#1
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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
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 |
#2
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Good post. I am following to see what feedback you get.
I’m still new to Truefire. |
#3
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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:
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. |
#4
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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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#5
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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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Really good answer, my intuition told me "learn more songs", so I'm glad to hear that from another person. |
#7
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#8
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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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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. |
#9
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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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2003 Froggy Bottom H-12 Deluxe 2019 Cordoba C-12 Cedar 2016 Godin acoustic archtop 2011 Godin Jazz model archtop |
#10
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#11
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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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“The guitar is a wonderful thing which is understood by few.” — Franz Schubert "Alexa, where's my stuff?" - Anxiously waiting... |
#12
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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 |
#13
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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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songwriting, truefire |
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