Chord Progressions

[john]

If I am wasted here I would love to know where I wouldn't be lol

[Lazz]

Am I correct that rather than starting with a triad and adding to it, you’re looking at chords in a major key as being derived from all seven notes of the major scale, stacked up in thirds?

Yes – I am looking at chords as being derived from scale-tones.

(Where else are we going to get the notes from, right?)

But we’re not using all seven notes to express the chord.

We’re just using four fingers for the first four notes: 1-3-5-7.

And being aware of what those other notes might be if we wanted to go there

In spelling out those extensions we are giving clear notice that, should you choose to include a 9th in your version of a III chord, it needs to be flattened, same for the 13th.

So the I chord in the key of C major is "C-E-G-B-D-F-A"

I view the I chord as I Major7: C-E-G-B.

But I know the rest of those notes are there if I ever want to use ‘em.

wrote it as a 7th chord, but noted all the alterations that would be required to keep the notes of a 13th chord in the scale.

Yes.

You then recognize a chord as major if has a major 3rd, a perfect 5th and a major 7th

minor if it has a minor 3rd, a perfect 5th and a minor 7th.

leaves V (which has a major 3rd but a minor 7th)

and VII (which lacks a perfect 5th) as neither fish nor fowl.

It makes sense — the 3rd and the 7th are the only notes in a chord we call major or minor, rather than flatted, sharped, diminished or augmented, so they must both be major to have a major and both be minor to have a minor.

The dominant seventh fits neither, so you consider it a type of its own.

That’s about the size of it.

Except that the 5th carries much less significance.

The 3rd and the 7th are the characteristic defining chord tones

I tend to think of everything as beginning with a triad — the common ones, with a perfect 5th, have their character determined by the 3rd: major, minor or suspended (replacing the 3rd with a 4th), while the less common diminished and augmented are off by themselves. The (unqualified, hence minor) 7th note added to a major or minor chord seems to me not to change the character of the underlying triad so much as to lead...

That’s the important bit, I think.

Chord progressions do their thing through voice-leading.

Moving around round the cycle of fifths in the normal world of regular functional harmony – the same one described by Hariosa – we can see this voice-leading job is done by the 3rd and the 7th

That’s why it just seems a lot handier using a concept embracing the 7th as fundamental, rather than the simple triad.

Having a concept which also illuminates upper extensions at the same time introduces extra potential to our palette in the way of extra passing-tones available to expand our voice-leading with yet other intervening chords or substitutions.

For progressions, I would argue that these qualities serve to make the approach more productive than sticking with triadic thinking.

(I’m guessing that you think of a 6th as a 13th with the 7th, 9th and 11th omitted?)

I think of it as a 13th because, in terms of the model of stacking thirds through the scale, that’s what number that note counts itself as by the time I reach it.

But I might still prefer to voice it as a 6th, with no 5th, and a dropped 7th : 7-3-6.

.

[Roflcopter]

We’re just using four fingers for the first four notes: 1-3-5-7.

Do you play all of these with your left hand only, or move the 3 to your right to open up the chord?

[Retrosaurus Rex]

Can I try to move forward by addressing Coise's specific questions to me ?

I know Andrew (King Retro) might still be interested.

I am, and the answer was illuminating. I'm also interested in the answer to Rob-chopper's ? about the specific voicing. I seem to spend too much time finding satisfying voicings for piano & synth parts...

Hariossa's comment reminded me of a section of Mick Goodrick's book "The Advancing Guitarist", which I also have not yet adequately explored... the suggestion Goodrick advances is, in a nutshell, to work out 4 note grips for the basic 7th chords, and then figure out all the functional possibilities for those grips. For example, C-E-G-B is obviously a CMaj7, but it could also be the b3rd-5th-b7th & 9th of Amin9, and so on... interesting stuff... to me...

[hariossa]

Hariossa's comment reminded me of a section of Mick Goodrick's book "The Advancing Guitarist", which I also have not yet adequately explored... the suggestion Goodrick advances is, in a nutshell, to work out 4 note grips for the basic 7th chords, and then figure out all the functional possibilities for those grips. For example, C-E-G-B is obviously a CMaj7, but it could also be the b3rd-5th-b7th & 9th of Amin9, and so on... interesting stuff... to me...

That book is really good!

There's other interesting techniques, as I mentioned earlier Allan Holdsworth has another way to do it, he thinks scale wise, where chords can be any combination of the scale notes, he rarely constructs chords by triads, he often uses wide intervals mixed with very close intervals creating a "shape" and then moves the shape across the guitar neck using more or less the same intervals but with other scale notes.

This non-triadic chords has a very ambiguous sonority, so they can fit over various "regular" chords, i.e. if the tune has notated Dm7 - G7 - CMaj7 he can play a chord containing just g-d-e-f, that chord alone can fit over the whole progression but if he moves that shape up and down the scale, any resulting chord will fit also. Of course if you play this you will sound instantly like Holdsworth...

Edited September 28, 2010 by hariossa

[Lazz]

Do you play all of these with your left hand only, or move the 3 to your right to open up the chord?

Oh, I'm just focussed on identifying the 1-3-5-7 in the context of the scale I am looking at as a thinking exercise - chord generation.

Plus - in that answer - my intention was to clarify (if there was ambiguity) that it was NOT about voicing "all seven notes of the major scale, stacked up in thirds".

So in that context it wouldn't really matter - you are just as likely to find me stabbing at the keyboard with 2 fingers from each hand.

If I was trying to voice the chord for real, I would be choosing to look for the shell-voicing of just the 3rd and the 7th, and maybe picking a third note for colour - depending on the direction it was heading.

So I might voice it upwards: 7-9-3; or 7-3-6; probably with two fingers from my right hand and one from my left.

If I was working on searching for a melody with fingers of my right hand, I would be finding the 3rd and 7th with two fingers of my left hand.

But then, not being an instrumentalist, I don't need to worry much about technique.

As singer, writer, and tyro arranger, all I need is a productive way of making sense that I can use to interpret chord changes.

Two thankfully slim but helpful little starting volumes:

"How To Create Jazz Chord Progressions" by Chuck Marohnic

"Jazz/Rock Voicings for the Contemporary Keyboard Player" by Dan Haerle

They may be more use in terms of specific voicing suggestions.

[MikeRobinson]

(blink...)

Re-reading my music-lessons . . .

[Nick]

One first big bit of usefulness is clarity - being unambiguous about key centre.

Take an Em chord as example – a nice popular guitar chord.

Slap two fingers on the neck – strum E A E A C E – and voila !!

But what sort of Em are we looking at ?

That may sound like a severely dumb question – especially if you’re bass player whose job it is to groove around the root and 5th of whatever chord is flying by, or if you’re the enthusiastic minimalist guitarist sticking with the simple triads….. but if you are someone else called onto a gig where you have to be able to fake your way through a chart and interpret appropriate note choices of your own, then it is very useful to know which chord function we’re dealing with.

Most of the time, I imagine, we would be easily tempted to interpret the appropriate scale tones for Em as E F# G A B C# D and presume it is the II chord in the key of D. However…… if it turns out that our Em is functioning instead as the III chord of C, that C# and F# could have caused some unfortunate and avoidable ugliness.

Spelled out carefully as Emin7, with the b9 & b13 in parenthesis, the tonality is made very explicit.

C Major.

There are times when the clarity of Em7^(b9)(b13) proves more useful than Em

NB - It doesn’t mean you have to squeeze all those notes into a chord.

It’s just telling you where you’re at, what’s going on, and what to look out for.

Like life – you have to use your own judgement about how to ‘voice’ it.

And often – even while being aware of what else is out there – a simple triad can be the right choice.

When I sent along a tune to be considered for a gig by one of our friends here, Joe Roxhythe, he voiced concern about the modifications and alterations in our chord spellings (Alt. chords, #9s, #11s, etc.). The tones being indicated by those spellings, however, were all contained in the melody – they are already being sung and so there is absolutely no need to repeat them, to ‘double’ them. The chord spelling on the lead-sheet tells us what’s going on. And the job of the supporting instruments is to support that melody. Joe understood, and his band renders it in simple triads as some kind of as rag-time bluegrass.

In a more jazzoid context, where the song normally lives, using the broader vocabulary allowed to players in that context, the voicing choices will get made differently.

But whichever style or idiom, we’ve got interpretation being made from the same package of information contained in the chord spelling. The differences in perspective are about how to make the best sense of the intention.

For me personally, that is probably the best post I have ever read on this forum and has created a light bulb epiphany moment which I appreciate enormously.

I do believe that everyone actually IS talking about the same thing here only I'm not sure everyone sees that they are. I have attached something a little further down this post that hopefully might help (or hinder) a little more to explain that - though I'm not sure I can terribly well. I think I might have mentioned it before and still recommend Eric Roche's 'Acoustic Guitar Bible' (beside me as I type) as the best /most useful book I have ever read on guitar playing.

Perhaps part of the difference in perception is that I would guess a lot of people here come from a rock/folk/pop idiom and learned the way to play and harmonise songs based on 'the three chord trick' that was the basis of a huge swathe of music since the late 50s based on 3 or 4 piece guitar bands; Lazz comes from the songwriting tradition and school of harmony that is more based on (possibly/probably) the golden age of songwriting that owed a lot to the orchestrations of big bands and jazz as well as the crucial contribution of the craft of the words. The pop/rock view is a rather simplified and cut down version of the latter and has less harmonic diversity (and dare I say subtlety and colour) and it's focus is more based on rhythm than harmonic complexity in most (not all) cases; in fact, at it's best it's simplicity is strength.

I like most of these genres and play in several to some degree. The quote from Lazz above is so clear if I have understood it. I used to look at the b9#11b5 stuff and wonder what it is all about - I knew how to make them but not what they were doing there. I used to wonder how someone knew which one was 'right'. I had never looked at it as a road map to where the current tonal centre of the melody is and that makes it so much clearer as I had missed it before. Jazz musicians tend to look much more closely at the harmonic structure of a tune than a folk or blues or pop player might and look to explore the harmonic possibilities much more than (is needed?) in a 'pop' song or folk song or similar. They also tend to improvise much closer to the melody and harmony on a bar by bar basis than pop or rock musicians - as a gross generalisation a lot of 'soloists' will play blues pentatonics over anything and wonder why it sounds like shoite (or do they...) - and explore the possibilites of exploring the harmonic possibilities of tunes without losing sight of the tune they are playing.

Bizarrely I also find the same in Irish and other session music where the addition of a similar road map helps players to know what a likely harmonic structure is and hence what the chords that will work will be - or what other ones will work even though they are not the traditional 'right' way to play a tune and will add harmonic interest and variety to tunes. (Lunasa are a favourite of mine in that genre and they play around with harmonies all the time). Traditional irish musicians are not always keen to want people coming into sessions playing 'those fancy jazz chords'; mostly I would guess where people play with little to do with the melody and tune and with no feel for the balance of tension and resolution that (I think) characterises great players in the genre.. The melody is at the heart of that type of music. if you play ITM you ignore or abuse the total importance of the tune as the centre of the genre at the risk of violence...

As a slight aside, that tension exists in blues and jazz and most music I love - it's also the reason how people can go far away from the 'right' harmony and tune of a piece but it still work so well. Most of the time a fundamental knowledge and interest in the tune and the possible variations is at the root. Bad improvisation, in my book, tends to apply formulae and shapes and habits rather than an exploration of the tune. For an example of an a player who spans various genres (Irish, folk, gypsy jazz, and opined to me when I was in touch with him some years back that Yorkshire is the home of the world's greatest guitarist ie in his view Alan Holdsworth!) talking about chords and improvisation have a look here - John McGann and improvisation - the rest of the site is excellent too and he's a lovely guy.

The following is from Eric Roche's book and he looks at harmonising songs. He takes 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' as his starting point and looks at different ways to harmonise it from the way we all know to other places. The first one is one end of the spectrum of this discussion, the last one is in more in Lazz's world. They are all part of the same thing though. The juxtaposition of each of these versions though does, hopefully, help to explain the final one a bit more (the book does it MUCH fuller and much better) and Lazz's post helped me put an extra bit to my understanding jigsaw that hadn't been there before, so thank you.

There is a lovely bit in his book when he points out that when you get to a 13th (the right and appropriate 13th that is, not any one) you have every note of the scale you are playing in it. Realising that and the possibilities of inversions of those changing the harmonic feel of the tune AND substitutions AND adding secondary dominant sevenths to create tension but lead you back onto the path of 'harmony that you know and have in your head' creates a myriad of harmonic possibilites to colour and add to the melodies we create. Lazz's post just made the progression from the first version to the last just a bit clearer to me.

The last one DOES have an additional bar. Just for those who need resolution

<PRE>

TWINKLE TWINKE LITTLE STAR - arr Eric Roche							

4/4 timing. Each beat has a chord name or a slash inidcating a chord repeated. 				


Traditional/proper version										

C	/	/	/	|F	/	C	/	|F	/	C	/

G	/	C	/	|C	/	F	/	|C	/	G	/

C	/	F	/	|C	/	G	/	|C	/	/	/

F	/	C	/	|F	/	C	/	|G	/	C	/


Tonic root											

C	/	/	/	|F/C	/	C	/	|F/C	/	C	/

G/C	/	C	/	|C	/	F/C	/	|C	/	G/C	/

C	/	F/C	/	|C	/	G/C	/	|C	/	/	/

F/C	/	C	/	|F/C	/	C	/	|G/C	/	C	/


Dominant root											

C/G	/	/	/	|F/G	/	C/G	/	|F/G	/	C/G	/

G	/	C/G	/	|C/G	/	F/G	/	|C/G	/	G	/

C/G	/	F/G	/	|C/G	/	G	/	|C/G	/	/	/

F/G	/	C/G	/	|F/G	/	C/G	/	|G	/	C/G	/


Relative minors											

Am	/	Em	/	|Dm	/	Em	/	|Dm	/	Am	/

Dm	/	Am	/	|Em	/	Dm	/	|Am	/	Dm	/

Em	/	Dm	/	|Am	/	Dm	/	|Am	/	Em	/

Dm	/	Em	/	|Dm	/	Am	/	|Dm	/	Am	/


Mix of above											

C	/	Em	/	|F	Dm	Em	/	|Dm	/	C	/

Bdim	/	C	/	|Em	/	Dm	/	|C	/	G	/

Em	/	Dm	/	|C	/	G	/	|C	/	Em	/

F	/	Em	/	|Dm	/	Em	/	|Bdim	/	C	/


Adding sevenths and slash chords									

C	Cmaj7	Em7	C/F	|Fmaj7 Dm7/F Em7 C/E	|Dm7	Bm7b5/D	Cmaj7	Am7

Dm7/F	Dm7/G	C/G	/	|Em7	/	Dm7	/	|Cmaj7	/	G7	/

Em7	Am7	Dm7	G7	|Am7	/	G7	/	|Am7	/	Em7	/

Fmaj7	/	Em7	/	|Dm7	/	Cmaj7	/	|G7	/	C	/


Adding 'add 2' and 'sus' chords									

C	Cmaj7	Em7sus4 Em	|Fadd2	/Em	/	|Dm	/	Cadd2	Amadd2

G7sus4  G7	Cadd2	/	|C/E	/	G7/D	/	|C	/	G7sus4	/

C/E	/	Dm7	/	|C	/	G7	/	|C	Cmaj7	Em7sus4	Em

Fmaj7	/	Em	/	|Dm	/	Cmaj7	/	|G7sus4	/	Cadd2	/


Adding tritone substitution and secondary dominants (each of which resolves to

a chord from the key you are playing in - here C)						

F#m7b5 B7b9	 Em11	 A7	|Dm7	 G9	  Em7	   A7	|Dm7	  G7	  Cmaj7  A7/C#

Dm7	Db7b9	 Cmaj7 /	        |Em7	 Am7	  Dm7	   G7	|Cmaj7  Am7	  G7sus4 G7

Em7	Eb7	 Dm7	 Db7	|Cmaj7      Ab7#11      G7sus4       G7	|F#m7b5 F7	  Em11   Eb7   

Dm7  Db7#11	 Em7	 A7	|Bbm7	 Eb9	  Am7	   D9	|G7sus4 Db7b9 Fm7	   /     | Cmaj7 / / /


</PRE>

Edited October 10, 2010 by Nick

[john]

hey Nick

I agree, everyone is talking about the same thing here, slightly differing perspectives.

The way Lazz describes is the way I approach this, including the naming conventions and the reasons for it. The fact that it is not universal I find interesting. I can see where each perspective has come from, as I mentioned in a previous post. The differing benefits as meets purpose I think becomes highly relevant when arranging songs. I started a topic in the recording board about common issues with recordings, and one of the points there is about lack of detailed arrangement or planned arrangements (ie not accidents or jammed) and their benefit to overall clarity. Using a fuller notation allows that kind of detail level to be achieved with a good deal more clarity. No guitar parts interfering with vocal melodies and muddying the sound etc.

To me the fact that notations are confused comes down to the area of application and purpose. One is useful for understanding chord construction in relation to the root note of the chord, and the other relates to the key... the latter being the common notation and approach when discussing chord progressions and arrangements (yes I know this was highlighted a few pages back).

The fact that fuller notation helps clarify for the purposes of arrangement and the tonal centre of the melody is vital for clarity of the finished arrangement. Ok there are plenty of tracks that don't heed this, the tracks that evolve through countless layering processes as the song is written while it is being recorded, rather than a planned arrangement that takes into account the melody when that arrangement is made, but that does not mean they wouldn't benefit from the arranger taking that approach.

An interesting topic

Cheers

John

[Lazz]

For me personally, that is probably the best post I have ever read on this forum and has created a light bulb epiphany moment which I appreciate enormously.

Phew !!

That's nice to hear.

I thought I'd just been talking to the wind.

It was a light-bulb moment for me, too, when someone took the trouble to sit me down at a piano and lay the revelation out before me in plain sight.

Seems really difficult to approach that clarity in text on forums - so I am relieved and chuffed that it worked for you.

.

[Nick]

Phew !!

That's nice to hear.

I thought I'd just been talking to the wind.

It was a light-bulb moment for me, too, when someone took the trouble to sit me down at a piano and lay the revelation out before me in plain sight.

Seems really difficult to approach that clarity in text on forums - so I am relieved and chuffed that it worked for you.

Hopefully I understood what you were saying

Still something of a mystery how arrangers make the particular choices to harmonise a tune and when they add some of the choices they do that lift the harmony and enrich it - practice and experience and talent I guess. And still a mystery as to how an Emb13b9 would immediately say I'm related to C - I can work it out by seeing that the flattend 9th is an F and the flattened 13th is a C but I wouldn't know instantly. If it was an Bb b13b9 it would be even harder to immediately know it's Gb (if my fingers are working right)

I spent a pleasant evening after reacquainting myself with John McGann's Myspace channel and listening him play Gypsy jazz on a mandolin which I rather approve of.

Thanks again.

As a complete aside Zander has started at College in London doing his BMus degree so it'll be interesting to see what he picks up from there as there are some rather good teachers and masterclasses. And rather impressed that the first lecture was from the woman who does Alexander Technique training so that they look after themselves!

Nick

Edited October 12, 2010 by Nick

[Roflcopter]

I came across this guy on reddit a while back - really wished we could get him to post here:

As for why different cultures associate harmonies and melodies with certain emotions is one of the beauties and enigmas of music. Indian ragas are even meant to be played only at certain times of the day, as the tones are supposed to correspond with the morning, afternoon, evening, or whenever the raga is being performed.

I highly recommend the book "Temperament" by Stuart Isacoff, an excellent study on the relatively unknown subject of the evolution of musical scales and the mathematics behind the tuning (but readable by those without a strong musical background).

How to tune our musical scale was a HUGE problem for centuries, as most musicians/philosophers dogmatically clung to Pythagoreas' tuning method of the perfect 2:1 octave ratio, the 3:2 perfect 5th ratio, and the 4:3 perfect 4th ratio. When the scale is tuned that way, those intervals sound fantastic, but when you try to migrate to other keys, it all falls apart and the distance between those intervals in the new key is not those perfect ratios. So for ages music was stuck in a rather linear and confined state.

The book delves into the story in far more detail, but another thing I remember is that he mentioned someone commenting about 500 years ago that the raised major 3rd symbolized erect masculinity while the lowered minor 3rd was the submissive feminine, and today we tend to associate the two with happy and sad, respectively.

The way I see it, sadness and happiness aren't necessarily inherent in the intervals themselves, rather it's how you use them in the song/melody and the tempo, timbre, and rhythm all are factors in the what emotions the music elicits in us.

For those who have a stronger theory background, here's a video I made on the subject of modes, I'm actually working on a new one right now on more exotic scales and their modes:

I ordered the Isacoff book, too but have to wait a while before it arrives. Shame.

Original page on reddit: (really great thread)

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/dj61r/how_and_why_did_we_all_evolve_to_perceive_certain/

[Lazz]

Still something of a mystery how arrangers make the particular choices to harmonise a tune and when they add some of the choices they do that lift the harmony and enrich it - practice and experience and talent I guess.

It all amazes and impresses me, too.

I think it's all down to the experience of accumulated practice.

And I think the talent lies in learning how to apply it.

still a mystery as to how an Emb13b9 would immediately say I'm related to C - I can work it out by seeing that the flattend 9th is an F and the flattened 13th is a C but I wouldn't know instantly. If it was an Bb b13b9 it would be even harder to immediately know it's Gb (if my fingers are working right)

Seems to get easier the more we get used to applying it and just becoming familiar with the language.

Practice - like everything else - helps us to recognise more clearly that a minor chord with b13 and b9 must be working as a III chord.

I found that applying the same process of chord-generation to minor scales gets even more exciting and revealing.

Zander has started at College in London doing his BMus degree so it'll be interesting to see what he picks up from there as there are some rather good teachers and masterclasses. And rather impressed that the first lecture was from the woman who does Alexander Technique training so that they look after themselves!

Good for Zander !!

I'm only aware of a few of those teachers - but everyone has something special to offer.

The important thing, I reckon, is that Z meets similar enthusiasts, finds people with whom he can play everyday in ensemble situations, and builds his network of contacts for his future.

.

[Nick]

It all amazes and impresses me, too.

I think it's all down to the experience of accumulated practice.

And I think the talent lies in learning how to apply it.

Seems to get easier the more we get used to applying it and just becoming familiar with the language.

Practice - like everything else - helps us to recognise more clearly that a minor chord with b13 and b9 must be working as a III chord.

I found that applying the same process of chord-generation to minor scales gets even more exciting and revealing.

It's not immediate though if you are starting

I need to go back and practice and then it will become a part of me.

There is a beauty in jazzy chords which I can't explain. My elder son who can read music as I can read a book (but isn't a musician - not a criticism) listened to 'After Midnight' and still plays it to this day on the piano when he comes home. And the first time he heard it he just went 'wow' - how so? Wonderful noises.

If I go to the other extreme though, Lazz, Pat Metheny's 'Travels' makes me cry. So simple but ridiculously and enormously beautiful to me. You could probably teach a very new guitarist to play it (at various levels of complexity) but how could one write such an enormously simple thing that has such beauty?

Edited October 13, 2010 by Nick

[Nick]

I came across this guy on reddit a while back - really wished we could get him to post here:

Then just ask him.

Some years back I ran a competition on the internet on a website I had and a bloke who ran a (much better and important) website asked me how I had got the fantastic prizes. I just asked.

Some years ago I came across a tune I loved by John McGann (I mention him up the thread nd I love his music) called Canyon Moonrise. Wonderful tune great chord progression. I got in touch with John (Professor from Berklee etc) and about 10 minutes before I went to the pub to play his tune he sent me an email. And I learned so much from him in a few emails and his site. I'm a lucky soul.

If you think the guy would like to contribute then ask.

Some people talk as proxies for people as to 'what [the expert in the field] would say' without asking them. Sometimes you can ask and they'll give you the answer from them rather than a third hand one.

A friend of mine got in touch with one of the great fiddlers in the world when people were talking about what he would do or say and he has the more informed view (which for various reasons the person concerned did not want to share to the world) because he has it from the source.

[Lazz]

Yeah.

Pat McFeeney (as I heard it from an Irish scalper outside a Hammersmith Odeon PM gig) is lovely, and does some wonderfully moving music.

And no – I have no answer for the simplicity-beauty question.

Wish that I did.

.

[Nick]

Yeah.

Pat McFeeney (as I heard it from an Irish scalper outside a Hammersmith Odeon PM gig) is lovely, and does some wonderfully moving music.

And no I have no answer for the simplicity-beauty question.

Wish that I did.

.

Nor do I. Mr McFeeney is a wide ranging man and some stuff I love and some stuff I don't get. Travels and James and things like that he does I just think are astounding for their simplicity. James is hard to play (I don't) but the tune is 'easy'. If you get me going on great tunes I'll never go to bed... (I just reemembered I liked his acousitc album with 'Ferry Across the Mersey')

I met someone recently (very very good player - toured the states with name band plays with .... and writes but doesn't perform his own stuff) and we have made THE scariest pact that next Wednesday we are each (for the first time) going to sing our own songs in public.

Scarey.

Taking it seriously though.

If I ever get to Vancouver play me some stuff

Edited October 13, 2010 by Nick

[Lazz]

Scarey.

Has to be done, then.

No question.

If I ever get to Vancouver play me some stuff

(But I don't play anything.)

What do you need to hear?

.

[Roflcopter]

Then just ask him.

Yeah I just have.

[Nick]

Has to be done, then.

No question.

(But I don't play anything.)

What do you need to hear?

.

Sing me some stuff then.

Singing is playing in my book.

I bet you also know that you press those white and black things on a piano and noise comes out ot the back (front and sides)