can't find the chords and melody i hear in my head
stillroasting
this has been bothering me for sometime now. i'll be coming up with
chords and melody and i'll have a chord in mind and try to hit it, but
i'll never get that chord that i hear in my head. because of that, my
entire song kind of gets screwed up and i can never get that original
train of melody back. are there any drills or ways to sharpen up my
skills to indentify chords as i'm hearing them in my head? i know
about the one where you remember the way a famous song starts out and
thats how you identify intervals. for example a 5th with its tonic
would bring the though of the two first notes from 2001: a space
odyssey. are there any other mnemonics or drills or exercises?
i sometimes write melody first then chords, or chords first and then
melody, but i'm not talking about that. i'm mostly talking about when
i'm hearing the melody and the chords in my head at the SAME TIME and
not being able to figure them out fast enough and losing the train of
thought. also, if i'm listening to a song, i want to be able to
instantly figure out
what chords are being played. what frustrates me is i can listen to a
simple
song and yet still it takes a few minutes before i figure
out the chords. i want to be able to listen to a song on a CD and
follow the music so i can think while the music is playing, "now he
goes to VImin, now IIIdim, now IImin..." does anyone here know how to
do that? can anyone here hear a chord progression and repeat it
verbatim after one listen?
thanks,
stillroasting
Steve Latham
"stillroasting" <stillr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140720677....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> hey all,
>
>
> this has been bothering me for sometime now. i'll be coming up with
> chords and melody and i'll have a chord in mind and try to hit it, but
> i'll never get that chord that i hear in my head. because of that, my
>
> entire song kind of gets screwed up and i can never get that original
> train of melody back. are there any drills or ways to sharpen up my
> skills to indentify chords as i'm hearing them in my head?
Yes.
i know
> about the one where you remember the way a famous song starts out and
> thats how you identify intervals. for example a 5th with its tonic
> would bring the though of the two first notes from 2001: a space
> odyssey. are there any other mnemonics or drills or exercises?
Yes, as many as there are songs you know, and care to identify what the
interval content is. What you're talking about is commonly called
"ear-training". YOu might take a look at the website good ear
(www.goodear.com I believe). Many people remember for instance that "Maria"
and the "Theme from the Simpsons" both begin with a tritone (augmented
4th/dminished 5th).
>
> i sometimes write melody first then chords, or chords first and then
> melody, but i'm not talking about that. i'm mostly talking about when
>
> i'm hearing the melody and the chords in my head at the SAME TIME and
> not being able to figure them out fast enough and losing the train of
> thought.
Can't help you there. What you're looking for is a tool or skill to get what
you hear in your head onto paper (or other fixed medium). Dumb question
here, but could you play the chords and sing or hum the melody into a tape
recorder? There are programs like "tanscribe" that will allow you to slow it
down (but not change the pitch) so you can write it down slowly if you're
not as good at that part yet. But the real tool you need is a good ear -
it's not just that though - you also need to know what what you hear in your
head is, and what you see on paper sounds like, and the way to do that is
too just practice things many time over. But you can't just look at a paper
and see a perfect 4th, and play it on your instrument. What you need to do
is look at the paper, see the perfect 4th, and say to yourself, "this is a
perfect 4th" and it sounds like what happens when I play from here to here
on my instrument (or sing the opening notes from "Aura Lee" etc.). You're
internalizing the process this way.
also, if i'm listening to a song, i want to be able to
> instantly figure out
> what chords are being played. what frustrates me is i can listen to a
> simple
> song and yet still it takes a few minutes before i figure
> out the chords.
It just takes time. I hear any type of pop song and can tell you the chords
(unless it's Steely Dan or something). If it's guitar, I can even tell you
what position the chords are played in, and whether the guitars be de-tuned
or has a capo. That's something you just pick up from years of experience
with an insturment (and the fact that given pop songs, there's a limited
amount of chords being used, and most songs are s o similar that it's easy
to eliminate many right off the bat).
i want to be able to listen to a song on a CD and
> follow the music so i can think while the music is playing, "now he
> goes to VImin, now IIIdim, now IImin..." does anyone here know how to
>
> do that?
Sure, I do it all the time. I'm sure there are others here (like Greg) who
does it far better than me. But I had to learn to do it. I had to learn what
kinds of sounds various kinds of chords and note combinations make. And
still it's not 100% accurate. But, just as a for instance, I've learned
every song on Green Day's American Idiot by simply listening to the CD in
the car. In fact, I rarely sit down with the CD anymore - I just listen to
it in the car - although occiasionally there's something funky you need to
actually hear, or think about more fully. But if you gave me a Jazz CD I'd
be lost pretty quickly (Green Day being admittedly more simple than John
Scofield). But also I'm not accustomed to that style. I'm sure if I played a
bit more, morethings would come to me.
can anyone here hear a chord progression and repeat it
> verbatim after one listen?
For me, it depends on how complex it is. If it's four chords repeated
throughout a song, I'll have it before the song is complete. If there's 20
chords, and differences in the bridge, verse, and chorus sections, it's a
little more taxing on the memory. My uncle, who never studied music at all,
could come home after hearing a song on the radio and play it at the piano
(never took a lesson). So some people are born with really good ears and
once they figure out what it is they're hearing, it's easy to turn it back
out. For others, it's a little more tedious of a process. I could not sit
down and listen to a Bach Chorale and transcribe it for you at one hearing.
The first couple of chords maybe, or little bits I recognized here and there
(a deceptive cadence here, a Phrygian half cadence there, a i6/4 - V7 - I
Picardy third cadential progression with a 4-3 suspension - thes I could
recognize (because they're understoods in the style) and fill in the
blanks).
Mozart's famous example is going to hear Allegri's Miserere, and he went
home and wrote it all out on one hearing. He went back the next day and
checked to see if he was correct (apparently he was, and supposedly the
story is the church wouldn't let anyone have copies of this music so it
couldn't be played anywhere else and Mozart, figured he could copy it, and
did (though not maliciously)).
I'm not that good :-)
Steve
Matthew Fields
Training training training, practice practice practice.
Yes, you can learn to do it. It takes time and very specialized practice.
This practice is essential. When you get done with it, you should also
be able to hum a tune upon first seeing the sheet music, and imagine
the sound of the tune likewise on first sight. There's no magic to it--it's
just a skill, like reading and writing English.
--
Matthew H. Fields http://www.umich.edu/~fields
Music: Splendor in Sound
To be great, do better and better. Don't wait for talent: no such thing.
Brights have a naturalistic world-view. http://www.the-brights.net/
edi...@rcn.com
trancribing the prose in my head to words on paper a lot changes and,
when read back, the writing doesn't sound anywhere near as wonderful as
it did in my head. Same with my music. Reality is a harsh critic.
Steve Latham
<edi...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:1140785844.6...@t39g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
That just means you do not yet have the skills needed to translate the
things you hear in your head to either text or music notation. Or in each
case, maybe it needs to be realized (read, or performed) on order for it to
fully take on what your mind's ear is hearing. I think your reality's
harshness can be tamed with effort.
Best,
Steve
Matthew Fields
There's more to it than that. I've many times had the experience of
dreaming of an absolutely fabulous music, then accurately transcribing
it upon waking only to find that it sucks. The dream was not of the music,
really, but of fabulousness, and the actual music present in the dream
was besides the point. Reality is a harsh critic...
So what do I do? I work on my composing, rather than hoping for
dream magic.
Joe Roberts
Reading this thread raises a curiosity. What shorthand notation techniques
do folks find useful?
I'm referring of course to quick score notation methods that let you capture
a snapshot of what you're hearing in your head, to get it down on paper
before it fades.
I have my own method (dots and 'comma'-like curlycues with different tails).
It's worked well, but I'm curious about what other composers might use.
Joe
Matthew Fields
I write out explicitly the first instance of a motif. Then overlapping
transforms can be referred to by names of the transform, and grouped
into brackets describing the purpose of the overlap, e.g. T I3 T6 under
a bracket that says "up chromatically to here, delay arrival long enough
to feel right". But I only do that if I'm working on things while pretending
to take notes at a business meeting. Otherwise, I tend to use standard
music notation, composing directly into full score.
Steve Latham
"Joe Roberts" <cdex3_at_comcast.net> wrote in message
news:f8WdnfBU788pcpzZ...@comcast.com...
>
> Reading this thread raises a curiosity. What shorthand notation
> techniques
> do folks find useful?
I was sitting in the car the other day waiting to pick up my son from
school, and I got an idea. I took paper and wrote out meter and rhytmic
values of an idea I and put things like "duration lines" behind notes to
show they were longer, and angled beams on notes (they were 8ths) to show
general directions. later when I got home, I started filling in the blanks
(the actual pitches).
>
> I'm referring of course to quick score notation methods that let you
> capture
> a snapshot of what you're hearing in your head, to get it down on paper
> before it fades.
>
I think it also depends on how vague the idea is for me - like part of what
I wrote the other day had something like "continue in alternate long against
many sim Inventio 1 (I'm referring myself to the part in Bach's 2 part
invention #1 where there's a long note in one part (half I think), and
running 16ths with the motive in the other part, and they alternate in
dialogue). Another part of it simply said "together on long note - oboe
sustains - breath - quasi-cadenza.
So I'm writing and indicating a structural framework maybe, and then going
in and filling the little details (like the actual notes) later. My ideas
usually tend to come like this - I'm more likely to get things like
duration, direction, register, spacing, rhythmic, texture, or even a generic
idea, and then sketch this part out (or outline it). I can often get these
whole frameworks down for an entire piece (well, a short one anyway) before
ever writing a pitch. If I don't do this, I find I have a really finely
crafted measure or phrase, and then can get no further! It's better for me
to work from more generic to more specific, and of course when notating
these generic things, they're often just text, or durational values, or even
lines (to show ascent and descent, etc.). But almost immediately I move to
notating these things out, so I don't really "shorthand" the pitches
themselves.
Steve
Roni
The best method is to compose in your head. It probably takes some
training..
Roni
liebenson.com
Joe Roberts
Yes, am there, do that. But sometimes it's handy to sketch an idea,
quickly, in shorthand, so one can refer to it later. Not much different
from jotting down an appointment schedule -- it's an appointment to be kept
with an idea.
Rarely do the finished score's notes match what was in the sketch. That was
just a memory jogger, and of course music, like life, flows forward from
memory.
Joe
David Sherman
> Yes, am there, do that. But sometimes it's handy to sketch an idea,
> quickly, in shorthand, so one can refer to it later. Not much different
> from jotting down an appointment schedule -- it's an appointment to be kept
> with an idea.
>
> Rarely do the finished score's notes match what was in the sketch. That was
> just a memory jogger, and of course music, like life, flows forward from
> memory.
So write standard musical notation quickly.
I don't know about the other guys here, but I carry a small pad of music
paper around with me. Aztec Music Popers makes a pad that's perfect - I
think it's for marching band music because it look about the right size to
carry on your clip while marching. Anyway, I always have one with me. If I
have an idea, or hear something I like, I write it down very quickly along
with a note to myself what I'm writing (ie. - Str. Quartet, 2nd theme, or
Chevy Malibu commercial, drums & bass.)
Albert Silverman
>
> Training training training, practice practice practice.
>
> Yes, you can learn to do it. It takes time and very specialized practice.
> This practice is essential. When you get done with it, you should also
> be able to hum a tune upon first seeing the sheet music, and imagine
> the sound of the tune likewise on first sight. There's no magic to it--it's
> just a skill, like reading and writing English.
The blind leading the blind!
In order to be able to advise someone else about chords, "doctor," you
yourself must understand them!!
And as we all know, you do not have this knowledge. So what's NEW?
Albert Silverman
(Al is in Wonderland!)
where "theory" has no relation to reality
Matthew Fields
Welcome back after all this time, Al! Have you come up with anything
interesting to say about Schubert's Erlkoenig, or my madrigal on
Shakespeare's 18th Sonnet, YET? You've had 12 years to work on it.
Tis only you who brought up the topic of chords on this thread--have
you learned to read yet, or are you still in write-only mode?
Joe Roberts
... twelve (12) on-topic to the original poster,
... one (1) off-topic flame job. Yours, of course.
Poor Al. Newsgroup stalking makes you look really silly, you know.
Joe