![dammit chords dammit chords](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qrjopCOM-qk/maxresdefault.jpg)
though, there are some parts i changed a bit. if you have any problems with the tab, just listen to the song first. so i guess i could dedicate this tab to the drunk chick at the bar with the word "juicy" on her butt. finally i got tired of her yelling and this version of the song just came out. while i was playing my set, this woman in the front row kept on yelling at me to play a blink 182 song. A nice smooth run of the same pitch underpinning the unexpected chords made the upper lines also run more slickly.Chords and Lyrics Dammit Acoustic - Blink 182 one night, i went to my local open mic - night bar to play just for fun.
![dammit chords dammit chords](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YRvmr08Wi6I/maxresdefault.jpg)
Interestingly, it was the bass line that made the most difference. But when I radically simplified the lines, it suddenly became possible to maintain the tempo. My first instinct was to simplify the rhythm, which helped a bit but not as much as I'd hoped. But the passage in question was more harmonically surprising than what had gone before, and the extra cognitive load just kept slowing things up. It wasn't the tempo per se - I had been happily singing along at that tempo for a good 32 bars by then. I say this because of an experience I had recently at the polishing phase of an arrangement, where I was singing through all the lines to check for sense and singability, and at one particular passage, I kept losing speed. It's not just a vocal thing, however, I think it is also an issue of cognitive speeds, a version of the Stroop effect. Again, choose your metaphor: it is hard to drive fast on a bumpy road, you can run faster in a straight line than if you have to keep hopping sideways. The faster the tempo, the more static the lines need to be. Ah well, while I'm stating the obvious, here's another observation about arranging fast music: It seems rather less exciting now I write it down than when it was sloshing round my head. I have hunch all this is terribly obvious. Again, you'll always need a mixture (both sympathetic and parasympathetic systems are involved even when one dominates), but it makes sense for faster songs, on average, to be more closely voiced than slower songs. The energy of a fast tempo is consistent with the inherent energy of tight voicings, while the care required to place widely-voiced chords is more consistent with gentler speeds. Therefore, if the notes are going to be rushing by quickly, you want to have a closer target to blend with.īut this works expressively with the metaphor of the autonomic nervous system too. The reasoning at that point was entirely pragmatic: wider voicings take more careful balancing, as the singers are in more distant parts of their voices, and have to listen over a wider range. Years before I even started this blog, I was telling students that the faster the tempo of your song, the closer you should keep the voicings.
![dammit chords dammit chords](http://www.gimposity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/PascalDammit.jpg)
Now, what I like about this metaphor is that it carries beyond the bar-by-bar alternation of open and closed voicings. We particularly notice when one or the other is more strongly in control, but both are on duty all the time, regulating a whole host of bodily functions we need to operate effectively in the world as we find it. The sympathetic nervous system offers focus, narrowing of perception, energy the parasympathetic nervous system offers relaxation, breadth of awareness, rest. When it happens suddenly, we get a 'dammit chord', as discovered with Silver Lining recently.Īnd it occurred to me that the balance between the two resonates with the homeostatic patterns of tension and release provided by the autonomic nervous system. Whichever your preferred metaphor, the pattern alternately allows more musical space into the texture, then squeezes it out again. This feels to me like the voicings are being used to propel the music forward, like the pulsing of a jellyfish, or the pumping of bellows.
![dammit chords dammit chords](http://s3.amazonaws.com/halleonard-pagepreviews/HL_DDS_0000000000141646.png)
#Dammit chords manual#
I particularly like the way the Sweet Adelines manual recommends alternating tight and wider voicings. I've written before ( here and, more tangentially, here)about the inherent energy implied in different chord voicings.