ION INDIE MAGAZINE October 2015, Volume 17 | Page 72

Not that this comes as any great revelation to anyone who has been
in the music business a while, but you really want to retain as much
control of your own career as possible. This would include protecting
your publishing, spending the money to pay dues to organizations
who protect your copyrights, and keeping an attorney on retainer.
As much as we love performing onstage, writing original songs,
singing and playing on the level of our childhood heroes, you must
protect your future and not be naive. The business side of musical
performance is filled with predators. Do what you love, what you
trained for your whole life…but be careful!
***

Downtown Tommy Guitar Lesson of the Month: As I have mentioned before in my
guitar lesson column, it is a good practice to get to know two-note power
chords and "cheater" chords that fit your song's progressions. This enables
you to quickly land on sweet spots where changes are, make something
small sound grand and set your improvisations up nicely. An example of
this being The Isley Brothers’ version of Seals and Croft's "Summer
Breeze".
The chorus of the song runs Fminor to Gminor, and is followed by the familiar
little "dah dah dah DAH dah dum" melody line. To easier access the single note
portions, I utilize two finger, two note chords, in place of F and G minor. Pete
Townshend of The Who used this technique a lot--and a little cleverness can make
a small chord change carefully placed, sound huge.