December 6, 2024

Last week I played a bit of some of the songs from our new strumming packs (Neil’s Top Strumming Songs Volumes 1 & 2) and a few of my students wanted to work on the melodic strumming improv I did on Solitary Man. That reminded me of a recent request I got to tab out my opening to The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, which was an early lesson where I did something similar in the Preview. That instrumental bit was the opening to today’s Update, along with a bit more of the story.

Something else that popped up recently was a question on the TG Forum about the harmony in the intro to Sweet Caroline. That inspired some thoughts and examples of tunes that use thirds in a similar way. Let It Be Me and Rhiannon were brought up as examples.

I wrapped things up with a Christmas Challenge. The idea is to construct your own arrangement of Carol Of The Bells, which I will get to a lesson on soon, by combining two independent parts. I give you the parts in a few different keys. See what you can do…

Neil