Song chords, ahhhhhhh?

A challenge that I seem to keep coming up against more and more these days is fulfilling the requests of people who write to us wanting to know the chords of our songs. This may seem like a simple request and it is actually a huge compliment, so thank you to those who do request the chords to our songs. However I do tend to panic when these requests come through, because as a prolific songwriter and ‘highly trained’ Victorian College of the Arts music graduate that I am, I don’t actually know what I play on guitar.

Some would call this disgraceful, and others would call it brilliance. I like to think the latter myself. I originally learnt guitar so I could accompany myself (some advice given to me from my mum when I was younger – ‘learn an instrument so you never have to rely on anybody else to play your own songs’ she said). Dad showed me a couple of chords, I forgot what they were called nearly immediately and then I just made up what sounded good and what I could play easily. Every now and then a good song came out of my noodling on guitar and I wouldn’t give it another thought.

Until now! I wouldn’t have a clue what most of the chords to our songs are or how to describe the picking patterns. I’m sure there is proper ‘guitar talk’ that can be spoken, but I don’t know it and my gut feeling is that I probably won’t learn it for a long while. I am yet to decide whether deep theory knowledge clouds the creative writing process or enhances it. Either way, I know what’s worked for me so far and you know what they say, don’t mess with something that works. So I will continue to do my best with chord and picking pattern requests that come in and try to communicate these in some kind of a common universal language that can be understood by people from all musical backgrounds.

Adios!
Beth

Some advice from fan on the weekend

Following my blog last week mentioning that I think Byll and Rob are very funny on stage with their banter, I have a story to relay that happened at a gig on the weekend.

This particular show, Byll was totally ‘on’. She was shooting out the lines, she was quick, clever and perfect in her timing. I on the other hand endeavoured to tell a story about ordering coffee and milk in America that in my own mind was ridiculously funny, but in reality when the words flowed out of my mouth didn’t really have much coherence what so ever and didn’t quite get to the level of funny that was in my mind and experience. This difference between Byll and I is something that regularly occurs between us both on stage and off. I create a never ending pool of material for her, and she flogs it for all its worth and turns it into ‘funny’. I tend to do a lot of stupid things that so beautifully lend themselves to having the piss taken out of them. So like any older sibling she grabs it and runs with it, and I love it.

So after the show as I was at the merch stand, someone who came up to buy a CD said something that completely backed up what I mentioned in the last blog. He said ‘my mate is putting together comedy nights and your sister would be perfect at it! She should put a routine together!’. Well I nearly died with laughter. That was right up there with the time when we were out dancing and a girl came up to her on the dance floor and asked if Byll was a professional dancer.

You can imagine the look of both delight and disbelief that soared across her face as I mentioned this to her. So look out people, next year’s Comedy festival might just see Byll leave the band to launch her solo stand up comedy career ;)

Beth