PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Your Most Useful Music Making Tools

Ha! Dan's a tool! Sweeeet!

Like others; understanding music theory is a tool, so I am starting there
Starting piano lessons at 7
Starting Trumpet at 9
Learning Bass much later (by then I could read well, the challenge was interpreting it to the frets)
Then moving to guitar much later

Every other tool I use benefits from my learning to play those instruments first .. and (for me) in that order

Piano helped visualize how to read to begin with
Then trumpet made me learn to transpose
Bass was kinda easy after I learned the previous ones, but taught me how to use a basic fret board (one note at a time)

Guitar was/is ridiculously hard; I visualize notes on the piano keyboard instinctively, so then have to transpose them to the guitar fret board after 'reading' it in my head first
//For me, learning guitar first would make learning theory a lot harder in the beginning

FWIW I can work with other musicians much better because of learning theory how I did
So I consider that my most useful music tool

OK, I got a big laugh out of that.

Dang, I never thought of it that way!

I meant it as a compliment! You have helped me with MIDI and product recommendations and I really appreciate it!

John, it was taken as a compliment and I thank you for letting me know that I was able to help you in some manner. I am always glad to share any knowledge I may have regarding our shared enjoyment for music making. I am not an expert since I don't have the needed credentials. But I have never been shy about sharing.

Dan

Kind of why we wanted you to come to Herbstock. What's a music festival without a "chemist"?

- ears and mouth
- pen and paper

I read that thread from top to bottom and would never pretend to understand everything there but I do notice your exhuberance over Scaler2. I also watched a few of the videos and can't get my head around how this would be useful to me at this time.

Towards the end of that thread Mario said this.

Hi Matt,

The main thing it does for me is to give me different chords and chord progressions that I might not of thought of using BiaB. Being able to select chords from a different points of view does help, i.e. scales, modes, artist, genre, etc.

I have tried the melody function and it is on par with BiaB's Melodist. That is it will not give me a complete melody line that I find usable, just like the Melodist. I doubt no program will do that for me.

To be truthful I rarely use Scaler. I bought it when it was on sale and hoped it would do a lot more for me. I have worked with it and watched the videos but I keep going back to BiaB.

It might be beneficial to both of us if you asked the same question to a power user.

If your workflow/experience with this tool is markedly different from what Mario said, please share.

My opinion:

I wouldn't waste my time learning TAB. Tab is limiting to what you can find written in TAB.

Put that effort into learning how to read music. I did that on the guitar with Mel-Bay type beginner books. But I already knew how to read music on saxophone.

The advantage of learning to read regular notation instead of TAB is that just about every song ever published is available as regular notation.

Pick up a fake book with thousands of songs that have the melody line and chords, and you can play them.

Furthermore, when you know how, reading regular notation is actually easier than TAB. The notes on the staff give you timing and pitch, and you don't have to look at the staff AND the TAB diagram, so sight-reading becomes much easier on regular music.

Being a multi-instrumentalist, I do admit that reading music on the guitar is more difficult than reading music on the Saxophone, Flute, or Piano.

But the guitar has some other things that are easier. If you need to change the key on the woodwind, brass, or keyboard instrument, the new key involves entirely different fingerings. Where the guitarist needs to learn how to play one major scale, and can just move it up and down so many frets, the other have to learn 12 different fingerings. The same goes for pentatonic, various minors and even chords/arpeggios.

My advice is to spend 15 minutes to a half hour per day learning how to read regular notation. Get a book that shows you how, and if need be, also check explanations on-line.

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

Yes.

Scaler, for me, was not meant to replace BIAB. And, I never wanted Scaler to "do more for me". Instead, I wanted BIAB to do less, and Scaler to allow me to do more - for myself. After decades of using BIAB, I reached a point where I was letting BIAB perform too much of the creative process for song writing. I no longer wanted to pick a style, load the demo songs, and have the chords laid out in a canned progression. Scaler helps in the creative process by helping "ME" to write the progression. Nor did I want the entire accompianment to be added to my chords by picking and pluging RTs into the song. I came to the point where I needed to get more of me in my music. That dictated less of BIAB. Scaler was helpful for me in making the needed transition away from BIAB for me in order to grow musically.

I am not trying to sell Scaler (although it might sound like that ). And I also am not trying to bad mouth BIAB. I still use both these tools, for the inspiration they provide.

In recent times, I have been able to bring more of me into the creative process by limiting my BIAB content and employing alternate tools, including Scaler and all the virtual instruments provided by Kontakt along with aids to write my own music. Its a long term process... but I am making progress.

Hope that clarifies my workflow strategy.

Dan, your workflow isn't that much different from mine!

Like I said I use Scaler to help me with chords and chord progressions that I would not have thought of using BiaB alone. I transfer those chords and/or progressions into BiaB.

I also use MIDI loops to augment and/or replace parts of or enter BiaB tracks. I also use arpeggiators, soft synths, etc, and my own creativity to add to or modify BiaB MIDI tracks.

It is a long term learning process, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I agree. Invest your time in learning to read music. The benefits are worth the effort.

Even just a basic reading skill (I can read it, but I can't read and play at the same time) is worth having and really not all that hard to pick up. It opens so many possibilities that simply don't exist otherwise.

TAB is limiting in that basically its just "this string, this fret". If you don't know what the tune actually sounds like, the TAB is kind of useless.

Years ago (decades ago really) I decided to learn a few fiddle tunes on guitar. All I found (and I admit I didn't look very hard) was TAB. I had no clue what the tunes actually sounded like but they were fiddle tunes so what the heck, learn the TAB. Play the right notes in the right order real fast and that's that, right?

I learned the TAB of some tune played it for a guy who really did play fiddle tunes... on a fiddle no less. I played all the right notes in the right order and everything. He said "What the heck was that?" I told him. He picked up his fiddle and played something that sounded totally completely different and said "That's how that tune goes. Don't know what you played but you played it really well."

So TAB is useless? No. It is really useful doing what it actually does. It shows fingering position. If you want to learn an alternate chord voicing or a particular finger-picking pattern its great. The what string what fret is what you need. Understand though what you are learning....you are learning fingering position... which is technique (gotta have it so that's not all bad).

Could have sworn I had chimed in on this....

Gibson & Fender
Mesa/Spark
Dell
CW/BB/assorted plugs

I kind-of agree with Steve. Dan's got the best tool box available

As far as guitar tab goes, I actually had to Google what guitar tab IS. After that I vaguely remembered seeing it early along my music path but when I started guitar I was in a different place in the journey than most. I took up guitar at 11 but I had already been studying music for 6 years, and played first the accordion and then piano. My teacher beat theory into my head, and until I could tell him that the second space from the bottom was called A and it's this key on the keyboard I was not allowed to touch an instrument. But at that time I was 4 yrs and 10 months old. I could read words up to maybe 5 letters long so I knew that those things called A through G were the first 7 letters of the alphabet, and wow, how convenient that these piano keys were the same as those first 7 letters. Everything for the first few weeks of actually playing was in C, so no black keys. Then came the sharps and flats. He gave me such a strong foundation that I was fortunate to have gone to that guy for lessons. Now here's where it turns toward "but that's just me". That all happened in 1956. My exposure in the home was Slovenian ethnic music (polka and waltz) and big band music, some showtune type stuff. In other words, pre-Beatles. Once I heard The Beatles, the accordion went into the case and I only took it out when I wanted to play to remember how or amuse myself.

Now I said all that to say this. In 1963, when I was 12, I wanted a guitar, because I had recently started hearing this thing called rock and roll. I got a very cheap acoustic guitar for Christmas in 1963, and because I knew so much about the nuts and bolts of music, I figured out from my Mel Bay book #1 how to tune it, which incidentally I did by ear as I had perfect pitch then. (That has waned. I now have relative pitch, so if you play a C, I can then identify other tones by hearing how they relate to C in my head.) By the time I went to sleep that night I was playing chords that fairly recently became that thing called CAGED. I got that guitar at 7pm and by the time I went to bed at midnight I had finished book #1. Just after Jan 1st I started lessons with a guy who was about 10 years older than, so 22-ish, who I found via referral from the old man who taught me initially. He was a student of the old man before me, so he taught the same way. I took lessons from him twice a week. After 12 weeks he said he wanted to meet with my parents so he drove me the 2 blocks from his teaching studio to my house. We sat at the kitchen table and he told my parents that while he would be happy to keep taking their money that he really didn't have anything more he could teach me, that I was at a point where it was now a matter of how much time I wanted to put into it. And how that was due to my coming in with such a strong base in fundamentals and theory. He asked if I would go get my guitar, which I did, and then told me "Play that song you played for me right at the end of your lesson." It was a 3 minute "nothing" thing, with lyrics about a similar "nothing". When I finished he told my folks "He wrote that himself, and for his age it's rather complex."

And again, I said all that to say this. That is just the way I did it. I went right past guitar tab because I didn't need it. I knew that seeing an F on the page meant to press this string on that fret and could work out chord inversions and neck positions by myself. Which leads me to reiterate what I have said several times here. Learn your neck in a "planar" way, at a diagonal across all 6 strings, rather than from nut to body. Pick a note in your mind and find every instance of that note on every string with no regard to octave. Know that F is 1-1, 2-6, 3-10, 4-3 and 4-15, etc. Do that with all 12 notes. You won't learn that from tab.

/soapbox mode on

I HATE HATE HATE that guitar lesson have devolved into a teacher teaching songs and not teaching MUSIC. I also don't get why people think it's a good thing to marvel that so many old school musicians don't know chord formations, key structures, etc. But I think that because I WAS taught all of that, and being the only way I know, to me that is the "right" way to learn. In a convoluted way it brings me the the Eagles lyric "A man can use his back or use his brain." Also a funny poster that used to hang in every Army motor pool of a guy hanging a poster that says "The right tool for the job" and the guy was driving nails with a rock instead of a hammer. Sure you CAN become an outstanding player by stumbling around frets or keys or buttons and levers on wind instruments, but the road map that solid basis in theory provides can eliminate a lot of that stumbling.

//soapbox mode off

A guy on Youtube told the story about when he was recently called to be in the house band at Willie Nelson's 90th birthday party concert. Booker T was there. He went to Booker during a break in rehearsals and asked him "Can you show me the voicing you play on that Bm7b5?" And Booker T, one of the best ever, had no idea what he was asking for. He can play it in his sleep, but he can't show it because he doesn't know what it is. One of the best players ever doesn't consciously know any theory. He KNOWS theory. He just doesn't know he knows.

So, sure it can happen. But who here plays 14 hours a day to do all that experimenting that leads to subliminal knowledge of theory?

Which brings me to the tools. BIAB, with "song demo mode" (which I have never used), allows people who know zero about music to "write" songs. Pick a key, pick a style, use demo mode, save that demo creation, and call it your own. What did YOU write? You didn't enter a chord progression, right? You didn't do any production, like regenerating a section because you didn't like the fit of what was originally generated, right? What did YOU actually do? And when it's instrumental, you didn't even write lyrics, which compounds the felony.

There is no satisfaction in the world like writing a song with lyrics that tell a story of your life and then seeing that song get positive response from the listeners. At Herbstock, as we got started, I did a couple of songs that were remakes done in different grooves from a concept album I started and never finished. Songs like I Wish It Would Rain done in reggae, and 6345789 done in a boogie piano groove. Then I popped in a few I wrote. When we finished the first one, Herb, standing closest to me asked "Is that yours?". I said "Yep. One of my 'girl done dun me wrong' songs." And he said "That's really good." Those 3 words made all the driving and the physical toll that the trip took on me worth it. You won't know that feeling until you write something from your soul and people like it.

Songs are nothing more than stories set to music. Tell your story. Use your tools AS tools, not as creators. In other words, be a musician. The carpenter drives the nails, not the hammer.

EDIT: Here's a +++LINK+++ to the song I mentioned with a local guy, Bobby Lee, singing it.

Eddie, this line brought back a memory that I will never forget.

A few years ago a local music store was advertising for another guitar instructor. I applied and got the job. The only other guitar instructor was teaching songs while I was and still am old school and taught music. I taught reading music and eventually learning theory. If a student was doing well I would throw in some fun stuff like a current song as a teaching exercise. The store owner was impressed and in a couple of months I had a lot more students than the other instructor. It turned out that the owner, although much younger than me, was also "old schooled"!

Thanx for the pleasant flashback.

An overwhelming list for sure and one that can extend beyond anyone's lifetime. I guess that's one point, that the study of music can (should?) be a lifelong endeavor. So it comes down to prioritizing given that we all have limited time. I particularly like 1, 2 7 and 9.

PS> Many thanks to to all who have responded; it's been a good flood. I'm trying to reply to most but I can't keep up due to my current schedule . . . but I'm trying

Thanks AT. I am guessing that I am like many here, Music is our hobby! What may be a bit different in my case is that music is my ONLY hobby. So at this time in my life, I can afford to give it my full and focused priority attention.