✅ Do the basics, get 90% of the results.

It's easier than you think.

RIFFS:

Remember that no-knead bread we were all baking in 2020?

It’s fun to make something you’d normally buy.

But was it any good?

Eh… it was fine. The pride & novelty of creating it yourself covered up any shortcomings.

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Last month I learned something mindblowing:

If you invest just a few additional minutes, you can make bread that's orders of magnitude more delicious.

(The recipe I followed is from this book.)

Nothing about baking this bread is difficult.

Ok, maybe it’s slightly less beginner-friendly. You have to buy a couple of inexpensive specialty tools. You have to measure the water temperature. And you spend five additional minutes shaping the loaves.

But the results are waaaaaay better.

(And guess what: getting your hands in the dough is fun.)

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Hacks: 90% of the work for 50% of the reward.

We confuse comfort with happiness.

We circle the parking lot, looking for a better space. We wait for the elevator when the stairs to the second floor are right there. We bake the mediocre bread even though exceptional bread only takes five minutes more.

Guitar is exactly the same.

We create elaborate workarounds that end up costing more effort than they save. We flinch from the work, imagining it to be more difficult than it is.

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Do the basics, get 90% of the results.

It’s not your fault.

Just like I didn’t know how easy it was to bake better bread, how would you know what “the basics” are for playing music? When we hear “the basics,” we assume it’s playing scales or reading music. It’s not.

The “basics” of playing music:

• play in tune

• play in time

• play with dynamics

• play with confidence (don’t mumble; enunciate)

Notice what’s not on this list: speed, scales, modes, tapping, sweep picking, odd time signatures, 3NPS, the CAGED system, or any of the other usual suspects that make for good YouTube videos.

Would those things help your playing? Yeah, maybe.

But not if you don’t attend to the basics. Mindlessly noodling on scale shapes, playing out of time, bending out of tune, all at one monotonous volume… that ain’t it.

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RECS:

Easier said than done.

But how do you practice those basics?

Luckily for us, there’s a straightforward answer: record yourself.

Specifically:

• find a song you like

• pull it into your DAW

• ID a short section that’s ~within your current abilities

• record yourself playing along

• listen back

• make adjustments

• repeat.

That’s it. It’s fun, it’s effective, and—once you figure out the process in your DAW of choice—it’s easy.

Which DAW should you use?

There are two I recommend:

• Logic Pro

• Ableton Live

Logic Pro is Mac-only. Costs $199.

(I bought it ten years ago. Not only has the price stayed the same, they’ve continued to release kickass updates for no additional charge.)

Ableton Live is for Mac or PC. Costs between $0-$749.

If you’ve ever bought an audio interface or MIDI controller, there’s a decent chance that the free version (Ableton Live Lite) came with the bundled software. That free version is plenty capable for practicing guitar. Failing that, the $99 Ableton Live Intro rocks too.

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CHARTS:

I transcribed Aerosmith’s What It Takes.

• Sibelius, musicXML, & PDF here

• SoundSlice of the intro here

• SoundSlice of the solo here

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SMARTS:

1

The Feel

What It Takes is at 72 bpm, and the sixteenths are swung:

In other words, the sixteenth notes have that lopey feel to them.

How did I know it wasn’t swung eighths at 144 bpm?

Easy: I listened to the snare drum—it’s on the backbeat (2 & 4).

2

Recontextualized Arpeggios

Check out this intro.

Both electric guitars are playing this repetitive arpeggio, which is basically a G chord…

…but the chords played by the bass & keys are changing underneath it.

I wrote them as simple G, D, Em, & C (because that’s what the piano plays).

But if you wanted to nerd out on it, you could argue that those chords are G, Dsus4, Em7, & Cadd9.

3

Production choices

The guitar parts evolve over the verses:

• Verse 1 guitars are tacet (they don’t play) until measure 14

• Verse 2 has electric guitar chanks in the left channel…

• and acoustic guitar adding texture (almost like a shaker) on the right

Also, how cool is this call & response between the vocals & accordion!?

How many other songs do you know with accordion?

4

Form

I love when songs do this:

Rather than box themselves into one static form, the writers followed where the lyrical/narrative/melodic content lead.

So Verse 1 has three stanzas:

1. four bars

2. five bars

3. three bars

Of course, you’d never notice this until you go to write it down—when you’re listening to it, it just sounds like great music.

They do this again for the guitar solo.

What should we solo over? The verse? The chorus? Oh wait, we’ll just come up with a completely different part… oh and it’ll be a totally unusual seven bars long.

5

That key change!

What It Takes has my all-time favorite key change.

They’re in the key of G…

…and they modulate… down a whole step?

But they come in on the IV chord

…so it still feels like we’re going up!

*swoon*

Reminds me of that MC Escher piece:

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That’s all I got this week.

See you next Wednesday,

Josh

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