It's hot, humid and the middle of July here in Austin. Well, it's the middle of July everywhere, I suppose, but it's also hot and humid in New York, or so Ms. Fretboard, who is currently encamped there, tells me.

It's the sort of weather that can make anyone wonder, "Why am I here? What are we doing? What does it all really meeeeean??"

Or, as I like to ritually ask myself in the car on my way to a venue, "Whyyyyy do we play the gig?" There are so many uncontrollable variables involved in playing live music, the least you can do is choose one constant of your own devising to hold fast to over the next few hours.

"For the money" has probably gotten a lot of worthy musicians through a lot of wedding and restaurant gigs, along with its cousin, "To get paid to practice." "To play with these other cool musicians" is maybe a little more soulful, although of questionable utility for the solo performer.

In my most lucid moments, I remember to think of performing as an act of generosity: "Look, I love this thing so much, I got as good at it as I could, so I could share it with you – like this." 

At its best, that's how teaching can feel, too: "Look, I heard this thing that was so cool, I had to know how it worked. So I took it apart and put it back together again, over and over, till I knew just what made it tick. Oh, you want to be able to do it too? Here, lemme show you."

I remember the moment I realized I wanted to be able to improvise while fingerpicking. I was in the midst of a six-month residency at a South Austin listening room called Strange Brew, and I was playing some worked-out arrangement in the key of C for the dozenth time in as many weeks.

In that moment, I thought, "This is silly. I know how to fingerpick, and I know how to improvise. Isn't there some way I could improvise a different solo on this song every time instead of just playing the same part every week?"

In the decade since then, I have discovered that yes, there is some way to do that, and not just on my own tunes, but on blues repertoire, honky-tonk songs, swing tunes – basically anything you can work out on guitar with an alternating-thumb or steady bass.

Standards – those 32-bar tunes originally written for Broadway shows and Hollywood films up until around 1960 – tend to have more chords than blues, folk or country songs, and so present a bit more of challenge.

But that also makes standards terrific vehicles for learning, because in working through just one such song, you acquire a whole lot of useful tools and ideas you can then apply to plenty of other material.

Case in point: the song I'm teaching this coming weekend, "Indiana," has not just a I, IV and V chord, but also a II7 chord, a VI7 chord, a iv minor chord and the dread diminished chord.

In the key of C, that means C, F and G, plus A7 and E7, F minor and C diminished. So once you learn to play "Indiana," you'll also have all the moves you need to play over a I-IV-V song like John Hurt's "Richland Women" (C, F and G), a I-VI-II-V rag like Blind Boy Fuller's "Rag Mama" (C, A7, D7, G) or even another 32-bar standard like "Exactly Like You" (C, D7, G7, F, F minor).

If you'd like to learn how to think that way on the fretboard, that's what I'll be covering in this Saturday's workshop. You'll work through specific, tabbed out exercises demonstrating how to combine chord tones, scales steps and chromatic notes over an alternating thumb bass, ideas you can then apply to just about anything else you're working on.

"You want to do it too? Here, lemme show you:"

Fingerstyle Standards: 'Indiana'

In tomorrow's Youtube lesson, I'll get hands-on and preview exactly how some of these ideas work. In the meantime, to join me for Saturday's workshop, sign up at the link below:

Fingerstyle Standards: 'Indiana'
 

More soon,

David