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sathorI'll get around to replying to those comments Noxi, I promise. But probably not tonight...I'm totally wiped out and I have to get up early tomorrow to procure what I need to finish Hobbes Leviathan.
There's something musical I want to talk about in this entry, and maybe some other stuff if it pops up as I write. After all, most of my journal entries are like automatic writing, and I prefer it that way - unless of course, they actually involve significant events. And we all know in Tidioute Pennsylvania, having a significant event is like finding a needle in a massive hay stack. If you do find it, it's probably going to hurt, and you probably won't find anymore for awhile.
The musical aspect is this: My cousin Eric did the guitar for Ride (which is on the myspace now, the completely updated version, complete with solo and backing guitar) As he said, if we do it live at any given point, we'll need at least one other guitarist, likely two. Hah.
Moving forward: When we worked together at the beginning of this month (or was it the end of august?) he was asking me what scale I played Ride in before we started recording. I said C# major, and I ran the scale a few times on the keyboard. He's a guitarist, you know (and an incredible one at that) - but he also has knowledge of keys. But what surprised me is that he told me he wasn't very familiar with the black keys. Well, he is, certainly on guitar...they're just sharps and flats. What he meant is playing scales on keyboard/piano that include them, especially scales that include a lot of them.
In the case of C# major, every "black" key is utilized, along with C and F. This is, admittedly, one of my favorite scales, and I'm pretty positive Nobuo Uematsu used it extensively in the Final Fantasy soundtracks, because I often find myself discovering melodies of his in it (and even entire songs - note "Last Night Here With You" from FF8, I'm almost positive, is in C# major.) On the other hand, I may have just discovered the relative melody in a different key. It is a very angelic and moving scale, in my opinion. Anyway.
What bugs the hell out of me is that it has always been very easy for me to learn scales and memorize them. All I do is memorize the major and minor pattern...W W H W W W H in the case of major. It's simple enough to transpose that into any key, play it a couple times with my hands, and then I'm "in that key" mentally, and I generally only hit notes out of key by accident. I don't understand why this is so easy for me, nor do I really know if it's this easy for most other players. I also can immediately tell if there's a note out of scale on guitar or on any instruments. I don't know why this is, but I am pretty positive this is what you would call "inherent talent." Coming up with melodies and patterns is very simple and this is generally how my song writing begins. It's just improvisation in a key. That's all. And by the way, improvisation is really all I do for practice. I don't bother learning pieces by other musicians...and I'm only interested in learning sheet music so I can play classical.
Admittedly, I'm not at the point where I can recognize chords by name, or the actual scale by listening to it. I can tell you if it's major or minor, however, quite easily in both cases. The thing is that you can play the same song in any given key and it will sound the same /relatively/ (although I would argue that different keys can result in different emotional evocation, or at least, different "feels" even for the same relative piece.) I suppose explaining this to anyone here who's not a musician will fall on deaf ears, but understand that it is the series of intervals between given notes in sequence and the timing time signature (and yes, you can increase or decrease the BPM and the piece will still be recognizeable as long as the notes are still relative to each other in the same way - it's like math, you have to subtract, divide, add, or multiply to the ENTIRE EQUATION - THE ENTIRE SONG - equally) that determines whether you find a piece recognizeable or not. If you took a Beethoven symphony and transposed each note up a half step, it would sound exactly the same and most people could not tell the difference - unless you played one version after the other, or simultaneously (and in the case of simulatenous play, you'd find it delightfully cacophanic - i.e. incredibly painful, likely.)
The funny thing is that I was never taught any of this, it was all quite natural and I always understood the idea naturally of relative time and relative pitch. I don't know why - but it's probably why the ONE of two music teachers I ever had - my Aunt Belle - told me my timing was perfect. Maybe it was a result of a year of drum lessons...i suspect this, honestly, because practicing drums for the first year was entirely on a single snare, and it was mostly learning how to do drum rolls (and a drum roll is simply taking a 4/4 beat and increasing it, say, to 8 hits in 4 beats, then 16 hits in 4 beats, then 32 hits in 4 beats, etc...that's where the concept of whole/half/quarter/eighth/sixteenth/thirty-second/sixty-forth comes from. Notice the pattern? The next is always half or double, depending on which way you're going. It's division and multiplication by 2. Time is relative. Einstein was a genius.
And with this, I bid you adieu.
-bows-
There's something musical I want to talk about in this entry, and maybe some other stuff if it pops up as I write. After all, most of my journal entries are like automatic writing, and I prefer it that way - unless of course, they actually involve significant events. And we all know in Tidioute Pennsylvania, having a significant event is like finding a needle in a massive hay stack. If you do find it, it's probably going to hurt, and you probably won't find anymore for awhile.
The musical aspect is this: My cousin Eric did the guitar for Ride (which is on the myspace now, the completely updated version, complete with solo and backing guitar) As he said, if we do it live at any given point, we'll need at least one other guitarist, likely two. Hah.
Moving forward: When we worked together at the beginning of this month (or was it the end of august?) he was asking me what scale I played Ride in before we started recording. I said C# major, and I ran the scale a few times on the keyboard. He's a guitarist, you know (and an incredible one at that) - but he also has knowledge of keys. But what surprised me is that he told me he wasn't very familiar with the black keys. Well, he is, certainly on guitar...they're just sharps and flats. What he meant is playing scales on keyboard/piano that include them, especially scales that include a lot of them.
In the case of C# major, every "black" key is utilized, along with C and F. This is, admittedly, one of my favorite scales, and I'm pretty positive Nobuo Uematsu used it extensively in the Final Fantasy soundtracks, because I often find myself discovering melodies of his in it (and even entire songs - note "Last Night Here With You" from FF8, I'm almost positive, is in C# major.) On the other hand, I may have just discovered the relative melody in a different key. It is a very angelic and moving scale, in my opinion. Anyway.
What bugs the hell out of me is that it has always been very easy for me to learn scales and memorize them. All I do is memorize the major and minor pattern...W W H W W W H in the case of major. It's simple enough to transpose that into any key, play it a couple times with my hands, and then I'm "in that key" mentally, and I generally only hit notes out of key by accident. I don't understand why this is so easy for me, nor do I really know if it's this easy for most other players. I also can immediately tell if there's a note out of scale on guitar or on any instruments. I don't know why this is, but I am pretty positive this is what you would call "inherent talent." Coming up with melodies and patterns is very simple and this is generally how my song writing begins. It's just improvisation in a key. That's all. And by the way, improvisation is really all I do for practice. I don't bother learning pieces by other musicians...and I'm only interested in learning sheet music so I can play classical.
Admittedly, I'm not at the point where I can recognize chords by name, or the actual scale by listening to it. I can tell you if it's major or minor, however, quite easily in both cases. The thing is that you can play the same song in any given key and it will sound the same /relatively/ (although I would argue that different keys can result in different emotional evocation, or at least, different "feels" even for the same relative piece.) I suppose explaining this to anyone here who's not a musician will fall on deaf ears, but understand that it is the series of intervals between given notes in sequence and the timing time signature (and yes, you can increase or decrease the BPM and the piece will still be recognizeable as long as the notes are still relative to each other in the same way - it's like math, you have to subtract, divide, add, or multiply to the ENTIRE EQUATION - THE ENTIRE SONG - equally) that determines whether you find a piece recognizeable or not. If you took a Beethoven symphony and transposed each note up a half step, it would sound exactly the same and most people could not tell the difference - unless you played one version after the other, or simultaneously (and in the case of simulatenous play, you'd find it delightfully cacophanic - i.e. incredibly painful, likely.)
The funny thing is that I was never taught any of this, it was all quite natural and I always understood the idea naturally of relative time and relative pitch. I don't know why - but it's probably why the ONE of two music teachers I ever had - my Aunt Belle - told me my timing was perfect. Maybe it was a result of a year of drum lessons...i suspect this, honestly, because practicing drums for the first year was entirely on a single snare, and it was mostly learning how to do drum rolls (and a drum roll is simply taking a 4/4 beat and increasing it, say, to 8 hits in 4 beats, then 16 hits in 4 beats, then 32 hits in 4 beats, etc...that's where the concept of whole/half/quarter/eighth/sixteenth/thirty-second/sixty-forth comes from. Notice the pattern? The next is always half or double, depending on which way you're going. It's division and multiplication by 2. Time is relative. Einstein was a genius.
And with this, I bid you adieu.
-bows-
