❤️ McCartney called it "the greatest song ever written"

plus: how to get better in 2023

RIFFS:

My system for success in 2023

The best part about getting older is knowing yourself.

You have enough data, you can filter out the fluke events and random noise, and you start to truly know yourself. And with any luck, you’ve learned to filter out the opinions of people who don’t matter to you.

This week, it occurred to me that there’s a formula for me to have a good day:

1. Walk to wake.

2. Have a plan.

3. Do one thing.

4. Keep score.

Although the day starts with a walk, success starts the night before.

I identify one solid win in four main categories:

• advance my career and/or business

  • reach out to a talent buyer, booker, or promoter

  • follow up on emails (ie considerately bug someone until they hire me)

  • fix something that’s wonky

  • create something new

• get better at making music

  • arrange a new solo song

  • practice a guitar part that I biffed at the last show

  • learn one new feature of my software tools

• clean up

  • tidy up the kids’ messes

  • organize some tiny area of my life

  • I can’t think straight amidst visual chaos…

  • …and it’s easier to reset my mise en place as I go than it is to clean once it’s truly messy.

• document what I do (so I can turn it into stuff like this newsletter)

  • write a chart

  • shoot a quick video explaining how I solved a problem

  • make an outline of a Riff or Rec

Advance, Better, Clean, Document → ABCD

At the end of the day, I score myself.

One point each for:

1. making a plan,

2. going for a walk,

3. advancing my career/biz,

4. getting better at music,

5. cleaning up,

6. documenting my process,

7. and debriefing at the end.

Scoring a 5/7 (or whatever) is an interesting signal, but really what I’m after is:

• was I able to follow the plan?

• if not, is it clear why?

  • did I start the day off wrong, with inboxes & feeds?

  • or did get too ambitious with my four wins?

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RECS:

It’s a new year, so we’re all working on ourselves.

So much advice is tired, recycled, unoriginal commentary.

(and with AI, this is gonna get a lot worse)

I like this video from Jay D Williams:

“Systems not goals” has quickly moved into the canon of self help, but Jay points out some really helpful subtleties.

Step 1 (in this vid) - Have A Goal

Of course, you still need a goal—doesn’t matter how fast you drive if you don’t have a destination in mind.

Step 2 - Form A Strategy

You’re asking yourself two things:

• what has worked for me in the past?

• what has worked for others in the past?

What were you doing when you had success?

Someone in the past has achieved a similar goal¹—what did they do?

Step 3 - Take the one-time actions first.

If there’s a single step that can move you forward, take it first.

• hire a coach

• join a community

• change your environment

• eliminate something

• buy the gear you need

  • (careful you don’t fool yourself on this one)

Step 4 - Create a system for daily (or weekly) action.

What can you do every single day (or every single week) that will move you towards your goal?

I love checkboxes & streak trackers, and (as you saw above) I’m working on a lightweight daily scorecard so I can at least be honest with myself.

Step 5 - Take action with 10/30/100

10 Days - Test - 100% success

• you want to find out if this is sustainable in your life

• if you can’t get to 10 days:

  • and it was a one-time fluke → try again

  • and it just seems too hard with everything else you have going → make an adjustment and try again

30 Days - Progress - 90% success

• you’re not going to get to the goal, but you can make progress

• and progress is motivational

• if it’s not moving you towards the goal, try something new

• if it is moving you towards your goal, double down

100 Days - Persist - 80% success

• once you have a system *that works*…

• …all you have to do is work the system

• you don’t need 100 or even 90% compliance success

  • 80% is fine here

Track these things in whatever you’re already using—a journal, an app, your calendar, etc.

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CHARTS

Valentine’s Day is six days away, so here’s a chart for the greatest love song ever.

Legend has it that after Tony Asher gave the lyrics to Brian Wilson, it only took him ten minutes to come up with the melody & progression.

• Sibelius, PDF, & musicXML files

• SoundSlice lead sheet

• SoundSlice for that gnarly interlude, arranged for one guitar

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SMARTS

This one is such a doozy.

As per usual, let’s not try to theorysplain the magic away. Instead we’ll focus on pointing out some delightful details.

1

It’s swung and straight.

God Only Knows is basically a modern jazz standard… with a baroque interlude.

Fittingly, everything in the song is swung except that bizarre interlude section:

2

The chorus is four bars… except for when it’s three bars.

The INTRO & OUTRO are both variations on the CHORUS, and complete the expected 4-bar phrase.

But CHORUS 2 & CHORUS 3 are both truncated to set up the next section. This to me is the hallmark of great writing—clever solutions that are so well executed that you don’t notice them (until you try to write them down).

3

It’s in the key of A… er, E… wait, no it’s D… wait, make that A again.

• I wrote the chart in the key of A.

• But the melody in the intro suggests the key of E.

It’s slippery that way—you could write it and/or describe it as “in A” or “in E” or maybe even “uses A Lydian.”

To further complicate things, that same slippery harmony happens again in a whole other key here:

4

The segue from CHORUS 2 to the INTERLUDE is jarring and unexpected:

On the other extreme is this bafflingly smooth key change from CHORUS 3 into VERSE 3.

It doesn’t follow the pattern laid out in the other choruses, which (in this key) would come to rest on the A chord. Instead, it just seamlessly continues onward as if nothing happened!

5

Can we take a minute to appreciate these lyrics?

i may not always love you

but long as there are stars above you

you’ll never need to doubt it

i’ll make you so sure about it

god only knows what i’d be without you

if you should ever leave me

well life would still go on believe me

the world could show nothing to me

so what good would living do me?

god only knows what i’d be without you

Guess I’ll leave you with this GIF of my wedding ring:

the inside of my wedding ring

See you next Wednesday!

Josh

1. Important caveat: choose an example of someone starting from a similar point—copying the workout routines of Olympic athletes isn’t helpful for a beginner.