Uke at Do's

We hadn't played together for awhile, so Do and I decided to to try tonight. Billy C couldn't make, seeing's how how his beaked was stuffed up due to a recent bizarre snorkeling accident.

So I go to Do's. We decided to play all of these songs with lots of chords, starting with "If I Only Had a Brain" The version she has is in a key unfriendly to both of our voices. I have a version at school in a friendlier key, but that did us no good. So we look on the internet to see if we can find that version, or a simialr one. Of course, since this is a mega-chord song, we felt it would be best if the actual chord fingerings would be there with the song.

We found one and played awhile, but Do thought some of the chord progressions from her version would work better if they could be transposed. But the chords are like D6 with an subliminal 9th and C12 with an dislocated 2nd and stuff like that. You know, the kind that take tentacles instead of fingers to make.

I find that I get frustrated trying to figure stuff like that out as a committee. I tend to want to go off and figure it out myself or just play the damn thing. I think it's a product of me not being an experienced musician and not having as much patience as I think I have. Even so, I Usually like what comes out of that process. Do has more experience with that than I do. Do, on the other hand, has a lot more experience than me working with other musicians and hammering out an arrangement. Anyway, I found myself spiraling into terminal crank mode. I think she sensed my frustration, so we moved on to "Paper Moon."

So I guess she wins the diplomacy award. I win the cranky award.

This was also a little frustrating because of one tricky chord change, but, after having played this song half-assedly for about a year, I had an epiphany as to how that chord change could be more easily accomplished. I find that, where possible, if I just bar the offensive chord, that usually leads to a solution of some sort. This solution started out with barring and ended with sliding my fingers from the barred chord to the unbarred chord. Also, I have always had trouble with the bridge on this song, but we worked that out too. Didn't exactly nail the song, but we played through it enough that we can both practice it and eventually get it down.

We also tried "I'll See You in My Dreams." Our fingers were twisting all over that fretboard.

We fizzled into "Sway" and tried working into "Perhaps. Perhaps, Perhaps," but we didn't know that song well enough. "Sway" is perfect for Do's voice and, when I first heard her sing it, I thought it would be cool to work "Perhaps into it it somehow as either a dialog between two dancers or even an inner dialog for a woman.

A lot of baby steps for me tonight. So I got a lot to practice this week.