June 16, 2023

This week we added a couple lessons that were not really even on my radar or schedule until last week, thanks to a couple students who were working on them. I realized that most of the prep had been done long ago for both Killing Me Softly, as done by Roberta Flack, and Richie Furay’s Kind Woman, which first appeared on the last Buffalo Springfield album but came out again on Poco’s live album Deliverin’, and stays in Richie’s live shows to this day.

I thought it was time to review some thoughts on modes again and today’s theory lesson went into some of the differences you hear using D as the tonic and cycling through the Ionian, Mixolydian, Dorian and Aeolian modes. I am afraid trying to keep it to 5 minutes or so may introduce more confusion than clarity but hearing the same story multiple times should be helpful in general.

This was inspired by the question of the Forum about Can’t Find My Way Home, and I ended with a little improv based on that, along with snippets of my tune Cobble Creek.

Back next week…maybe,

Neil