I hope some of you went to have a listen to and a look at "Georgia on my Mind" last week.

Last weeks column: http://www.guitarsite.com/newsletters/991025/5.shtml?nl64

It's a good example of dropped-D tuning chord positions and voicings. The tuning lends itself to the creation of interesting bass lines, which are essential if you're thinking of using the guitar as accompaniment to your voice. Simply strumming chords can be pretty boring after a few songs. If you can turn the bass line into the pulse and play chords and chord pieces above it, you can really start to get the vibe, the feel, of the song.

"Georgia" is a result of listening to the Ray Charles version and first nailing the essence of the bass line, then finding nearby bits of chord to add on to it, paying special attention to the augmented and diminished sounds in the original, often played by the violins or sung by the choir. Also, I kept my version in the 'folk' camp rather than the 'jazz' camp, just through choice. Apart from a couple excursions into jazz territory, it's pretty straight forward.

You may be thinking that this dropped-D tuning is great for the key of D, but what about the other keys. What then?

This week I've put up a new piece of music -- Blues in A I've called it -- to give you an example in A. It's just a little improvisation which I then TABbed out. You'll see that the sixth string comes into play occasionally, and that you have to compensate accordingly, but it doesn't really affect much else. You can almost forget you're in a different tuning.

Once again, I'll mention that the 'trick' to keeping track of all things musical -- chords, melody, harmony -- on the fretboard of a guitar, is revealed in my book PlaneTalk. TAB is fine to probe the detail of a particular piece, but useless when it comes to understanding how music fits together and where to look for it. There are a million ways through the chords of 'Georgia' or 'Blues in A' or any other tune. There is a simple trick to 'seeing' them all there. PlaneTalk explains it in detail.

For the rest of this, go to Blues in A. http://www.onthenet.com.au/~kirkclan/BinA.htm

Until next week,

Kirk Lorange
http://www.lorange.kirk.net

Hear Kirk play "Georgia"
http://www.audiogalaxy.com/bands/kirk/kk.html