👗the bridesmaid CRUSHED it
[plus: Closer To Fine]
RIFFS:
Charts are about empathy.
You’re projecting yourself into someone else’s mind. You’re asking yourself: what information do they need in order to play this song? How can I make this obvious for them?
(And often, the person you’re trying to empathize with is Future You.)
Charts are nonfiction writing.
It’s an art form. Can you hold the attention of experts without overwhelming the newbies?
the bible for this style of writing is William Zinnser’s On Writing Well
and the canonical example is Tim Brookes’ Guitar: An American Life
But these days, some of the best practitioners are YouTubers.
RECS:
Case in point: this F1 explainer by Cleo Abrams.
Whether you’re a longtime Formula 1 fan—or couldn’t possibly care less about car racing—Cleo pulls off a magic trick with this video essay.
I especially love her description of the sport: “epic group science projects.”
CHARTS:
Last weekend I played a wedding in Jekyll Island, Georgia.
One of the bridesmaids asked to sing The Indigo Girls’ Closer To Fine.
Normally when a layman sits in, they get a rude awakening: they quickly realize they don’t know the timing, the lyrics, or the form as well as they thought they did.
But not her: she knew EVERY detail of this song:
every lyric
the harmony
the countermelody
every nuance of vocal phrasing
In a delightful role reversal, it was me who was holding on for dear life. 🤣
I’ve got some homework to do, so I wrote us a chart:
Dropbox folder with PDF, Sibelius, musicXML, & Ableton files
SMARTS:
1/ quick hits & quirky bits
TEMPO
not recorded to a click
varies between 96-99 BPM
KEY
played as if its in G
but with a capo on the 2nd fret
which means it’s in concert A
FORM
They make us wait for the first chorus:
INTRO → VERSE 1 → PC 1
but then instead of going to the chorus…
RE INTRO → VERSE 2 → PC 2 → CHORUS 1
Differing PRE CHORUS lengths:
PC 1 is 4 bars, dropping us back into the RE INTRO
PC 2 is 5 bars, setting up the CHORUS
PC 3 is 7 bars—those two extra bars give us space for the lyric “I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free”
Every song has its own internal logic.
This song’s is dictated by the lyrics & melody.
(You can also see this in CHORUS 3, which repeats that first two-bar phrase four times instead of the usual two)
2/ easy-to-read is better than 100% accurate
Check out these chords in the PRE CHORUS:
These are deliberately wrong.
The technically correct names are something like:
But no one wants to see this on a chart:
3/ why no slash chords? → who is this chart for?
If this chart was just for Future Me, maybe I’d remind myself of these voicings.
I’d at least include the bass note (D/A, C/G), or even a chord diagram.
But this chart is also for anyone who plays with me.
And the note to the right of the slash tells the bassist1 what to play. If we don’t want them to play that slash note, then don’t write it.
4/ speaking of which…
I’ll want to save a transposed copy for future bandmates.
I’m playing it as if it’s in G, but my capo makes it sound in A:
In a pinch, a pro player can transpose on the fly.
But it’s much more courteous to give them concert keys. (And it’s trivially easy to create one.)
In Sibelius:
select all
Note Input > Transpose
Save As > append “CONCERT” or “in A” to the file name
I saved this version to that same Dropbox folder.
That’s all I got this week.
I’m on vacation next Wednesday.
See you the following week,
Josh
and/or the keyboard player’s left hand