working through the surprises...

Today I offered up "Send in the Clowns" by Stephen Sondheim as a prayer. It mostly worked - except for the bridge. I ended up re-writing it because I could not figure out the piano transcription for guitar chords. That is often a problem when piano music includes guitar chords. More often than not, the chords are technically right. They get ALL the right notes. But the guitar has six strings played with four and five fingers while the piano has 88 strings. What usually happens is that a piano player writes the chords as the sheet music is prepared and puts in too many chords. They are all correct, but too many changes for most guitar accompaniment. 

In the Mexican folk song, "De Colores," for example, the New Century Hymnal  (#402 for the church musicians) starts out in A (it should be C), immediately adds a 7th and then goes to an Em for the second measure. That fits, but it isn't standard Mexican folk music form: that would require an E7 (the five chord in a I, IV, V set up.) Then in the middle, the arranger throws in another A7, A9, A7#11, before ever getting to the D (the IV chord.) And NEVER resolves it with the essential E7. All I am saying is that pianists make guitar charts too freaking complicated. That's one problem.

The other is that the passing notes played on a piano require different chording on a guitar - and are usually written wrong. That was my problem figuring out the bridge for "Send in the Clowns." (Ok, I blew the timing a little, too and made it more squared off than necessary. Something I resolved later in the day and will address next week.) No matter how hard I tried, I could not make the suggested guitar chords work - so I rewrote the bridge with some jazz chords, changed the melody (not for the better), and was able to get back to the turn around that let me restart the melody for the closing. It wasn't always pretty but it mostly worked.

This afternoon, Di and I spend 90 minutes working through the odd Sondheim timing - not a problem - and the weird chords in the bridge - a REAL mofo! By the end we got it but not with a lot of wrangling, experimentation, and careful listening. I hope to rework it more tomorrow when the snow storm hits so that I can do it justice. And maybe get Di to join me sometime on key board so I can lay down and upright bass track, too.

Here's the link from this morning's livestreaming reflection. More soon.

https://fb.watch/3mYyq-24yt/