Steal from the best!

So....as I've mentioned, and as Cameron and a few others witnessed firsthand at camp after the very first master class, I got a little obsessed with John Medeski's explanation of how he plays C blues licks over alternating "inside" and "outside" harmonies (Cm and EMaj) on "The Lover."

Well, it's a little less outside than that, but I've been fooling around with playing F blues in my RH over an alternation between Fm and BMaj. F blues scale contains a lot of the notes of B Major 7, so as I said, it doesn't sound quite as dissonant and surprising as C blues over E Major, but it still has a kind of cool "wrong-but-right" flavor to it, especially if I catch a C natural in my RH while playing B in my LH. In any case, this "inside/outside" harmonic structure has become the bedrock of a brand new tune, called "Monster." I'll give you just the first part of the lyrics....

MONSTER by Sandy Asirvatham BMI (c) 2008 all rights reserved..

[verse 1]
I built a monster in my basement
and tried to teach him how to talk
But he never managed more than
an unintelligible sqawk.
I sent him up to the state college
to earn his history degree
But what he learned there was so gruesome
Back to the basement did he flee...He say,

[chorus]
Words, they fail me, they fail me, they fail me, he say,
Words, they fail me, they fail me.....every time.

[verse 2]
I got a parrot for my parlor
And waited long for her to speak.
But she preferred to perch in silence,
Patiently burnish her mystique.
I wondered if she was a goddess
Reincarnated here and now.
Does Polly really want a cracker,
Or does she want me to kow-tow? She say,

[chorus]
Words, they fail me, they fail me, they fail me, she say,
Words, they fail me, they fail me.....every time.

...more to come!

We'll be rehearsing this in my Sandcastle meeting tonight...after I put the guys through some heavy stridulations!