AlanHB

Hey I don't mean to distract from the point of this thread (whatever it is) but this example has some issues.

Firstly if a singer who doesn't know how to play an instrument makes up a part, it becomes really hard for them to remember it once you try to start playing along.

Think about it - it's really hard to sing one tune while another is playing in the background. My money says that she forgot her songs the instant you started playing guitar.

Also you said the ideas "didn't work"....isn't that a bit anti-music/theory/whatever? I mean, everything works in theory, theory didn't make those lines - she did. I'm having a hard time thinking about a situation where it wouldn't work, maybe she sung some atonal stuff, which actually would prove that she's better at theory than all of us

Theory would not have helped her in this situation, she made melodies she liked, you tried to play along but couldn't find appropriate parts, meanwhile she's forgetting the parts and you're changing the guitar parts as her parts change, chasing eachother around in circles...

I only know this because I've been there, done that. It's an extremely frustrating experience.

What you do is get your singer to record her parts away from you. She can record with an iPhone/computer mic/whatever - pretty simple. She gives you the recorded parts and you make your guitar parts around those.

Ok you guys can get back to it now. Cheers.

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jazz_rock_feel

This thread is now about the theory, history and philosophy of 20th/21st century classical music.


I don't even know what "goofy" tape loops mean. If you just mean pieces with an electronic component then yeah, that's one of the fastest growing areas of contemporary composition.

Either way, what I meant was that the idea of theory being passe is passe. People have started embracing, if not traditional harmony, traditional concepts of tonality. The idea of subverting old genres and forms with "irony" is passe. Ever since the postmodernists there's been a pretty strong move towards connecting with music of the past.

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HotspurJr

We weren't writing songs. We were trying to mesh to pre-existing songs that we both know. So this wasn't really relevant.



We tries drawing the connections where she thought it might work, and it felt jarring and wrong - not a sound that made either of us happy. Whereas it was easy for me to quickly identify places that sounded smooth.

I think you're misunderstanding what we were doing/trying to do.

mdc

^ what were the songs?

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Sweet

Hail

and

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mdc

^alol!

... and this song, See You Next Tuesday, is a very clever anagram for a word I've used during my angry moments on this forum recently!

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AlanHB

Gotcha, I missed the word "medley". But generally speaking I'd say that it would be inexperienc in writing medleys than music theory knowledge that lead to this result.

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ArtistLion

Maybe it would help if you learn the theory with the guitar in your hands. It would make learning theory more interactive and fun (instead of just sitting behind a PC/in class and drift far away).

I.e. when you learn about consonance and dissonance, you could try strumming that dissonance chord (progression). After doing this you could fumble around with it and ask yourself questions like: What would happen if I do this in this riff/solo? What if I play this after X chord. What if I play one of the chord in X chord and another in X2 chord? How would they sound if I play them differently?

cdgraves

Putting together a medley with songs in different keys means you have to treat the transitions as modulations. That means identifying common tones and tonic/dominant relationships. The only way you could do this without theory is by guessing and checking, which is fine if you never intend to perform, but if you're preparing for a gig time matters quite a bit. Or you could transpose everything to one key, which is extraordinarily lazy.

When you've got music to work through, there is simply no reason to spend hours fucking around with "does this modulation work? how about this one?".

edit: censors really? Are we not big boys and girls?

Hail

haha aw you're starting to sound like a reg

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D..W..

That's true I suppose, since it'll sound the same (at least in feeling) in any key. Figuring out the exact note you had in mind would be perfect pitch though (Unless I have something wrong there. Perfect pitch being the ability to recognize notes by name, relative pitch being the ability to recognize intervals, etc?).

cdgraves

I actually joined after looking specifically for a high-traffic forum to argue/discuss musical stuff. And to advertise myself when I get new recordings up. I have much experience arguing about music.

macashmack

Perfect Pitch

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Modes and scales are intelligent and useful. Start learning them. Seriously.

Hail

hahahahaha high traffic my ass

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jazz_rock_feel

Compared to most other music theory forums it's a bustling metropolis in here.

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Morphogenesis26

Every thread about scales is a car crash.

Every thread about modes is Hiroshima in 1944.

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cdgraves

it's a step up from forums where the most frequent post topic is "what guitar should I get?". I mean, at least crappy threads about modes are actually talking about music.

MaggaraMarine

You mean 1945?

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Shit, you're right.

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