01/03/12

Happy 2012!

Some of you had yesterday off, and, for the most part, I did too. My younger brother flew into the state after being gone most of last year in Afghanistan, so I spent some time catching up.

Instead of doing the normal thing of talking about new songs, how cool Lafayette Live was last week, or shows in the works, I’m going to take a few minutes to do some legit blogging & actually share some useful info…

Several of my music buddies have asked me some music theory-related questions (a lot of my songs are sounding the same, I need to branch out, any pointers?)...

So I’ll touch on some ‘keys’ with you.

My guitars are tuned to ‘Drop C’: all strings tuned a whole step down, with the 6^th string tuned another whole step down (CGCFAD).

Side note: I refer to notes as if they’re in standard tuning with a *, the * meaning relative to a step down. For example, if you’re a whole step down & I said, “Play a C Major,” you’re likely to play a C Major chord shape, not a D Major Chord shape. The C shape you’re playing would be a Bb in reality, the D would be C Major. See how this could get confusing?

Since having the open low string to chug on is important to meaner music and/or drop-D tuning, there are 7 traditional major keys (plus their relative minors) that’ll give you a D note (open 6^th string). For the most part, I start in these & go beyond them as necessary.

D Major*:  D  E  F# G  A  B  C# D

C Major*:  C  D  E  F  G  A  B  C

Bb Major*: Bb C  D  Eb F  G  A  Bb

A Major*:  A  B  C# D  E  F# G# A

G Major*:  G  A  B  C  D  E  F# G

F Major*:  F  G  A  Bb C  D  E  F 
Eb Major*: Eb F  G  Ab Bb C  D  Eb

Here's a .jpg diagram of what the first 7 frets of your guitar neck will look like in these keys. You should be able to right-click it, save, print, etc.

Remember, you can build any major key following the interval formula: Whole, Whole, Half, Whole, Whole, Whole, Half.

Start with the root note & add notes up in that order. (B to C & E to F are half step changes).

If it helps, here’s an octave of all 12 notes from A to A. The bold notes are the white keys on a piano, the normal print would be the black keys.

A - A#/Bb - B - C - C#/Db - D -  D#/Eb - E - F - F#/Gb - G - G#/Ab - A

While I’m at it, don’t scoop your mids or turn your amp’s gain all the way up! :-)

I hope this helps!

That does it for this week. Thanks for stopping in!

Since Facebook decided to be a pain last week & prevented me from posting links for the 2011 Recap, you can find it HERE.

Over and out

04/11/11

Hey all!

After a week of more hard work, I'm a bit closer to having the mix of "Dear Reason" done. As of now I'm having an issue with some clipping during the guitar solo. It's not the tracks or overall volume. Maybe it's an EQ thing. As soon as I can get that resolved, I should be ready to let it fly on the internet & focus on the video for it.

This weekend Chemcoma will be firing up for, what I hope to be, another relentless string of shows. We've been prepping to add a significant amount of new songs to the set. A good portion of my week will be spent transcribing more guitar & bass lines, building live tracks, making sure Cody & I are on the same page with what we're playing, and practicing singing and playing my parts. In other Chemcoma news, Adam Shewmaker appears to have about half of the "Something to Die for" video edited together. He sent us a rough cut over the weekend. I'm digging it.

I usually don't say much, if anything, about my side biz of teaching guitar lessons, but I'd like to mention my gratitude to Logan and his parents for giving me the opportunity to be his guitar/music teacher. Last week Logan joined Ashleigh, Tyler, Kaitlin, Valeska, and Dakota in our combined investment in the future of the Lafayette music community and, hopefully, guitar awesomeness.

In addition to what I mentioned above, I'll be spending the rest of the week working on promo with Guillermo (owner of Rancho Real) for Chemcoma's Cinco de Mayo show and scheduling more video shoots with sponsors of the Taste of Tippecanoe (btw, this year's Taste is going to be insane! www.tasteoftippecanoe.org). Also, I'll be padding my music account by helping run sound at the Knickerbocker on Friday night.

There's my weekly update, on time. I'm glad that you're still stopping by. Look out Crawfordsville, me & the Dishastercaster will be more than ready to blow off some steam on Saturday night at the Lew.

PS: Thanks to the Cocaine Wolves, American Speedway, and The Mound Builders for putting on an epic rock show over the weekend. Please check these cats out if you're not familiar.

Over and out.