Long before an old friend from Scotland sent me his chords, I was doing the song in Em, which is one of the chord progressions you can find on the internet. It was a bit of a stretch for my vocal range, though. As I've stated many times, I only play what the voices in my head tell me to play. I'm an ear player, but I can read guitar tabs if I need to. Never learned the other stuff very well, and I freely admit to that flaw in my character. I guess my only saving grace is my vocals have always been fairly good.

My biggest fear at my age is my voice will soon give out, and I have no way of preventing this from happening. My lungs are shot to Hell, so I couldn't be a power singer even if I wanted to be. It only took two weeks of heavy asbestos exposure while in the U.S. Navy to do the dirty deed on my lungs. My fondest hope is that my cardiologist is right and that my high (210) cholesterol will kill me. I would rather drop dead of a massive heart attack than slowly suffocate to death over the next 5 years. (Being shot in the back of the head by a jealous husband while in the saddle at age 108 just ain't gonna happen!)

From my perspective, the internet is a great tool for learning new songs. Places such as You Tube allow you to hear the original versions, and put the song into your head. Most of the time, those of us that play by ear never have to look up the chords - we just play what we heard, sometimes in a different key to suit our vocal range, but we tend to do pretty darned good most of the time. Some songs, however, songs with complex chord progressions, might require looking up the tabs - just to be on the safe side. As Diki said, those chords and tabs are not always correct, but most of the time I've found them to be fairly close. Hey, some person like you and I was kind enough to put down on paper what he heard in his head, then post it so we can all benefit, and for that these individuals should be applauded.

Midi files with embedded lyrics are also a good online source for learning new songs. I rarely use a midi file for anything, and never use an MP3 for anything other than breaks or some special line dance songs the country gals request. Those ladies want the original, and most of the time it would be very difficult to replicate with a style file unless you wanted to spend many, many hours using the keyboard's onboard style creator program, or a PC based program. Creating a high quality style takes a lot of time and effort. And, like Don Mason always says, I'm gettin a little lazier as I get older. So once or twice a month, when someone ask for the Cupid Shuffle, I'll fire up an MP3 from the laptop.

So for once, I agree with Diki on the subject of looking up the chords should be the last thing to try. For me, it comes somewhat natural, mainly because I'm so old that I was performing long before the internet existed and didn't have the resource at my fingertips for the first 30 years I played music. Back then I was still typing the lyrics with my old Underwood and thought I was one of the more advanced guys because I typed the words instead of printing them on lined notebook paper.

Halftime's over - back to the playoffs,

Gary