15 minute a day practice routines

Rocker

@Octatonic, when I had a pub/functions band in the 1970s, I was in a similar position to where @cacophony appears to be now.  At that time, there was no internet, no music teachers in Midlands Ireland, no music books to learn from.  All we had were other pub band members and some guys who knew a few chords.  The odd chat with the guitarist in Showbands helped too.  Especially with chords and simple solos.  Over time, my friend and I worked out that certain chords 'worked' in definite keys.  Aminor in C for example.  A eureka moment came when we figured out that by moving the Aminor up one note to Bminor this worked in the key of D.  As did all the chords that worked in the key of C.  And this trick worked for all the other keys too.

Pretty basic stuff but it got the job done.  And we got away with it.  I never heard of scales at that time and as far as I knew, none of the other pub bands did either.  Well TBH I did, but they were for piano players.  Not guitar players.

Fast forward to the year that Princess Diana died.  I took up the guitar again after a long layoff.  The guitar playing world had changed.  To a remarkable degree.  Guitar players knew more about music than I ever did.  It was a bit late for me to catch up but I did my best.  Even if my music knowledge is still extremely small, I know a lot more now than I did when I played the pubs every weekend.

I understand where cacophony is coming from.  To some extent his thinking is similar to the Punk movement in the 1970s.  Ignore the theory and create sounds.  But I urge him to try to learn some theory, some scales and a lot of chords.  Music is not a competition, there is no Gold medal for the winner at the end of the race.  The fun is in playing with friends and making sounds that are pleasing to the player.  Simple things like really nailing Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones is satisfying in itself.  Learn it then work out why it works.

Octatonic, you mentioned that you read transcriptions on the train.  Does that mean that you can 'hear' each note when reading it on the tab sheet/music sheet?  If so I am in awe of your skills.  If I am in London soon, I will try to meet you for a lesson.  

octatonic

I completely get the punk thing- I grew up during that period of music but also things, as you say, have moved on massively.

Music theory isn't magical or mystical or even that hard if you do it step by step- if you can count to 12 then you won't struggle.

The problem is when people try to take in too much information at once- then it feels like you can drown in information overload.

It affords the ability to communicate with other musicians, which makes the creative process more rewarding.

Never once have I wished I knew less about how music functions.

To your question- do I hear music when I read scores?

Sort of.

I can look at a score and see an interval (say a perfect 4th) and I know how that sounds.

I can read a score and hear a melody with its melodic and rhythmic information intact- this is after years of doing aural training.

Same with harmonic information- I can see, for example, a ii V I in a score and know how it sounds, because I've spent years playing ii V I's.

It isn't quite the same as hearing a recording of the score, or playing the score.

If I saw something completely new to me then I probably wouldn't have as good a grasp on it as I would on something i have seen before.

Having done it for so long there aren't many chord progressions that are completely new to me.

You are welcome to come for a lesson- but I live in Oxford.

cacophony

rocker,

 

" But I urge him to try to learn some theory, some scales and a lot of chords."  

i taught myself chords using `flash cards`.  but the scales i`ve never done. i had this conversation with someone in the `real world`, he played in a band gigging around newcastle, and to be truthful it`s much easier to explain my views face to face with someone than it is over the often impersonal internet. where comments which sound friendly and fine in your head often come across as arrogant or vain. which upon reading this thread back is how some of my earlier posts may sound. if so i apologise.

i go back to my earlier comment, that my strat fretboard `contains` exactly the same notes as anyone elses, i just choose to learn those chords and notes using a non formal method which, whilst it may be the `lazy` way is working for me...   so far!.

viz

I know this is a thread about practice, but one point on theory, which I think is relevant long-term to effective practice: I think it's important to approach theory from the right starting point, and to make it practical so that it's relevant to real music.

To my mind the most important first step is to learn about harmony and melody - to understand whether a piece is major or minor, the role of each chord in a musical piece and what notes work within that structure and why. There's no point in learning modes of the melodic minor or whatever, until you've grasped that. Or even notes of the scale and key signatures. Or even how to play chords on a chart or scales (because I'm talking about your musical mind not your fingers).

And because harmony and melody are so fundamental to music, in the same way as verbs and nouns are fundamental to language, you can tie the theory immediately back to whatever you're listening to. Only then go for the keys and the circle of 5ths, then scales, then modes etc. Like octa says, take any song, write down what's happening in it, first harmonically, then melodically, and soak in it. It'll be an enlightening experience.

It's difficult to force your fingers to play out of the rut if your mind is still in it.

cacophony

i may even be doing many of the things that were listed in the original post i commented on, and not even know that`s what i`m doing, because no-one has shown me!. 

octatonic

viz said:

It's difficult to force your fingers to play out of the rut if your mind is still in it.

This is absolutely, totally nailing it.

I'm stealing this, Pete.

Rocker

@viz, I am quite certain your last post is absolutely correct but I don't have a clue what you are talking about. When I had a band and we played at a wedding, often the bride took the Mike to sing a song. Very often a song that none of us had heard before. The bride singing, all her friends grouped in front and we, the band, stumped. In songs, patterns emerge through repetition, one country song is quite similar to another in practice. So we bluffed until a chance note suggested a key signature and using our experience, we could sort of play backing for the singing bride. If any of that makes sense or fulfills the music theory needs you mentioned, please let me know. I might know more than I think, it would help if I could be sure I was on the correct path to enlightenment... Thanks

viz

Rocker said:

@viz, I am quite certain your last post is absolutely correct but I don't have a clue what you are talking about.

I often have the same feeling when I reread my posts

Yes, I think a strong sense of harmonic and melodic theory helps you do exactly that - find the key instantly, predict what is about to happen in a progression, play seemingly magic notes that seem always to fit because they are flexible enough to match a number of chord changes, use little melodic tricks like repetition, chromatisicsm and suspensions, to hold and release tension or convert jazz notes into seemingly intentional turns of phrase, etc. A knowledgeable player will be able to noodle over anything in real time and make it seem as though it's their favourite song even though they've never heard it. Not saying I can, but many can, and I would think they have a strong theoretical knowledge even if it's been picked up informally.

Barney

Just take one subject you think you are lacking in....it could pentatonics in all postions....arps...triads ....chords ...rh picking ...legato ...anything really ....and just keep on going at it until you hear progress...then move onto another subject ....but spend a lot of time on each one ...not just a couple of nights ...make sure you learn them properly...

Depending on how you want your playing to progress it could be either of the above examples....or could be none of them...it might be slide or finger picking only you can create your own pathway.....

For example there is maybe no point in learning modes iff you want to be a blues guitarist....or no point in learning the blues scale iff you want to play folk....

monquixote

EricTheWeary said:

My son likes to learn bass stuff off YouTube videos. He picks it up really quickly and the house resonates to the sound of Royal Blood. But because he doesn't want to take on any music theory - because he can do all that stuff without it - he has no tools for communicating with other musicians. To get through a blues jam or play an AC-DC cover or whatever it's really hard without some basic theory. Even if you can communicate with other guitarists it's no good saying second string fourth fret to a keyboardist.

Much wisdom. 

If you've ever been in a band where no one knows any music theory it's absolutely painful and hugely inefficient. A mate of mine had to teach songs to his bass player with numbers because he had no idea what notes were. 

I use what little music theory I know all the time. There seems to be this weird misapprehension that you have to intellectualise music to play using theory. To actually understand it properly you have to get to a point where you apply the theory without thought. The point is that you can turn music into language and language into music.

To give an example when I was depping in a band I had to learn "Come up and see me" the guy said "it starts with a run up in G, but with a flattened 7th" I'm like "oh so G mix?" and he's like "yep" and it's riff learned.

The other guy learning the song is like "err?..." so he says "OK C major, but start on a G", "err..." cue twenty minutes of showing him the exact fingering.

imalrightjack

I've come from the same place as a few here and have gradually increased my knowledge over the last few years, if nothing else because I've had to in order to keep up with my band actually solo effectively over their patterns.  Just basic modes, largely using a relative approach, which is growing into a more natural use (I'm yet to find a particularly effective method for learning).

One thing referred to above that I simply cannot fathom is the circle of 5ths/4ths.  Can somebody (@octatonic most likely) help me understand why this will help and how to find a context for it?  Off the top of my head, other than knowing how many sharps/flats are in a key, I don't get it.

viz

imalrightjack said:

One thing referred to above that I simply cannot fathom is the circle of 5ths/4ths.  Can somebody ( @octatonic most likely) help me understand why this will help and how to find a context for it?  Off the top of my head, other than knowing how many sharps/flats are in a key, I don't get it.

Octa, or Guy, Matt, Branshen, Pip, Evo or any of the other theory chaps will do this far better than I, but I'll have a go anyway:

The thing is, if you are a player who plays entirely by ear, has an instinctive knowledge of what's happening in the music, and doesn't need to refer to keys or sharps and flats in discussion with others, then you might never NEED it as such. And if you are Beethoven who knows all musical relationships in his head, you're not going to have to refer to it either, just like Newton doesn't have to refer to his times table any more. All the Co5 is, is a diagram that describes what is actually happening in music, behind the scenes as it were, whether you want to know or not. It's used as a learning tool and reference diagram, for those who want to understand which keys relate to which, and how, and why. Soon it becomes second nature and you don't need it any more. I personally use a mental representation of a piano keyboard, rather than a Co5, but that's possibly because I was originally a pianist. Others find the Co5 more useful; it's sort of like a pivot table of the same information. If you were to arrange a piano in the same sequence as the Co5, then in each octave you'd have all the white notes together then all the black notes.

http://i865.photobucket.com/albums/ab217/Vizzage/Mobile Uploads/image_zpscyvmwj6b.jpeg

That was the preamble, and you probably know all that's to come, but I'm putting it all here in one place in case it's helpful for others.

Basically the Co5 is a map of notes, but instead of showing them alphabetically, it shows them in order of their closest and most important relationship in western music, that between the I chord (the tonic) and its dominant, the V chord. The V-I cadence is the most common resolution we have - it's everywhere. You can't avoid it in western music. It's called a perfect cadence. A good challenge is to name a song, particularly a major song, without one. (Even if you think SHA is in D, you can find snippets of an A7 dominant, for example in the first two notes of the first guitar solo ). This might be a silly analogy but if major and relative minor are like brother and sister (they share the same notes, or genes, to stretch the analogy), dominant and tonic are like father and son (they are the next closest relatives, their keys differ by only 1 note). You might therefore, as a musician, want to know for any note what that note's dominant is. You can find that by indexing clockwise by one note, going up a 5th from tonic to dominant, and conversely, the perfect cadence is found by going back again, down a 5th. C's dominant is G, and its perfect cadence is G-C.

This brings us to the next most important relationship, the I-IV relationship. The IV chord is called the subdominant. The IV-I cadence (plagal cadence) is a relatively common resolution in its own right, but also, because a 4th and a 5th add up to an octave, going UP a 4th is the same interval as the V-I perfect cadence described above. So whilst a IV-I cadence is relatively common, the I-IV move is also very pleasing. In blues when you go from the I to the IV you are in fact effecting a mini on-the-spot perfect cadence (which is why E7 works as a I chord in blues in E, in readiness for the A IV chord. It's an example of a 'secondary dominant'). You find the IV by cycling backwards on the Co5, just like finding a perfect cadence.

This is why most people think of clockwise as going up in 5ths, and anticlockwise as going up in 4ths. Blues in E therefore, if you find E on the Co5, will have the IV before it (A) and the V after it (B).

Then, as you say, you can also show each key with its unique signature of sharps or flats. As you cycle clockwise, you are playing each preceeding chord's dominant chord. We all know you can add a 7 to the dominant to get a dom7 chord, also called a V7 chord, to make an even more effective perfect cadence V-I resolution. (The added 7 works so well because it's also the tonic's sus4 note and resolves beautifully to the tonic's major 3rd). The important thing is that the dom7 has a MINOR 7 (it's mixolydian for all you mode-spotters), and remains diatonic to the tonic. It's not like the tonic's 7th which is a major 7th. Consider C as the tonic. C major scale has a B as its penultimate note, which is a major 7th from C. Now cycle one forward to find C's dominant, G. When deployed as C's dominant, G would have F NATURAL as its 7th. G7 therefore has an F, which is a minor 7th, not an F#. Just as expected.

BUT let's say you wanted to write a piece in G. Now G is your tonic, and you need to know its dominant (D). Your G scale can no longer have a minor 7, it's no longer a dom7 chord. It's a tonic chord so it needs a major 7th, so you need to sharpen that F to F#. A good Co5 will show you, as you cycle clockwise, that each successive key has an additional sharp to the preceeding key, and that these sharps accumulate. The sharps in order can be remembered by the phrase Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle.

The opposite happens when you go anticlockwise. In music, if you remain true to a key, with no accidentals (added sharps or flats or naturals), when you play a IV chord, it's based on the lydian scale. It has a sharpened 4th (which is the tonic's natural 7th). Think of playing in C; the IV chord is F, which, if it were a tonic, would normally want Bb as its 4th, but if you're religiously sticking to the notes in C, would have to have B natural, which is an augmented 4th above F. That's all fair enough and you hear that all the time. Think of Happy Birthday - when the name is sung, the harmony has moved to the IV chord, and the melody is singing the name on the augmented 4th of the IV.

However, if you want to continue cycling round anticlockwise playing V-I cadences (in other words moving the key UP by a 4th each time) you have to keep flattening each susbsequent note's 4th in order to treat it as a new tonic and avoid the augmented 4th described above. So if F is to be a tonic, it must have a flattened B as its 4th, ie Bb. And indexing one more anticlockwise, Bb, if it's a tonic, must have a flattened 4th, so Eb. And just like the sharps did, the flats accumulate. The mnemonic for remembering the flats is Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles's Father. OMG this is the reverse of the mnemonic for adding sharps when going clockwise.

Additionally, any Co5 worth its salt will also show you the relative minor key for each major key. The minors are all a minor 3rd below their relative majors and have the same number of sharps or flats. They are also therefore 5ths (or 4ths) apart.


Finally, how to remember the circle of 5ths? Well one way is to use the sharps and flats mnemonics, starting at 11 o'clock (F) and recounting Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle clockwise, and Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles's Father anticlockwise. They overlap in the last two words.

If you want to remember the whole cycle clockwise, the best way I came up with is to imagine a 5-string bass guitar with a low B string.

The first is C for CIRCLE.
Then it's each of the bass notes plucked from high to low - G, D, A, E, B.
Then detune the bass by 1 semitone and pluck again - Gb, Db, Ab, Eb, Bb.
Lastly it's F for FIFTHS.

SCMIV

octatonic said:

viz said:

It's difficult to force your fingers to play out of the rut if your mind is still in it.

This is absolutely, totally nailing it.

I'm stealing this, Pete.

Just browsing and stumbled on this thread, but completely agree. Beautifully put! (and why I'm inching my way back to theory)

viz

Ah cool, thanks chaps!