Play a tune of the song

[rony.kris]

Hi,

I am a novice in guitar and have picked up some chords and sclaes that I practice pretty regularly. At times when i listen to a song I feel like playing the tune on the guitar, but my i somehow manage to screw it up when I make an attempt. I mean I get no where close to the tune.

For eg: Yellow (Coldplay). In this song predominantly only chords are used, but lets say if I want to play the song like a solo (or the tune) how would I do it? Where do I start? How do I select the notes? I understand it totally depends on the ear, but there should be some trick to get to know the scale or the first note that can be possibly used. Any suggestions?

[arie]

start by finding the root notes of the chords in the progression and string them together. try to single out the most noticable sound that you are hearing within each chord and string them together. this would be basically the melody line.

[walternewton]

You might start out by getting your hands on the sheet music/tab, from someplace like here for example.

[rony.kris]

Thanks guys... I tried listening the song over and over again to figure out the root note and tried my hand on the guitar, to be honest most of the notes I tried sounded like the appropriate note to start with, but lost track mid way or wasn't convincing subsequently.

The question haunting me now is; how do i figure out what the root note is? How do i conclude in which scale the songs is to be able to use it's root note?

[JoeCharter]

Sounds like your ear needs to be developped and the only way to do it is to listen to a lot of music and try to replicate a lot of music.

The melody line to Coldplay's Yellow is rather straightforward and with a bit of patience you should be able to play it straight.

The root is pretty much determined by the structure of the chord progression. You can approach this intellectually byt figuring out the root and the appropriate scale -- or you can approach this by ear and just find the right note (there's only 12 notes in the scale so trial and error is a good method).

I'm a classically trained musician and I know all of my theory etc. But when I try to play a melody on the guitar, I hardly ever think of what scale I'm in unless it's a complex progression.

[JoeCharter]

Originally Posted by rony.kris

The question haunting me now is; how do i figure out what the root note is? How do i conclude in which scale the songs is to be able to use it's root note?

What are the chords here?

As a rule of thumb, the root is often the first and/or last chord -- although this is not a hard rule and in certain types of music it doesn't apply at all.

In a straightforward tune like this, the melody line pretty much follows a major scale. Once you find the actual notes, the scale will become obvious IF you have music theory training.

[bishopdm]

Coldplay's "Yellow" is in a major key. If you know how to sing a major scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do; remember "The Sound of Music"?), you may be able to figure this out. When the singer starts in, his first notes are fundamentally the "mi" note in the scale (the last note of his first phrase, when he sings the word "stars," is "mi", which is the third note of the scale. The next guide point is when he sings the word "you": at this point he is on "re," or the second note of the scale. Then, when he sings the word "do," he's on the first note of the scale, or "do" (pronounced like the female deer). So the singer leads you right into the root of the scale, starting from the third scale note and descending stepwise down to the first note of the scale. Does this make sense? It sounds as if the recording is in the key of B major, which is not a guitar-friendly key, so I'm guessing that they tuned down one half step and played in the key of C major (the first chord would be C major). If you have a tuner, tune your guitar like this (from lowest string to highest): Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Bb, Eb.

I hope this isn't too much to digest! And I hope I got this right; I'm at work and don't have an instrument with me.

[bishopdm]

Hi Rony.Kris. I was thinking about my last response and thought I'd add something. If you want to play along with the record you may have to retune your guitar. But if you don't want to play along with the record, then here's how to start. Play a C major chord. The open first string (E) is the note the singer starts on. The next chord change is G major, and the note the singer lands on at "you" is D (second string, third fret). The next chord is F major and the note the singer lands on at "do" is C (second string, first fret). The next chord is C major again. This might help get you started.

[Misifus]

What I do is to fun my finger up the second string, looking for one of the notes in the tune. Then, I try to find other notes in the tune close to the note I found. Often two frets up or two frets down will give one. Then I check for one string up or down at the same fret.

Listening to the tune over and over, I can usually find enough notes of the tune to figure out what scale I'm in. That let's me know the rest of the scale, and the accompanying chords.

-Raf