Today it seems that what we used to call common sense now should be
called uncommon sense because it definitely is not common that someone
has it.
I had some goof ball ask me the other day, “why do I need to know
scales?” That is equivalent to a house painter not knowing the names of
the types and colors of paint that he uses to paint houses for his
finicky customers. Sure, he might do a great job of painting the house
from his intuition and experience, but what happens when he paints the
house a color contrary to the instructions to paint the exterior in
EggShell with non fungal latex exterior and the inside with Ivory no
lead semi gloss interior latex. If he doesn’t even know what they are
he will get some lawsuits and lots of trouble. Many of you guys out
there are painting over chord progressions in just this ignorant way
and you obviously don’t even know it.
Another genius asked me “why do I need to know licks?” Well you don’t
but if you want the listener to relate at all to your style,
clichés are the best tools to use. This is similar to phrases in
speech like ”you know what I mean” that, although annoying, give the
speaker a little shortcut by finding out if the person is following or
not. It may be so common now that it has lost all of it’s original
purpose but licks will never let you down. It is the same reason that
everyone does not paint their house the same color but you do find many
redundant colors simply because they are popular and work so well.
Paint your house to match your car and watch letters from the
neighborhood association pour in.