Quote:
Originally Posted by DupleMeter
The place to start is with a technique called Solfege (or Sight Singing). Learn the intervals (distance) between notes and how to tell how far each not is from the last. This is what they teach you in college ear training courses.
You start by singing solfege to scales (Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do). Then you start skipping around (Do Mi Do, Mi Sol Mi Do). Then you start looking at music and trying to figure out how a written melody would sound based on the solfege. The key is irrelevant. You just pick a tonal center and solfege the intervals.
The idea is that you learn to "hear" the intervals in your head so you end up being able to "hear" the melody as you read it...before you play it. You can also hear the intervals of a chord & know what kind of chord it is (major, minor, 7th, diminished, etc) and it's relation to the key (That's a I chord, that a #IV diminished, etc).
This not only helps with notating what you write, but also helps you learn new music because you don't have to "figure it out"...you know what you're hearing as you listen to it...melody & chords.
It's a powerful skill and any serious musician should develop it. It's not easy. In fact, it feels quite impossible when you first start...but hang in there and you'll amaze yourself as it all clicks and starts to make sense.
|
I am reassured to realise that I am not alone in my advocation of sol-fa notation.
In my youth, in the Highlands of Scotland, sol-fa notation was universal ... we had to be able to sight-read psalms and hymns and whichever songs our teacher deemed appropriate to be sung in music class.
From my own point of view, this early exposure to tonic sol-fa has proved incredibly useful. I ended up being able to instantly, in real time, sing any melody in the actual sol-fa notes. My party piece, as I recall, was "The Irish Washerwoman".
Where it has proved beyond valuable is in translating melodies and harmonies onto the fretboard. I never ever think of the chords and the melody as being named notes like in staff notation ... in my head I hear doh, re mi, fa, soh, lah, ti, doh, and the scale positions and the harmonies follow automatically and almost subconsciously.
Obviously you need to know what key you are in and to be able to communicate conventionally with other musicians (very, very, few of whom have any sort of expertise in instant sol-fa btw) but that is simple enough.
I have always been awestruck by musicians who can sight-read staff notation flawlessly ... it is not a skill which I have ever mastered, or even tried to master, but if I had to make a choice between having the ability to sight-read and play a written piece flawlessly, or having the ability to play a heard melody, with correct chords and competent fingerstyle accompaniment after a couple of listenings, I would have to choose the latter.