|
Post by Stratmangler on Apr 23, 2020 22:10:08 GMT
Lower your sights a bit, Mike. Listening for intervals, and why they catch your ear is the stuff you need to start with.
I developed a love of Steely Dan a long time ago, and there's plenty of things with their music that grab your ear and reel you in. Mahavishnu Orchestra came onto my radar a lot later, but there's loads of intervallic things in their music too - it's not all flash and bombast, not by a long chalk.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Apr 23, 2020 22:13:22 GMT
Steely Dan catches my ear a lot because of clever key changes, timing changes and stuff that I don't even have the words to describe.
I'd love to hear an analysis of a song like Third World Man.
|
|
|
Post by Stratmangler on Apr 23, 2020 22:48:13 GMT
The chords used get repeated throughout their catalogue. There are certain "Dan" chords, and you hear them time and again, from album to album.
Listen to the melodic intervals, and the way they sit in with the chordal structures.
This chap has been The Dan's live lead guitarist for a good many years
|
|
|
Post by MikeMusic on Apr 24, 2020 9:39:38 GMT
Lower your sights a bit, Mike. Listening for intervals, and why they catch your ear is the stuff you need to start with. I developed a love of Steely Dan a long time ago, and there's plenty of things with their music that grab your ear and reel you in. Mahavishnu Orchestra came onto my radar a lot later, but there's loads of intervallic things in their music too - it's not all flash and bombast, not by a long chalk.
Mentioned it as my latest search and listen. Didn't think chord changes would be that complicato Hopefully useful to others No surprise to find out the more I find out the more I realise I don't know
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Apr 25, 2020 16:46:39 GMT
This chap has been The Dan's live lead guitarist for a good many years
I've liked Third World Man for a long, long time. It's gratifying that it's a well admired song by other professionals. That video helped me but I don't follow the chords very easily.
|
|
|
Post by Stratmangler on Apr 25, 2020 18:46:12 GMT
The opening section sets things up with the movement from Fm to Edim. The Fm chord has a flattened 3rd, and the Edim chord has a flattened 5th. The intervals are what set the sound and mood of the chords.
Jon Herington plays the chords as triads, ie 3 note chords, wherever it's possible. Occasionally he'll play a triad over a bass note that may be in scale, but not a natural resolving note in the key. It's all about tension and release, resolution and dissonance.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Apr 25, 2020 20:04:28 GMT
That last sentence of yours I get. I also get the overall feel of the song and that wonderful key change towards the end.
|
|
|
Post by Stratmangler on Apr 28, 2020 15:15:50 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Slinger on Apr 28, 2020 16:08:34 GMT
A lot of parents may end up wondering if a harmonica was such a good idea after all.
|
|
|
Post by petea on Apr 28, 2020 16:11:55 GMT
I can feel a TAS ensemble coming on. Things really have become that bad!
|
|
|
Post by MikeMusic on Apr 28, 2020 20:16:00 GMT
I can feel a TAS ensemble coming on. Things really have become that bad! No, that would be awful !
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Aug 8, 2021 12:01:27 GMT
|
|
|
Post by ajski2fly on Aug 8, 2021 14:35:22 GMT
Just picked up on this thread, and it's very interesting. I had a mid life crisis and went back to college to do a BTEC in Music, my chosen instrument was guitar, having played poorly in amateur bands in my youth and played around on it to poor effect for many years. At the start of the course we were told to purchase the American song book, we were then spilt up into working groups(bands) from the class of 4-5 players each, 5 in total, there were only 2 drummers so these poor chaps had to be in two groups each. Each week each group had to pick 3 new songs and learn them in one week and on the following Monday night perform them live at a local music venue, we also had to perform one new song Thursday lunchtime in the college refractory, a total of 10 groups for both years. To say it was daunting was an understatement, the first 6 weeks were actually quite frightening, I would say at the start only about 1/3 of the class was reasonably competent on there chosen instrument, I was far from it, and 4 of them had chosen their voice to be their main instrument although 3 of them also played an instrument(badly). For the chosen 3 songs for each group, each person in the group had to perform at least one solo(improvised) on one song, taking centre stage. It was very interesting as the students ages ranged from 16 to 45, only 3 or 4 were 16 years old, about 7 were 18or 19, about 7 in their 20's and 3 of us were over 35. You would think the young ones would just want to do modern rock or R&B, far from it they tended to pic either Jazz standards, or rock from the 70's/80's, and everybody helped each other which was lovely, only one or two had egos, and these were swiftly dealt with by the tow lecturers. Most of us studied for a formal music theory qualification, equivalent to an O-level as well. What I did learn was that music is not always what it seems and something that can sound simple can in fact be far from it. I learnt this mainly from having to learn how to improvise and construct solos over chosen compositions. So for those of you are interested and play or dabble with an instrument take a look at the Jazz standard 'Autumn Leaves'. Take a look at this explanation www.learnjazzstandards.com/blog/learning-jazz/jazz-advice/navigate-autumn-leaves/ , it explains it very well and much better that I can, but the key?(pun intended) to understand is that the song is constructed using its minor key major and relative major key, that is G Minor and the relative major key of B-flat major, as pointed out in the analysis there are 2 bars in the song that can be confusing, these use the what is known as the cycle of 4ths. If you listen to Autumn Leaves and try and follow the chord progression I suspect you may find you quickly get lost as to which chords or bar the song is actually on, this may be that you are no familiar with do so or it may be you get lost when the cycle of 4ths occurs(passing chords) resolving back to G minor, give it a go. When I learnt 'Autumn Leaves' my guitar tutor set me the task of building a solo over the sequence 3 times and coming back a week later to demonstrate, so that it what I did, he said my solo was quite nice but rather ordinary, and then pointed out that actually I could do much more by looking at the chord sequence a different way and picking out chord sequences from it that fitted other keys and then uses the scales(note) of the keys to solo over each different sequence. What he was doing was introducing me to the art of using different scales from the key of the piece to solo with, a difficult concept at first but if you get it right then you can produce some very interesting solos. Having accomplished this we went on to study the song by replacing some of the chords as indicated with diminished 9th's and augmented 7th's, this introduced different flavour and allowed for different voicing on the guitar and also gave opportunity for even more complex improvise solos. So a song which can sound very simple actually can be quite a complex beast when analysed, the trick for a good musician is to do this intuitively. My teachers said the only way to become good was to learn all the scales off by heart, and practice every day for 6-8 hours for about 5 years. At the end of it you would be a reasonably competent musician.
|
|
|
Post by Slinger on Aug 8, 2021 15:00:00 GMT
If music is a language, then Jazz is Aramaic.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Aug 8, 2021 15:20:31 GMT
If music is a language, then Jazz is Aramaic. Basque, surely?
|
|
|
Post by ajski2fly on Aug 8, 2021 15:24:19 GMT
If music is a language, then Jazz is Aramaic. Basque, surely? Arithemetic!
|
|
|
Post by Slinger on Aug 8, 2021 15:30:06 GMT
I stand by Aramaic. It reads right-to-left by the way.
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Aug 8, 2021 15:36:10 GMT
It reads right-to-left by the way. I'm so glad you clarified that! My uncle was Basque. Although I can follow French fairly well (my aunt married to him was French), I could not understand one single word he was saying.
|
|
|
Post by Stratmangler on Oct 28, 2021 18:05:45 GMT
Rick Beato has been trying to condense music theory to around 10 minutes
|
|
|
Post by MartinT on Apr 28, 2022 15:19:12 GMT
I found this helpful.
|
|