9. GIVE ME A REASON

What Will You Learn in This Lesson

In this lesson, you’ll finally learn the full tune: “Give Me a Reason.”
After all the drills you’ve completed in the previous lessons, the hard work is already done.

Now it’s just about putting the pieces together in the right order, and what you’ll have is the complete tune,
ready to play from start to finish.

A little story about how this piece was born, because no tune appears out of thin air.

One of my students wanted to learn “Coffee Cold” by Galt MacDermot, and that bassline just stuck in my head all day.

After a while, I caught myself singing, “Give me a reason to love you…”

I didn’t remember much of the lyrics, only that it was from Portishead.
It brought back those early memories of being in love for the first time.
(We listened to that song a lot.)

I thought the song was called “Give Me a Reason,” but I just found out it’s actually “Glory Box.”

But instead of going back to listen to those songs, I stayed with what was already in my head.
This strange blend, both groovy and melancholic, started circling in my mind.

I knew what I was hearing wasn’t their music anymore. It was my own voice taking shape between them.
That’s what this tune is about: merging what’s already inside you until something new is born.

No matter how much you try to copy or sound like someone else,
what comes out is still yours, shaped by memory, emotion, and everything that ever moved you.