Working up some songs

I'm trying to work up "Puttin' On the Ritz". It was apparently written in 1930. I haven't really decided which verses and bridges to use -- the original words were about going down to Harlem and watching the servants spend their pay. There were a bunch of verses added subsequently, to replace the offensive ones, so there's no "real" version anymore. The Pasadena Roof Orchestra version I have uses some of each, so I may follow their lead.

I need a lot of work on the guitar part, especially the bridge. There's a lot of bass line, going pretty quickly. Of course, possibly a bigger problem is trying to actually pull it out in public -- the whole song seems too peculiar...

I was also surprised to like "Let It Be" so much. It's always seemed a little "much", but it plays so well on guitar, and I like singing it (now that I've transposed to a rational vocal range). Maybe it feels better because of the current political climate...

I worked on "Someone to Watch Over Me" some more last night. I'm liking it more and more as my arrangement begins to sound righter to me. It was, and is, clearly, a chick song, but lots of guys sing it anyway, so I guess it's OK. I suppose if Sting can do it, I can. (He says, "There's a little lamb that's lost in the woods", instead of "I'm a little...". I may steal that idea.) I'm trying to get the guitar part smoother -- getting the hang of that "four inside strings" diminished chord. In this case, it's a Cdim, x3424x. It helps me to think of it as a two-finger E7 shape (the 030200 part) *and* an A7 shape (the 004040 part), played at the same time.

The "real" song has one of those traditional, completely different, intro parts, which I don't have any chords to, and most folks don't know that part anyway. The remaining song is kind of short, so there's definitely an instrumental verse in there for Warren. I think it'll go like "Stardust", with an instrumental verse, then a repeat of the final section(s).

Yet more new songs

I guess I'm essentially not happy with the quality of many of the songs that I end up doing just to fill the time -- even when it was only an hour and a half. I'm probably my strictest critic, but I keep hoping to stumble on songs that really "work", to replace the second-stringers. Recent additions like "Let It Be" and (I like to think) "Crying" fall into the first category -- all too many others fall in the second.

Anyway, I think I've settled on some working chords for "Someone to Watch Over Me", after some work on Sunday. It's a classic, of course, and though I'm not sure my singing will make it a "keeper", it was worth a try. (Not to mention the pure challenge of getting it working.)

And we were at Daleen's mom's house last night, and she had a "Songs of Irving Berlin" book on the piano, from which I plucked "Putting On the Ritz". Surprisingly, the chords work quite well on guitar (unlike, for instance, "End of the Innocence", as discovered on Saturday). Again, I don't know what the vocal will sound like yet, but there's a small chance it'll work out. (It probably falls under the category of "Songs to Stump the Lead Player", but it might be fun.)

I guess I've discovered that some songs that sound OK in the bedroom, fall flat at Tully's -- and vice versa. So I'm stuck with working them up anyway, and trying them out live.

P.S. In reading various sites on Berlin, one claimed he only played didn't read or write music, never learned to play properly, and only played black keys on the piano (!). Using a pitch shifting piano (apparently readily available at the time), he *sounded* in different keys. Another said that he could only play in F#major (which may or may not correspond to "black keys only" -- I guess it's F#major without 4s and 7s). Can that really be true? If so it'd be a amazing collection of pentatonic melodies... I guess I should sit down at the piano and pick out "Ritz", starting on F#.

Tully's 15Feb2003

Tully's was pretty good this week. My cold is getting worse, but I seem to be able to kinda sing through it -- I don't have a sore throat, just a cruddy one. I managed to hold off the coughing until between songs. A quartet of nice Chinese people came in about 9, having an anniversary party. They wanted to hear some Carpenters, which I begged off of, on account of being chromosomally impaired for such songs. I happen, though, to have "Won't Last a Day Without You" in the book, 'cuz this little girl at work likes to come sing it when I bring my guitar in for lunchtime practice. So the anniversary couple's friend came up and sang it while I played -- she wasn't bad. And they tipped us $20 at the end. We had to play all love songs for the rest of the night, which, as it turns out, not so many in the book qualify for, but it was fun.

Yesterday I worked up a song at my mom's insistence -- it's called "Frog Kissin'", and the recording I have is Chet Atkins. The song may or may not have been written by him, or Ray Stevens. Anyway, it's a novelty song about seeing the best in people, worked around the fairy tale notion in the title. Cute, but I can't imagine doing it for anyone except my mom.

Longer hours at Tully's!

February 10, 2003 9:28 AM

Wow. We did 33 songs last night. I was afraid my ragged voice would give out, but I actually felt stronger as the night went on, though I did hear myself missing notes here and there. It was odd -- usually I just sing, and think about the song, and the words, and the phrasing, and the chords -- and the singing itself just takes care of itself. It's not like you have to think about how to talk -- you just do it. But with the sore throat, I have to actually *try* to hit the notes -- it's like my voice is slightly out of control and I have to concentrate on it to keep it in line.

Hopefully, it'll clear up soon -- though today it's worse than last night, so I'm not in the upswing yet...

Anyway, there weren't many songs on the list that we *didn't* do last night -- mostly the "second stringers". I guess I'd better go on a more active hunt for more material.

I'm pretty stoked that we get to play 'til 10. It'll be a challenge to have that much really good material, and to be able to play that long, and sing that long, but it reinvigorates that whole thing.

Warren seems to think that I sounded "fine". Seemed to me like I heard me miss plenty of notes -- sharp here, flat there. "Wicked Game" is certainly the most challenging -- that descending line off the falsetto flip is the worst. I don't know how he does it so smooth -- I always feel like my flip from falsetto "don't" to regular-voice "want" is horrible. I end up landing on "want" so hard it sounds like a yelp. And my falsetto sounds so much different than full-voice that it embarrasses me. Maybe it's not so bad from the outside? In my head, it's gnarly. If I didn't like that song so much, I'd certainly skip it.

I lately heard "I Will" on the Musak somewhere, in a version that sounded a lot like James Taylor. I've never seen it on an album, but a deep check of the 'net showed it on something (bootleg?) called "Rarebits", so he may do it in concert, though how it would get it on a Musak tape remains a mystery. Anyway, it gave me the idea to go ahead and transpose it to a sing-able key (duh! Why don't I think of that *without* the cattle prod?), which I did yesterday. It's originally in F (!), but moved down to D, it's (as far as I can tell with my trashed voice) in a sing-able space, and easy to play, not to mention very James-like in chords.

In fact, once moved to D, the first phrase is identical to the first and last lines of "The Way You Look Tonight", so I'm thinking of melding (medly-ing) the two. It'll, at least, save me having to decide on a "next tune" once per night.

I'll have to see if some other Beatles songs can be beaten into submission by the same treatment. I might look at "Mother Nature's Son", as requested by my brother a couple of weeks ago -- seems like a distinctive (and non transposable) guitar part, though.

Anyway, I played through some of the "Working On 'Em" songs to see if I can move 'em into the "Good Enough" section. "Play Me" (Neil Diamond) seems a likely candidate, and "Four Strong Winds", I guess. Also, we probably ought to dust off some of the ones that we were playing, but that I've come to avoid because I didn't think I did 'em well enough -- "Free Man", "Crazy Little Thing", "Still Crazy", and such like. Even "That Thing You Do" maybe...