Message:
Mr. Jimmy Webb
Finally read Tunesmith and glad I did. Lots of times people with talent and insight choose to keep it to themselves for any number of petty reasons, you are generous with yours and have provided an excellent source of good, basic stuff. I have been writing all manner of things for most of my life, lately have settled with lyrics as the most satisfying and have gone back and 'converted' stuff that was written as poetry using a lot of the tricks of phrasing and scansion you describe, only I never knew what to call what I was doing.
While I have pretty much always known that for the most part a tune needs to resolve, I never looked at harmonizing individual chords, it explains why some of what I had done works (I do a lot of Almost playing chords before finally playing them) and gives me a clearer view of future scribblings.
I can’t read music anywhere near fast enough so mostly use the chord symbolism above the lryics, what we used to call guitar tab when you were ordering sheet music. I don’t know if that qualifies as real ‘composing’ but it is a hell of a lot of fun.
When I run across a call for a chord I don’t exactly know (in that notation) I can usually just sound it out. On a piano the inversions are a lot easier but on a guitar you can achieve some very nice different chords by moving one finger one space, or even just lifting it up. On a piano I like to step down chromatic with the bass line while holding a nice round chord above. I kind of let the chords write the melody line in some fashion or the other altho admittedly my chosen genre after many years playing is the Blues and you can fit some tasty words into those twelve bars.
Anyway after rereading a couple of your musical tutorials I came to see what things I have played five hundred times are called and why they work, and that is the real point here for me, anything that fires the musical nuerons is tonic to me. I have also always noticed that musical people dispite their boggling diversity otherwise tend to be a decent lot, and your offering out of what you learned mostly the hard way proves you to be, to.
Your thoughts on keeping lots of notes*, crossing out instead of erasing, things like that seem obvious but will not have occurred to a lot of aspirers. I know it's a few years later but I almost have to take small issue with your repeated admonition to not send uncopyrighted material. For you that's a bad idea because your writings are assets worth protecting, and you have heard your stuff played a zillion times. But I'm a maintenance man, If I wrote an original tune, words and music, worth shit I would post it everywhere. If somebody picked it and sung it would be, if nothing else, encouragement to write another. And hugely flattering I'd think.
*Oh, I got notes allright. I hand write pencil firsts, then scan them into the computer and save them as image files, in case I lose the written ones. Then some of them get typed out and saved as text, god bless cut and paste. I still can't find any particular one when I need it but even random re-readings can produce new vibrations.
I have applied for my license to play Blues as genre of choice mostly because that's what I like to play the most, and while I know a lot of folks view the twelve bar format as limiting and even simplistic, nothing at all stops a person from extending, varying, branching. Anyway remember what George Carlin says, "All music is the Blues. All of it."
Rambling is poor writing discipline, they say, so thanks again for a good job.
Dan
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