Ok -I'm leading the Web 2.0 charge at IBM, so I should probably practice it in my real life as well. To that end, no email for this, just blog posts. So....Martha...I've listened to the song...didn't know it before tonight, but now I want to play it. The recording I heard happened to be (coincidentally) in the "cheapest key" E flat. We're not going to do that. We'll play it in C or G, but I have to learn it first.
As for inversions of chords, there are right ways to play chords, and then sort of right way to play chords. If the song calls for a G7, any inversion is going to deliver the desired response: a nice grounding root, a defining third, and a tempting 7th leading tone. The human brain will almost always fill in the blanks for inversion stuff*. That's my experience at least. However, when you do arrange the chords the way they were originally played in the song, you'll get that wonderful feeling of sounding like the record.
So, let's learn Martha together, but not in E flat. I hope to have something on video for you tomorrow night.
*Interesting and dorky fact: if you play a root and a fifth, a human brain will almost always assume a major chord unless given some other cue.
