I Can Explain

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm a fan of the deadline. In fact, one of the most fun things about working in advertising, for the 10-odd years I did so (and they were odd, ba-dum-bum-KSHH!) was often getting just a day or two to make something cool. When you're writing for youself, you can hang loose for six months at a time, waiting for the muse to pop in. But if you've only got 36 hours to write two minutes of pet food music, suddenly you're like that last track on the first Eddie Murphy record: "What's this? A hundred dollars? Step aside."

So I've cranked out my share of work on demand. Before I wrote music on a deadline, I had magazine deadlines, publishing deadlines, Truefire deadlines. Granted, some of the earliest advice I ever got about deadlines, from my journalist friend Michael Forman, was somewhat contrarian: "Oh yes. Your editor's job is to set the deadline. Yours, as the writer, is to break it." And yet, for the most part, I met those deadlines, with bells on, because that was the gig.

For my own projects, therefore – viz., anything I do under the Fretboard flag – I create what deadlines I can to get the work done. And for the most part, it works: this Letter comes out, nearly every week, the videos go up every other week (and sometimes more frequently). And to a large extent, that happens because I'm trying to set a precedent, to myself as much as to anyone else. And having done so, I now do what I can to show up with the goods.

So when I announced the membership, it was nearly ready to ship, and the idea was: if I say it's coming, I'll finish and deliver it. Deadline, accountability – check, check. And yet the whole time I was putting the finishing touches on what I'd designed and shot, I kept thinking, "this isn't right yet." The monthly format didn't feel conducive to the number of moving parts involved, so the material didn't feel as helpful, useful or good as I thought it could. I found myself either trying to explain too many different things at once, or leaving out too many details. And most importantly, it didn't feel fun. It wasn't simple and clear. I couldn't see myself saying, "here's this thing, it's good, it makes sense; if you do it, you'll find yourself playing cool new things." So I hit the pause button to reorganize, and hope to provide more  details over the next couple of weeks on how that's going.

Meanwhile, I have a new lesson up called Three Keys to Playing Swing and Jump Blues. These ideas are excerpted from my course of the same name, and you can check out the lesson on Youtube:

Three Keys To Playing Swing And Jump Blues

As usual, as a subscriber, you can download the tab directly without re-entering your email address:

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More soon,

David

P.S. I'm looking for volunteers to beta-test a live workshop/webinar format via Zoom. If you're interested in taking part in a free one-hour trial workshop this afternoon, Thursday August 22 at 2:30 U.S. Central time, email me and let me know. I'll send back an invitation link to the first twelve people who reply, and we'll hack through the tech together to see if it works. Assuming it does, I'll use the remaining time to preview some new lesson material and take a few questions!