November 18, 2022
Rev. Gary Davis, Hot Tuna, and even Peter, Paul & Mary crept into today’s Update, mostly with respect to upcoming plans. Some of this is part of a request from last week about showing how to improvise over a chord progression. That turned into this week’s tip, which attempted to demystify some of the things I tend to do with songs–mess around with them and even mash a few together.

On the slightly more focused side…we had a couple new lessons and a couple new packs. My lesson this week was on coming up with your own arrangement of It Was A Very Good Year. I hope there is enough info there to get people rolling on it. Nesh reached way back to the early days of rock & roll with Cliff Richard’s Lucky Lips.

We released packs of lessons from two iconic stars: Aretha Franklin and Glen Campbell. I have to tell you I had a lot of fun working on the recent Glen Campbell lessons (Galveston and Highwayman), and really enjoyed taking some time to revisit a lot of Jimmy Webb masterpieces like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress and even MacArthur Park (as done by the composer himself).
I am also looking for suggestions on Christmas arrangements that people might like to tackle. I know we have quite a few of them but every year we should add one or two more. Let me know what might be conspicuously missing.

That’s it for today,

Neil