chord toolkit isnt a crutch

I shared a toolkit with you yesterday. A group of chords that go together. It’s not the chords themselves that are special.

It’s their relationship to one another. I gave them to you in the key of C for simplicity, but you could expand on them by learning them in other keys. But if you never moved the key, you’d be in really good company.

I’m reminded of Irving Berlin. To level set, Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101. But in his day, he wrote bangers.

White Christmas. God bless America. Putting on the Ritz.

Cheek to cheek. Whatever. Doesn’t matter.

The point is that Irving Berlin, who’s ostensibly one of the greatest songwriters ever, wasn’t comfortable playing on white keys. So he played everything in F#. He had a special piano made that would lift the hammers up and transpose for him.

And what that means is, he was using a toolkit, kind of like the one I gave you. Even if you’re not producing music that sounds like it came from 100 years ago, we can all take a couple pages from Irving Berlin’s book. For example, he pointed out that it’s the lyrics that make a song a hit, but it’s the music that makes it last.

He also didn’t believe in inspiration. He said he believed in hard work. The dude wrote a song every day.

Every day. Anyhow, take that toolkit. Go make something cool.

If you can’t find it, drop us a note in the comments. Like this post. And if someone who’s ready to join a Beat Kitchen class, share it.