October 14, 2022

This week we added a lesson on a classic tune made famous by Frank Sinatra in 1965, It Was A Very Good Year. The haunting song was written a few years earlier by Ervin Drake and recorded by The Kingston Trio. When a request for a lesson on it came up a few weeks ago I listened to Frank’s version and thought it would be a good project to arrange it into a reasonably easy guitar accompaniment. When I listened to the Kingston Trio’s version, I was pleasantly surprised that their guitar part was perfect for what I wanted to do. Listening to more of the Trio’s songs led me to my opening piece today, a tune we know because of the Monkees more than anything else. The connection is part of what I talked about today.

Other than that, I mentioned a couple lessons that are under construction and gave a short and fast tip on all six common modes (also inspired by It Was A Very Good Year). This time I was going into parallel modes, meaning hearing them all using ‘A’ as the tonic, rather than relative modes, where you have different tonics all in the same key signature. I hope you can follow the thread and there is more info in the Acoustic Genius Series – Fundamentals V: Modes Inside & Out.

See you next week,

Neil