numberthirty wrote:jbar wrote:Yea, the "I couldn't tell if the bells were getting louder" bit. I believe it's something like [A] couldn't [E] tell if the [F] bells were... etc, but I cannot figure it out.Copy that.I was just listening to this last night![Am] Couldn't [E] tell if the [E7] bells were getting [F] louder the[Am] songs they ring I [E] finally recognize[F]Edit: In the piano part, the E rings thru all the chords (12 fret on guitar), so technically all those F's would be Fmaj7 - the maj7 being the E.E7 (guitar) 654321 -------- 022130 Fmaj7654321 --------xx3210

After that it does7 5 3 5 3 2 - riff on the A string (probably would play this starting on the D string 2nd fret actually - but them the notes)Am E G D[Am]Time..[E]closer[G]read [D] poster[F]Fanatical [C] exposers[E]corners [F]prophes [E] yE E G G# (riff) back to Am E E7 Fmaj7On the guitar you'd play the D E and C with the 3rd on the E string so you get the descending bass line of A G# G F# F EE F E

Hey, thanks a lot Barndog.I'm gonna take another stab at it this weekend.

Okay, here comes some theory:I've been grappling with the 'how do you use the circle of 5ths?' question and I've taken a couple stabs at it. In trying to provide a comprehensive, consistent answer I keep ending up down a really deep 'prescriptive vs. descriptive' rabbit hole and veering wildly off topic. So here's a video with the more modest goal of demonstrating a small, simple concept that might help you hear some new sounds. It uses nothing more than a simple pentatonic scale and the circle of 5ths.

Salut FM projectMalamute for such a fine theory course!I took a bunch of music theory classes when I was younger, and the one thing I would add is when doing the solfeggio (do-re-me...) sing the numbers (intervals) instead. For example: Oh when the saints1....3.......4....5 come march ing in1.......3.........4....5If you can get reasonably good at hearing intervals (relative pitch) so many things open up and become easy.And for guitar, when you combine this with the CAGED system, and can see the fretboard in shapes, it makes the basic stuff much, much easier, so you can be more creative and spend your time making more personal, perhaps unusual, musical choices, instead of just trying to keep it together.projectMalamute wrote:I've been grappling with the 'how do you use the circle of 5ths?' questionI think it's best used as a mental shorthand for learning key signatures, and as an aide in memorizing 5ths and 4ths (dominants and subdominants) since they are so important in harmonic theory.

yard barf wrote:Salut FM projectMalamute for such a fine theory course!Thanks man!yard barf wrote:I took a bunch of music theory classes when I was younger, and the one thing I would add is when doing the solfeggio (do-re-me...) sing the numbers (intervals) instead. For example: Oh when the saints1....3.......4....5 come march ing in1.......3.........4....5If you can get reasonably good at hearing intervals (relative pitch) so many things open up and become easy.That seems more or less equivalent to do-re-mi, no? What do you sing for flat or sharp notes? I'm not saying that this is a bad idea, I'm just interested in what it is doing for you that traditional solfege syllables are not.I think the real question is fixed do or movable do. I was taught movable years ago, and that seems to be the trend at most college programs. Fixed do seems to mostly still be a fixture at the old school, hardcore conservatories.At the beginning, when whatever you are singing has a clear tonic and you are working on hearing stuff relative to that pitch, movable seems more intuitive. Do is always the tonic, Sol is always the fifth, La is always the sixth, etc. When you start getting in to stuff that modulates or doesn't have a clear tonal center it is less intuitive, and can even get sort of weird. I'm not sure which is better. I will say that fixed do stalwarts like NEC or Julliard seem to turn out musicians who know what the fuck they are doing.I have a bunch of ear training things I do as part of my daily practice routine and I am mostly not using solfege syllables at all. Just la la la or doo doo doo or whatever.Here's a drill that I've been doing lately:1. Pick a note on the piano that is about in the middle of your vocal range.2. Sing a major triad where that note is the root. Don't give yourself the other notes from the piano, find them by ear.3. Now sing a major triad where that same note is the third of the chord, finding the root and fifth by ear.4. Now sing a major triad where that same note is the fifth of the chord,5. Now do all the same things with minor triads.6. If that gets too easy try augmented and diminished triads, seventh chords, altered 9ths, whatever.The goal is to keep that one pitch fixed in your inner ear and hear it functioning in different parts of different chords. I've found this to be good for my ears.

yard barf wrote:This is how I was taught ear training, and this is how I would teach anyone. Start with 3rds and 5ths. Play any note on any instrument and then sing the 3rd and the 5th.That's the most elementary version of the exercise I was describing, and exactly where I would start someone also. Play an E and then sing an E major triad, or an E minor triad, or an E7 etc. Then play a C and sing a C major or C Minor, yadda yadda yadda.It get's harder when you start working backwards.Just starting with the four triads is a great ear workout:start with E, first as the third: sing C-E-G(major), then C#-E-G#(minor), then C#-E-G(diminished), then C-E-G#(augmented). Then as the fifth: sing A-C#-E(major), A-C-E(minor), A#-C#-E(diminished), Ab-C-E(augmented).You just get the E as a reference, no cheating. If that's easy for you, salut. If you move to Western Mass I have paying work for you.I'm pretty solid up to different kinds of seventh chords. It get's real hard to do stuff like play a note, here it as a b9 and sing the chord up root-third-fifth-flat seventh-flat nine.

projectMalamute wrote:That seems more or less equivalent to do-re-mi, no? Oh, yeah, it's totally the same. The reason I think it's better is that every jazz musician, and the rock musicians with great ears, all talk in numbers, saying things like, the chorus goes to the 4 chord and then to the 5 chord and then this weird chord with a 6th in it, or something like that. I once heard 2 horn players who were going to be performing a melody in unison, sing it together in numbers (intervals) right before the show to make sure they were doing it the same.Also, when you start reading charts, or thinking about chords, they all use numbers: G7/Csus4/D-9/Amaj7. If you learn ear training by interval then you can hear these chords before you play them, which is awesome.About 15 years ago, I sat in for a few gigs on upright bass with this old jazz band in Olympia, Washington. I mean, old jazz: it was a fiddle player, banjo player, washboard player, guitarist, and me. Strangely, the washboard player was the most accomplished musician but he liked to just hang out in the back and strum the washboard. Anyway, I didn't know any of these old songs from the 30's. I showed up at the gig and stood at the back with the washboard player and when they called a tune, the washboard player would lean over to me and say, Verse is 1, 5, 2. Chorus is 4, 5. Or whatever the chords were. Then they'd pick the key and away we'd go. The washboard player would also do that old trick where he lifted his foot on the last bar of any chord we were on, to let me know when there was a chord change. On the upbeat numbers, his foot was going up and down like crazy, and I was just walking notes up and down the bass trying to keep up, haha.You can of course, start with traditional solfeggio (do-re-mi) but if you play rock or jazz, you'll be translating them to numbers at some point, and I figure, just learn the intervals as numbers in the first place.projectMalamute wrote:Here's a drill that I've been doing lately:1. Pick a note on the piano that is about in the middle of your vocal range.2. Sing a major triad where that note is the root. Don't give yourself the other notes from the piano, find them by ear.3. Now sing a major triad where that same note is the third of the chord, finding the root and fifth by ear.4. Now sing a major triad where that same note is the fifth of the chord,5. Now do all the same things with minor triads.6. If that gets too easy try augmented and diminished triads, seventh chords, altered 9ths, whatever.The goal is to keep that one pitch fixed in your inner ear and hear it functioning in different parts of different chords. I've found this to be good for my ears.This is how I was taught ear training, and this is how I would teach anyone. Start with 3rds and 5ths. Play any note on any instrument and then sing the 3rd and the 5th.Ear training (relative pitch) is so underrated. Once you're decent at it, everything gets so easy!

andyman wrote:I have the two Lloyd Alch. guitarist pdfs, which go into a lot of this. I'll sendspace them when I get home if people want?I would love to grab those!

Ah, this is great! I talked about staring a music theory thread here ages ago but as I started to write up what I had in mind it seemed like it would be more of a book than a forum post, and plus I was worried it would turn into a 10 page digression with BD about the difference between equal temperament and well temperament or something like that. But I can contribute something smaller here.That Matilda Mother question is interesting. He's using a middle eastern type of scale in the key of F#. Similar to the scale used in Miserlou, he's using a minor 2nd, major 3rd and major and minor 7th so it doesn't fit neatly into any of the diatonic modes. I'll see if I can do a little video on that as a video explanation is so much easier, and it's quite nifty.The guitar playing on that record is well worth investigating too of course.