Augh! It's true! There's nothing new in the world!

[Deke]

I'm writing this almost apropos of nothing. For some reason the 'Case against rock and pop' thread had set me thinking back to the fun days. The first time I realized that you can't go wrong if you stick to the black notes. Teaching myself to play a plastic ukulele (10/6. Cheap?) from a book and learning all kinds of weird and wonderful chords. Mum, wrecking the family's budget for a week to buy me my first guitar, working out how to carry the uke chords over to 6 strings, deliberately trying to write songs using only simple chords, finding out that that chord I was playing was a major 7th, though not standard fingering. Finding out that if you add that note to the top of that chord it makes this great sound, experimenting with putting the bass here instead of there, and what happens if the bass stays here while the chords do that, and then what happens if I move both that chord and this bass line together...

It has just occured to me that it has been years since I last discovered a new chord, or something new to do with the old ones.

Now I am really depressed...

[Richardo Caerleoni]

[sonic1]

If you can't find a new chord, screw with another element. Screw with rhythm, structure, texture....there is so much more to music than the vertical harmony.

Jared

[Dennis Gonzalez]

You have reached The Last Chord. Please turn out the lights as you leave.

[Deke]

If you can't find a new chord, screw with another element. Screw with rhythm, structure, texture....there is so much more to music than the vertical harmony.

Jared

Unfortunately my blinkered attitude towards texture was always 'Add more players'. In the 70s when I added the 5 piece brass section there was general approval, when I added a 2nd keyboard player in the 80s there was an odd eyebrow raised, and when I added a 5 piece string section a decade later... well that's when things started to fall apart. By a stroke of luck Frank Zappa chose this moment to die, and we quickly reformed as a Zappa tribute band. I say quickly, it took 3 years of rehearsal to get that damn show on the road. 7 years with the Zappa band drove any further ideas of experimenting with time and tempo right out of my head.

I guess that still leaves structure...

Must pop in to the library on the way back from the doc's tomorrow!

[Dennis Gonzalez]

Bongos. It's all about the bongos.

[Deke]

How do you know what I was going to the doctor for?

[walto]

Use the same chords (in fact just one of them will do) but play them only very briefly about 4 minutes apart from each other...preferably in a room with a noisy radiator.

They say that pretty young girls will be all over you!

[Gentle Giant]

I need more cowbell!!!

[Gentle Giant]

With all her different tunings, I'm not sure Joni Mitchell ever ran out of chords. But you could always try playing out of tune, or on heavy drugs, if you need a change of perspective.

Then again, maybe you could run the ukelele through a couplf of Revox tape recorders and invent Dekotronics (after Robert Fripp's Frippertronics).

[Richardo Caerleoni]

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[Gentle Giant]

Wow, Richardo, are you my genie or something? Very f-in' funny!

[sonic1]

Remember also that most chords you might be playing are tempered. If you contemplate the universe of the microtones, there are no limitations even in harmony. But your taste in chords may surpass most listeners-not a problem to many on this site. I don't know what kind of music you play Deke, but there really is a lot to do out there if you want new sonic explorations.

Jared

[Gary Sisco]

Oh, there ain't no life nowhere......

[SEJ]

Bongos. It's all about the bongos.

Oh, God, I'm glad I wasn't drinking something when I read this!

[Jazz-in-Aust]

Oh, there ain't no life nowhere......

i disagree. you can't look for life. the life comes from you. it's just how you interpret it.

in regards to the fact that everything has been done, of course it has. this musics beenaround for 100 years, if it hadn't, it wouldn't interest me. Just because its not 100% original doesn't mean it's bad. We just gotta try and mold what's been done into a sound that is purely our own.

That's what i'm trying to do anyway.