Walking The Words Home

If you've spent much time around bluegrass, you've probably noticed something. The people who seem most comfortable with a song are often the ones doing the singing.
They don't need to be gifted singers, but the singing helps tie the layers of a song together as one living thing. The words carry the story. The story helps us remember what comes next. The phrasing helps us feel the timing. The timing propels the chords, and the melody. They all feed right back into the singing. Before long, the song begins to make sense as a whole instead of a collection of separate pieces.
That's why I'm always encouraging people to sing, even if they don't consider themselves singers. You don't have to perform. You don't have to sound polished. You simply have to spend a little time living inside the words.
Around here, we often discover that songs become easier when we stop trying to memorize them and start trying to understand them. A story. A phrase. A soaring high note. Those things give us something to hold onto.
You'll see this idea return throughout these lessons, the workouts and play-along songs. The goal isn't to become dependent on lyrics. The goal is to use lyrics as a pathway into the larger structure of a song.