Plonking

Plonking

Learning the song

This song should, as soon as possible, be rewritten to fit with some of your own plonk chords. I’ve done it with just 3 chords (chords X,Y and Z on the score). And the score is just a rough guide to the shape of the melody… take it where you like. But the aim is to settle on something good, rather than to continue being random.
You can download the mp3s and put them on your ipods. You can burn them to CD. You can plug a laptop in to some speakers to practice along with. Record or video the class and upload this to your blog(s).

About Plonking

Many singwriters I know are plonkers… they randomly plonk their fingers on their instruments until they find a sound they like and then put a few of those plonk chords together to weave a melody over. Or sometimes, they have a melody already and plonk while they sing until it sounds like what they had in mind. That’s right… no music theory involved at all! You’d be astounded how many musicians are like this. And even though I love music theory, I also like switching off my brain and plonking, particularly on an instrument I don’t know very well. It’s a great way to come up with new things, or to rediscover old things from a new angle. One it’s done, you can analyze it and you’ll go, “oh, that’s what it is!” Of course, plonked chords don’t have to sound weird: You can keep plonking til some pretty ones happen. Hours of fun.

P.S. I’d been using the word “plonking” in this context for a long time, but only really made it public at Summersong, a songwriting workshop I was recently co-running. People there loved the concept (and the people who were already plonkers were happy to find it was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of).