The Chetboard

This is a bit of a crazy idea I had a while back, and I think that some of you just might be crazy enough to get involved in it.

The idea is to offer a resource both for students wanting to discover more about learning Chet's style of guitar playing, and for teachers interested in integrating Chet's playing into their educational programs.

The plan: To create a pedagogical songography of Chet's recorded body of work.

First, let me tell you what this is NOT intended to be. It is not intended to be a depository of improperly, or illegally, published transcriptions. Nor is it intended to be a depository of down loadable digital audio files.

It IS intended to be a collection of articles/discussions, one for each tune, written by people who know a great deal about Chet - in a word, you guys - and who can give less experienced players invaluable insight into learning Chet's music.

Articles can certainly contain educational snippets of 2 or 4 bars to illustrate a point - both visual and or audio. They can contain the chord progression of the song being discussed (chord progressions are not copyright protected).

If you are someone who relies on the sale of legal educational products for an income, you are welcome to include a link to these products in your discussion. (For example, if Craig or one of the Johns wanted to write an article about a song they have covered in one of their publications.)

At rate, right now I just loaded a rough copy of the songography and am still figuring out formatting issues - and how to get the sort by either chronology or title function up and running. It also contains lots of errors and omissions but, I will be more inspired to edit it now that it is public.

Also, it just resides on my new FingerStyleGuitar.ca site at the moment as it is just more convenient. If this project actually get off the ground, I'll set up it on its own site. The URL is http://www.ReadMyLicks.com

Randy

Okay, this is better. Now we can sort and search. I'll remove the sidebar shortly so it can spread across the page.

http://fingerstyleguitar.ca/?page_id=776

Randy

Hi Randy,

You might want to change just one piece of information on that page regarding Richard Smith's age. I happen to know that he was born in 1971 and his bio states that he is now "thirty". This year he will have been 40.

Randy,

Following along with Rande's suggested correction, you might also want to fix the spot that says that Chet and Jerry Still consider Richard to be their hero ... it may be true, but of course we can't know that

I love what you've put together ... looks like you are off to a good start. Best of luck with your ambitious project! I think it's a splendid idea.

Bruce

Randy,

I think this is a great way to help all of us and the next generation learn about Chet's music. I'm crazy enough to jump in. I'll choose a tune I know something about and put a few things together. I think some tunes could benefit from several articles, especially the tunes that Chet recorded more than once over his career.

Thanks for inviting all of us to participate at an early stage.

John

I moved the table to its own site because embedding it was just too much of a headache.

I like this new table. I removed the "Original Release" column as I think this info can be part of the "More Info" link - which will contain all releases of a the given song.

NEW LINK http://readmylicks.com/

Randy

One thing I'd like to see someone tackle is the "jazzification of Chet," influenced by Lenny Breau, John Knowles, and Tommy Jones (and probably others).

You can see (hear) the jazzification clearly in two remakes: (1) compare his original recording of Bells of St Mary's with the version done on SuperPickers (somehow I've lost my copy of this version), and (2) compare his recording of Winter Walking with the youtube version that shows "three of him" playing it.

This could actually be a fairly involved subject that might warrant more than one article.

RandeDager wrote:You might want to change just one piece of information on that page regarding Richard Smith's age. I happen to know that he was born in 1971 and his bio states that he is now "thirty". This year he will have been 40.

I am not a publicity agent but, I do my best to help out the guys when the come to Toronto. When Tommy was here in 2009, I attempted to get him onto a popular late night show (equivalent to Letterman in New York, I guess). I had inside connections to the host - someone who worked at the television station and, a quite famous actor who is a Tommy Fan was in town and was scheduled to be a guest on the show agreed to pitch Tommy to the host.

We lost. The host's reasoning? "Too old. Nobody wants to see a 50 year old guitar player."

Now, everybody I promote is "30 years old."

keener wrote:I love what you've put together ... looks like you are off to a good start. Best of luck with your ambitious project! I think it's a splendid idea.

I am thinking you should be a major contributor, Bruce. That will make it "OUR" ambitious project.

John Knowles wrote:I think this is a great way to help all of us and the next generation learn about Chet's music. I'm crazy enough to jump in. I'll choose a tune I know something about and put a few things together. I think some tunes could benefit from several articles, especially the tunes that Chet recorded more than once over his career.

Thanks for inviting all of us to participate at an early stage.

You should send me a database (or CSV file), of all the tunes you have covered in the Quarterly and which issue they appear in.

You should also accept my invitation to become the president of the Chet Atkins Pedagogical Society.

keener wrote:One thing I'd like to see someone tackle is the "jazzification of Chet," influenced by Lenny Breau, John Knowles, and Tommy Jones (and probably others).

You can see (hear) the jazzification clearly in two remakes: (1) compare his original recording of Bells of St Mary's with the version done on SuperPickers (somehow I've lost my copy of this version), and (2) compare his recording of Winter Walking with the youtube version that shows "three of him" playing it.

This could actually be a fairly involved subject that might warrant more than one article.

I love doing this too, Bruce! The chronological songography is critical to this type of study.

I often attempt to deduce what versions (whether by other guitar players, big bands, singers, or whoever) of a particular tune Chet likely listened to, and which of these most influenced his arrangements.

Great idea to put his YouTube videos in chronological order. Your first big contribution to the Project?

Incidentally, the website is starting to shape up some more. Have a look at it now.

http://readmylicks.com/

It is still pretty rudimentary. I added some data for "Ain’tcha Tired Of Makin’ Me Blue" to get a feel for how we might be able to pull off organizing the site.

Once we have a clear vision, I'll pay someone to write us some custom code so it works nice and smooth.

Advice is welcome.

Randy

Hi Randy,

While I will try to contribute a bit from time to time, I don't really have the energy to contribute in any major way. I certainly appreciate the offer, but I think there are many people who could do a much better job than me of documenting and organizing and explaining Chet's music. (For one, I've never even written a tab, and have a hard enough time trying to read them ) I might be able to contribute as a part-time editor, because there may be cases where someone explains Chet's playing of a tune and I see another point that could be made beyond what they've explained ... but I would think that would be rather rare.

All my best
Bruce