New Music

Many of you who read this blog know that I play the guitar and sing.  It is primarily for my own enjoyment, relaxation and unwinding, but occasionally I will do something for church.  Since it isn't part of my vocation it is often difficult to spend much time learning new songs.

Lately I have had a little more time on my hands so, I've starting trying to learn some new stuff.  After all, most of what I know are songs that were popular back when I was in college when I had time and more inclination.  Things have changed a lot since then.

I remember using a cassette recorder to capture what was being played on the radio.  Most of it I didn't care to learn but, there were a few gems.  When I caught one of them I would play it repeatedly to transcribe it to paper and begin the memorization process.  Then, I would spend hours figuring out the chords so that I could play it.  I tried my best to make it sound like the recording artist but, of course, never quite succeeded.

Today, it is a very different proposition to learn new songs.  If it is something that I know the title, or the artist, or even a phrase, I can look it up on the Internet.  I can listen to YouTube videos and print off lyrics with chords already written on it and then play along from the printed music to the video as it plays.  It has certainly shortened the cycle to add new music to my repertoire. 

Sometimes the chords on the printed sheets don't exactly match the music.  There are mistakes.  After all, someone probably went through an exercise very similar to the way I used to learn music to create those sheets with chords.  The system isn't perfect but, it's much better than what I used to go through.

Here's a link to one I've been working on this morning.....

http://youtu.be/dYsc15s0IDM