Transcribing By Ear Part 2.2

Hi, Everyone

In the last post we talked about figuring out single-note-lines and I mentioned that in my next post I would explain “the other white meat” so to speak…figuring out the chords to a song. This is daunting but I’m totally game if you are.

Prerequisites:

There is no substitute for studying this subject first. Chord construction is learning the many different flavors of the 5 chord types in music: major, minor, dominant, augmented, and diminished. What this study involves is essentially learning the symbols and formulas for the various chord types and then being able to have several grips (hand positions) for each.

The formulas are simply numbers that represents small groups of notes taken from the 7 notes of the major scale. For example: The formula for a major chord is simply written (1,3,5). That means if you go to any major scale of the 12 we have to work with in our system and extract the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes, when you play them together in any order, you will have created a major chord. To put that in practical application, if I wanted to create a C major chord I would only need to locate the (1, 3, 5) notes of the C major scale and play them together. So C major = C D E F G A B and removing the (1,3,5) would give me C,E,G or C major. Above and beyond that I would have to know the symbol for that chord. Oddly, in this example, there is no symbol. By that I mean, when speaking of chords, if only a single-letter note is given, it is interpreted to be a major chord. (C major would be represented by a single capital “C”. Confused yet?

Here’s is a bare minimum of the chords / formulas / sounds you would need to be familiar with to accurately lift a chord sequence from a garden variety radio type song:

Power Chord = 1, 5 = notated as C5
Major = 1, 3, 5 = C
Minor = 1, b3, 5 = Cm
Suspended 2 = 1, 2, 5 = Csus2
Suspended 4 = 1, 4, 5 = Csus4
Dominant 7th = 1, 3, 5, b7 = C7
Augmented = 1, 3, #5 = C+ (Not as common these days)
Diminished = 1, b3, b5 = Cdim ( “ )

Ok, if you still haven’t fallen asleep yet from all the numbers, the next concept that makes transcribing a chord sequence possible is understanding a subject called the Harmonized Major Scale.

The idea behind this is that if you harmonize a major scale or turn the 7 single notes in it into 7 chords, a very distinct pattern of chords emerges. Let me show you: I’m going to apply a process called stacking 3rds to turn Do, Re, Me in the key of “C” into 7 chords that could be said to belong to the key of “C”:

C D E F G A B

C E G = C
D F A = Dm
E G B = Em
F A C = F
G B D = G
A C E = Am
B D F = Bdim

This pattern never changes. For those of you who write music this is invaluable. Why? Because, with the exception of the Bdim, you cannot put these chords in an unmelodic order. Try for yourself. I dare you, ha! You could randomly mix these chords together on the fly in any way shape or form and it would sound like you were playing a well thought out piece of music. This is the idea behind what some refer to as the Nashville Number System. This is when Roman Numerals start getting thrown around and people start saying things like, “C’mon, Herb! I know you’re drunk but you can play this song. It’s just a ii, V, I in “G”!

Whether, you know it or not, this is the theory behind almost every pop song ever written. It is irrelevant whether the artist that wrote the song was thinking this way or not. At the end of the day, this is the little “ism” at work. Anybody’s whose grown up listening to music has it programmed in them somewhere.

Now you might say to yourself, great but, what does this have to do with transcribing? The answer…everything. Let me explain. When you figure out a song’s chord pattern it is common to be able to get a chord or two and then draw a complete blank on the few that are missing. Because this system is so readily in place, you could easily examine the harmonized scale of a couple of keys that have the two chords you’ve found and almost immediately see what the missing chords will most likely be. A little trial and error and you’ve got it. This should open the door to understanding chord progressions in general. From there it doesn’t take very long to realize there are only a handful that get used over and over and over, and…understand?

Well, there you have it. While I know this is not enough information to make you a master at transcribing, I’m hoping it will at least point those of you who want to know more in the right direction. Keep in mind that I have simplified this as much as possible and those of you brave enough to try it will no doubt find contradictions to this right away. Music theory is full of contradictions but, even those make sense in time. Now, go get a chord dictionary, and connect with your inner nerd. The rock star in you is waiting, ha!

Matt Venus

Hi, Everyone

Surprisingly, I’ve gotten quite a few requests to write more about transcribing music by ear. Let me first say thank you to those of you who took the time to read the last post and left a comment.

Prerequisites:

First off, you will do yourself a giant favor if you purchase a program to slow down and repeat phrases of music. There are many on the market if you care to take a look. I have a stand-alone unit that I use from Tascam called a GT-1. I’ve gone through three of them so far. I love them. It’s crucial to have the ability to loop little sections of music. Sometimes you may have to hear a small section over and over until you can understand all the rhythms and notes in the passage. These units make that very easy and it helps tremendously.

Also, on the theory end of this whole discussion, paramount to everything that is written here, is the need to learn what is called solfeggio or the musical intervals. Learning to identify the distance between two notes is the key to transcribing music for anybody on any instrument.

Ok, that being said, when I realized I was going to write about this again, I had to take a couple walks and think through how to teach something that I, myself, had developed over such a long period of time. There is such a blend of theory and just listening when I figure out music. I wanted to think of a way to lay this out logically for somebody to try to alleviate a lot of the mystery behind it. Here’s what I came up with:

It occurred to me that there are essentially two skills you must possess to lift songs off of a recording. I’ll talk about the first with this article and follow up with the latter (chords) in a different one.

The first level involves learning to repeat single-note lines. Like I said in the last article, this level is very similar to the popular 80’s electronic game, Simon. Simon was a game about copying an ever-increasing sequence of tones and blinking primary colored buttons. The better your memory…the better you did with the game. Same here.

There are several ways to go about this but one of the best ways at first is to find a good TAB transcription of a song you know very well but have never learned to play. One little caveat…don’t look it over. Part of figuring other people’s playing out is to be, for lack of a better word, unbiased or uninfluenced. The only information you need from the first page is the guitar tuning usually in the upper left corner. It is absolutely vital that you know the correct tuning in the beginning…down the road…not so much.

Next you should locate the first single-note melody you can in the song you have chosen and ask yourself where that cluster of notes could be on the neck. Listen and learn one note at a time and find a cluster or small group of those notes anywhere you are able. The best and worst thing about the guitar is that there are so many ways to do the exact same thing on the neck so there are lots of places with the right answer. When you’ve accomplished this, ask yourself what the rhythm of the notes is. If it is strange to you, try to find a word in your language that has a similar rhythm to help you remember. For example, if you hear a measure long riff that has a 5-note cluster of notes and then maybe a 4-note cluster…then maybe two 2-note clusters, it may be hard to remember even when you’re are sure you know the notes individually. But, you could think something silly like (hipp o pot a mus…mo tor cy cle…mo tor cyle…t shirt…t shirt) and it’s likely to all fall right in place. Now that sounds silly, I’m sure, but I can’t tell you how many people that has helped…including myself.

At the point, you feel you know the notes and the rhythm they are played in, the next phase is logistics. Ask yourself if the way you’ve figured the notes out facilitates doing them up to speed perfect ten times. It may very well be that you’ve figured out all the right notes in the most awkward way possible. You don’t have to be genius here. It’s really a matter of common sense. If the way you’ve chosen isn’t possible slowly, you will never get it up to speed in a normal amount of time. Remember what I said about the guitar’s strength being that there are so many ways to do the same thing? Here’s where you come in. Find a way of doing the notes that feels smooth and consistent above all. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing it the same place as the original artist. You’re just trying to learn to hear and repeat. You will find quickly that bends (if any) and open strings in the phrase you are trying to copy are sometime arrows or tells, so to speak, as to where a lick is done. Considering the fact that bends are usually done on the E, B, and G-strings, you can quickly hone in on the place something was most likely played on the neck. In the end it doesn’t matter where…it just matters if it sounds right and can be delivered seamlessly.

When you’ve covered the above criteria and you’re pretty certain you have it right, then go back and check the tab. See how a professional interpreted the same thing you did. No matter if you are completely wrong, you will only learn here. This is how TAB is most effective when learning to transcribe. Remember too, your version of how to play something may be better for you than the pros. Everybody’s hands approach the guitar differently based on your skill level and familiarity with the instrument. Also, I can’t tell you how many TABS I’ve seen that were completely wrong in sections if not entirely. Any of my students will tell you that is a pet peeve of mine, ha! In time, doing this regularly, you will start to see that certain riffs like the Chuck Berry riff, for example, are usually only done one way. And when you know how, you will start to identify it by just hearing it. It’s a steep hill to climb but it has a peak like all mountains do no matter how big and you can have the sublime pleasure of having tea at the top if you want to do the work.

At any rate, I hope this helps those of you who are trying to learn. I will be back soon to discuss the more difficult side of this coin…identifying chords. Until next time…

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Matt Venus

If I had dollar for every student who sat across from me and told me they didn’t know what to practice, I would be wealthy. It’s been my experience that a lot of really motivated people simply crash and burn for lack of a understanding where to get started practicing. This article should help point you in the right direction and get you rocking out in the mirror in no time.

If you lived in a cave and didn’t know anything about guitar playing, and you saw it for the first time, you would observe the player to be doing one of three things at all times. 1.) Strumming (swinging  the right hand wildly back and forth across a given set of strings) 2.) Single-note playing (using the pick or fingers to play a single or sometimes double note melody or solo.) 3.) Or you would see them using their fingers to play several musical lines at once-much like a piano player would.) Truthfully, that’s where you have to start when you think about what you should practice.

Each of these things are separate entities. You should decide which one appeals to you the most first. There is no reason to try to learn all three at once. As a matter of fact, it would probably only hinder you. Here’s a breakdown of three and the order that’s most beneficial to learn them in.

Strumming/Chording:

The study of chords, chord theory, and rhythm. Learning to strum with your right hand, oddly,  involves alot of wear-and-tear on your left hand finger tips at first. It also involves learning numerous chord shapes with the left hand and pressing them down with enough strength to let them ring clearly.

Above and beyond that, there is the study of chord construction, which will tell someone what notes belong in a particular chord and why they’re together in the first place. It isn’t necessary to know chord theory to be able to strum a song. It definitely makes sense of why certain chords always seem to show up together. It also helps immensely if you want to write your own music. But, to put it in perspective, there are alot of famous musicians who couldn’t tell you what they were doing if their life depended on it.

Learning to strum also means studying rhythms like a drummer. Half of the time a strumming pattern is just a guitar version of the drum beat. So, it’s not enough to know some chord shapes. You have to be able to switch between them in perfect time to make a song seem cohesive . In a nutshell, it’s learning to keep an obvious, steady pulse going while you play so that people can understand the time frame the song is in.

Single-Note Playing:

This is the next logical progresion for someone who has a good foundation in chords and strumming. This is also an excellent place to start with a child who’s hands might not be strong enough to play chords just yet. Learning single-note playing usually involves learning scales and many of the classical exercises that come to mind when you think of Do Re Mi etc. It’s is not near as hard on the fingers of the left hand as chording.

Along with this style of playing often comes the tradition of learning to read music. Again, I will tell you, it isn’t necessary to know how to read music to play this way. Luckily, there is a modern method for writing guitar music now called Tablature. With ”Tab“, as it is also called, all you need to do is know how to count and you can learn how to play almost anything you like. Tab is so common, it’s in the magazine isle at the grocery store.  So much of this style is pattern based. Patterns that you can see and easily memorize. Many student learn this style from copying famous guitar songs and solos. This is also where you go if you want to learn how to improvise your own solos and the like.

Fingerstyle:

Fingerstyle is a whole other animal. This style involves the other two styles in their entirety and then some so it only makes sense to learn this once a solid foundation is established in the other two ways of playing. It is the guitar equvalent of piano playing…or spinning plates for that matter. Practicing this style involves an almost completely different set of exercises than the other two. With fingerstyle a player is usually responsible for a bass part, a rhythm part, and a melody all at the same time. It is much more mentally demanding than the other two ways of playing, however, many people feel it is much more gratifying at the same time. It has a wholeness that many players find very appealing. Fingerstylist usually gravitate towards acoustic or nylon guitars since they generally facilitate this style of playing better. There are seemingly no musical boundaries for fingerstyle either. It is practiced by people from all genres. Good examples of this style can be heard in the music of Chet Atkins, Andres Segovia, Michael Hedges, etc. just to name a few.

Well, there you have it. I hope this helps to break practicing the guitar down into some more easily digested chunks for you. One of the greatest things about the guitar is that there are so many ways to express yourself with it. Pick the style that is most interesting to you and have at it. Private teachers, books and youtube videos abound on each subject so there’s no excuses for not learning anymore… so… stretch those fingers out and get cracking.

Until next time,

Matt Venus

When I first started playing guitar my father told me about a friend of his who was a working guitar player who could listen to something once and almost immediately reproduce it on his guitar. He laughed and remembered that his friend remarked once that at any given time he could have up to seven different checks in his wallet and he was playing so much, he didn’t have time to cash them. To me, as a young player, that had a big impact. I started trying to pick up little phrases from a Chuck Berry tape my Dad had bought for me. My dad, in his infinite wisdom, explained to me that Chuck Berry was the first real Rock-n-Roll guitar player and that if I wanted to be good, I should learn how to play like him. I enjoyed trying to figure out how things were played. Soon I moved on to radio songs. I remember wearing the crap out of the Money For Nothing riff and that cool guitar break in Tina Turners and Bryan Adams hit It’s Only Love. I guess I got hooked on transcribing things right away. It became a literal obsession. If I couldn’t figure out how something was played it would really drive me nuts until I did.

The question I get asked the most in my lesson room is how did I learn to just hear something and repeat it. I never would have imagined the reaction I would get from people when they saw me do it right in front of them…astonished as if they had seen magic. That always struck me as funny because I didn’t think of it that way. To me, it was like reading a mystery novel and using what was obvious to fill in the grey area. It was a game. Kind of a “can you repeat what I’m doing?” thing. Much like the electronic game, Simon.

What I didn’t realize was that every time I tried to pick up songs from a recording, I was learning rhythms, song structure, technique, and most importantly, developing my ear. I’ve played and taught guitar for over twenty years now and I’ve honestly lost track of how many songs I’ve figured out. I’ve easily transcribed over a 1000 or more songs from various styles of music. Truthfully, I think what people see when they watch me figure something out (a skill, I might add, that is shared by many musicians) is really just someone who knows what to look for. There are seven sure fire techniques you can use to get started practicing something like this and I’m going to break them down for you this month in the hope that you can get some insight for yourself and maybe start growing as a player by figuring out some of your favorite riffs.

1. The hardest thing about figuring a song out is figuring out what tuning the song was recorded in. Look for the lowest note in the song first. Start in standard tuning and see if it’s possible first. If it’s not you need to see what tuning would allow you to play that note. Most of the time if you’re figuring out radio songs and the like you’re going to run into the four biggies…

Standard = (EADGBE)
Eb Standard = (Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb)
Drop D = (DADGBE)
Eb/Drop Db = (Db Ab Db Gb Bb Eb)

Songs done with Slides usually require open tunings such as…

Open G (DGDGBD)
Open E (EBEG#BE)
Open D (DADF#AD)

2. Listen for open strings. Open strings have a very different flavor, if you will, than fretted notes. Sometimes a riff will seem almost impossible to play fretted but factor in the right open string and wham!;piece of cake. Or, maybe you come up with what’s going on chord wise and it seems like a bunch of strange barre chords…but you hear open strings being used. Consider the fact the song was recorded with the use of a capo.

3. Use headphones. “Panning” or moving different tracks to different locations in the stereo spectrum is a popular recording technique used by sound engineers to unclutter a final mix. When you use headphones it is sometimes much easier to discern one part from the next. Also, in times when you really struggle with a passage you can put the “cans” on backwards and let your ears trade duties and, a lot of the time, hear right away something that you could not hear when they were on properly.

4. When figuring out chords, listen to the lowest note in the chord and then listen to the highest. Try to fill in the blanks by asking yourself what common chord shapes would allow these two notes to exist in the same place on the neck. It’s true there are as many as 25,000 different chord shapes but, there are only about 35 to 40 that get used commonly and most of the time these days shapes don’t venture very far from plain old root/fifth power chords.

5. Read up on the players you’re trying to copy. I marvel at the amount of information available on the Internet. If the player you’re trying to copy does something idiosyncratic with their guitar or his/her tuning or has an unorthodox way of doing something, someone will almost always know about it and sometimes that’s all it takes to get over the hump.

6. Get a Phrase trainer. Phrase trainers or “slow down machines” as they are sometimes called are very cost effective and sensible way to study fast or slow music passages. These units are designed to repeat any section of any song infinitely at half-speed or sometimes even slower. When I started picking songs off of records I use to perform a delicate balancing act with my guitar on my knee while I would painstakingly pick up the needle of my record player hundreds of times to move it back to repeat a line from a song on the record. All the while holding a pencil in my mouth and a tab book on my other knee and God forbid if the phone rang…frustrating to say the very least. Then the first wave of phrase trainers came out. They would drop the song an octave, which could be a bit confusing, but they would slow things down nonetheless. A major improvement however you looked at it. A couple of years after that they figured out how to keep them in the right octave but, because of the processing, the slowed down version would have a very harsh comb-filter effect which would make you believe there was more going on in the part than actually was there…also very confusing. Now, thank God, we don’t have those problems anymore. Now you can buy a fifty-dollar program for your computer or even a variable speed cd player. A lot of units now have filtering devices to get rid of frequencies that confuse your ear. Long story longer…there’s no substitute for a slow down machine. You can hear any passage of music you like as many times as you need to hear it and as slow as you need it to go…very cool.

7. Lastly and most importantly, learn to isolate certain parts of the recording you are transcribing by listening without an instrument in your hands. Take your favorite song, for example and ask yourself as a guitar player, “Do I even know what the bass is doing in this song…how about the keyboard part?” I realized that I had heard certain songs for years and didn’t really listen to anything going on except for the guitar part…big mistake. When your trying to figure something out it helps to be aware of what is going on around you so that you can practice being unaffected by it. When you can sit down and listen to a song four different times and isolate and listen to only the bass line for example, then the rhythm guitar the next time, drums next etc. then your getting somewhere. Not only are you learning the subtle interplay between the instruments, but you’re training yourself to isolate parts and in essence, truly developing your ear.

Until next time…
Matt Venus

When I was in high school my junior and senior years, I took my college prep classes half the day and did the rest of the day at a technical high school. I studied Electronics. My mother told me if I was going to pursue music for a living, I should have a trade to fall back on. I fancied the idea of being able to fix my own guitars,
amps, and speakers so I went for it. I got my two-year diploma, graduated, and
took off to the exciting new world of gigging in nightclubs. Except for the
occasional lamp or toaster repair, my electronics training largely just
gathered dust somewhere in the recesses of my mind. It would be another 13
years before I would return to it…and it was all Hendrix fault.

Somewhere around 2003, knee deep in the throws of the
relentless pursuit of good guitar tone, I started to toy with the idea of
learning how to make an effect pedal. I was so frustrated with buying guitar
pedals and they’d almost always be perfect except for (insert gripe here). I
figured if I knew how the sounds I liked were made, I might discover the
secrets to the really great guitar tones and finally be able to make myself
happy with my own sound.

It started innocently enough. I tried to build a work a like
of a Hendrix Fuzz pedal. I found the schematic on line. I took aim at this fuzz
pedal and just plain got stuck. I ordered the wrong parts, got pretty confused
and eventually had to shelf the thing and regroup. It took a while to get back
on the electronic horse. I remember buying a box of assorted capacitors and
resistors from Radio Shack, dumping them all out on the kitchen table and then
trying to learn how to read and identify their values painstakingly one by one.
The curve seemed so steep at that point.

Eventually, I got the pedal made and tried it on my stage
amp after a show. The guys in the band I was playing with at the time were
tearing down but, gathered around my rig long enough to give me a thumb up.
Little did I know the storm that was about to unleash. A tsunami of schematics
from the web and trips to the Shack that would both drain the checking account,
as well as inspire some of the high points of my musical life.

I slowly got back up to speed and found I was preoccupied
with understanding the mechanics behind the common distortion pedal. The need
to understand this, for some reason, was vital to me. I started to build every
dist. schematic I could get my hands on and slowly but surely, as if by magic,
the truth behind the mysterious little boxes unfolded. I suddenly found myself
able to understand the seemingly esoteric concepts like symmetrical vs.
non-symmetrical clipping, op amps, transistor biasing and the like. When I
finally got to the point I could build a distortion pedal from memory, I
remember commenting to my wife that the feeling had to be akin to early man
when he discovered fire, ha!

Well, this went on and on. I kept a copy of each schematic I
built and tweaked in a little green high school folder. I built almost every
kind of buffer, wah, fuzz, overdrive, distortion, chorus, true bypass box…you
name it. I was hooked. I learned something from each pedal for better or worse.
I would build things for my friends and I’d almost inevitably forget something
minor. Then I’d have to go home and fix it for them…my friends, luckily, were
always very cool about it.

I remember being blown away to find that a 20-cent capacitor
could change a store bought pedal’s sonic personality so drastically; enough to
the point you could turn a crappy pedal into one you’d guard with your life. I
realized there had to be an industry to, for lack of a better word, tune
these pedals up to their full potential. I realized there’s no way any big
pedal manufacturer could have the time and/or talent to tune these pedals like
they should. They find a generic middle of the road sound when all the while,
lurking $2.75 away, could be the Holy Grail.

Well, my little schematic folder eventually turned into 2
full-sized business binders. I have been building pedals from scratch for about
5 or 6 years now. I encourage everybody handy with a solder gun to give it a
whirl. There is a wealth of information on the net to help anybody motivated
enough to try. It’s so fun to be able to make a $275 pedal that has a 9-month
waiting list for $40 bucks and your time at home. I could have never afforded
all the pedals I’ve built. Most importantly it afforded me the opportunity to
understand guitar tones on a whole different level. I don’t have a problem
finding the tone I want and the liberation that comes from that is wonderful.

I am not a qualified electronics instructor, but I have
built a lot of pedals and been lucky enough to study with and excellent teacher
(J.G., you know who you are), and I would be more than happy to help anyone who
would like to get started in the crazy addictive world of pedal modding and
building. Feel free to call me at the shop if you have any questions or would
like to set up an appointment.

Take care,

Matt Venus

I started playing guitar somewhere around 1983. Back then there seemed to be a strange mystique about the guys in the music shops that could play something exactly like the recording. I remember waiting for my lesson on Saturday morning and hearing the student in front of me nail the intro to a famous song and all I could do was smile from ear to ear. In my mind at that age was something like , “OMG! That sounded exactly like the record! That guy can can do what (insert your favorite guitar player) can do!” I remember certain guys that were so good, they seemed to almost glow, ha!

I spent a good deal of my youth just listening to recordings and trying to emulate them. I would have to try so many ways of doing the same thing to figure out how simple guitar riffs were done, I would pick up a tremendous amount of residual knowledge just learning to play something very simple. I had a Chuck Berry tape I tried to cop licks from and I learned from watching cartoons and copying things on tape players and commercials. I somehow began to pride myself on my ability to emulate. I honestly thought that was the goal at one point. Guitar playing became very much a competition sport for alot of us and playing became about one-uping your buddies. It became a game of who could be the master technician. Obviously, we hadn’t discovered the art part yet.

Then Grunge happened. Suddenly it was uncool to admit that you sat and learned a guitar solo note for note. It became a world of guitar noises over a tribal drum beat. Kids were getting angry and music was reflecting it. I remember reading a guitar magazine and a certain band, who shall remain nameless, had declared that the day of the guitar solo was dead and that they (with their infinitely small understanding of music) had deemed soloing as “masturbatory.” I remember thinking at the time, “if I hear one more guy who couldn’t play his way out of a paper bag talk about how soloing is egotistical and that they prefer to play for the song…I’m going to lose it. While I’m sure some of them were legit, I’m certain a good portion of them were just too busy playing video games to learn to play. IMHO

It’s been my experience that players fall int0 two categories:

You’re either totally against learning other peoples music. Add to that a fear that learning to copy someone will tarnish your musical intuition. You tell yourself  you’re a purist, but if the truth were told, you’re probably a little bit on the lazy side.

or

You’re one of those people who will put yourself aside and copy someone else’s music in an attempt to learn from it. In the hopes that someday it will help you create your own…if that’s something you aspire to. These kind of people typically do not shy away from music theory but, rather enjoy learning the intricasies that music has to offer.

(Rant Warning) !!!!

I have to laugh at anyone who will tell me that they’re afraid to learn, for example,  a Charlie Parker riff because they could end up sounding like him. If it were only that easy. I have learned a ton of things from copying Bird but I’ve never been lucky enough to be compared to him. Never will. I’m limited to my mind, fingers, experiences, etc.

What I have learned from studying others music is immeasurable. When you learn to copy someone you have to be a blank slate and let this persons style come through. Bruce Lee would say you become “formless.” From that develops a long list of musical benefits: timing, sense of song structure, feel, tone, technique. The list could go on forever. It certainly seemed important to the great classical composers to study the music of others. Fact is, no one ever learned a language without copying someone who spoke it first…and it no coincidence that people who have spoken with a good deal of people are usually very eloquent.

The better question is…

Which one are you?

I had been playing for 10 years when I realized I didn’t know how to count the time signature of a song with numbers properly. I was the guy who would count the band off one, two, three, four, very fast and then start playing a ballad. I was visiting at my teacher’s house and he asked me to play the changes to a song he was studying out of a fake book. I think the song was Confirmation. We kept doing great up to a section, which for some reason, I kept messing up on. We tried it several times and each time, more self-conscious than ever, I got worse. Finally he looked at me disgusted and said something like,” you’ve got to learn to count! Watch, one, two, three…Oh, my god!” I was horrified by my own ignorance but I had never been taught to think of music in numbers. I always seemed to get by just fine by feel until there was an incomplete measure. Most of the time I would copy what people were telling me and not really understand how they were coming up with the numbers they were trying so desperately to get me to count. But, at some point it happens to all of us. We are forced to think of music in numbers and here is the 411 for anybody who was ever confused about timing and counting a song.

Turn the radio on any channel and one thing you’ll notice about pop music is that it has a very definite feel or, more aptly, a pulse. The bass drum (the biggest in a kit) almost always hits on beats 1 and 3 and the snare drum on beats 2 and 4. You can almost bank on it. Of course, there will always be exceptions to the rule but this is the beat we seem to like the most no matter it’s how it’s dressed up.

Adjusting the channel on a radio should open your ears to learning to count out the measures in a song. This is a vital skill. Phrases of music usually take very quantifiable amounts of time. If you count on your fingers how long they take you generally come up with the number 4 here. The numbers can vary greatly. Sometimes phrases of music can last 2,3,6, and even 7 beats long, but mostly 4…get the picture here? Simple once you know. If you attempt to count what the drummer is doing you’ll often see that it’s highly predictable and they have techniques for distinguishing where the different parts/beats of the song are. For example, it’s very common to hear a crash cymbal used on beat 1 to accent a new section of music. Every time you stack those little counts to 4 you’re counting “measures” or “bars” as they are usually called. When you start to analyze music this way you will see the most song are made up of little clusters of 4 measure segments most musicians refer to as “rounds.”

Flip the dial to different channels and see for yourself how many time frames exist for different kinds of music. Rock & Roll happens in 4’s. Country music typically happens in measures of 2. Doo Wap usually happens in measures of 6. It’s very common to hear a folk song or a waltz in measures of 3. Sometimes bands like to play “off-time” and they’ll play a measure 7 beats long. That’s like playing a measure of 4 and then a measure of 3 or vise versa. Point is here…learn to count. The radio gives you a wonderful opportunity to study the time signature of various songs and can greatly affect your ability to memorize arrangements.

Until next time…