I'll Take A Fifth and Thirty Useful Tips For $100, Alex

Here's a short explanation on the Circle of Fifths. Even if it STILL doesn't make sense when you're done reading it, you'll come away with at least two or three new chord progressions to stick in your quiver.

After reading that I started reading the blog I found it in. Great ideas here! This guy has a blog chock full o' ideas. I found myself just reading straight down the page and getting more and more inspiration.

He posted an article about playing live here.

That lead me to the site it was hosted on, Muse's Muse.

I feel like Alice In Wonderland here, but THAT lead me to THIS site, which was highly suspect because of the random pop-up ads, but I stayed and surfed anyways and found a list of programs for creating loops. (I've been messing with a pretty fun online loopmaking program called Splice that I really enjoy, but that's another rabbit hole to wander down at another date.)

Which naturally lead me to I Am The Mighty Jungulator, a band AND an educational software for looping music used in schools in the UK. Yeah. I took the blue pill.


Too many links? Sucker, you ain't seen nothin' yet. I need to write/finish a song now. As is obvious, the computer used its evil tentacles of coolness to wrap me up and suck me in.

(Read Jeff's Songwriting Blog if you do anything, but if you feel like chasing the rabbit, start with the first link and work your way down...)

Chalk Up Another One For Science!

So, as you may know, I've been frustrated with trying to sing All We Need Is Some Love. Tonight, after tuning my guitar down ANOTHER half step, I sat down to figure out if it would be possible to play it in another key and, thereby, save my pipes (such as they are) and keep the tension on my guitar at a healthy level.

On the recording, I'm playing [C F Am G] on the verse on a guitar tuned down a half step which yields [Bb E G#m F#]... I think. This is still pretty high for me when we get to the chorus, which is [Dm Am G] or [C#m G#m F#m] in reality. After fumbling around with transposing it myself, I had the brilliant idea that there must be a better way!

Well, there is! And it's called Autotransposer.

Simply enter the chord progressions (C F Am G for example) for up to five fields (verse, chorus, bridge for example) and click transpose, and viola! Many new keys to try your creation in. For this one, I tried the progression [G C Em D] for the verses (now played on a standard tuned guitar) and [Am Em D] for the chorus.

What I've effectively done is transpose the song down four steps (assuming the original guitar tuned down a half step and the new one tuned regular). For instance, the chorus was, in reality [C#m G#m F#m] and now becomes [Am Em D]. Amazingly, I can actually sing it in this key.

I'm not sure how I'll record the next version, but I'm leaning toward this new key. Maybe I'll post this new version against the previous one and have you give it a listen.

Of course if I end up hiring Bono to sing it, I can play it back in its original key.

Carry on,
J