I closed my last post saying I would share an example of how this thinking about soulfulness in music has manifested itself in my own music. Here’s an example.

For the past few weeks, I’ve had this little acoustic guitar shuffle laying around. I liked the chords a lot! I thought to myself, “If I like the chords, I must like the song,” because I tend to put a lot of importance into harmony. Somehow I failed to notice that even if those chords were pretty neat, the way in which they were delivered to the ear had about as much rhythmic oomph as a Ringo song. I was originally going to post it here and then thought better of it. If you really want to know the degree of rhythmic impotency of which I speak, simply close your eyes and imagine a circle of hand-clasped evangelicals singing, “Lord I lift your name on hiiiiigh…”

So! I took those same chords and reworked them, with a healthy dose of SOUL. Enjoy:

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