| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Kapila Kane |
Posted - 01/04/2010 : 10:04:01 AM
I submit for your approval,...
to those who fear, or at least struggle with music theory...and it puts you into a Twi-light zone trance...
Go find a keyboard/piano you can get to now and then...
it can be a small Casio, or a Concert Bosendorfer Grand...your choice!
(it will be impossible to get your Bosendorfer on as a carry-on.
So, IF you think you could benefit from SEEING notes in your theory, as well as hearing what your patterns are doing...
try a LITTLE of this...a couple of scales to start to see some patterns.
Eventually, you could learn the major scale in ALL keys, --but to start, just do C, G, and maybe D and A.
YOU MAY"cheat"...use both hands, and 4-fingers from each hand to play (eventually) any scale....
It will require a basic understanding of how to build a major scale from a "home:"
where to step up...in the usual whole steps and half-steps in the right places.
Noticed the "black and white" pattern on the piano...NO black key between B and C, or between E and F....but it repeats the pattern over and over.
For an 8 note scale, start with C
...climb/play 8 white keys...start with middle C, (it's in the middle), or any C....climb to the next C.
NO Sharps or Flats.
Next find G, --you will need ONE black key...and do another 8 finger Do-Re-Me...climb to G, but play an F# on next to last note instead of F natural.
That's 2 scales
Now, if you're still haven't switched to Pre-Med, go up to D and build your scale--GUESS WHAT, 2 sharps
good old F# and plus a C#.
Notice, as you add, the sharps will NEVER change order FROM LEFT TO RIGHT you'll just keep adding. (THIS WILL ALSO BE TRUE FOR FLATS, once you go to that side of the "wheel" and their never changing patterns of adding as you go around the circle.
When you go up to 5 or 6 sharps, at some point it is best to start calling them flats...
But don't go all the way yet...Before you go past E major, 4 sharps, or B major (5 sharps) or for sure I'd stay away from F# adn C#...
Instead
build your scales from the other side of the "circle of 5ths"
F one flat...first flat is (always) Bb
then the next scale in flats is Bb, which uses the Bb and adds an Eb.
but don't talk it intellectually, Play the scales on these pitches.
it goes on around the circle till you meet up with sharps and deciding at what point one has more than the other, and all get a little obnoxious on the far side of the circle.
but it can be done. and once you transmute back to sharps or flats they will keep dropping one on each "slice" back towards C.
But take short journeys, learn a couple and see if the patterns start to gel.
This is literally in black and white.
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| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Kapila Kane |
Posted - 01/10/2010 : 07:17:42 AM
Dancing with a fiddler, and dancing, ARE two mutually exclusive things--just ask a fiddler's dance partner.
I like to watch.
What was the topic? |
| Retro |
Posted - 01/09/2010 : 8:02:18 PM
quote:
Originally posted by rendesvous1840
Dancing with a fiddle, and dancing with a partner, is 2 different dancings, I'm thinkin'.
I do believe you're right - though I've known some dancing partners who were stringing me along, and had no interest in fiddlin' around. ("Bow" to your partner...) |
| rendesvous1840 |
Posted - 01/09/2010 : 6:24:39 PM
Not that I would know, I couldn't dance a lick when I had good knees. One of our girls roped me into subbing for her recalcitrant boyfriend at Ballroom Dance class some years back. It's a wonder she survived my attempts. I was glad when it was over. The above is just an old saying in Appalachian Music Circles.
Unko Paul |
| rendesvous1840 |
Posted - 01/09/2010 : 6:21:40 PM
Dancing with a fiddle, and dancing with a partner, is 2 different dancings, I'm thinkin'.
Unko Paul |
| Retro |
Posted - 01/08/2010 : 9:10:00 PM
quote:
Originally posted by rendesvous1840
Be kind to the fiddlers, they never get to dance.
Don't tell that to my Cape Breton friends - they can dance up a storm while playing! |
| rendesvous1840 |
Posted - 01/08/2010 : 3:45:18 PM
Buy the Kordeen, dance barefoot if necessary. The soul gotta eat, too. Be kind to the fiddlers, they never get to dance.
Unko Paul |
| thumbstruck |
Posted - 01/08/2010 : 11:02:59 AM
I've had my students take their guitars and sight down the neck from the body. I've told'em to picture the open string as "C", even thought in tight key, it's E and superimpose a piano keyboard with the black notes and white notes for a chromatic scale and then a diatonic one. I gues I was hoping that they would see a commonality between the instruments.
The ADVANTAGE of the accordion over the piano: The piano has no places for shoulder straps, the box does. The kordeen is easier to pack around and it can drown out a carelessly played fiddle.
A Scandihoovian's dilema over the first paycheck in the new country: Vhat do ve buy first, shoes or a kordeen? Ya, but you can't dance vitout no shoes, but even harder to dance vitout no kordeen. |
| Russell Letson |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 08:55:01 AM
The friend who guided me through swing and the Great American Songbook is a self-taught rock player. I remember when he got access to a keyboard, he said, "It's so easy on the piano--it's all right there!" By "all" he meant things like chord construction, since the stacking-of-thirds, inversions, and flatting and sharping and adding of notes is laid out in a linear fashion. He knew the fingerboard well enough to translate the keyboard relationships to the guitar and construct any chord he didn't already know--and he could also find substitutions easily. The keyboard was a kind of audio-visual aid.
I'm not sure that it's quite as powerful for a natively guitaristic folk tradition like slack-key, where it's more important to know where the bass notes and sixths are--it's a more "grippy" tradition. (Which is also the way I finally absorbed a lot of swing--it's all about the grips. But that also puts a ceiling on what I can achieve. Chord theory really does help there.)
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| Lawrence |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 08:08:46 AM
quote:
I used to attend his concerts at UCLA back in the 60's and the 70's up to the time he passed. I LOVE "Barstow" and "Daphne of the Dunes".
Yes- my kind of musical thinker, who made many Marimba-ish instruments, which reminds me, last time I looked at a Marimba (one of my favorite instruments) there weren't any white or black keys (bars). 
P.S. - I worked in the UCLA School of Music in the 70's, but I never met him so far as I can recall. But understand this... I was really there in the seventies, which is why I don't remember them! 
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| slipry1 |
Posted - 01/07/2010 : 01:59:40 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Retro
I think I need to listen to some more Harry Partch...
I used to attend his concerts at UCLA back in the 60's and the 70's up to the time he passed. I LOVE "Barstow" and "Daphne of the Dunes". |
| rendesvous1840 |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 7:21:16 PM
Taking what I know of chords,from playing guitar, and scales and modes,learned from the mountain dulcimer, I can pick out songs and simple accompanyment on Wanda's piano. No one will ever mistake me for a pianist. But having a piano available is a prerequisit to learning anything from it. If a piano is available, use it to your advantage. I never threw my screwdriver away when I bought pliers.If a piano ain't available, they cost way too much just for the lesson capability. Buy a good music theory book instead.
Unko Paul |
| rendesvous1840 |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 7:13:54 PM
"Can you read notes?" "Hell, there are no notes to a banjo, you just play it."....nameless Old Time Banjo player
"The land of the brave
The home of the free,
I don't want to be mistreated
By no bourgeosie." ...Leadbelly.
"Can you read music?" "Not enough to hurt my playing." ....Another nameless Old Time banjo player
"It's all folk music. I ain't never heard no horse sing." ....Louis Armstrong
"The strongest dissonance is to be one half-step off. If the note you played doesn't fit, you're never more than one half-step from a better choice." ....Jamie Aebersold, Jazz instructor
"If it sounds good to you,it probably is good."....Doc Watson
"Jus' Press."...Led Ka`apana
"Tell your Ma, tell your Pa, our loves a-gonna grow, oooh waaa,oooh waaa."...Bob Dylan
"If only the best birds sang, the forrest would be a quiet place." unknown
Unknown was buried next to Arch Fisher.
Unko Paul |
| Mika ele |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 2:18:03 PM
OK OK OK
So maybe I wasn't clear . .
'jus what Professor Medeiros told me -- some people learn differently than others
-- this, by the way was repeated to me by my English Teacher wife a few days later
What makes perfect sense to me (since I learned music on the violin first as a wee keiki and then on the piano before taking up guitar and ukulele) when looking at the piano keyboard -- is not intuitively obvious to all casual observers (aka slack key students).
While I can refer back to a visualization of the piano keyboard and "see" that there is no black key between B-and-C and also between E-and-F and thus infer all those infernal rules (like Cb and B# are the not same notes -- but B and C respectively). Those that have never attempted to play the piano -- much less lifted the keyboard cover to look, may find the keyboard illustration difficult. (right slkho ?)
When you learn music theory on a fretted instrument like the guitar or ukulele first, all you see are strings, frets, and dots (except on some classical guitars). Trying to visualize a non-familiar keyboard can just add noise to the learning process and make the waters so much muddier. |
| Retro |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 11:30:27 AM
I think I need to listen to some more Harry Partch... |
| hikabe |
Posted - 01/06/2010 : 11:09:24 AM
Whatever the people's key is, the bougeoisie's would be the relative minor of that key. Seriously!!!
This is a great thread. Kapila has a point about the piano being a great visual tool to decipher scales in all keys. But you don't need a piano. You can draw a simple sketch of the piano (about 2 octaves)and use that to figure out distances between intervals.
Also, use number patterns and account for all 12 notes.
1-3-5-6-8-10-12-13 represents do re me fa sol la ti do and is the pattern for the c major scale CDEFGABC. Move up the pattern by a half step and you have the C# major scale. Keep moving the pattern up and you will visit all 12 keys until you get to the octave C Major scale.
Identify the modes for each key and you got it made.
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