Idiot's Guides - Music Theory
Page 17
Once you can internalize the interval, try to determine what interval you’re singing. Is it a second? A third? Is it major or minor? Determine the interval, and then try to reproduce the interval on your instrument. Once you can accurately play the interval, you can verify the specific interval you guessed. (For example, if you find yourself playing a G and then a B, you know you’re playing a major third.)
TIP
When you first start listening to intervals, you should focus on the relative distance between the two notes. Is it a wide span between the pitches? If so, the interval is a larger one; maybe a fifth or a sixth or something even larger. Is it a narrow span between the pitches? If so, the interval is a smaller one; maybe some sort of second or third. Narrow the possibilities down as much as possible before you determine the precise interval.
Hearing Rhythms
Lesson 4, Track 27
We’ll set aside pitches for a moment and instead focus on note durations—in other words, your rhythmic memory. Use the same technique as you did before, but this time listen to the rhythm of a song’s melody. Start by figuring out the time signature of the song and breaking the melody (in your head) into measures. Now pick the first few beats of the melody’s first measure. Stop the playback, fix that rhythm in your head, and then pound it out with your hand on a table. Repeat this process until you can hold the rhythm in your head for half a minute or longer.
Once you can repeat a short rhythmic phrase, it’s time to up the ante. Try repeating the rhythm for an entire measure; then two, then four, then for the entire melody. Always check your accuracy by pounding the table in time to the original song.
With the entire rhythm of the melody committed to memory, use the theory you’ve learned and try to transcribe the rhythm. Start small, a beat or two at a time. Make sure the rhythm you write is mathematically sound; for example, if the song is in 4/4, all the notes have to add up to a full whole note. (That means four quarters, or eight eighths, or two quarters and four eighths, or whatever.)
Once you’ve written down the entire rhythm, play back the song again, this time reading the rhythm you’ve written. If you notice a discrepancy, correct it; otherwise, repeat the exercise with another song, this time one that is more rhythmically complex.
Hearing Melodies
Lesson 5, Track 36
Now that you can hear individual notes, intervals, and rhythms, you should be able to hear and transcribe complete melodies. All you have to do is put together everything you hear, in the right order, to develop your melodic memory.
Although you can piece together a melody one note or interval at a time, it’s easier if you try to grasp the big picture first. That means figuring out how many measures long the melody is, and how it’s broken up into phrases. Once you can disassemble a melody into its component parts, you should focus on each part separately.
On what pitch does this part of the melody start? On what pitch does it end? On what pitch does the middle of the phrase end? If you try to pinpoint individual parts of the melody, it should be relatively easy to connect the dots and fill in the empty spaces with the proper passing and neighboring tones.
Once you’ve written out the entire melody—including both pitches and rhythmic notes—remember to verify your accuracy by playing back the melody you’ve written. Compare the melody you play with the melody you first heard; the better you get, the closer they’ll match up.
Hearing Keys
Once you can notate a melody, you should be able to determine what key the song is in. For example, if your melody incorporates a B♭—but no other flat or sharp notes—it’s a good guess that the song is written in the key of F. (As you probably remember from Chapter 4, the key of F has a single flat.) If the melody has an F♯ and a C♯, you’re probably in the key of D.
Another way to determine the key is to fix the home pitch of the melody. If the melody keeps resolving to G, chances are you’re in the key of G. (Unless, that is, the melody is minor—in which case, you could be in the key of G minor.)
Test your guess by using your instrument to play a major scale in the designated key, while the original song is playing. If all the notes fit, you’ve guessed right. If not, try a related key—a key one or two steps away on the circle of fifths.
Hearing Chords and Chord Progressions
Lesson 6, Track 41
The last piece of the puzzle concerns the underlying chord structure. You need to hear when the chords change, and what they change to.
When determining chords, it helps to listen to the song’s bass line. If you listen to the notes the bass is playing, 9 times out of 10 the main notes—all embellishment aside—will be the root notes of the underlying chords. For example, if you know the song is in the key of C and the bass player plays, in successive measures, C, A, F, and G, it’s a good guess that the chord progression is C-Am-F-G.
You should also listen carefully to determine whether you’re hearing a major or a minor chord. Remember, major chords are happy sounding; minor chords are a little sad.
TIP
If you’re having trouble hearing the chords, you can always try to figure out the chords from the notes of the melody, which you learned how to do in Chapter 10.
Once you’ve figured out the chords in the song, you should test your chord transcription against the melody you’ve previously transcribed. Make sure the notes of the melody fit within the chord structure; if not, you probably need to rethink a few chords.
The real test comes when you play your chords against the original recording. Be especially careful to match where your chords change with where the chords change in the original song. It’s not uncommon to accidentally skip a chord change or two, so listen closely to make sure you picked up on all the changes.
Writing It All Down
If you’ve followed the exercises carefully, you’ve ended up with a complete transcription of the melody and chords for a specific song. Congratulations! It’s a lot of work, I know, but this newfound skill is one you’ll use again and again as you progress in the music field.
You can further develop this skill by transcribing other parts of the song, not just the melody. If the song has a horn section, try to figure out and transcribe each individual horn part. If there’s an orchestral backing, work on transcribing the string parts. If there’s a fancy rhythm section, isolate and transcribe the rhythms played by each individual percussionist.
Further developing your transcribing skill is especially important if you choose to pursue the fields of composing or arranging. You can certainly challenge yourself by transcribing an entire big-band arrangement for your high school jazz band, a full choral arrangement for your church choir, or a string quartet for your community orchestra. There’s value in this skill—and a great sense of accomplishment when you get it right.
Exercises
Exercise 12-1
Play each of the following notes on your instrument, wait for 30 seconds, and then sing them back.
Exercise 12-2
Sing each of the following ascending intervals, starting on any note you like.
Major third
Perfect fifth
Perfect fourth
Major second
Minor second
Minor third
Octave
Tritone
Exercise 12-3
Sing each of the following descending intervals, starting on any note you like.
Minor third
Major second
Perfect fifth
Major sixth
Perfect fourth
Major seventh
Major third
Minor sixth
Exercise 12-4
Sing all the notes of the following chords, one after another. (Start on any root note you like.)
Major chord
Minor chord
Diminished chord
Augmented chord
Major seventh chord
Minor seventh chord
Major ninth chord
Exercise 12-5
Transcribe the rhythm (only) of “I Got Rhythm.”
Exercise 12-6
Transcribe the melody of “This Land Is Your Land.”
Exercise 12-7
Transcribe the melody and chords of one of your favorite popular songs.
Exercise 12-8
Listen to and complete all of this book’s online ear training exercises, and check your answers in Appendix B.
The Least You Need to Know
Ear training is necessary for those times when you don’t have written music to work with—or when you want to figure out a song you’ve recently heard.
The key to transcribing a song is to listen, process what you’ve heard, and then document what you’ve processed.
To accurately analyze a piece of music, you have to learn how to actively listen—to isolate and then remember the individual parts of the song.
As part of the ear training process, you must develop your intrinsic tonal, interval, and rhythmic memory, so that you can remember and replicate the pitches, rhythms, and melodies you hear.
Once you’ve transcribed the entire melody, you can more easily figure out the song’s key signature and its underlying chord structure.
CHAPTER
13
Accompanying Melodies
In This Chapter
Working with a lead sheet
Figuring out what to play
Understanding different types of accompaniment
Adding a more interesting bass part
Accompanying on guitar
If you play piano or guitar, at some point you’ll be asked to accompany another musician or group of musicians. Maybe it’s playing behind a singer at church, or backing up your children’s choir at school, or even vamping behind a harmonica soloist in a blues band. Whatever the situation, you’ll be expected to provide at least rudimentary backing to the primary musicians.
If, along with this request, you also are handed a page of detailed sheet music, you’re set. All you have to do is read your part, play the notes, and take your bows.
However, if there’s no written music accompanying the request, you have your work cut out for you. Depending on the gig, you might have to transcribe the melody, figure out the chords, and compose your own part—all of which you can do, if you have the proper grounding in music theory.
What’s the Score?
When you’re asked to accompany someone on piano (or guitar, for that matter), you should first figure out how much homework you need to do. This is determined by the amount of written music you’re given.
The best of all possible situations is that you receive a complete musical score. If this is the case, you don’t need to read any further in this chapter—you’re set!
However, it’s more likely that you’ll be provided with only sketchy written information—or none at all. If this is the case, you need to apply the skills you’ve learned in the previous chapters to figure out just what to play.
Working from a Lead Sheet
Here’s the 411: you’re given a sheet of music that includes the melody and the chords—what musicians call a lead sheet. It will look something like this:
A typical lead sheet—melody and chord symbols.
NOTE
Learn more about lead sheets and other types of arrangements in Chapter 21.
With this lead sheet in hand, what do you play?
The temptation for many novice musicians is to play the melody with your right hand and form the chords with your left hand. You should resist this temptation.
When you read a lead sheet, the melody (also known as the lead) is provided for your reference only. Unless you’re playing solo piano in a cocktail bar, you’re not expected to play the melody, except maybe during instrumental breaks.
No, what you’re expected to play are the chords—along with any kind of embellishment or harmony you can create to play behind the melody.
NOTE
If you play in a cover band, jazz band, or other casual ensemble, you’ll see lots of lead sheets. The so-called “fake books” many musicians use contain hundreds of lead sheets for popular songs in a variety of genres.
But the main thing you need in this situation is to play the chords, which you have—printed in big, bold letters on your lead sheet. Play the chords themselves with your right hand, while you play the root note of the chord (the bass line) with your left hand.
That’s all you have to play, and it isn’t hard at all.
TIP
When you’re playing chords with your right hand, try to avoid playing every chord in the standard 1-3-5 inversion. Try different inversions—different voicings—to better group the notes from adjacent chords together. (Turn back to Chapter 9 for more information on chord inversions.) For example, if you’re alternating between the C and the F chord, you might play the C chord C-E-G, but then play the F chord C-F-A (first inversion), which lets you leave your thumb on the C note for both chords.
Working from a Chord Sheet
A chord sheet is like a lead sheet, but without the melody written out. Sometimes you’ll see slash notation for each beat, other times the chords will be placed over a song’s lyrics. Working from a chord sheet is just like working from a lead sheet—play the chords with your right hand and the root of the chord with your left. A typical chord sheet looks like this:
A chord sheet—no melody.
Working from a Melody
Sometimes you get the melody (in the form of a lead sheet) without chords. All you have to go on is the melody—no chords, no bass line, no anything else.
A melody sheet—no chords.
What do you do now?
First, don’t panic. Second, remember back to Chapter 10, in which you learned how to create a chord progression based on a melodic line. That is the skill you need to draw on now.
Take the melody you were given and go off by yourself for a half hour or so. Play the melody on the piano, and try to figure out what chords sound good with that melody. If it’s a familiar song, the chords might come easily to you; if you’ve never heard the song before, you have your work cut out for you. In any case, apply the rules you learned back in Chapter 10, and write out your own chord progression for this melody.
TIP
When you’re trying to figure out the chords behind a melody, you can take several different approaches. The best, as you learned in Chapter 10, is to try some common chord progressions. See if I-IV-V fits the melody; if not, try I-ii-V, or I-vi-IV-V, or the “circle of fifths” progression. Chances are, one of the common chord progressions will fit or at least come close.
The key thing here is that the chords you write are now your chords. Even if they’re not quite the established chords for this melody, you can get away with it by claiming that this is your unique harmonization. You’re at the piano, and you’re in charge, so what you play must be right!
Now, if you’re playing along with other musicians—perhaps a bass player or a guitarist—you don’t want to end up with three different sets of chords to this single melody. If you’re playing in a group, put your heads together and work out the chord progressions as a group. Heck, maybe one of you actually knows the chords already! In any case, three heads are better than one, and together you should be able to come up with just the right chord progression for this song.
Working from Nothing
Now we visit the worst-case scenario. You’re asked to play piano accompaniment and you’re given no music at all. All you have are your ears and your fingers, and all the skills you’ve picked up from reading this book.
Now you can panic!
In this situation, it’s okay to ask for help. Ask the person in charge if he or she has anything to give you—a lead sheet, a lyric sheet, an old trumpet part—anything at all. (Anything is better than nothing in this scenario.) Ask what key the song is in. Ask if there’s anyone who k
nows the chords and can either teach them to you or write them down for you. Ask if anyone has a recording of the song you can take home and listen to.
In short, ask for all the help you can get.
Whatever meager help you get, you’re now on your own. It’s time to fall back on the ear-training skills you learned back in Chapter 12. You’ll need to figure out the melody, figure out the key, and figure out the chords. In short, you have to reconstruct the song from memory and hope you get it right.
Then, when you start to play and the vocalist says “Those aren’t the right chords!” make sure you have something small but heavy nearby—because you’ll want to throw it!
Working the Form
Once you get the chords written down, you’ll need to write down some sort of “cheat sheet” to help you remember the form of the song. Do you play one or two verses before the first chorus? How long is the introduction? Is there an instrumental break in the middle—and for how many measures? Do you fade out at the end, or stop cold?
You’ll need to figure all this out and write it down, so you’ll remember when to start, when to stop, and what to do in between. Use the form notation (AABA, ABCA, and so forth) you learned back in Chapter 11 to help you keep your place.