C | F C | F | G7 F | G7 | C | C
I’m dream-ing of a white Christmas. Just like the ones I used to knowC CM7 | C7 | F | Fm C | C | Dm7 | G7
Where the tree tops glisten and children listen. To hear sleigh bells in the snowC | F C | F | G7 F | G7 | C | C
I’m dream-ing of a white ChristmasvvWith ever Christmas card I writeC CM7 | C7 | F | Fm C C#dim | Dm7 […]
C A7
Pack up all my cares and woe,
Dm7 G7 C
here I go singing low,
C C Dm7 G7
Bye Bye Black bird.
Dm Dm7
Where somebody waits for me
Dm7 G7
sugar’s sweet, so is she.
Dm7 G7 C7 C
Bye Bye Black bird.
C7 A7
No one here can love and under stand me,
Dm […]
“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is a song co-written by soul singer Otis Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper. It was recorded by Redding twice in 1967, including once just three days before his death in a plane crash on December 10, 1967. The song was released on Stax Records’ Volt label in 1968,[2] becoming the first ever posthumous single to top the charts in the US.[3] It reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart.
Redding started writing the lyrics to the song in August 1967, while sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He completed the song in Memphis with the help of Cropper, who was a Stax producer and the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G.’s. The song features whistling and sounds of waves crashing on a shore.
“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that what is deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” -E. E. Cummings
Intro 2X (Am Am6 Dm6 E7) 2x
|Am | Am6 | Am7 | Am/F# | Dm7 | G7 G7#5 | CM7 |
Now you say you’re lonely, You cry the whole night through,
| Bm7 E7 | Em7 | A7#5 | D9 | D9 |
Well, you can cry me a river cry me a river
Dm7 | Dm7/G | C6 | B7b9 Bb7b9
I cried a river over you.
|Am | Am6 | Am7 | Am/F# | Dm7 | G7 G7#5 | CM7 |
Now you say you’re sorry, For bein’ so un.. true,
| Bm7 E7 | Em7 | A7#5 | D9 | D9 |
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river,
| Dm7 | Dm7/G | C6 | F#m7b5 B7b9
I cried a river over you.
Em | Em | Am6 […]
ain’t misbehavin’. First performed at the premiere of Connie’s Hot Chocolates in Harlem at Connie’s Inn as an opening song by Paul Bass and Margaret Simms, and repeated later in the musical by Russell Wooding’s Hallelujah Singers. Connie’s Hot Chocolates was transferred to the Hudson Theatre on Broadway during June 1929, where it was renamed to Hot Chocolates and where Louis Armstrong became the orchestra director. The script also required Armstrong to play “Ain’t Misbehavin‘” in a trumpet solo, and although this was initially slated only to be a reprise of the opening song, Armstrong’s performance was so well received that the trumpeter was asked to climb out of the orchestra pit and play the piece on stage. As noted by Thomas Brothers in his book Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism, Armstrong was first taught “Ain’t Misbehavin'” by Waller himself, “woodshedding” it until he could “play all around it”; he cherished it “because it was ‘one of those songs you could cut loose and swing with.'”
“If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: the only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.” – Kurt Vonnegut
A trip to New Orleans with Mrs. E was lots of fun and very inspiring! The musician’s tomb in St. Louis Cemetery #1. is available for non-family New Orleans musicians. According to our tour guide, if you have New Orleans in mind as a final resting place, he suggests as a first step, moving here and learning to play an instrument… I especially like the blue note symbol in the center of the cross. The blue note is pretty darn important!
Our visit inspired me to write some music. This is “Upside Down in the Boneyard” and the name comes from a story our Uber drive told us on the way out of town.
Upside down in the Boneyard
and download the sheet music here.
New Orleans Weekend
And during some down time on our last day in N’awlens I put this down- “New Orleans Weekend”. Sounds like it has a sort of French influence to me. Or maybe that’s the fried oyster po’boy I hear… This sheet music you can get here
These were written with musescore btw which is FREE! and pretty easy to get a handle on. If you like music and you want to look under the hood a little I highly recommend it.
[…]
If you think about a scale as having eight notes – do re me fa so la ti do- and then assign numbers to the notes, you’d get one through 8, right? So your first note would be 1 and your last note would be 8 The one note is the “root” note in the scale and the other notes all different jobs to do when we play them as chords.
For instance a major chord has the scale notes 1, 3 and 5. For a C scale, which has no sharps or flats, the notes corresponding to the numbers 1 through 8 are C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C. So for our major C chord, 1,3 and 5 are the notes C, E and G. That makes a C major chord.
When you take the 3rd out though, something interesting happens. Playing the 1 and the 5 makes a very beefy, crunchy sort of chord, and playing a simple 1/4/5 pattern with that power chord is like the basis for tons of rock’n roll songs.
Conveniently for us as guitar players it doesn’t matter if you play the 5th note above or below the 1st note, and we have two strings in standard tuning, the D string and […]
We know the C scale has no flats or sharps and we can play it in the first position using D, G and B open strings.
We can play, as shown here: C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C
Also the C scale continues both below and above the two Cs, so we can actually start playing that scale from the open E and above the C on the B string, as far as we want. Let’s go to G (third fret of the E string) so we’re using the C scale notes on the first 3 frets including open strings.
A Minor (Am) is the relative minor of C and it doesn’t have any sharps or flats either! You can spell the Am scale just like the C scale just starting on the A! Try it out! 
What this means is, we can play these notes over changes like Am, G, F and Em which would be 1, 7, 6 and 5.
Try playing the chord and then the scale from the root note. So, play an Am, then play the scale from the A and so on.
Cool, right? Sounds sort of “Spanish ” to […]
How to play Hotel California. This is a GREAT tune and not too hard to get the basic changes down. I’m including a link to the chord diagrams here and the chord and lyric sheet here. Have some big fun playing this great Eagles classic tune!
You can also play this using the same chords as above, but in a different position – descending on the neck! This would be a good place to start if you wanted to do a Joe Walsh- type lead line over the changes also.
…a solo fingerstyle version that includes the techniques discussed in the previous videos.
“As long as you’re excited about what you’re playing, and as long as it comes from your heart, it’s going to be great.” – John Frusciante
Simple strumming patterns improve your playing for guitar and ukulele!
Simple strumming patterns will improve your playing! Using strumming patterns can be super handy for perfecting your guitar or ukulele accompaniment. Eventually you will figure out your own patterns for any song that you do, but in the meantime try these as a place to start. Just choose a chord you can play easily and strum down or up where indicated. Count out loud to help yourself with your timing. Click here to download the PDF
One interesting exercise is to choose a lyric line for a song you know well- for instance, from the Eagles’ Hotel California: “On a dark desert highway”. Now see if you can strum that “syllabically” meaning, use either an up or a down strum per each syllable. Something like this below, which you can download a pdf for here.
Looking for online guitar or uke lessons? First one is free!