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  #1  
Old 12-02-2018, 04:57 PM
interstellar interstellar is offline
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Default Good Truefire Courses: Chords, music theory, progressions, harmony

Hi,
So my objective is to become a good songwriter on guitar (and piano) so I just became a Truefire member.

I specifically need knowledge in the areas of
Music Theory: Chord progressions and tension vs release
Learning more chords than the basic Major, minor, Maj7, Dom7 and understanding how they harmonize and work to create an atmosphere.
How songs are built and how good melodies are created.
Understanding advanced rhythmical patterns / Poly-rhythm
strumming techniques and percussive effects.

I learn best by hearing and seeing a lot of examples (listening to examples, not too much talking) and by having a lot of exercises or inventing them myself.


So far I'm wondering if the following courses are good
  • Chord Cookbook - Matthieu Brandt
  • Inversion excursion
  • Songwriting on Guitar Matthieu Brandt
  • Songwriter's Guide to Great Guitar
  • Creative Fingerstyle Guitar for Songwriters
  • 1-2-3 Songwriting

What ressource on these subjects have been of value to you on your journey? Can you recommend any of the courses listed? Any books or charts youtube videos or other truefire courses? I would very much appreciate your help

Kind regards
Interstellar
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  #2  
Old 12-06-2018, 05:06 AM
Sg3000 Sg3000 is offline
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Good post. I am following to see what feedback you get.
I’m still new to Truefire.
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  #3  
Old 12-06-2018, 05:24 AM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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I learned all that stuff (and more) without benefit of Truefire, so I'm also interested in what advantages (if any) Truefire might offer. (Not as a student, but as a teacher.)

To put simply, how I learned all this -
Quote:
Music Theory: Chord progressions and tension vs release
Learning more chords than the basic Major, minor, Maj7, Dom7 and understanding how they harmonize and work to create an atmosphere.
How songs are built and how good melodies are created.
Understanding advanced rhythmical patterns / Poly-rhythm
strumming techniques and percussive effects.
- was by learning songs.
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Old 12-06-2018, 09:12 AM
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Blueser100 Blueser100 is offline
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Gee, I think I responded to a similar question by the same OP in another thread...I even looked at the TrueFire courses mentioned. [emoji848]
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Old 12-06-2018, 09:52 AM
stanron stanron is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by interstellar View Post
Music Theory: Chord progressions and tension vs release
Learning more chords than the basic Major, minor, Maj7, Dom7 and understanding how they harmonize and work to create an atmosphere.
How songs are built and how good melodies are created.
Understanding advanced rhythmical patterns / Poly-rhythm
strumming techniques and percussive effects.
You can learn nearly all of this by listening, analising and experimenting.

What you wont get is the vocabulary of music theory.

What worries me about a post like this is that you appear to not have a personal view of what sounds good in a song. Or, if you do have such an idea you don't have the confidence to work with it.

Untrained songwriters in the past followed what they thought sonded 'good' or 'cool' in the music they heard about them. They started working with the sounds they heard, practiced doing that and got better.

Improving your knowlege of theory and structure and the rest won't help you do that. If you already write songs or tunes the next step would be to try them out on some kind of audience. If you are not already happy with the results I would suggest you change your method of writing, look for different sounds or subjects until you find something that excites you. That sense of excitement is important. I'm not sure how theoretical knowlege would help.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:11 AM
interstellar interstellar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JonPR View Post
I learned all that stuff (and more) without benefit of Truefire, so I'm also interested in what advantages (if any) Truefire might offer. (Not as a student, but as a teacher.)

To put simply, how I learned all this - - was by learning songs.

Really good answer, my intuition told me "learn more songs", so I'm glad to hear that from another person.
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Old 12-06-2018, 10:13 AM
interstellar interstellar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stanron View Post
You can learn nearly all of this by listening, analising and experimenting.

What you wont get is the vocabulary of music theory.

What worries me about a post like this is that you appear to not have a personal view of what sounds good in a song. Or, if you do have such an idea you don't have the confidence to work with it.

Untrained songwriters in the past followed what they thought sonded 'good' or 'cool' in the music they heard about them. They started working with the sounds they heard, practiced doing that and got better.

Improving your knowlege of theory and structure and the rest won't help you do that. If you already write songs or tunes the next step would be to try them out on some kind of audience. If you are not already happy with the results I would suggest you change your method of writing, look for different sounds or subjects until you find something that excites you. That sense of excitement is important. I'm not sure how theoretical knowlege would help.
Thank you, I think i have always had a lack of confidence in my abilities, always wanted a full knowledge of a subject thinking "my creativity will be so much better when I know a template of structures" and to some degree i there might be some truth to it, but i think i'm going to look for more songs and learn them since that's where the music is, and then perhaps work on chord inversions and some strumming patterns.
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  #8  
Old 12-06-2018, 03:05 PM
JonPR JonPR is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by interstellar View Post
Really good answer, my intuition told me "learn more songs", so I'm glad to hear that from another person.
You only need to look at the great songwriters of the past - at least the pop writers of the 50s and 60s.

The classic example is the Beatles, who had minimal music lessons, practically no theory at all (they knew a few chord names but that was about it). But they learned 100s of songs in all kinds of styles, to entertain various kinds of audience, in the years 1957-62. They then had all the vocabulary they needed to write their own. The only other ingredient (and you might guess this) was supreme confidence in their abilities.

The question is: why would you not write a song? Who says you can't? When I got my first guitar, I wrote four songs in the first week. Nobody said I couldn't! Were they any good? Of course not! That's not the point! The more I did it, the better they got (well, I think so anyway...) I just copied some things I found in other songs, put different pieces together any way that sounded OK. It's easy.
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Old 12-08-2018, 11:02 AM
dkstott dkstott is offline
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For a lot of years, I was happy playing more songs and never cared about the theory behind them.

Then I started to question "why & how come", but was never able to learn music theory simply by playing more songs. (Especially when it came to jazz standards).

For my personal journey, it took working with an instructor who was able to answer all of my "Why" & How Come" questions as they came up.

To the OP - Go to Truefire's YouTube channel.

There's a ton of free samples of all of the courses you mentioned. You might find that you can learn quite a bit of what you are looking for just from watching those free samples.

After you've spent some time watching them, you can decide which one interests you the most & purchase it.
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  #10  
Old 12-08-2018, 03:24 PM
interstellar interstellar is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JonPR View Post
You only need to look at the great songwriters of the past - at least the pop writers of the 50s and 60s.

The classic example is the Beatles, who had minimal music lessons, practically no theory at all (they knew a few chord names but that was about it). But they learned 100s of songs in all kinds of styles, to entertain various kinds of audience, in the years 1957-62. They then had all the vocabulary they needed to write their own. The only other ingredient (and you might guess this) was supreme confidence in their abilities.

The question is: why would you not write a song? Who says you can't? When I got my first guitar, I wrote four songs in the first week. Nobody said I couldn't! Were they any good? Of course not! That's not the point! The more I did it, the better they got (well, I think so anyway...) I just copied some things I found in other songs, put different pieces together any way that sounded OK. It's easy.
Thank you very much, that was very encouraging to hear. I feel motivated to learn many songs. I think I will watch a documentary on the Beatles now
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  #11  
Old 12-08-2018, 10:03 PM
tbeltrans tbeltrans is offline
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While I have no reason to disagree with anything said so far, I want to add another perspective. Different people operate differently.

Some will just write tunes until they get good at it. They listen to other people's music, internalize what they are hearing, and then start creating from that. I don't claim to know why the Beatles became world famous and so heavily influential of an entire era in history, while the myriads of other folks who "just do it" like the Beatles did, remain invisible to the world, but the Beatles certainly had something that these others did not. I am not convinced that any approach to music will do that for anybody, so there is certainly another aspect to this. Other than whatever that thing is, the rest is really up to however an individual is "wired" to learn. Others like to study and understand what they are doing in a more formal manner. If that were not true, then there would be no students for schools such as the University of North Texas, Berklee, Julliard, etc.

If a person find Truefire and similar courses to be of interest, then studying that material can be a very enjoyable means of getting involved in music.

I don't think any approach is necessarily better than another, but rather whatever approach allows an individual to engage with music is good for that person, whether it is suitable for others or not.

Tony
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  #12  
Old 12-11-2018, 01:06 AM
Clallam Clallam is offline
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I agree with the suggestion to look at the samples on the Truefire site. They usually post enough samples to get a good feel for the courses.

I have Songwriting on Guitar by Matthieu Brandt. I like it although it is not a beginning theory class. You won't need a lot of theory to understand the material but some will help. It is more about applying theory. I don't have any of the other courses you mentioned so I can't advise you on which is best.

I agree that learning from experience is good, however it takes many hours over many years. I'm old enough I don't have that kind of time. Truefire and other classes and books are a pretty good shortcut to the same result and make the process much shorter and faster. Truefire has helped me in that regard. My personal learning style also is that I'm happy to have stuff explained. I get bored and frustrated from the time it takes to figure it out on my own. I like to have stuff explained then have time to experiment with it. YMMV
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  #13  
Old 01-28-2019, 03:41 PM
brianlcox brianlcox is offline
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Default Get open access for a month and go crazy

About a year ago I bought one course and then thoroughly abused the one month free open access. I skimmed through a bunch of courses on similar topics and definitely got some good nuggets out of them. I basically had unlimited time where I could watch videos but not play guitar (I had a newborn sleeping on me for a couple hours every evening). I could have been more studious and taken notes of what courses interested me for later, but alas, I didn't. Either way, for the ten or twenty bucks it cost me to buy that one course I really got my money's worth out of the free month of all access. I would really recommend it. I also got a great fingerstyle blues course from David Hamburger, which I still enjoy.
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