Didn't have a gig last week, for the first time since the summer. It gave me the opportunity to take a bit of a break and write a new song, though it will need some rehearsal before I play it live!
My new year's resolution for 2012 was to learn a new song every week. Reason for this is I'm really looking to increase the range of covers I can play, cater to all audiences, use the skills I've gained over the last couple of years to complement the songs I choose to play, and hopefully learn some new skills as well. So launching straight into open nights in the new year, I began...
I actually learned 2 in the first week. Patti Smith: Because The Night is a throwback to the Perception days, and I always liked the song so I decided to learn it. For some reason with this one I've found the lyrics really hard to get, but in front of the right audience it goes down well. I don't think it was a mistake to play it at the Maverick!
The other was Roxy Music: Do The Strand. This is one of the ones I learned when I was learning songs for the Roxy Music tribute act, Roxy Magic. Interestingly, I've tried to learn Oh Yeah before now, on several occasions... but as much as I like the song on the record, it's not all that interesting to play. Do The Strand, on the other hand, was a welcome challenge - there's a lot going on, and I had to work out what I was going to do with 6 strings and still be faithful to the song. I think I do alright! The lyrics are a little tough to remember but I've had a good run of playing this live so far so I reckon it's a keeper.
I was not in a good mood when I decided to learn Marilyn Manson: Coma Black. For that reason I haven't played it all that much since the week I learned it. As will all Marilyn Manson songs, it's murder on the throat! But as I've been listening to him for 12 years now, and that song for most of those years, I basically knew it already, and it was just a case of reminding myself of the chord sequences and a couple of the lyrics. Whether I'll ever play it live is anyone's guess.
I've been wanting to learn some Within Temptation since seeing them live, and I picked my favourite song off their most recent album: Sinead. It's got quite a bombastic disco-stomp chorus that can't really be done on an acoustic guitar, but the chords are not actually that hard. Not much of Within Temptation is to be honest; they're great musicians but the structure of the songs themselves is usually quite straightforward.
I decided to be lazy for the last week in January and learned another Within Temptation song: Shot In The Dark. This was even easier than Sinead to be honest, because the chords were even more straightforward. I've enjoyed playing it but I don't know where I'm going to be playing either of these songs live to be perfectly honest; Within Temptation are not exactly a commonly known band amongst the acoustic fraternity so I'll have to pick my spots carefully here.
So - another few songs added to my repertoire! Actually in the song that I've most recently written you can hear the Within Temptation influence. So the effect it's having on my songwriting is tangible so far.
Time will tell where I go with it...
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