Members Dean Roddey Posted October 18, 2007 Members Share Posted October 18, 2007 The real trick is the middle of the road. Understand and appreciate what went before you (and what went before that), but don't be limited by that when it comes time to create your own music. A lot of music has gone under the bridge by now, so we have many influences to draw on to create new stuff. Turning your back on what came before, though I can appreciate why it's done, isn't really a very smart thing to do. The more music you know and appreciate, as long as you aren't overwhelmed by that music and come to believe that you'll never be as good, the more interesting music you can make in many cases. It all gets blended up and spit back out in your own style (eventually, once you develop your own style.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 18, 2007 Members Share Posted October 18, 2007 I have also observed the difference between African American and European American families when it comes to dancing and responding to music. I don't think it is any innate trait, its seems obviously cultural. For one thing the music they play in black churches is fun, most white folks' church music is serious, joyless and devoid of rhythm for the body. Compare the two cultures response to their young child dancing around to music. White parent: "Susy, stop wiggling around like that and sit down!" Black parent: "Ooh, look at Susy do that thing. You get it girl!(chanting and clapping) Go Susy, Go Susy, Go Susy!" Yep. This is almost exactly what my friend (the white, middle-aged CPA I mentioned above, I think) said... And, having lived in a thoroughly multi-culti mid-urban neighborhood for a decade and a half, I'm pretty convinced that while there may be individual variances in aptitutde that such variances are extremely difficult to correlate to skin color. That said, if you want to hear some crazy ass precise rhythm -- go see a good Latin/Afro-Cuban band... I'll be the first to tell you that rhythm was probably my biggest challenge. (And I can still be somewhat sloppy, I'm afraid.) And I say a little prayer of thanks to the long-forgotten soul who, listening to me in my first few months of playing who said, look, even if you can't get a single good note out of the chord you're trying to finger -- when you're playing, just play steady -- don't slow down to get your fingers right or think about what you're doing. Better you should muff every chord but at least play them in rhythm... Say what you will about drum machines -- but playing and practicing with them is probably the single biggest thing I've done to improve my timing. (I actually tried a metronome back when I was first starting out -- but I couldn't figure out how to play with it and kept losing my place. How sad is that? But there was something about the old kick-snare thing that made instant sense to me. Of course, by that time, I'd already been playing with drummers. But the single most important rhythm lesson was one frustrated punk pocket drummer who told me (on bass) and his wife (on guitar) how to count rock (we were trying to come in on time after a 4 bar intro with only a 4-on-the floor kick drum to guide us -- 16 kick beats that seemed to befuddle one or both of us each time). He said, "Look, here's how to count simple time: 1-2-3-4, 2-2-3-4, 3-2-3-4, 4-3-2-4." After a couple "hunhs" from us, he explained that we were simply marking the bar number on the downbeat and, really from there on out, rhythm was no mystery... WHY couldn't someone have told me right off the top? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 18, 2007 Members Share Posted October 18, 2007 On the native abilty front -- probably many of you are aware of Williams Syndrome -- which used to be called musical idiot-savantism. Williams Syndrome people can have varied levels of societal functioning -- many of them have problems with complex tasks, following directions, maps, and such. But they often show extraordinary aptitude for music, often being able to play complex music very well with little or no instruction -- and often without the ability to read notation. (They also are often quite personable and gregarious.) [Musical savantry used to be lumped together with mathematical savantry -- but in recent years researchers have dilineated some considerable differences.] One of my old friends told the story of his little sister, who was severely dev-disabled. His big sister (I think she was 16) was a driven over-achiever who had decided to "master" piano and who would pound away for hours trying to perfect difficult Chopin -- often making the same mistakes over and over. One day he was elsewhere in the house and he heard a Chopin piece his big sister had been struggling with -- only it was being played seemingly perfectly, with none of her mistakes. It wasn't the day the piano teacher was there and he went to see who was playing. His little developmentally disabled sister (6 at the time) -- who no one had ever seen play the piano before -- was sitting on a phone book at the piano and playing what to him (at 13) sounded perfect -- without the mistakes his big sister repeatedly made. There was no sheet music in site. (And, of course, she couldn't read the written word and never, in her sadly short life, learned.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ZigZagWanderer Posted October 19, 2007 Members Share Posted October 19, 2007 I wrote a similar post a few days ago on the acoustic forum, but I'll toss it out again here because it's on topic... One of the most depressing things I have discovered about myself is how little musical talent I have. I took a comprehensive, all-day skills assessment test about a dozen years ago, and musical aptitude was one of the things they checked. There were three parts to the test. One was a comparison of melody A and melody B (one note was different, you have to choose which one), the second was a pitch comparison (is note A higher or lower than note B) and the last part was rhythm comparison (is rhythm A the same or different than rhythm B). I was above average on the pitch comparison, average on the rhythm, and in the bottom percentiles of the melodic comparison. Ever since then, I have always taken any other online musical aptitude quizzes I've run across (there was one on MSN a week or two ago--a university in Scotland has an ongoing study), and I have checked myself on other, similar tests (non-internet). I'm consistently in the bottom half of the bell curve, even just compared to the general population. I can't imagine how far down I would be in a pool of other musicians. There is no mistaking the conclusions...I do not have a good ear for melody. And I don't think anyone can say that isn't a critical musical skill. The weird thing is that I immediately gravitated to the guitar. I started playing when I was 21, but had a few stabs at piano lessons, school band (trumpet, 5th grade), etc. so I wasn't totally starting from scratch (although I did not grow up in a musical family). I took on guitar as a hobby because I had a lot of time on my hands at that point...and over the next fifteen plus years, the guitar essentially took over my life, to the point of re-arranging my priorities around music. I am most comfortable learning from sheet music. I have one of those Tascam guitar trainers that I use to figure things out by ear, but I can ususally just get the basic chord progression. Sometimes I can listen closely enough to get a more complex part, but there is no way I could do that without help from the trainer (i.e. I can slow things down on it). And as far as vocal melodies go...forget it. I have noticed that people tend to get into things they are good at. I'll go to my grave wondering how I got so into music with so little talent. Sure, I probably do have some skills that are relevant to music (for example, I picked up on music theory intuitively--once I had a good teacher--and I have good pattern recognition and manual dexterity). But music is fundamentally about sound and in the end...I can't "hear it". And I've been around enough other good musicians to know that there's something missing. The most extreme example is a friend of mine who has perfect pitch and years of classical training on violin and piano. This guy can listen to something once and play it. He is listening and assimilating musical ideas on a level that I will never be able to comprehend. He has also never earned a dime from music, doesn't play out at all, has never had any musical ambition as far as I know, and makes his living as a lawyer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted October 19, 2007 Author Members Share Posted October 19, 2007 I wrote a similar post a few days ago on the acoustic forum, but I'll toss it out again here because it's on topic...One of the most depressing things I have discovered about myself is how little musical talent I have. I took a comprehensive, all-day skills assessment test about a dozen years ago, and musical aptitude was one of the things they checked. There were three parts to the test. One was a comparison of melody A and melody B (one note was different, you > Wow, what an amazing post, ZZW. It appears to me that you have one of those Richard Feynman brains discussed above: maybe pitch isn't what your brain is "all about" but rhythm IS.... Who knows what Feynman and Updike disliked about music... Music is often about (not always literally, of course, but in net effect) wooing somebody, coaxing someone (e.g. an audience) to like you, to love you, to forgive you, to notice you... Maybe these men are made of some steelier, more circumspect, canny stuff that makes them obdurate to this "flirtatious", even literally hypnotic, aspect of music. It sounds as though you have a brain like Tim Rice, W.S. Gilbert or Cole Porter... the denotations are more important than the connotations, the concrete more than the ineffable, the literal more than the implied, rhythms every bit as important, if not moreso, as pitch. [You Cole Porter fans: Feel free to disagree, but I've often thought his oeuvre was much more about sparkling lyrics and rhythm; his melodies, frankly, have a wooden or studied effect as well as a certain architectural quality more in line with a Visual type person rather than an Auditory person... to invoke some NLP-speak. This is not a "diss", mind you---look at the man's legacy!-- just an observation.] Still, it's obvious that you love music. And I'll bet you make a bang-up lyricist, truly, as well as a guitarist. Then there also arises the embarrassing (to me) inkling that you might be presenting yourself here with a generous humility.... you may well be a monster guitarist, and my words here, glabrously patronizing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted October 19, 2007 Members Share Posted October 19, 2007 With regards to ZZW's post as it focused on tests and the opinions of teachers -- I say: Don't let The Man hold you down or hold you back! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 There's a theory that we all have perfect pitch when we're born too, but bad circumstances mess it up. No idea if that's true or not. I certainly know there isn't a physical difference between most of us without perfect pitch and those who have it. I think this is a pretty good link supporting that theory:http://www.aip.org/148th/deutsch.html It is from a study of speakers of tone languages. I don't really think that pitch alone is music. I don't think that rhythm alone is music. I think that music lives in the processes of the brain where we make extraordinary symbolic connections between very different things. I think that there are at least two parallel processes, one is language and the other is spirituality. There are overlaps between those three. We can all point to individuals who have an abundance of one or two "gifts" and no measure of a third. Students of music and language and spirituality are all in pursuit of the most astonishing giant steps in connecting those processes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 ".....One of the most depressing things I have discovered about myself is how little musical talent I have. ....." It's quite possible you're just not very good at doing those tests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 I have a 5.348 second threshold when I can dance. It's that 5.348 seconds between when I get drunk enough to do it and when I pass out. I'm sure it's because I'm one of those Norwegian Bachelor Farmer types. Like Garrison Keiler says, they all look at their feet when talking to you. If one is really, really outgoing, he looks at your feet. Haha... that's good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Beck Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 "No ear for music". What does this mean? "Amusia." Everyone falls somewhere on a continuum between that and musical genius. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Tedster Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 I think that "no ear for music" is the auditory equivalent of being colorblind. Colorblind people aren't blind, they can see, just as tone-deaf people can hear. Some little genetic thing interfered and the sounds (or sights) we take for granted...they can't process. My youngest son, for example. I love him dearly, and he seems to enjoy music, but, he couldn't carry a tune in a front end loader. He can tell that pitches rise and fall...but he can't match a pitch. For example, in "Happy Birthday"...he can tell that the pitch raises on "Birth" and lowers again on "day"...but as to just how much it raises and lowers, he wouldn't know. And there are a lot of folks out there who have it even worse. But, if they can enjoy [Jamaican accent]riddims[/Jamaican accent] then they're doing okay I reckon... But, what's even worse, there are some people with no sense of rhythm!!! How do those people procreate? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Antman261 Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 I was like your son. Now I can pick up piano/guitar parts by ear and sing in tune, and hear when other people are out tune, and judge intervals. It's just training. Honestly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 But, what's even worse, there are some people with no sense of rhythm!!! How do those people procreate? I 'spose they could let their partner do all the work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Hard Truth Posted October 20, 2007 Members Share Posted October 20, 2007 I have observed that the greatest barrier to learning is fear. I suspect that a large portion of the people who think they lack musical ability have just been scared away from making music by bad teachers and other unpleasant experiences. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Raymar Posted October 21, 2007 Members Share Posted October 21, 2007 In the way some people have an ear for music, some people have an ear for soundscapes that are totally non-music but interesting if not moving to listen to. They have an in-depth ability to create and combine rhythmless loops(live, analog, or digital) as well as process them in real time in profound ways. Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rudolf von Hagenwil Posted October 21, 2007 Members Share Posted October 21, 2007 Most poets hate music, literary people have a horror of music. Here some poet quotes: "The stuff that is not worth writing, is good enough to sing" "What do you think of music?" "Oh," he replied, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members the stranger Posted October 21, 2007 Members Share Posted October 21, 2007 Good reading, guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted October 22, 2007 Author Members Share Posted October 22, 2007 In the way some people have an ear for music, some people have an ear for soundscapes that are totally non-music but interesting if not moving to listen to. They have an in-depth ability to create and combine rhythmless loops(live, analog, or digital) as well as process them in real time in profound ways.Steve Absolutely. There are young folks making Techno/Dance/Ambient/House stuff nowadays... they are coming up with some amazing sonic juxtapositions that I never would've considered, me with my "musical education". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members slight-return Posted October 22, 2007 Members Share Posted October 22, 2007 I think someone mentioned Diana Deutch's work she's got some neat music perception stuff...a decent amt of it cultural...like the absolute pitch thing, or that different subcultures may hear musical paradoxes (like tritone paradox) resolve differently Also, Oliver Saks (the "Man who mistook his wife for a Hat" neurologist) just came out with a book on music and the brain in his "clinical tales" type of writing He was just in town for a talk (Sadly, I missed him -- wife has a neuroscience background so it's a field of interest for us) anyway, he was on local radio check it out http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=13673 Oh, at the end, Diana Deutch dicusses (and has an example that tweaks your own noodle) a an interesting perceptual phenomenon there are a few other good books (if you are looking for something to read)and articles on Deutch's work over the years have appears in Sci-Am (which is a hell of a lot more readable, not to mention cheaper than the Journals like Nature Neuroscience) anway, seriously -- check out that radio show, it's like an hour, but well worth it I think Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members rasputin1963 Posted October 23, 2007 Author Members Share Posted October 23, 2007 Great broadcast, slight-return! Dr. Sacks says the best cure to eliminate an "earworm" is to switch and listen to another theme; I respectfully disagree: The quickest way to lose an earworm, is to LISTEN TO THAT EXACT RECORDING (the one which elicited the earworm). Then it's gone. I also have long perceived the key of Dmajor to be yellow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members slight-return Posted October 23, 2007 Members Share Posted October 23, 2007 I also have long perceived the key of Dmajor to be yellow. (Glad you enjoyed it) you might enjoy this one http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/hearingcolours.shtml Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Antman261 Posted October 23, 2007 Members Share Posted October 23, 2007 There's a guy in a band here in australia (who actually toured the US with the dresden dolls last year) who has very strong synaesthesia with music. This lead him to set up canvas's and paints at the bands shows, to see if people see the same things he sees in his music. He can write a song from a painting. Interesting stuff too, www.myspace.com/theredpaintings I also have a friend who perceives EVERYTHING as colour. Not just music, but even numbers, people, textures etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kurdy Posted October 23, 2007 Members Share Posted October 23, 2007 I also have long perceived the key of Dmajor to be yellow. Interesting. I've always perceived the key of D (major or minor) to be dark orange. Here is my mental color chart for keys: C-grayish black D-dark orange E-green F-light bluish green G-green, A-yellow B-light red. The sharp and flat keys share the same color as their "natural" counterparts. Except for Eb, which shares it's color with F (although maybe a little lighter). Anytime I write a song, the color that I perceive it is always based on which key it's in. If I were to call a song "Red", and I wrote it in the key of A, the song would still be yellow to me. I'd say the colors reflect the letter name, rather than the actual sound of the key. Each letter of the alphabet has a color too, in my mind. As a kid I used to play with those magnetic letters that came all different colors, so that may have had something to do my perception. I don't know if this is relevant to the discussion, but I just thought I'd share. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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