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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another incident: I was stepping out of my ride to the airport, and noticed another woman pulling her luggage out of the trunk of a car. I remarked "I bet you're a ballet dancer." She said "nope, I'm an ice dancer!" Funny I could tell just by the way she wrangled the luggage.
and I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Recognizing melodies by ear is a hugely useful skill, but I can't help but think it's going to be nearly impossible to do without a sound foundation in music theory. Tabs are, in large part, paint-by-number. Lots of guitarists out there are only interested in learning a song. Regardless of key, mode, or what the notes actually are. And, tabs satisfy that group by saying: "Play this fret on this string". To write tabs…
But over the years I realized that there were gaps in the Western classical theory I studied.
A relatively small one is that I never systematically studied jazz harmony, and I still don’t have a good sense for it. I can’t make my improvisations sound like jazz even if I try.
Another, bigger gap is rhythm: I have listened over the years to music from all over the world with interesting and complex rhythms, but I cannot explain those rhythms or reproduce them. The classical notation and theory I learned is not up to that task, either.
The biggest gap, in my mind, is my lack of exposure to any formal theory of melody. I like good melodies, I think I have a sense of some features that separate good melodies from drab ones, I think I am able to create pretty good melodies, but that all came from listening and experimentation and playing. I once (again, more than fifty years ago) looked through some music theory books in my college library that covered melody, but I didn’t get anything useful out of them.
The videos on music theory that crop up on my YouTube feed all seem to be about chords and scales. Maybe some music influencers should start producing in-depth content on rhythm and melody, too.
This brought to mind a quote from Ira Glass: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your…
I've picked up a couple languages relatively easily and I 100% attribute it to the fact that I have no shame - zero I will speak in my ugly, broken, American accent and do it til I improve. I didn't read about this technique in a book or anything, I simply mirrored what I saw kids do and IMO a big reason kids do well with picking up language (aside from all the physiological stuff) is that they actual speak it - they…
I started learning guitar using tabs. It's good for easily picking up a song, but I found it painful to learn new songs. Everything I played I simply memorized and learning a new song was always a start from scratch. I mostly play classical guitar and now force myself to get better at sight reading standard music notation. I find it extremely hard but very rewarding because I'm now able to simply pick up a sheet of m…
Listening and transcribing is an excellent thing to do. But it would be terrible advice to say it's the only thing to do. Also, I would argue that if you really want the benefit of transcribing, don't write it down until you have memorized whatever chunk you are transcribing - the act of memorizing it and learning it solely by ear is where the real value is. On the other hand, this is not a good way to learn techniqu…
Thanks
Sting famously learned to play bass using this sort of technique with music on LPs, lifting the needle and dropping it back a bit in the track over and over again as he gradually worked out the notes and fingering. Probably almost any method is effective at learning guitar, as long as it includes the key factor - time spent practicing.
(1) the songs were already in my head,
(2) Sting would have two or three cool hooks per song, and this is the important part,
(3) the hooks would played over and over during the song. That meant I could play the song all the way through and get to practice each riff 10 times or more with just a single needle lift.
A prime example: Demolition Man (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf7To6vdg7A)
This brought to mind a quote from Ira Glass: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your…
Recognizing melodies by ear is a hugely useful skill, but I can't help but think it's going to be nearly impossible to do without a sound foundation in music theory. Tabs are, in large part, paint-by-number. Lots of guitarists out there are only interested in learning a song. Regardless of key, mode, or what the notes actually are. And, tabs satisfy that group by saying: "Play this fret on this string". To write tabs…
Learning formal music theory helped me a lot when I was a teenager playing guitar and piano, and having absorbed all that theory more than fifty years ago helps me to continue enjoy playing and improvising music now. But over the years I realized that there were gaps in the Western classical theory I studied. A relatively small one is that I never systematically studied jazz harmony, and I still don’t have a good sen…
As I write this, I think when a melody sounds good it's likely related to the implied harmony in the notes being used, and obviously the expectations the listener gets and how they're handled. But I don't think there is a system of constructing good melodies in Western classical music theory.