Saturday, December 1, 2018

"I Get Around"

I haven't been very active on this blog recently, but I have been learning parts.  Earlier this week, I learned the rhythm guitar for "I Get Around," and then - in order to have enough to make it worth recording so I could write a new post here - I also learned almost all of the lead guitar (I'm missing just the solo) and the organ phrases.


The rhythm guitar is panned slightly left, and the lead guitar is panned slightly right.  Along with the organ phrases that are actually in the song, I also played some of the lead vocal phrases on organ, just to make my recording a little more interesting.

Until learning the chords, I'd never realized that there's a key change in the song.  At the end of the guitar solo, it raises a half step from G major to Ab major (although the specific chords there are E major to F major).  Musically, this helps give the impression of "get[ting] around."  Similarly, there are some accidentals that portray the wanderings.  The first half of the song is in G major, but the chord progression contains an E major (with a G# accidental) and an F major (with an F natural accidental).

In an opposite sort of musical picture, the guitar part is simple (only four pitches) and repetitive to represent the mundane sameness of "I'm gettin' bored drivin' up and down the same old strip."