Chords for Talking Banjo Backup with Alan Munde!

[D] _ _ [B] _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
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_ _ Alan, you touched on your method of backup when you lead the guitar player, playing like
you're in a room full of guitar players and they don't know the song.
And I remember in South Plains College there being in that ensemble room and your office
attached to it and you'd be working on something or a song you wrote or this or that and you'd
say, Ben, grab this guitar.
The school had an old Martin that the school owned.
And you'd say, grab the guitar and play along with me.
And I'd say, what song is it?
You know, I'm nervous.
And you'd say, oh, it's this song.
And I'd say, well, I don't know it.
And you'd say, oh, you'll learn it.
And I don't know if I ever missed a chord.
And I was a horrible guitar player.
But you were doing exactly that.
I could just absolutely hear it.
And I know when I give my private one-on-one lessons, that's something I try to work with
people is working that seventh tone in when you're going to the four chord.
Things like that.
And so what I'd like to do, this is a little dangerous, and I'm not scared of messing up,
but I'd like for you to just play it a little back up, or it could be considered a lead,
whatever.
And you're not telling me what the song is or what the chord progression is, but I'd
like to just _ show the folks out there exactly what you mean by leading [A] tones, by leading maneuvers.
All righty. _
Do you want to play it first or say what they're going to be? _ _
No, we'll just play it.
All right. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ [E] _ _ [A] _ _ _ [F] _ [E] _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [D] _ [F#m] _ [Bm] _ [A] _ _
[F] _ [E] _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ [E] _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ [F#m] _ _ [A] _ _ [B] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _ [A] _
_ [E] _ _ [A] _ [E] _ [A] _ _ _
I missed one.
It was my fault.
It wasn't yours.
That's outstanding.
I'm sure that everyone out there can hear exactly what I'm hearing.
And that's just that language that's being spoken through those notes.
It's so important.
You know, sometimes I tell students when I'm teaching them one-on-one through Skype, even,
I say, you know, a lot of times your audience [F#] is, the majority of them are musically ignorant.
And so you can go up there and throw a lot of notes at them, but if you play _ very tastefully
and leading them along, I've heard them walk out and say, man, I don't know why that guy
was good, but he was good.
Right, right.
You know, and they don't even know why.
They just, they're communicated to, even though they don't know what a seventh tone is, they
don't know what key you're in.
Right, right.
[A] Well, as I'm sitting here thinking about it, it's, you're sort of playing descriptively.
You're describing what you're playing through these devices.
You know?
Yeah, absolutely.
You can kind of compare it to, you know, creative writing versus technical writing.
We have a lot of technical writers out there, but what's interesting to read, what sucks
you in is when you get creative and very descriptively, as you said.
Right, right.
_ And really what it is, and I always encourage people to make up their own words for these
things, but I don't know what you call [G#] this.
[A] _ If that's a run or a walk.
Yeah, a walk up.
Right, a walk up.
Well, it tells you without knowing anything that you're going.
[F#m] _ [A] _ Yeah.
You know, that's, or if [B] you go.
[D] _ So [E] _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ you use a lot of those and they go a lot of, you know, _ _ _ _ [F] _ [D] _
you know, you can.
So you're coming from the other end.
Yeah.
And I always tell people or try to do this idea that, you know, a lot of those things
are just geographic.
You know, you can describe, well, this is the tonic.
There's the major seventh.
That's [E] the flatted seventh.
And then [D] you go to the [A] end of that.
But really what you're doing is here's the chord you're on. _
[D] _ _ [A] _ [G#] _ [F#] _ You just take that note down to the [G#] note you want it to be.
So a lot of times you can do things like that, that, and I call it sort of playing the geography.
And I've seen, [Am] you know, [G#] _ [Dm] _ [A] they just play the same chord.
Yeah.
Move it up.
And I always like to say playing music is kind of like the stock market because you
don't win or lose until you sell.
And in music, you don't win or lose until you stop.
So you can take something and just go [C#] chromatically.
[D] Until you get there.
Until you get there.
As long as you get there at the right time.
If you don't, you lose.
Yeah.
Or if you're really good, you make it look like you're doing it on purpose.
[A] Exactly.
You can do that.
I [F#m] know that the girls and I, [A] and you know in Rusty Hedleston, we had [D#] a piano teacher
and he would say that.
He'd say, technically, you're only a half step away from the right note.
Right.
Any time.
So if you act like you meant to land there, just [E] so that, [Fm] there you go.
It's called resolving.
Right.
Yeah.
It's all, it's, uh, that's really true.
And then the other thing, which is real simple, is just the [A] flatted seventh.
You know.
Right.
_ _ [D] _ Perfect leading tone.
And I'll prove that to people when I teach them.
I say, look, I don't know how much you know about music.
And I know that they know what a G, C, and a D chord is.
But [A] I'll play a chord and I'll say, now listen, _ what chord would come next?
[D] And without them knowing anything about what I'm doing, they can sing to me what comes next.
I said, sing a note.
And they'll always sing that C chord.
It's just, and that's just, [E] to me, that's what a musician, you know, is all about.
It's pairing up these licks and these fancy things that we can do, but pairing it up with
being descriptive, which is really not a better word for that.
Well, you know what? _
And people have talked about this, about music forever.
It's a language.
Right.
And you get so comfortable with it, you can sort of do it.
_ And people never think about their language.
When you talk, _ it's something you've practiced all your life.
You don't have to think about it.
You have a thought, and then it comes out in language.
And it's the same way in music, is you have a musical thought and your fingers act as
your mouth and your tongue, and it makes the noises out here.
And that's kind of part of the issue, is getting these fingers trained to do that.
And it just takes time.
A lot of practice.
Great stuff.
A lot of practice.
A lot of practice.
_ Good stuff. _ _ _ _
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