. So I let go of her, set the crate on the floor with the door open, and lo and behold, I was able to just walk her headfirst into the crate, as if we were both reasonable people having a civilized discussion about how best to arrange transportation to the vet's.
It's a delightful shock to find a different – and easier – way to think about something you've been doing for as long as you can remember. I've been fooling around with Freddie Green voicings since I first saw Duke Robillard explain them over twenty-five years ago, but until recently, if you'd asked me to explain this or that sequence of chord moves or substitutions, I'd have basically said "well, that's just how it's done."
Lately though, I've found myself using a simple but effective way to think about how to get from chord to chord in a progression, and have discovered that – what a surprise! – when you understand why each chord works and what it's doing, it's easier to both remember the things you do know and find new ways to apply them. The short explanation is, Freddie Green chord substitutions work almost like licks – you can learn to organize them into short sequences of moves, a vocabulary which you can then move around and apply in a variety of ways.
That's what I explain in this week's Youtube video, which you can find at the link below:
Chord Substitutions on an 8 Bar Blues
This month in the Fingerstyle Five membership, we're working on arranging the eight bar tune "How Long Blues." "Arranging" sounds all complicated and fancy, but it really just means taking the bones of a tune – the eight or twelve bar melody, played over the bass – and finding ways to turn it into a complete-sounding song by adding intros, fills, solos and yes, chord substitutions. We'll have a whole month of live streams, Q&As, videos and, of course, pages of detailed tab for all the material, including the Freddie Green voicings covered in today's Youtube lesson. To join us, click the link below and sign up:
The Fingerstyle Five
More soon,
David