Cherry-picking

Tonight I want to kick back and read my new book, but I better write this blog post first, lest I fall asleep while reading and break my promise.

My new book is The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece by Eric Nisenson. I'm reading it to keep me motivated to learn So What in its entirety. Practicing a song takes mind-numbing repetition, and I succumb to shiny new object syndrome far too easily. I hear a catchy chord and I want to learn it. Before music was passive, ambient. It provided a soundscape, nothing more. Now it's full of possibilities. I want to learn a chord from this song and from that.

When Frank Black wrote music for The Pixies, he excluded "boring" parts of a song's structure like the bridge to the chorus and predictable time signatures. He wanted just the good stuff. That's how I want to learn: cherry pick great-sounding chords from various songs and mash them together into a medley. But I'll resist.

Time for some reading.