Little Lily Ann

Kirk Lorange · #1 October 29th, 2008

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I was playing through this the other day, tightening the arrangement up and trying to come up with a title for it. Little Georgia was in the room 'dancing' to it and I thought "look no further" ... I name it after her middle names, Lily Ann.

This is definitely on the challenging side. The left hand is easy, not much going on there; not so the picking hand. I've always found it very difficult to keep the thumb playing a regular two string pattern regardless of what the top line is doing. I guess I just haven't done it enough. But muscle memory is a wonderful thing and all it takes is a good dose of conscious, attentive practice -- at slow speed -- to get that all-important flow going.

It's in the key of G and there's nothing very fancy about the chord progression. It's all I-IV-V chords with a vi thrown in. Those are the strongest of the seven related chords. So, Gs, Cs, D7s and Em. You'll see that a couple of the Cs are Maj7 ... that doesn't make them 'unrelated'. A Cmaj7 is just an extended IV chord. Same with the Em9, it's just an extended vi chord. "Em add 9" might be a better way of naming that chord, or "Em sus 2" perhaps. I was never good at remembering the finer points of naming chords.

The melody line is the tricky bit. You'll no doubt find as I did that there are a lot of counter-intuitive moves going on and that you really do need to take it nice and slowly as you run through it. You'll also find that once you do have it down, it's easier to play fast that slow. The version here is actually slower than I like but I figured it would be less daunting at this medium tempo. The 'hook' to the whole thing, the ear-catcher, is that recurring flat three to three move in the melody, the very first two notes. That momentary minor third in a major key definitely perks the ears up. That coupled with the momentary 6 in the bass line makes you listen just a little harder than usual to get your aural bearings, to let the discord become acceptable. Normally, bass lines in this kind of picking moves between the 1 and 5. Little Lily Ann follows that rule except for that one 6 that keeps appearing in conjunction with the flat 3. (Another way of looking at it is that those notes combine at that moment to form a partial diminished 7th chord. The 1 is the bass note, the 6 is a double-flat 7, the flat 3 is there ... all that's missing is the flat 5.)

When it gets to the Em9, the picking settles into a new pattern. Here the bass notes keeping jumping between chord tones: 1, 9 and 5 for the Em; 1,3 and 5 for the Cmaj7; 3, 5 and 1 for the G; 3 and 1 for the D7. The treble notes are constant throughout, creating a hypnotic effect.

It ends with a repeating melody line that keeps asserting itself over the different chords ...

I hope you enjoy it. This one really is addictive to play once to get it and open to all kinds of variations and tweaks. I keep coming up with new sections. I think this may became a full blown tune.

The paid download version has the front view movie, overhead shot movie, a half-speed overhead movie. All the movies are high resolution Window Media format and have the animated fretboard. You also get the GuitarPro file, the Mp3, tab and notation, full and half speed midi files and the commentary ... all neatly formatted as PDF file. Well worth the few bucks.