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