PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic How many of you can take a song you've heard before - with really simple chords in 1 or 2 keys - and

Another +17.

My guess would be over half, and here's why.

Imagine you were a 14 year old kid in the heyday years of Van Halen and you decided you wanted to marry Valerie Bertinelli too and that is MUST be that Eddie is a guitar player, so you decide to take guitar lessons. You mow lawns and save money to buy a guitar (or your mother buys you one) and you march to the nearest music store and ask about lessons. The store tells you they have a great guitar player who teaches and you sign up. At your first lesson, the great guitar player comes in and teaches you 4 basic chord positions and calls it lesson 1. At lesson 2, he asks what songs you want to learn and he starts teaching them to you, because it's likely you want to learn Jump and Panama, with all the flashy hammer on and pull off solo gymnastics. That goes on for 2 years.

The point of that example is this. That "great guitarist" teacher of your may have learned by ear himself, and if he doesn't know theory, he can't teach it. Similar in concept you send your kid to me for Spanish lessons. I don't speak Spanish. What he would get from me is all from Google Translator.

DISCLAIMER HERE! This is just MY OPINION.

"Music" has to be taught by a "music" teacher. "Songs", while they CAN be taught by a music teacher, will likely be what you get from that great guitar player who teaches at the music sore to supplement his income earned at his 2-3 copy band gigs per week, all with an eye on when he can finally live without 2 similarly semi-employed roommates. Music should be taught in a music school.

Now to translate that to adults, we have community colleges available to us that will offer that music basic basics class to us for far less money than what Berklee charges. AND you don't have to audition and be accepted! LOL!!

I highly recommend that Music 101 and 102 to anybody serious about playing. And if you are even more serious and want to learn about the roots and evolution of music, I also suggest music history classes. I once worked briefly with some guys who wanted to do a blues band and I suggest they do Stormy Monday, which is on every list of "All time blues songs" you will find. The drummer was against it because he didn't want to do "Allman Brothers songs". I looked at him, mouth agape, and said "You think Stormy Monday is an Allman Brothers song? Why? Because they play it? Google 'Stormy Monday and T-Bone Walker.' Then get back to me." And he was that way about EVERY song on the list. Born Under a Bad sign was a Cream song, and so forth.

Somebody once said in an interview, it might have been Bon Jovi, that if you have influences, find out who THEIR influences were. There are a lot of people out there who don't know better than to think When The Levee Breaks was a Led Zepplin song. And to them I just shake my head and say "wow".

Learn the craft. If only to respect the craft, learn the craft.

Wonder how many are in the last category?

It depends how far up the musical food chain you are. Pro's who work as studio session players can all read fly specks at 20 feet. They can read a brand new piece of music perfectly the first time through and play it with feeling. They're on the clock, the producer hired them in the first place because they can do that. The big band I mentioned earlier is populated by guys like that. Half of them are session players and the other half are still damn good. At a rehearsal, one chart has a 16 bar piano intro and I casually asked the guitarist next to me what it was and he said, "Read the ink, man". On the fly I could read the top melody note ok but as for the chord voicings I just faked it. I took a pic of it with my phone, found a recording online and worked it out correctly at home so I was ready next time. That won't cut it if this was a studio session. Now, this is in LA and there are studio players all over the place. If you're living in the hills of North Carolina or in the middle of Iowa you may not run into that much.

Here's a question for anybody. If you can't read at all but you have great ears, experience and all that good stuff but you've not heard the song before how can you use your ears and fake that intro? You have the chart right in front of you and you're expected to read it down. You'll hear how the song goes as you're playing it.

Keep going down from there and the percentage of players who read becomes less and less until you're down to the guy who can strum 3 chords on a guitar and that's it.

There are all kinds of players on this forum. They're at all levels of experience so it's hard to give specific advice that any one person can relate to. I spent years doing Vegas shows, reading and writing charts, traveling on the road and some recording studio work until I got married and had kids. I gave it up as a full time profession but I've been gigging regularly all along. I'm at a higher level than some here I guess and not as high a level as others.

Bottom line is music is open ended, it will take you as far as you want it to take you even if you never gig or perform, you're just doing it for your own enjoyment at home. Whatever your level is the more musical education you get the better.

Another point I just thought of. To those who are very good players, have great ears, can hear something once and play it well. You have lots of contacts, get lots of calls for gigs and such and are happy. That's great but...you also probably have contacts who may need players for gigs or a studio session who never call you because they know you can't read. You have no idea what you're missing out on because nobody's going to come up to you and say that.

"We've got this gig coming up with so and so who's flying in from New York and he has all his charts. Bob's a good player but he can't read so who else can we get?"

Just my opinion but it helps if you're not that Bob.

Bob

Great discussion. Seems reading is the way to go.

There are people maybe with very good ears, who might play a few wrong notes too, probably that is not even acceptable in a professional setting.

I started to practice a lot more on the guitar after neglecting it for decades and now I am in early sixties.

And then there comes a big factor in all of this I think, age.

I know age shouldn't be a factor in learning a new skill, but lets face it, later in life we all have limited time, and it might be a choice either learning a few new songs or riffs on guitar, rather than put more energy into learning to be a good quick sight reader.

I will attempt reading but I need the recording as well of the music, to keep me on track.

I agree with this too. I'm so busy with gigs and other things that I rarely practice anything that I'm not directly using for one project or another.

Having said that, you can find all kinds of great stuff online that is perfectly written out for you if only...

Bob

MusicLover, if you’re interested in guitar have a look at this guy https://www.guitarlessons.com/guitar-lessons he has a lot of good guitar lessons. Will it really teach you to read, I don’t think so, but, it will give good ideas for guitar.

Another way to learn to read music is to transcribe notation into tabs. It soon shows you where on a guitar you’ll find notes. Not that I can read but I know what notes are what and where they fit on a staff.

Years ago I played with an old time band. The band leader insisted her players could read. She then proceeded to hand out sheets to each person and off she went and played. However, rarely was she in the key as written. I asked the trumpet player how he coped. He said “I quickly work out what key she’s in and follow the notes up and down, you can see how long the notes are. Don’t tell her I can’t really read.” I reckon this guy knew more than most of us, transposing on the fly.

I also knew a really good highly qualified reader of music. He could play a completely new piece of music with absolute feeling. When I asked about the feeling he simply said “it’s in the notes, what follows what.”

Just some thoughts

Tony

Capos:

I've never used a capo, although I think they have a use.

But pressing down on a string between the frets raises the pitch a bit. Putting a capo on and pressing a string raises it twice as much. How much depends on how high the strings are from the neck.

Perhaps it's not enough for most ears to hear, and in many cases that includes my own, especially for solo guitar or one guitar bass and drums. But since I know it does, I would only use the capo when other solutions fail.

But that's me, and I'm probably being over the top in that respect. After all a lot of players I admire use them.

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Reading:

Don't confuse reading with sight-reading.

When I was in school and in practice reading, I could sight-read just about anything you put in front of me, no matter how difficult on the saxophone. I haven't had to do that in years, but a day of practice would get me right back into the swing of it.

I can sight-read just about anything I see in a fake book on the sax and when I was doing sessions, anything they put in front of me. Something real tricky give me a moment to count it out in my head before reading and I'm fine.

But there is a limit, put a transcribed Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie solo in front of me and I would have to read it slow a few times before going 300bpm.

On the guitar, I can read music, but only sight-read simple songs. More complex songs I'd have to 'woodshed' before playing them competently. But that's still reading, just not sight reading.

If you can read music but not sight read, it just takes time and experience to get there.

I believe all musicians should learn to read music, but I don't think all need to sight-read.

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Reading vs. Ears:

Simple answer, it's best to have both skills.

You can get by with either skill, but you can get a lot better if you have both skills.

You can be an auto mechanic without learning to read your native language (in my case English). But without being able to read the repair manual, you won't be able to diagnose and fix every car that comes into your shop, and it will take you more time and trial and error for anything new.

You need good ears, even if you read music. Put a complex piece of music in front of me and a recording of the music, I'll choose to learn it from the music first. Why? Reading will give me the notes, the right notes, first time around, even in complex, dense chords. Then I'll use my ears to get the proper style of the music, to keep my sax in tune (saxes aren't in tune with themselves, we have to adjust each note with our ears and lip), and when I've learned it, I'll decide if I want to change anything or not.

I remember the first song I learned 'by ear' on the sax, Harlem Nocturne. It took days to figure each note out. I could have sight-read the song, even at that young age.

We had a request to learn "Just Another Day In Paradise" by Bertie Higgins. It wasn't a big hit, and so finding the music was almost impossible. I prefer to have the right chords and then substitute when and if I want to.

The chords aren't difficult at all, and I had what I thought were the right ones but I questioned a couple that worked, but didn't sound quite right.

So I posted on a forum or two asking if anybody knew the correct chords. About a dozen people generously used their ears and took the time to figure out the chords, and I ended up with a dozen similar but different versions of the chords.

I found a used copy on eBay, bought it, and found we were all wrong. Nobody figured these simple chords out right.

In addition the music had the background song-specific licks written in notation, and that saved me a lot of time figuring them out. I changed them to steel drum, changed the feel a little to make it more lively for live performance.

The guy who requested it, a regular customer at a club we played in, liked it, appreciated it, and told us our arrangement was even better than the record.

Not reading and not knowing theory is going about music the hard way. It's finding your way through the forest without knowing about the trail markers.

There are plenty of excuses for not knowing how to read music and not learning theory, but IMHO there are no defenses.

If you want to be a better player than you already are, take the time to learn.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob, your comment about everyone having the chords of a song wrong reminded of something that happened to me. My family and I were in several cities in Europe during the summer of 2016. In many of them, we saw buskers playing Hotel California. And they all played the same wrong chord at the same place in the song.

2b

If your capo use causes your guitar to pull sharp you are not using the capo the right way.

Put the rubber pad on so the front edge presses the string onto the fret wire instead of between fret wires and boom, intonation problems disappear on a properly set up guitar.

Takes an extra second to place it, but very worth it. Try it yourself. I do this successfully with Kyser, Planet Waves and G 7th capos.

Really lots of great tidbits here...and explanations for some of the gaps in my music ability given all the years. Knowing theory up the wazoo, I've come to the conclusion that in my first 15 or 20 years, I was 'learning songs' as Eddie put it, without relating the changes in real time to the music theory, e.g. the Nashville notation....on top of that, I spent too many years practicing in front of the tv, without my full attention and ear on the sounds of the changes...and finally - never did enough practice on atypical progressions - e.g. - I IV V songs very easy for me - throw in a minor chord (other than I VI II V) - and I simply can't anticipate or hear them.

SO probably this should be a separate thread question - but for the sake of continuity....my followup question on this topic is, as stated above....

If one can easily hear the changes in
- I IV V, songs
- I VI II V
- the typical blues progressions,
, but has trouble with other minor chords thrown into the mix, what are the next logical sequence of progressions that one should master recognizing and hearing, and some good songs to do this through ?

Ears are great tools, our most important asset. But the best ears can hear chords slightly wrong. Especially with dense chords. The differences with the 'by ear' chords and the 'as written' chords can be subtle, but I think important.

Sometimes the inversion of the chord is important, and that is notated in the sheet music by the 'dots on the page'.

OK given all that, I sometimes use substitution chords, therefore not playing the correct chords. But when I use a substitution, I like to know the correct chord and I want to both reason and hear why I'm making the change, and comparing the two so I do not change the feel of the song, unless that is what my intention is.

Insights and incites by Notes

Thanks for that.

This is one of the things that makes this forum great, people sharing their knowledge and experience to help others.

Now of I can only find where I stored the capo I bought decades ago

Insights and incites by Notes

There is a down side to this method: because the capo is right at the fret, it can crowd the fretting fingers. The limited space gets more noticeable as you capo further and further up the fretboard. Low profile capos like the G7th do reduce the crowding aspect.

Interesting topic Joe.

I was just wondering. Is there really any such thing as "the right" and the "wrong" chord in a song? Sure there are the chords that are written on the sheet music by the songwriter (or arranger) and there is the chord that is played on the "original" recording but there are literally dozens of chords that will fit a melody line and can be substituted and will still sound good.

So, say if you take a public domain or traditional song or melody you can choose to harmonize it in any way that pleases you.

Plus IMHO I dont think it is strictly necessary for everybody to be playing exactly the same chords at the same time. Lebz and I do this all the time in our live shows. For example he may be playing the major chord while I will be playing the relative minor.

Joe, an easy way to start playing by ear is to just start out playing major key songs with the tonic all the way through the song. Then the second time you may want to put in the four or five chords when the tonic does sound great. There are not many major key songs that you cannot just play all the way through with just variations in sequence I, IV and V. Once you have got that down you will start hearing where the minors are used in the song. Then you can worry about the 7ths..etc..

In addition to The great advice in JC’s post right above, which you should go woodshed right now, take the heat of memorizing off of yourself. Your list of Cat Stevens songs...why do you love each one of them? Which bits give you the smiles? There are theory and production reasons behind those bits. Learn the why along with the how. Just for those songs to start. As you learn that your brain will eventually make its way from the slow process of analysis, to the faster process of recognition. Start with Peace Train. One of the things to study about that song is what the melody does against the chords. It’s almost a sonic version of the visual barber shop pole effect.

The only time a chord is wrong is when it classes with the melody. If instance you are playing a Gaug chord, G-B-D# and the melody note is a D then you will have a tonal problem.



We do that all of the time. A major chord played together with a relative minor chord becomes either a major 6th or a minor 7th, depending on the base note. For instance Lebz plays a C chord, C-E-G and you play an Am, A-C-E you have one of two chords depending on the base. If the base note is a C then you have a C6, but if the base note is an A then you have an Am7.

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All this advice is dancing around the basics of music theory. Theory sounds scary but to start it's really brain dead simple. I'll be a little sarcastic just to make a point and I'll use the word "you" generically.

The concepts is called Scale Tone 7ths and it starts on a piano keyboard. The key of C is all white keys. If you find any C note on a piano just hit it with any finger you want. Move up to each white key to the right and count to 8. Congratulations you just played a C Major scale. OMG!! I just learned a major scale? That's theory, noooo...

This is something a 7 to 10 year old kid can learn in oh, a minute maybe. Are you as smart as a 10 year old?

Now that you've counted the white keys C to C look at each one in order. You see C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. A C Major scale. Gee that's so hard, how can anybody but a musical genius grasp that? I don't know but lets press on anyway to the Scale Tone 7ths. The important thing here is these are all using the major scale in C which is all white notes on a piano. The white notes are what makes this so easy to start with. The D note is what number of the scale? It's a 2, right?, the E is 3 and so on. Here's the 7ths by playing 4 note chords not just triads. Oh, a triad is 1, 3, 5 counting from each note of the scale.

Again, all white notes and after you've counted the triad continue to count to 7 from each white note of the scale. So difficult I know but stay with me. Count to 7 from each note. 1 is a Maj 7th. 2 is a minor 7th. 3 is a minor 7th. 4 is a major 7th. 5 is a dominant 7th. Wait, what? A dominant 7th? That's simply a flatted major 7th, In G, the major 7th is an F#, the dominant is an F. Deal with it. 6 is a minor 7th and finally 7 is a minor 7 with a flat 5. A flat 5?? OMG, lalala. What is that? It's all white notes on a piano remember? So the 5th Scale Tone note is an F (the major would be F# so it's played as a flat 5) and the 7th Tone is the A so you're playing a B, D, F and A which spells out a Bm7b5 also known as a half diminished. That chord is talked about a lot on the Biab forums as in how do I enter it on the chord grid.

Scale Tone 7ths means exactly what it says. Once you've identified the notes of any major scale you simply count to 7 starting on each note (Tone) of the scale. This is just sooo hard I know, sigh. It's so hard a 10 year old can get it in maybe 15 minutes? This is the beginning basics of music theory. This is why btw if a kid starts beginner music classes he starts on a piano keyboard regardless of what his primary instrument is going to be. It's so simple to see the white keys right in front of you. Put any finger on the C note and count up the white keys to the next C.

I seriously don't want to hear any crap about I'm too old to learn this. C'mon people, really? Scale Tone 7ths. Learn it in C and then in all keys. Once you learn this then we can talk about exceptions.

Bob

Joe, many years ago when I started out playing the guitar, I knew nothing about anything except how to strum a few chords on a guitar. I used to hear a song (usually a John Denver or Cat Stevens one) and want to play it on the guitar.

In those days there was no internet to find out chord and lyrics so I used to sit and write out all the lyrics by listening carefully and lifting the needle off the record (yes it was a long time ago) so I could write everything down. I would then turn off the record player and try and work out suitable chords, in my key, so I could sing the song.

My friend (Cuzzie) always used to say to me "Why are all your songs A D and E? Those are not the correct chords!". I used to play Father and Son with A, D and E. I used to play JT "Gone to Carolina" with A, D and E. I never knew why though. I became very self conscious about playing "the right chords". I didn't realize that there is no such thing as "the right chords" when you are just playing and singing a song with your guitar. There is only how you choose to play it.

Now I have become very lazy and inevitably use Ultimate Guitar to find chords instead of working them out myself.

For the most part, I would figure out songs by ear.

I can read music, although I would never profess to be able to "sight read".

Reading music always seemed to be a much more cumbersome process than simply listening to a song and figuring it out. Once you take into account that standard notation is a lousy method for a stringed instrument, that makes reading standard notation even less desirable if you actually want to learn to play.

I'm not going to post a link to previous threads where we've already hashed this out. Standard notation sucks for a stringed instrument.

Once again, … learn basic music theory. Then focus on scales, chords and arpeggios. After you learn those, the songs come easily.

Joanne, I think if there was only “right” chords there’d be no point to Roman Numeral or Nashville notation, after all why learn the chord pattern anywhere but the right place. It sounds better to use the correct “pattern” in a key that suits your playing and voice.

When playing in a band with just guitar, bass and drums I’d often go back to using open chords that allowed me to pick whilst strumming. As I understand it, some folks in fact wrote tunes and then played them in a different key to make things simpler.

Tony