(no subject)

[caz963]

I'm watching Dan Gillespie of The Feeling on Sky Arts talking about his songs. One of the things that's always grabbed me about them is the incredible use of harmony. I've been geeking out at the modulations and chord progressions in Never Be Lonely and I Love it When You Call.

Gah. I wish I could do stuff like that.

Seriously, it's worth watching - it's called "The Feeling - Songbook" and if you've got Sky+ it's on again in the early hours so set the timer!

Comments

[flippet.livejournal.com]

I'll have to try to find it. It sounds very interesting. &hearts

I've been geeking out at the modulations and chord progressions

I have very little musical education, but it's occurred to me that perhaps part of why I don't play anything as well as I'd like is that I don't understand pitch, and relative pitch specifically. I'm not connecting the 'size' of the intervals you hear to the physical 'size' of the intervals as represented by the notes on a keyboard, or hand shapes on a stringed instrument, or holes on a harmonica - any of that. I feel like people who play, for instance, the piano well just *know* how far they have to move or stretch their fingers to get the sound they're looking for. I feel that if I knew that, I'd play better than I do, and more instinctively, rather than struggling to read the music and trying to commit it to physical memory, where it ends up as a singular, isolated thing, unrelated to any other piece of music.

[caz963.livejournal.com]

This is going to sound odd, but knowing about pitch isn't absolutely necessary - well, not in the sense of being able to identify the pitch of a note aurally. That takes some doing if you don't have perfect pitch, and that's something you're born with.

But I often say when I'm teaching kids how to play a melody on a keyboard that they should pay attention to the PATTERNS of notes - because a keyboard is a very 'visual' instrument. I'm not a pianist (although I can play a bit), but I suppose you can equate it with being able to touch-type in that yes, you DO get to know where to put your fingers without looking, just over a much larger area, given the relative sizes of the keyboards involved.
I'm a clarinettist principally, and while I learned to play once I could already read music, so it was a case of my learning which fingers I needed to use to play which notes, when we teach kids to play an instrument today, we do it a bit differently. The idea is to get them to associate certain finger patterns with the positions of notes on the stave, so that while you're not sitting them down and going through FACE or EGDBF, they are nonetheless learning where they are by a different form of association.

Wow - that was technical!

I've met some amazing musicians who can't read music and who play wonderfully 'by ear'. Although I'm a bit of a purist by heart, so I'd say that it's a good idea to be able to read, if you get a good result by other means, and you're happy and enjoy it, I'd say go for it.

[flippet.livejournal.com]

I've met some amazing musicians who can't read music and who play wonderfully 'by ear'.

That's exactly what I wish I could do, and can't. :-(

I don't even read music all that well - it's the hunt-and-peck method for sure, until I've committed things to body-memory. It's like learning specific steps for a specific dance.

When I got my mom's piano, I sat down with music that I hadn't played in probably 20 years. I read the first measure, enough to find my reference points, and then, without warmup, I played those pieces as well as I'd ever played them.

But I can't improvise. I can't riff on something and take it somewhere it's not written, like you'd do with jazz music, for instance.

When I was about 10, I used to be able to transpose at will - something apparently clicked, and all those intervals made sense. But that skill was never cemented, and I lost it completely. :-(

I'd love to have the skills to be able to sit down with other musicians and just fool around - like, someone would start playing something, and I'd realize what key it was in, and know the patterns I'd need for that key, and just be able to get up and go with it. It's very disappointing to feel somewhat crippled that way. I'm sure it's teachable, but I think I'd feel like I was trying to run a marathon on crutches. :-P


I played the clarinet for a year. That was enough to know that wind instruments are not for me. ;-)

[caz963.livejournal.com]

Not every musician is good at improvisation. I'm not; I consider myself to be a reasonably good musician, but improvisation isn't one of my talents. I mean, I can do it, but not well, and not without a lot of practice. It's the same with composition - my mind doesn't work that way. Give me a piece of music to take to bits and find out how it works - now that's much more my thing!