Lesson 3 (11/14/2005)

Fun lesson this time around, for sure! I showed up with a few printouts of some songs I had been working and such. I had "Hurt", "Let Her Cry", "Let It Be", and "Wish You Were Here".

I played "Hurt" for him. He joined in and had some suggestions on the chords and strumming patterns. All fit really well. Went on to "Let Her Cry". Didn't spend a lot of time on this one as it's pretty straight forward.

Then we looked at "Let It Be". This where the lesson took off. When playing it, I added a little walk down from the C to the G. He flew with this idea, showing that I needed to complete it, not just use the one note that I was using.

Then we started talking about what key the song was in. Then how the progressions work for each key. We started with the C scale. I played the first chord, a basic C. Then he said play the 2nd. I hit a D, but that's not totally right. The D major chord has a F# in it, but F# is not in the C major scale. When you flat the F# down to an F and play the D, it is a D minor chord.

This works for several steps of the scale. The 2nd and 3nd chords are minor, as is the 6th. The 7th is really weird. It becomes some dimished minor thing that sounds very dissonant. But, actually you can flat the 7th and play a major chord and that works well in some progressions, apparently. We went through the C progression and, lo and behold, the progression for Freebird just popped out!

For next time I Andy wants me to take the songs I played this week and change them into different keys using the methods we talked about. Something in G, play it in C. Stuff like that.

'Til next time!

Louis