The inaugural 'learn a song a day for a month' challenge.

Vaiai

octatonic said:

Tunes for tomorrow are "One Way Or Another" by Blondie and the Creedence version of Proud Mary.

I've already worked them out and does the first charts- I'll clean them up a bit and post them.
If I get time I might get started on "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder.

Yay - we do Hanging on the Telephone and launch straight in to One Way or Another. One Way is a nice easy one and goes down well. Proud Mary is so overdone we do Fortunate Son instead!

octatonic

Vaiai said:

octatonic said:

Tunes for tomorrow are "One Way Or Another" by Blondie and the Creedence version of Proud Mary.

I've already worked them out and does the first charts- I'll clean them up a bit and post them.
If I get time I might get started on "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder.

Yay - we do Hanging on the Telephone and launch straight in to One Way or Another. One Way is a nice easy one and goes down well. Proud Mary is so overdone we do Fortunate Son instead!

I like 'One Way"- starts with a chorus and doesn't really have a verse---- or does it? Who knows.
Chicks dig it.

viz

This is such a good thread. I'm doing a birthday bash tomorrow with a new band - the birthday boy and girl and their mates. We've had a couple of runs-through and the set list is:

1. Happy Hour - G
2. Picture This - C
3. Son Of A Preacher Man - A
4. Perfect - D
5. There's a Guy Works Down The Chip Shop - A
6. Simply the Best - F (but G when the sax comes in)
7. Boys are Back in Town - G
8. Don't Stop Me Now - F
9. Respect - C
10. Tainted Love - Cm
11. Common People - C
12. Tubthumping - D
13. Walking on Sunshine - G
14. Mamma Mia- D
15. I Will Survive - Gm
16. Hotel California - Bm
17. Wish You Were Here - G 
18. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Em
19. Living on a Prayer - Em

I knew the last four but the rest were new. The main question is, will I remember the structures ....

octatonic

Thanks Viz- looks like a good set.

octatonic

Day 6: Songs 8 & 9
Ahead of the game here- if I am able to stay on track I should get through the challenge in 20-21 days, not 30.
If I am ahead of time then I might ask people to nominate some songs (sensible ones- I'm not learning Malmsteen tunes in a day on 3 instruments)
.
"One way Or Another" by Blondie

"Proud Mary": Creedence Clear Water Revival version.

"One Way or Another"

Harmony & chord chart is below.
Guitar: Many power chords. Memorise the guitar solo note for note.
Bass: Mostly root & 5th type playing.
Drums: Another endurance song- the right hand sticking patterns are quite relentless in the A and B sections.
The drum break after the second B section needs to be right. C section drum rolls need to be precise.



I'll post the Proud Mary chart up in a bit.

octatonic

Proud Mary - Creedence version.

I've checked out a couple of other version- don't be surprised if they start it in B- that is the Elvis 'live in Las Vegas' version.
Again- a massive gap in my musical education- I've fudged my way through it before in jam sessions but never sat down and learned it.

Harmony is below in the chart.
Guitar: Play the intro confidently, learn the two significant fills- the main one to get right is after 'rollin' on the river' which is a nice line featuring diatonic 6ths (or inverted 3rd's if you prefer).
Bass: Mostly root notes for you. There is a chromatic line leading into the start of the chorus (from F# up to A) that you really needs to be played.
Drums: Simple 4/4 with some snare ghost notes. Nothing complex or challenging here.

octatonic

Day 7 Song 10 & 11

A week down and 4 songs ahead of schedule.
Are people still with me?
I learned these yesterday after I'd done Proud Mary but ran out of time to post.

"Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" - The Blues Brothers
Up tempo upside down blues progression (V I IV I).
Nothing too challenging- but the drum parts are surprisingly kick heavy and it barrels along so can be another tiring one.

"Call Me The Breeze" Lynyrd Skynyrd

Finally some proper guitar parts to learn- the intro is awesome sauce, plus some blues soloing.
Resist the temptation to shred modally over this- it will sound wrong.
The rest is a blues, so pretty straight forward.
This is the song that the band all get to do their own 8 or 16 bar solo, so lot of dropping out and listening to other people.
I don't do drum solo's but I apparently I have to *something* here.

Here is ENSTL chart. I can't imagine anyone needs a chart for Cll me the Breeze- it is 12 bar in A.

stratman3142

octatonic said:

....Are people still with me?

I'm trailing behind because, as often happens, I've gone off on a bit of a tangent.

I decided to create my own charts for the ones I don't know in a bit more detail and I've been wanting to get back into using Sibelius after using version 3 on my old computer. So I'm subscribing to Sibelius v8 now and it's a bit of a learning curve because it's changed quite a bit.

Here's my transcription of This Is The Life, created in Sibelius 8, just to prove I'm not making excuses.

http://i.imgur.com/2PEfapl.png

Plectrum

octatonic said:

"Call Me The Breeze" Lynyrd Skynyrd

A great song murdered. JJ always did it best.

octatonic

Plectrum said:

octatonic said:

"Call Me The Breeze" Lynyrd Skynyrd

A great song murdered. JJ always did it best.

I agree but JJ didn't have 11 people standing on the stage wondering what they are going to do.
This is a big band- we have to do the Skynyrd version.

octatonic

Day 8 Songs 12 & 13

"Let's Stick Together" by Bryan Ferry

"I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters

A couple of easy ones.
The set is starting to take a bit of time to get through- just under an hour to play through it from beginning to end.

"Let's Stick Together" by Bryan Ferry

A blues in A.
That is it really- 12 bar from beginning to end but it seems to please the horn players.
Vocalist will try to croon- yes, it is embarrassing but just think of all the other places you could be right now and it will soon be over.

Guitar: Not much to do here. Not even a solo. Sucks to be you (me).
Bass: Some nice walking bass lines that seem to carry the piece.
Drums: Four to the floor, some quarter note snare fills at the end of the chorus.

"I'm So Excited" by The Pointer Sisters

A bit more harmonic stuff going on here (ooooh look, a sus chord)

Guitar: some nice-ish offbeat funk type playing. It is vocally/synth driven so you are mostly staying out of the way of them.
Bass: Bouncy root notes and a bit of walking.
Drums: Actually straighter than it sounds, with some clipped hat work.

I'll do a chart for I'm So Excited, I'm not going to bother doing one for the Ferry tune.

Edit- adding chart.

octatonic

Day 9: Songs 14 & 15

Half way and ahead of schedule.
If you are feeling somehow cheated that some of the songs here are mostly the same 12 bar blues, well I sympathise.
I'd much rather play things that are not 12 bar, but these are the songs.
It is a good illustration though of how easy it can be to get a set of songs together.

"Great Balls of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis.

Blues in A.
No chart required.
Guitar: Intro melody double the piano melody, then it is death by 12 bar. Resist the temptation to overdo the gain. Double stop solos fun.
Bass: Walk dat bass.
Drums: Stops, single stroke fills, fast ride and hats patterns but otherwise ok.

"Lonely Boy" by The Black Keys.

It is in E and consists of about 4 riffs and 3 chords (E G A).
The first one has some sort of pitch bend- I had a look in this video to see how he does it and it looks like it is a pitch pedal (whammy/drop tune?). Edit: Google reveals it is a Boss Harmonist.

I'm not going to use a pedal, as I don't need to tie up that much of my board for one sound.
I've messed around with a couple of ways of doing it- one is to keep my right hand on the wang bar, the other is to reach around with my left and pitch bend with that.
Using the left hand gets the closest to the sound of the record as I can keep picking with my right and it looks cool.

Bass is sitting on EGA. Yawn.

Drums:  This is actually a lot of fun on drums. You get to get your train beat happening in the verses and then go big in the choruses.

At some point I'll post up how I chart out the drum parts- I use a system shown to me by someone who I need to clear it with before I post it up. I don't think he'll have a problem with me showing this but it isn't my approach to show.

I'll chart this out today.

EricTheWeary

octatonic said:

Day 6: Songs 8 & 9
Ahead of the game here- if I am able to stay on track I should get through the challenge in 20-21 days, not 30.
If I am ahead of time then I might ask people to nominate some songs (sensible ones- I'm not learning Malmsteen tunes in a day on 3 instruments)
.

I'm rewatching last week's Later, if you could send Dan Auerbach the chords to any of The Pretenders songs he was supposed to be playing that would be great 

octatonic

EricTheWeary said:

octatonic said:

Day 6: Songs 8 & 9
Ahead of the game here- if I am able to stay on track I should get through the challenge in 20-21 days, not 30.
If I am ahead of time then I might ask people to nominate some songs (sensible ones- I'm not learning Malmsteen tunes in a day on 3 instruments)
.

I'm rewatching last week's Later, if you could send Dan Auerbach the chords to any of The Pretenders songs he was supposed to be playing that would be great 

LOL- it was a bit... jazz.

octatonic

Chart for Lonely Boy is below.

I'm ahead of schedule so I'm going to take 1-2 days now to refine some bits that I've skipped over.
I've got 15 new songs that are fresh in my head- and about 3-4 parts per song per instrument to remember and it has been necessary for me to be economical with my time with some of it.

For instance, the drum part in Valerie- which I simplified to get the song up to tempo.
I'm going to go back and refine the part so I'm playing exactly what is one the record.
I will probably end up having to gig the simpler version, but that is more to do with how function bands operate.

One thing on the Lonely Boy drum part- if you look in the video I posted the drummer plays the Train beat with constant 8th notes and left hand accents, as you would if you were playing the hi-hat.
That isn't typical and it isn't how I'll be doing it.
Train beats are usually played with right hand accents.

Have a look at the Rich Redmond video below for a comprehensive lesson, should you want to.

I might post an update or two

octatonic

Was definitely a good idea to have today off learning new material- I'm going through the above video ^^^ on train beats as well as running though the set several times on each instrument.

I might get back on the new tunes tomorrow, or I might keep doing what I've been doing today.

PolarityMan

I found myself subconsciously tapping out a variation of that train beat all day after watching the video last night. My variation is bass drums on 1 and 2& and snare accents on 1, 3 and 4.

stratman3142

Still following your progress with interest and your methods will help me refine how I do things. But I'm afraid I can't keep up because of my day job plus loads of things to do at home. Excuses, excuses...
Plus, I don't have the threat of a gig coming up to spur me along, although I have had to do it in the past but only on guitar.

octatonic

PolarityMan said:

I found myself subconsciously tapping out a variation of that train beat all day after watching the video last night. My variation is bass drums on 1 and 2& and snare accents on 1, 3 and 4.

Cool.
The Rich Redmond snare groups are:

#1: 2, 4, 4&
#2: 2, 2&, 4
#3: 2, 3&, 4&
#4: 2, 3&, 4, 4&
#5 2, 2&, 3&, 4, 4&

I think there might be one more.
What I'm doing is working through them sequentially and then putting them together in musical sequences.
I'm keeping kick on the 1&3 for now- I'll move the kicks around later.

Also working on some buzzes and drags with the train beat- which is quite cool.

octatonic

Spiffing.
I seem to be coming down with the flu.
I'll see how I go tomorrow- I might put things on hold for a few days- but if I'm up to it I'll at least do charts for more songs.