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Author Topic: Music Theory Thoughts from New Member  (Read 5727 times)

Offline BradWillis

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Music Theory Thoughts from New Member
« on: February 20, 2005, 08:31:20 PM »
I'm new to this board but looked at some of your posts and find it interesting. Especially the post a few weeks back on Music theory being overated.
Here is my back ground and my thoughts:

I am a 35 year old bass player who plays Upright and electric bass and have been playing for over 20 years. I play mostly jazz (I make my living playing bass) but love to play anything in church as I feel it is my whole purpose for learning to play at all. I must sight read music because we play arrangements, Big Band, Jazz Combo and some light pop stuff. Anyway, I know alot of theory, jazz and classical.

First, A person could know all the theory in the world but not be able to groove his way out of a paper bag. A degree in music doesn't mean squat unless you can really play.

Second, Unless you know what came before YOU how can you communicate your music with other musicians today. Music has been around a while and styles develop from past styles into something fresh for today. Knowing what others have done and learning from them is the key.

Third, Music that doesn't have a structure, form , harmony, rhythm and melody isn't music. It's noise. Styles of music have basic foundations that can be identified. Drum beat, Bass lines, Guitar , Piano etc. and can be repeated. Not a mystery but a history.

Fourth, How you go about learning what others have already sweated and worked at to learn will determine how quickly you can grow as a musician. Some only need a limited knowledge and others MUST know more about their craft. Playing the same basic way you did after one year and saying you've played for 20 is not true. You only repeated 1 year 20 times. Plus or minus experience gained.

Fifth, Music is an aural language with a known vocabulary. Scales, Chords, Rhythm,etc. However, communicating that language and the development of that language is what Music Theory, Music History, Private Lessons,etc breaks down for all of us to take yesterday and take it into tomorrow. Airplanes of today didn't just happen. People built on ideas and knowledge. They didn't reinvent the wheel. They learned about aerodynamics and studies from the past. As musicians, do we figure out as we go all by our selves or do we seek knowledge from others. If you are reading this then you are already seeking out all kinds of thing and learning thing you didn't know was out there.

Sixth, Your ear and brain are connected. Your hands and eyes(or minds eye if blind-like touching your nose in the dark kind of thing) are making what you hear come out on your instrument. What you feed into you ear, mind, eyes and hands are what will come out.With practice and training.
But your ability starts at one level and progresses to another gradually.

Seventh, Music theory is only a chronology of past lessons learned about an aural art form known as music. However, simple your understanding of music and all it's complexities you can make music today. Even as a beginner you can enjoy making music and there are only two kinds; good and bad. But as Christians we are blessed to be able to offer it to Jesus and He knows music theory better than anyone and could outplay Mozart,
Charlie and Dizzy, Kirk W. , and out funk James Brown but he created you to love Him. He can teach you to play. He could instantly give you a gift of ability that could only be miraculous but doesn't in most cases. He helps you learn. Don't let your brain get bigger than your ears ability to put it to practice. Grow them together.

I came to this site to learn from you. Who and what songs and albums best show what gospel music is yesterday and today. so I can learn from what they did.

Never hire someone to build your house if he says "I'll figure it out as I go along" Hire someone who spent time with a carpenter that knows how to build a house.   Two messages in one. Thanks, Brad

Offline B3Wannabe

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Music Theory Thoughts from New Member
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2005, 09:17:29 PM »
Good advice.

I know that I'm not a great player, and I make it a point to never say that I've arrived at some theorical greatness. Nothing that I do was invented by me. Everything that I know was given to me by God and the people that He placed in my path to teach me.

Like you said, though, my musical ability is unbalanced. I know more theory that I can actually play. Cringingly, I use the phrase that you warned against: I'll learn it as I go.

  :lol:

I know, though, that this year I will learn a whole lot. I can feel it in my bones! Next year, maybe I can say that I've arrived!....Just kidding!


On a side note, I would appreciate seeing some clips of you playing bass!  8O  I'm learning, and have only been playing for about 2 years! If you don't have a site already, you can upload some clips to mine at: http://www.brownfloyd.com/

Offline BradWillis

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Keep at it.
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2005, 06:15:29 AM »
Just to clarify. " Figure it all out as you go" was meant to imply not practice which IS the time to figure it out. But performance the time not to to wiggle around trying to find the key, the Chord progression, groove,
style,etc.  Unless you can hear and know what is coming next in music by preparing yourself " figuring it out" then a lot of mistakes will be made.

I think God does and will place people in your path to learn from and teach you. I believe that God lead me through my seeking to know more about "Gospel" more specifically "Black Gospel" if that is a correct name for a style as opposed to "Country Gospel" etc.

As for greatness, as Christians I believe God demands excellence in what we do in life especially in service to Him. The greatness is left for Him alone. In secular music, the focus is different and draws a persons attention to the music and what feeling or mood it creates and sometimes  
focuses on a soloists ability but good musicians tend to not play to impress some one but to express something into the music. Jazz music for example has a very defined structure even if it sounds free and spontanious to let a soloist improvise over what the other members are giving them to play over.

Praise and Worship Music( All Styles) are meant to help people focus on God and enter into His presence and give to Him. To play in a way that takes someone away from that and look to you can detroy that. I'm not saying don't do anything cool but with the right motivation.

I don't have any videos of me playing except for a DVD with Jazz Trumpeter Bobby Shew and the band I play with. The sound quality is not good but shows my band and I. I do have a few CD's not for sale of me playing with a symphonic band but I don't remember what tracks I played on and the parts I play are extremly basic. I do have a Studio produced Jazz CD and would like to post examples because it is the best recordings of my playing that I know but Copyright issues keep me from
posting them until we get mechanical rights to all the songs. It is a free CD. I'll check on if we have any cleared tunes that I can post. As a bass player I've never been the kind of player to focus on wowing people but just focus on grooving with the drummer and layin down the changes with out getting in the way. The players I like the most are Abe Laboriel,Sr., James Jamerson/Bob Babbitt motown, Paul Chambers, Ray Brown, Rufus Reid, Ron Carter. As a Christian Abe Laboriel has played on most Ron Kenoly tracks recorded for Integrity along with Alex Acuna, Chester Thompson who both played with the Fusion Group Weather Report with Jaco Pastorious and are at the top and known world wide. Abe plays a lot of studio stuff on hit records. If you've listened to 80/90 R&B you've heard him. I hate to say it but Michael Jackson was an example.

B3Wanabe, I have seen a few of your posts/vids and am impressed by what you are doing. I would suggest using known musical expessions to communicate your ideas more effectively. Tabs are OK but the time you learn to know Tabs and read them you could have learned a great deal of
music reading skills. Tabs can be more effective and add more to your understanding of the instument By including the note name where the fret is. Otherwise people only learn patterns on the bass but not the instrument as a whole or how things are built harmonically.

Although I don't write much in tab. I saw a good example on this site of the neck with all the notes on it. Tab can be used to show positions scales, Chords/Arpeggios, and how it looks to you on the neck but shouldn't replace Notes and rhythms on a staff. Like I said, the way some people have developed tabs you could learn to read music in the time it takes to learn to read it.

Sorry if I seam over knowledgable. I don't want to seem a know it all.
The older I get the more I learn what I don't know. In all honesty I only want to pass on things to you guys and learn from you also.But I don't want to see bad habits, methods, techniques learned that will later on have to be unlearned.

God Bless, Brad

P.S. I'll start a new post that people can ask music theory, technique, and other questions that I may be able to help with. Also I'll put a post up so people can help me find Albums and the bass players who play on them.

Offline B3Wannabe

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Music Theory Thoughts from New Member
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2005, 06:50:36 AM »
Quote
Otherwise people only learn patterns


 8O

Hey! That's what I do! Actually, I don't use the tabs. I use my ear. I only write them out for other people here. As far as reading the fretboard, I know where the notes are but it always takes me a second to pin-point them exactly. Again, I figure that I'll learn that as I go. So far, I can pin-point the keys I play in most often.


Quote
I would suggest using known musical expessions


I don't understand "known musical expressions".


Hey! Sorry if I'm hijacking your thread!

Offline BradWillis

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Known Musical Epressions
« Reply #4 on: February 21, 2005, 09:12:50 AM »
Your not high jacking anything this is what this message board is for.

a known musical expression is not a music term but something I said to communicate saying something the same way that other musicians do. A standard name for something.

Such as Triad, Tritone, Dominant 7th chord such as A7. Major scale or Chord. Tonic chord, Sub-dominant, Dominant. Secondary Dominant. II-V-1 Progression, Modes, enharmonic tone, passing chord or tone, Pentatonic Scale-major or minor, Blues scale, Transpose, Root, Third, Fifth and many others.  All these terms comminicate a music idea.

A triad is 1 3 5 of a chord. CEG for C maj. Or C Eb G for C min
Tritone is an interval of an augmented 4th or diminished Fifth. Also called #4 or b5

Etc. if you want more defintions I can give them but I think you understand what I meant.

The term playing by ear shouldn't be only used to indicate ones music reading ability. We all memorize and learn things that happen repeatedly.
We play lines that we know over tunes that we know. Once we know something or can recognize something, it is memorized and can be recalled it's not playing by ear but memory. Playing by ear is taking something unknown that we hear and learning it. However all the things that we know already will help us identify what is going on and will speed up the process. You will start to hear familiar things that you've heard before or similar to them and be able to instantly transcribe what you heard.

Try to memorize all the notes on your bass start with the first 4 frets on each string. Then up to the neck at least to the 12th fret then it all repeats again.

Try learning the lines and spaces on a Bass Clef staff. Its easy. the bottom line is G and goes G B D F A and the spaces are A C E G. just like the alphabet. From the bottom up GABCDEFGA. and each space and line above it continues up alphabetically or down reverse alphabet.

You can learn to read by making index cards of all the notes in the staff by drawing each note on a separate card and practice shuffling them. Add chromatic notes to that and very quickly you can visually read and also write music notation. Next would be Rhythms. Eighth notes and rests
Quarter notes and rests etc.

Finale Music has a program that is free called Note Pad. You can use that to learn things about music notation and it won't notate things wrong. It will allow you to randomly enter things just to see what it looks like and play it back for you to hear. Any basic music book will also be a good place to get info on music.

Make Cards of easy rhythms and and practice shuffling them and putting them end to end. And play it one note on the rhythm and then play around with other notes in a scale or chord/Arpeggio. lots of fun stuff to do to learn your bass and reading at the same time.

You will always learn as you go thats what learning is but don't be discouraged. I would recomend the Simandl Method for Double Bass. It takes you up the neck to learn your bass and notes. It also will show you scales and arpeggios and advanced things also. You can start today and learn and play from it but if you can play everything in it you would be a very solid reader and know your bass inside out from a technical side.

If you can get a teacher to help you out.

At the very least learn all your major scales. Not just a pattern you move up and down but the actual notes.

Here they are. there are only 12 but 3 more if you use enharmonics. which means different name for the same note.

CDEFGABC
FGABbCDEF
BbCDEbFGABb
EbFGAbBbCDEb
AbBbCDbEbFGAb
DbEbFGbAbBbCDb    or C#D#E#F#G#A#B#C#
GbAbBbCbDbEbFGb  or F#G#A#BC#D#E#F#
CbDbEbFbGbAbBbCb or BC#D#EF#G#A#B
EF#G#ABC#D#E
ABC#DEF#G#A
DEF#GABC#D
GABCDEF#G

If you practice them in that order called the Cycle of Fourths or Fifths. You will notice only one note changes between the next scale.

Memorizing this will make chord spelling easy and learning the other chords will be simple because when it says Dmaj7#11 you will know that the eleventh is the same as the fourth and it is raised when compared to a major scale D F# A C# E G#. If you look at the D maj scale the G is natural.No flats or sharps. So raising it would make it a G# or #11
All Chords are built off the major scale or its relative minor. The minor scale is built using the same notes as the major scale but starting on the 6th note. C and A minor. Enough for now.

Brad

Offline B3Wannabe

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Music Theory Thoughts from New Member
« Reply #5 on: February 21, 2005, 09:33:15 AM »
Hey! Thanks! That's all good information.

Offline baggettcindy

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Re: Music Theory Thoughts from New Member
« Reply #6 on: June 09, 2014, 12:25:14 PM »
Thanks!!  this is an old thread...but....I am trying to get more into learning the bass and theory and reading the old threads.....
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