How do I play that again?

There's an assumption that you can remember everything you've ever done and can recall it on cue.

Sadly, I've found, this isn't true.

Case in point, there are songs I've written and recorded that I don't remember how to play. That doesn't mean I can't go back and figure out what I was doing, because I've had to do just that, but it's kind of depressing nonetheless.

I should be able to effortlessly pick up a guitar and just start playing whatever tune I want.

This sad state of affairs has coma about as I've begun to perform more and have this impish desire to play more of my back catalogue. There are certain restraints however. The most notable is most of the songs were not written or recording to be performed troubadour style, or perhaps more accurately, singer-songwriters style with just me and a guitar, although in truth, the delightful Nancy K often accompanies me.

As a result, I've hit upon the idea of recording backing tracks to play and sing along with. Think Karaoke except using my own songs. It also gives me an opportunity to show off my unique, to my mind, lead guitar techniques. For the most part, this has gone well, and with the new songs I've written over the last 4 or 5 years, I simply create a backing track after I record the song in its totality.

It's the older stuff that, on occasion, gives me fits.

Why?

Well... if I'm honest, and really, who wants that, that fact is I did a really poor job in writing down important things like chord progressions, track lists; actually, other than the lyrics, I didn't write anything down, and once the song was complete, I simply moved on to the next song. I blame Steely Dan-certainly in their 70's iteration when they gave up touring for the studio.

Consequently, I'm forced to play along and try to figure out what the hell I was doing all those years ago. It's embarrassing. I should know this stuff!

Sadly, as I've said, I don't.

So let this be a lesson to all your wippersnappers out there: document what you're doing or suffer my fate.

Which reminds me, I should write some of the new stuff down...

©2019 David William Pearce

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