Jump to content

What's your strength and weakness as a player?


PigWings_v2.0

Recommended Posts

  • Members

 

My strengths:


I have perfect pitch.

 

 

I'm not doubting you have a good ear but perfect pitch is rare. People with perfect pitch can generally...

 

-Identify by name individual pitches (e.g. A, B, C?) played on various instruments

-Name the key of a given piece of tonal music just by listening (without reference to an external tone)

-Identify and name all the tones of a given chord or other tonal mass

-Accurately sing a given pitch without an external reference

-Name the pitches of common everyday noises such as car horns and alarms

 

If you do though, more power to you, I'm jealous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 53
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Members
I'm not doubting you have a good ear but perfect pitch is rare.

It's not that rare. I've read that in the wild, maybe 1 in 10,000 have it, but at a serious music school, it might be 1 in 10, and for professional musicians, it's probably higher.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

I'll just stick to three of each:

Strengths: improvising, playing melodically, and I can cover a pretty wide range of styles

Weakness: my timing sucks (if I don't have a snare keeping me on tempo I wander a lot), I can't play particularly fast or technical stuff, and I'm a bit sloppy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

It's not
that
rare. I've read that in the wild, maybe 1 in 10,000 have it, but at a serious music school, it might be 1 in 10, and for professional musicians, it's probably higher.

 

 

+1. I've met two at my college and it isn't a particularly musical school. Music department is a bit of an embarrassment at times, actually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

Yeah, I was hoping I'd be the first jackass to post this.

Sad, I wasn't even the third jackass to thing of this one.

 

Seriously?

 

Strengths: I've got pretty good timing and a decent ear. Not perfect pitch, but I can find where I need to be playing based on what I hear almost automatically which is both good and bad. Not very much in terms of strengths....sad.

 

Weaknesses: I don't have a little songwriter sitting inside of my head dying to express himself. If I don't have something to inspire me and give me some sort of direction I am absolutely useless. My mastery of theory starts with the pentatonic scale and ends with me trying to change a few notes here and there to make it work. I suppose my scales are either really basic or completely made up in my head.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

It's not
that
rare. I've read that in the wild, maybe 1 in 10,000 have it, but at a serious music school, it "might be 1 in 10", and for professional musicians, it's probably higher.

 

 

It's a little less than 1 in 10000 and to me that's rare but your a rare individual honey. "Might be 1 in 10" is rubbish, you have no evidence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Strengths:

 

-Songwriting and structuring (especially layering)

-Use of interesting chord voicings for certain timbres/moods

-Tasteful phrasing and good vibrato (I've been told)

-Knowledge of some music theory

-Very quick to figure out songs/pick up on the playing of others/improvise and add to them

-Very good relative pitch and very sensitive ear to intonation

 

Weaknesses:

 

-I play lead in box patterns WAY too much (I desperately want to fix this because it makes my note choice very predictable at times)

-I tend to rely on legato playing quite a bit (now I'm in a phase where I try to alternate pick everything to overcome this)

-My sensitive ear to intonation frustrates me sometimes and discourages me from writing and playing (since I'll feel like things aren't worth doing if they don't sound perfectly in tune)

-I'm guilty of sticking to "guitar keys" way too often

-My inspiration (for noodling, practicing, writing; all alike) is very sporadic, which also affects my technical ability

-I use delay too much when I play clean :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

My strength is that I can swing my guitar all the way around my body by the strap while jumping up and down naked except for my pink sequin seventies Funk hat, singing Dancing Queen.

 

My weakness is that I can't do it while singing, Age of aquarius, no matter how hard I try.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Strenghts

I have a pretty good ear, a quite solid sense of rhythm, and I'm very good at finding parts that fit in with what the people I'm playing with are doing.

 

Main weaknesses

Losing my focus. When the band is playing that simple cover tune for god know which time, my mind will wander, and that's when I cock up.

 

Overreaching - I'm a solid soloist but I'm not a virtuoso - sometimes I forget that, go for the flashy bit and fail in a loud and obvious way

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Strengths: Hardly any...except a dogged determination to keep trying to get better (I get an E for effort :D)

 

Weaknesses: Carl Sagan like (billions and billions)...among those things I am most actively working to improve...My ear (terrible I never hear chords and rarely get the key without help), Vibrato (mine is more like violin style and isn't great at that). Phrasing, I can do melodic (slow) leads ok but anything faster or non melodic and I'm lost. Chords all over the neck and inversions, I have a few go to chord forms but I don't have much outside of that.

 

Being a late starter and musically challenged makes it harder as well :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

It's not
that
rare. I've read that in the wild, maybe 1 in 10,000 have it, but at a serious music school, it might be 1 in 10, and for professional musicians, it's probably higher.

 

I don't have numbers to back it up but I'd say no WAY that at a music school does 1 in 10 students have perfect pitch and I'd guess under 1 in 100 professional musicians have it. Based on the fact that it seems about 1 in 10 singers on the radio are recorded with Auto Tune.

 

:lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

This is a timely discussion for me as I am trying to figure out where to go with my playing. I have never taken lessons but am working on putting a structured practice routine together and developing the discipline to stick with it.

 

Strengths - Songwriting, rhythm playing, continuing to develop my ear

 

Weaknesses - solo playing, transitioning from playing a rhythm part to getting into a solo part that doesn't sound like I am just playing a single note rhythm :facepalm:, ie. phrasing

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Weaknesses - solo playing, transitioning from playing a rhythm part to getting into a solo part that doesn't sound like I am just playing a single note rhythm
:facepalm:
, ie. phrasing

 

Some of the easiest-to-identify melodic solos are based heavily on what the rhythm is doing. EVH, David Gilmour, and Eric Johnson come to mind as masters of arpeggiating inverted chords in the middle of their solos. If you're playing more modern stuff, you can really do a lot by finding a way to accentuate chord changes through your lead and solo work.

 

If you can make the five basic chord shapes (CAGED) everywhere on the neck, you're halfway to knowing the best points to solo from. Best of luck to you :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
It's a little less than 1 in 10000 and to me that's rare but your a rare individual honey. "Might be 1 in 10" is rubbish, you have no evidence.

I was going by what I read once about Julliard, i.e. a serious music school. I was probably extrapolating a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
...are recorded with Auto Tune.

People with absolute pitch do not have the ability to play (in the case of instruments like trombone, violin, theremin, etc.) or sing perfectly in tune. That takes practice... just like all skills related to musicianship. Absolute pitch helps, but you still need to practice a lot to make these things happen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

 

1 in 10 do not have perfect pitch.


But a high percentage don't understand what it is.

 

 

 

I see people confusing "perfect pitch" with "a good ear" all the time. There are people with no musical talent whatsoever who can pick an F# above middle C every time. And it is debatable whether being able to do so actually helps people who do have musical talent.

 

"A good ear" to me means at least:

- one can identify minor vs. major chords

- one can identify intervals ('the second note is a minor sixth above the first note')

- one can hear, remember and reproduce reasonably lengthy melodies

- one can identify time signatures

- one can identify rhythmic figures: triplets, dotted eighths, clave beat

 

None of the above requires 'perfect pitch.' All of the above can be improved with practice and training. And some people seem to have a knack for all of the above without having a lot of practice or training.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...