Ok, now you've got my attention

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by JanVigne

This probably wouldn't be a big deal if I was always playing for someone else or if I could sing. I can't sing. I tried when I was in high school. The nuns needed a lead player for their musical. I said I couldn't sing but they said, "If you can't sing well, sing loud." I sang louder and they said, "Come with me." Into the cafeteria we went and they had me try a few different songs from the show. I didn't get the lead.

But if you're singing, most people aren't paying close attention to your playing. As long as I could return to the melody line every now and again, this probably would matter at all. I certainly don't mind creating my own patterns and chord shapes/positions when I play for myself. It just seems like after all this time I should be able to play a few songs for friends. Maybe I'm making too much of this.

Good points about singing. I figure I am doing the world a real favor by not singing (and wish a lot of other people would have the same consideration ). I suppose that is why solo instrumental guitar appeals to me - I don't have to sing. It does seem particularly difficult for us guitar players to be able to play a few songs for friends. Whenever I am in a music store and somebody picks up a guitar to try, all I hear is a few largely incomplete licks and chord strums, but never a recognizable song. When somebody sits at the piano in a music store to play, I hear music that I can recognize. It is not that uncommon to see a little kid play some really decent piece of music - ragtime, a blues, whatever on piano. But somehow that doesn't happen very often with the guitar in a similar setting. When I have played in musical groups that involved only me on guitar and everybody else on piano, sax, or other instruments, nobody expects the guitar player to be able to read music or converse in musical terms and concepts commonly understood by other instrumentalists as a normal part of their training. I have found that knowing these things has been a great advantage for me and a surprise to the others in the group. Now I think I have a real shot at learning to put these pieces of skills together to make the kind of music I want to make.

Tony

[Fingerstylist]

This Tomi Paldanius program seems to be exactly what I want to learn. Please let us know how it turns out tbeltrans. Or give progress updates even!

[tbeltrans]

OK. I didn't intend to spend so much time here, since we get a lot of homework in that course. However, I will try to provide a recap as we get into the arranging part of the course. The first part is theory and ear training (7 or 8 weeks), and the second part (the remaining time out to 15 weeks) is application to arranging. Though a lot of people claim to know this stuff, I have encountered VERY few actually doing it, so I am somewhat puzzled. I know Rick is a phenomenal player, since I have his MP3 albums. He writes his own material, but I would not be at all surprised if he developed this ability along the way to being completely original. I think what many of us have is bits and pieces of this skill set, but maybe not all the glue to make what this class teaches happen consistently and efficiently. I could well be wrong and lots of people here can do it and I am just coming late to the party. On the internet, we never really know.

Tony

[AX17609]

Originally Posted by Fingerstylist

This Tomi Paldanius program seems to be exactly what I want to learn. Please let us know how it turns out tbeltrans. Or give progress updates even!

I'd be interested in this, as well. Start a thread.

[tbeltrans]

Well, so far we have worked with the various intervals of the major scale, hearing them and seeing them on the fretboard. We have worked with the major, natural, harmonic, and melodic minor scales, the major and minor pentatonic scales as patterns on the fretboard consisting of the various interval combinations and hearing them. We are getting into the CAGED forms now - but differently than the way they are normally introduced. Instead of just memorizing a form, we get into it - what it is made up of and how the various scales come out of them and how to figure out melodies from that. As I said earlier, being able to rattle off a bunch of theory is absolutely worthless at best, even if it makes us sound knowledgeable to other people. If we can USE it to play music, then it has value, and that is what we are getting to now.

We listen to tunes, determine the key, apply what we are learning to determine the most likely chords, the form, etc. In other words, what we are learning is nothing new. I am sure everybody here already knows this stuff. We don't play guitar for 20 years and not know anything about what we are doing. There are relatively new players in the class who are struggling to get this stuff - but they are getting it. I really think it is smart of these people to get this perspective early rather than so late as I am. This is a review for those of us who have been playing for a while - but the way we apply it and the things we see and really hear in these are things that we either ignored or glossed over - that is new, at least to me. This is the nature of this course and I have no reason it will change any time soon. From what Tomi says, we will be getting into arranging soon, and I would bet that will be really interesting, once this foundation is set.

I hope that helps.

Tony

[AX17609]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

...being able to rattle off a bunch of theory is absolutely worthless at best, even if it makes us sound knowledgeable to other people. If we can USE it to play music, then it has value...

So true. Wonderful to hear someone say it out loud and develop a program based on it.

[JanVigne]

"We are getting into the CAGED forms now - but differently than the way they are normally introduced. Instead of just memorizing a form, we get into it - what it is made up of and how the various scales come out of them and how to figure out melodies from that."




This, in your brief description, sounds like what I learned as "harmonized notes".


And that's what gets me in trouble as I play, I keep finding new harmonized notes that I want to play instead of sticking to the tune. Suddenly, Love in Vain starts to sound more like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Well, not really, it sounds like me finding a bunch of harmonized notes I like the sound of.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by JanVigne

"We are getting into the CAGED forms now - but differently than the way they are normally introduced. Instead of just memorizing a form, we get into it - what it is made up of and how the various scales come out of them and how to figure out melodies from that."




This, in your brief description, sounds like what I learned as "harmonized notes".


And that's what gets me in trouble as I play, I keep finding new harmonized notes that I want to play instead of sticking to the tune. Suddenly, Love in Vain starts to sound more like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Well, not really, it sounds like me finding a bunch of harmonized notes I like the sound of.

To me, that sounds like creativity at work. One question I have posed to Tomi is this:

When playing the standards (Misty, etc), solo guitar can be interesting because the song itself has a strong melody and provides a rich harmonic palette from which to endlessly explore possibilities. But modern pop tunes (from the past 30 years or so) are often (not necessarily always) relatively static in their chordal movement and highly repetitive. They are interesting when played by a band with vocals, where tension and release, and the vocal imagery and overall dynamics make the tune come to life. But as a solo fingerstyle piece, if you play it without some extreme inventiveness, it becomes boring really quickly. So it seems to me that what you consider a problem, I would consider not a problem at all.

Tony

[JanVigne]

"But as a solo fingerstyle piece, if you play it without some extreme inventiveness, it becomes boring really quickly. So it seems to me that what you consider a problem, I would consider not a problem at all."



I think you're assuming I possess "some extreme inventiveness".

I wish.

[Bern]

Originally Posted by tbeltrans

To me, that sounds like creativity at work. One question I have posed to Tomi is this:

When playing the standards (Misty, etc), solo guitar can be interesting because the song itself has a strong melody and provides a rich harmonic palette from which to endlessly explore possibilities. But modern pop tunes (from the past 30 years or so) are often (not necessarily always) relatively static in their chordal movement and highly repetitive. They are interesting when played by a band with vocals, where tension and release, and the vocal imagery and overall dynamics make the tune come to life. But as a solo fingerstyle piece, if you play it without some extreme inventiveness, it becomes boring really quickly. So it seems to me that what you consider a problem, I would consider not a problem at all.

Tony

I would agree with that to a point. TE and LJ have shown to be very inventive of getting around the static chordal movements. There's much to be learned by these two especially.

[tbeltrans]

Yes, there are some players who really do make pop tunes into interesting solo fingerstyle pieces. As mentioned, Tommy Emmanuel and Luarence Juber do. So does Tomi Paldanius. Rick Ruskin has done some of that too. It can be done, but I still say it is more challenging when you have less to work with.

Tony

[Fingerstylist]

Thanks for posting this tbeltrans. How difficult is the material to understand? By the end of it, you should be able to at least arrange simple tunes, correct?

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by Fingerstylist

Thanks for posting this tbeltrans. How difficult is the material to understand? By the end of it, you should be able to at least arrange simple tunes, correct?

I think that if you familiarize yourself with the CAGED forms and the major scales that go with them, you should be able to handle the lessons just fine. That isn't the whole course, but that seems to be where some people struggle to understand what Tomi is teaching us. It is sort of lke learning to drive a stickshift, if you have gone through tat. At first every movement is separate and your mind is taken up entirely with concerning yourself how and when to shift without stalling the car. Until you get past those mechanics, you can't really grapple with the rest of what is involved i driving a car.

I have not gotten far enough in the course to state from personal experience that I will be able to at least arrange simple tunes, but that is my understanding of a good part of the goal of the course. The emphasis is on being able to hear what is going on in a tune and then be able to come up with some manner of arrangement of it without having to consult a fakebook, leadsheet, sheet music, or TAB. The first part of the course is really focused mainly on theory, and we just nearing the end of that. Today, we focused on being able to figure out relatively simple melodies, where earlier it was about being able to figure out what the chords are. The next logic step seems to me to be to put these together, but until I get there in the course, I can't say for certain what comes next.

Tony

[mcasey329]

tbeltrans, any updates to this course you are taking? I followed this thread with interest sine it may be something I look into later on.

Thanks

[tbeltrans]

We just finished week 9, which turns out to be the final week of the theory pat of the course. Though I knew the territory, being self-taught in theory, I got some real different perspectives and insights into how this stuff works musically (my reaction being "I never thought of it that way...") which is all that matters in the end. It should be interesting getting into the arranging part starting next week.

The course focuses on relatively simple music, not jazz or some of the more interesting music from the 60s and early 70s. At most classes, Tomi will ask us to call out a tune that he will use to demonstrate how what we are learning that week will ultimately fit into the big picture. In the 8th week, I called out Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is". I was shocked that nobody knew who Chicago was! I am realizing how big the musical generation gap really is. I have never heard of most of the bands that the others in the class call out, and when we listen to them on YouTube, the music sounds mostly like static to me. So the generation gap certainly goes both ways.

Anyway, Tomi found the tune on YouTube and started figuring it out. He said that the tune was much more advanced than what we should be working on in this course. He said that if we continue to practice using the tools we are learning, we will be able to figure out more advanced material in time, but we should start simple. He emphasizes that - lots of practice and patience. He says it took him years to get good at this.

Anyway, that is where we are. I can determine the key of a tune and the chords fairly quickly, but within the bounds of relatively simple tunes at this point. It will be interesting to see what the arranging part is like.

I have to emphasize again that Tomi's teaching style may or may not be suitable for everybody. It is, as with any teacher, an individual thing. Thee are people struggling with the concepts, but I will withhold judgment about that until the end because they just might break through and start getting it. I already knew about all of the theory he is teaching, so it is difficult for me to look at it from the eyes of somebody who has not encountered this stuff before and gauge how well Tomi is explaining it.

Tony