1 Reply by rockclimber

(20 replies, posted in Music theory)

Listening to only the introduction several pieces came to my mind, and I wonder if these few notes make an impression that contributes to the special effect.

- Thelonious Monk: Epistrophy    [this is the quickshot: insane dissonant notes on the piano]

- Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde, Prelude to the third act (and to the first as well); this one is about a very special chord in his time; also the similar song "Im Treibhaus" (In the Hothouse)

- György Ligeti: Musica Ricercata II [Mesto, Rigido E Cerimoniale]; the one we know from the movie "Eyes Wide Shut"

- J.S. Bach Sarabande from the fifth cello suite; only a few very impressive and quite loosely connected notes; some speak of "virtual polyphony" what means you as listener invent and hallucinate further voices

- Antonio Vivaldi: sinfonia al santo sepolcro, first measures: this is about dissonant intervals appearing to be not swiftly released

Maybe e s shaw could listen to this pieces for some seconds each and determine if one of these evokes impressions that resemble the ones in Precious Lord, for then there will be definitely enough literature to find.

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2 Reply by rockclimber

(5 replies, posted in Music theory)

Baldguitardude, I totally agree with both of your remarks. I just don't want to explain this way of thinking through in every detail. Because of this I didn't refer to any special situation. And to be honest, I didn't even think of these cases while writing.

What I had in mind is either someone who knows basic chords and wants to conquer the whole fretboard or someone who feels sticking in the diatonic / perntatonic / blues scale and wants to leave this trap without getting too sophisticated.

As a teacher I had to learn that if you have the lucky opportunity to find some foreknowledge at your disposal you should use as much of it as possible and add only small portions of novelty, even if then the result is still shaky in the hands of the students. The positive experiences should arrive quickly and easily. It is to their minds to construct reality. This might be called a case of didactics versus theory.

To my opinion lots of players would like to know how all this arpeggio magic is done and then they find huge explanations that do not use the practical knowledge they already own in the form of their neck chords.

But still I am not that certain about this approach. Would you agree that it could offer an access that might be quite dirty and unexhaustive, but may take the player some practical steps further?

Thanks for your interest!

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3 Reply by rockclimber

(5 replies, posted in Music theory)

Tutorial updated with diagrams.

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4 Reply by rockclimber

(14 replies, posted in Guitars and accessories)

If nowadays one wants simulated original sounds I guess the Kemper profiling amp might be the most advanced solution, but buyers let's still wait a little until the used ones get cheaper.

If you want your individual signature sounds then I think a bunch of several pedals would be better than a single multieffect. By the way you'll achieve the most individual sounds by using several amplifiers parallel, because you'll be able to exploit their different behaviors at different pitches, what some say could make even each pitch individual by sound. Maybe the legendary Santana sound has something to do with this.

Now usability is another thing. Always think of all three stituations: being at home, being in the practice garage or in the studio or being on stage. With lots of pedals in front of you the benefit is that you can somehow connect to them physically and you actually see the effect chain. The disadvantages may be sound loss and technical issues of which there are a lot. (In my pedal days I used to try to limit the sound loss by using active effect-chain-loop-switchers ) Next is the amount of hazzle to handle with, e.g. buying and changing batteries vs. managing a power supply system and not to forget the setting it all up.

Let's get philosophical for a second. Imagine two player personalities which I believe both lie within each of us, and who both want to set creativity free. The first one doesn't want to think of tech stuff and sound an be free to play the music and react to the other musicians. She wants her sound to be already done just manage the interaction of the vibrations. The other one hers some fancy new sound coming out of the instrument and gets inspired by this to play things he has never even thought of before. The second one would be more happy with lots of boxes and wires. The first one may be a kind of purist who wants his legendary setting, which is some little boxes, or he might be the handy guy who doesn't want to spend time in wiring anything up. Even in the latter case he might have the enlightenment to just use a good amp. Still in none of these cases the multieffect pedal would be best choice. Then please show me that player who actually performs on stage and likes to fiddle with the computer system of the multieffect as well!

Now that I have put forth all these reasons against multieffect pedals I must concede that since I am using one of the newer ones with a tube running in it, I don't think anymore of others, to be honest.

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5 Reply by rockclimber

(9 replies, posted in Music theory)

Most simples rules:

1. Watch out for major-chords in fifth-distance to each other. The harmonically lower one of both may be the key-indicating tonic.
2. Watch out for major-chords with an added minor-seventh, e.g. G7, B7. If you find such one, then the chord (major or minor) one fifth below may be the key-indicating tonic, e.g. C or cm according to G7; E or em according to B7.
3. Verify the result of the rule by ear: the key-indicating chord is the one on which you would most likely let the song end, if you had to decide yourself.

For other rules, e.g. for songs in minor keys, see the explanations below.

In his post Russell Harding may have used some knowledge about harmony theory. I suppose he recognized that there is a chord in major with a minor-seventh and according to this chord the (major) chord one fifth below:

D7 --------------------------------------------- G
Dominant-7  ------------------------------------Tonic
V7 ----------------------------------------------I

The minor-seventh on any major-chord makes this very chord a dominant in each case, what in turn determines the key. (This is in fact an application of harmony theory.) It may be even in some way independent of the key signature.

You need the couple of

X(7) --------------------------- "X-minus-4" (major chord one fifth below)
or in numbers:
V(7) ----------------------------I

Here X-minus-4-major is the key.

In some cases the key may be minor:


X(7) --------------------------- "x-minus-4" (one fifth below, but minor)
V(7)---------------------------- i


In other cases the dominant may be minor too:

x --------------------------- "x-minus-4" (one fifth below)
v-----------------------------i

And then there may be cases where the dominant is replaced by it's related minor chord:

iii ------------------------- I

e.g.
em ------------------------C


If the results of these rules are not satisfying, you may look look after three major-chords in the distance of fourth and fifth.

For example: G- C- D   ... in which case the key is likely to be the G.

To make it even more complicated: some of these three might again be replaced by the related minor ones:

G- am - D
G - am - bm

In turn in minor for example the Dominant may be replaced by its related major chord (for which as an example "Working Class Hero" with  em-D-em  comes to my mind)

VII ---------- i

G ---- am     instead of
E or em --------am

In Lady d'Arbanville you find both bm and its substitute D according to the tonic Em and you can compare what each of them does. In Sister Morphine you find several such substitutions: C G F Am while the song proclaims to be in am so that either the song should rather be in C or the three major chords  are substitutes. (Don' think too much about the change Dsus2 - Am in Sister Morphine. Maybe it is just a colouring of the am ...) 

But then there are songs that work differently, even some extremely popular ones. Yesterday I played Mack the Knife with my son and had the impression that it is one of those which essentially swing around between tonic (I) and subdominant (IV, here replaced by its related minor ii) with the dominant in no substantial role (and the song even being possible with this one left out). In these cases I would construe the last chord of the melody line as the tonic, even though one wouldn't find any distance of a fifth at all. (But this could only be the case if there were no major chord with seventh at all).

To explain this strange behavior: It may be the case that the melody itself would be harmonically significant enough to undertake the task if indicating the tonic, so that the chords may create tension by staying away from it. In such a case a sheet with lyrics and chords alone may not suffice to determine the key, as long as you haven't got the tune in mind.

In the end it still helps to "feel" where your home is. This can be tricky either. "If I were a carpenter" for example has D - C- G  and you may feel the center at D which is the V according to the rules mentioned above.

(These rules are the ones that work best for rock and folk. In jazz the dominant has further subtitutes.)

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6 Reply by rockclimber

(5 replies, posted in Music theory)

Could someone please correct the paste mistake in the title?

... only 2 types!

Thanks.

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7 Topic by rockclimber

(5 replies, posted in Music theory)

This thread is about an insight I wish I would have realized some years earlier. I guess it would have facilitated my first years a lot. I knew the basic facts but I didn't know how to exploit them. Now I am old and wise ... (grinning)

It is about voicings of the triad and how they are placed on the fretboard. You have basically two possibilities: Directly over the root note place the third or place the fifth.

MAJOR TRIAD FIFTH-PATTERN

Example 1: E-Major chord in it's first position (which in this case means zero-posotion or neck position). Lowest note: E
              Next: B (the fifth), then of course again E
              Ab, which is the third, comes as the fourth tone in this pattern.

|
|
|  X         Ab
|  .  X       E
|  .  X       B
|              E


The following is what I call the according fifth-Pattern. The lowest x here indicates the empty E-string:

  .  x
  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  x

The lower part of this pattern forms a power chord by the way (which is undetermined missing out the third). The upper three are enough to make up the triad in it's full sense. You may move particularly this triad pattern up and down the fretboard, as long as you stay on the four lower strings.

TWO OTHER POSITIONS

The A-major-chord in the neck-Position is nothing else but this pattern shifted a fourth upwards by pushing it one string higher. It only looks different because of the major third between the fourth and fifth string.

|
|  .  X       C#
|  .  X       A
|  .  X       E
|              A
|           

Triad-pattern:

  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  x

D major in neck position is the same but shifted one further string / fourth upwards.

|  .  X       F#
|  .  .  X    D
|  .  X       A
|              D
|             
|           

Triad-pattern:

  .  .  x
  .  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  x



MAJOR TRIAD THIRD-PATTERN

Example 2: C-Major neck position. C-E-G. The third comes directly above the root.

|
|
|              G
|  .  X       E
|  .  .  X    C
| 

Triad-Pattern:

x
.  .  x
.  .  .  x

This is what i call the third-pattern. The G-major is another example of it, one fourth /string lower. Here two patterns for the higher strings:
|
  x
  .  x
  .  .  x
|
|
And
  x
  .  .  x
  .  .  x
|
|
|
Again the only reason they look different from the first one is the **** major third between the G and B strings.

PATTERN CONNECTIONS

At it's left the C-major-chord at the neck contains the fifth-pattern in the higher three strings, but transposed one tone (2 frets) downwards and using two empty strings.

  .  .  x                E      |
  .  .  .  x             C      | upper part of the fifth-pattern   
  .  .  x                G      |                                             |
  .  .  .  .  x          E                                                     |  third-pattern                         
  .  .  .  .  . x        C                                                     |

Here you see that in the usual chord patterns these triard patterns overlap. For example G-major contains the A-major-pattern in the middle strings (without the root note).

You see: Chord patterns use these elementary patterns as modules

If you play the D-Major fingering for a higher chord on the fretboard by just moving it upwards the fretboard, you may expand it to the bass strings in two directions. If you expand it to the left (lower side), there comes the E-major Pattern we have seen, but with it's third absorbed by the D-Pattern. This is what I might have heard of as the Hendrix-Style.

  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  x   
  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  x   
  .  .  .  . (x).  .  x           
  .  .  .  .  .  x           
  .  .  .  .  .  x                                 
  .  .  .  x                                                           


If you go to the right there comes the C-Major-Pattern which is already shown above. And so on for the other Positions. There are not that many.

ARPEGGIOS

You see, they connect to each other horizontically and vertically. And this helps in finding arpeggios that may run up and down the whole fretboard. Playing and practicing arpeggios is considered by many to be better than playing scales. In fact it sounds more vivid and experienced than with scales. Listen for example to gypsy jazz (correctly: sinti ).  Wanna play interesting arpeggios that switch the chord or it's gender? Use the basic patterns of different chords as modules. It is always only either three or four notes (depending on the type) in one micro-Pattern. What in some tutorials (the better ones to my opinion) is praised for soloing as "triads" are patterns that result from connecting these patterns I proposed.


MINOR CHORDS

Now, if you always know where the triad's third in the pattern is, then transferring this principle into minor is easy: just move the thirds one fret to the left.

Fifth-Pattern in minor on the 4 lowest strings:
  x
  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  x
Fifth-Pattern in minor on 2nd lowest to 2nd highest string:
  .  x
  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  x
Fifth-Pattern in minor on the 4 highest strings:
  .  .  x
  .  .  .  x
  .  .  x
  x

Third patterns in a minor chord:
x
.  x
.  .  .  x
and
|
  x
  x
  .  .  x
|
|
and
  x
  .  x
  .  .  x
|
|
|


C°j11 AND OTHER SPACECRAFTS

If you want chord extensions, i.e. those additional notes prescribed by numbers, you just have to find the best tab position to move. O. k., this advise is really too scarce, but I suppose that you will anyhow first need the basic understanding and some practice before adding extensions. The same for diminished or augmented chords: once you got the main point, the rest follows easily. 

REMARKS

Do you have to practice them? Physically maybe yes, if you are not into arpeggios already. Mentally: not really that much. If you know the chords in the neck position you have already the patterns in your mind. To my opinion the real deal is to practice the connecting of the modules. Many funny things may happen here, for example by switching between chords or between minor and major during one arpeggio run.

(If you play some etudes by Heitor Villa-Lobos or the C-Major-Prelude from the well-tempered piano, book I, or some pieces from Bach's cello suites, you will find lots of these interconnected patterns. In fact I found them a century ago while looking for alternative fingerings for these technical studies.)

If anyone finds this helpful please contribute critical comments and maybe some better diagrams. I can't make them that easy.

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8 Reply by rockclimber

(6 replies, posted in Music theory)

I like especially how the minor scales are explained. It fits well into my thread about the essence of major and minor scales. Thanks for posting the link.

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9 Topic by rockclimber

(0 replies, posted in Music theory)

When playing music I always want either to rage myself out or to relax or set emotions free or take music as poetry to meditate world and life. I do not want to do quantum mechanics at the same time. This is why I don't like the rocket science of scales. And this is why I want to offer you how I explain to me how major and minor scales work. This thread could be named "Why major and minor are the most popular scales" as well, because to my opinion these thoughts explain why they work best for the needs of western music.

First of all we need two preliminary and basic facts that are taught in science, but which everyone knows by heart as well:

1. A note / pitch to be emphasized is best approached by a semitone upwards movement. It says: here is the target! (There have been psychological experiments done about it. Jazz players know: if you hit a wrong note, just sell it as an approach tone to the next semitone upwards. In renaissance music this semitone upwards indicates the melody ending in the melodic formula of the main voice.)

2. The one basic movement in designing music (in all cultures and ages) is the fifth downwards - in melody the same as harmony. (This is already given by the pure math of the harmonics: the fifth is the next relative pitch after the octace) In most cases the level of the fifth first has to be reached, which explains the basic cadence: I-V-I which is expanded to I-IV-V-I. (For this subdominant IV see later.)

This is enough to explain the rest!

Given the center tone, the root note of any music activity, there can be only two basic movements which involve the root pitch: either it is reached by the fifth-downwards or the fifth-downwards starts with this pitch. Here is the subdominant IV! By this we have three pitches: root, it's upper fifth, it's "lower fifth" which we call it's fourth.

Now if you want to emphasize the targets of these two movements you may stretch them and put a semitone-below before the target note.

Now you have not only the root pitch and it's fourth and  fifth, but in addition two further notes in semitone distance. They are below the root and the fourth and help to make the happenings logical and satisfiying.

What about the two pitches left? Why are they in whole-tone-distance to their neighbours? They can be explained by the need to make major and minor triads, which would imply that major and minor triads would be primary (they can be explained by the maths of the harmonics which is theoretical physics) and the resulting scale would be secondary.

I personally prefer another and more philosophical explanation: Emphasis means non-symmetry, means creating a difference. You can not emphasize all things by painting them red. You only paint the most important signs red. So now that we have already emphasized two targets, which are the root and the fourth, by semitones underneath them, then let's not destroy this effect by emphasizing others. This means: take unobstrusive distances, which are the whole-tones. This is in effect the major scale.

The minor scale is related, but it's fifth-downwards-targets lack the semitones. To emphasize at least the root note people shift the seventh one semitone. If you extract all the pitches you get the harmonic minor scale. Now there is s three-semitone-gap which sounds quite arabic or indian and brings difficulties for the triads. To smoothen this people shift the sixth as well and they get the melodic-minor scale.

I want to stress that until here it has always basic requirements from melody making and very archetypal harmony making that formed the design of the scale. There has been scale theory ever since the age of bacteria, but what I want to say is that there is a logic within the scales which is psychological and practical and not mathematical and which makes scales more comprehensible. Once I met an extraordinary jazz bass who told me he didn' think in scales at all, but in related pitches and their approaches.

Thanks and please comment. I better leave out the joke about the term "string-theory" ...

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10 Reply by rockclimber

(6 replies, posted in Music theory)

Many composers started with admiring Beethoven and trying to follow him. Some of them ended up doing something totally different, like Richard Wagner for example.

By the way I had an irritating and fascinating experience with one single but totally weird note in one of B's string trios. It was a little tone and had its effect on me only by some overlay harmonic change by line progression on an unaccentuated time (something like 3andand of 4). No one else wondered about this and I had to explain at length what I meant, but finally it became clear that it was indeed strange.

Another one was the beginning of Vivaldi's "sinfonia al santo sepulchro". First a long held minor second, then moving in to fourth. Two long dissonances at the begining, just holding the tension, not swirtly releasing it! Hey, we are in the Baroque age and this is not Black Sabbath? But maybe the musical language is still the same in Metal as well as in Blues or much earlier: hard dissonances that don't resolve as the rules would demand -they  may show pain and suffer.

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11 Reply by rockclimber

(15 replies, posted in Music theory)

I have invited two of my friends to chordie. Each one of them knows a lot more about this stuff than me, because both are actually pro's in music history. Waiting for them to comment and reveal my mistakes and spank me a little.

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12 Topic by rockclimber

(0 replies, posted in Music theory)

This is a beginner's tutorial which leaves out a lot, for example all about chord inversions and voicing in general. It shows my dirty working technique for melody accompaniment. It does not cover the finding of some fancy effect chord to prepare the song bridge or a scale change and other tasks like these. Please comment and add ideas. Show me your own chord finding trick.

Preface: don't believe the braggarts who claim that music is about emotion exclusively and therefore they need no theory at all. (In most cases the guys who told this to me weren't musicians themselves, but simply claimed know "someone very professional who says this".) Well, there may be geniuses on the one hand, and on the other in pure melody playing this might even be true for one musician out of 100. For normal humans like me I assert: there is no good chord finding without a little theory but simply with experimenting. There are so many chords available that without knowledge you will stick in the trial-and-error process eternally or will end up using boring or even wrong chords. (And yes: in some way "right" and "wrong" does exist in music. This is not about what any teacher says and his authority, but what you hear and what will make you and your audience have emotions.)


1. Find the scale root: forget the first melody note, look at the pitch of the last one! In most cases it indicates the root pitch of the key and scale.

You may skip paragraph 2 if there is any sheet available. In this case you may let the accidentals and something like the circle of fifths help you. But don't take the accidentals dogmatic.

2. Look at the other pitches of the melody, especially at the third and the seventh in relation to the root: is the third minor and the seventh too, then it is the minor scale. Third and seventh major: major scale.

3. Recall all the triads over the scale pitches: in every case take the pitch, its third and its fifth within the scale.

(If you don't know them, just draw five parallel lines and ad a key. Yes, this is one of the moments where music notation becomes helpful, no matter what any poser says. Throw the accidentals in and mark the pitches of the scale side by side, not above. Now mark over each marked pitch the following thirds of the scale, which becomes either line-line-line or gap-gap-gap.)

Examine these triads. There will be three major, three minor and one diminished. This is your universe for the beginning.

4. Work on the accentuated notes only, forget the other ones or think about them much later.

5. For every accentuated tone-pitch you may choose one of three possibilities: it may be the first (lowest), second (middle) or third (highest) pitch of a triad - of one of those you've found living within your scale.

6. Now you may simply go on by trying them three possible triads out for every accentuated note you'd like to harmonize. But keep your mind open for those few cases in which the sounding melody pitch may actually lie outside the chord triad. (Likely it is a seventh or even ninth in relation to the triad root pitch, which means if none of the three triads fits you may move down the triads you test a third, two thirds ...)

You can stop here and go on discovering. Have fun! Perhaps this is already enough for a music life. But maybe it is a little annoying to always having try three possible triads. Improvising musicians can't do it either. They know some further things. Follow the next step if you like:

7. More sophisticated would be to have a harmonic progression in mind: The song often starts with the I-Chord (with the scale indicating pitch as lowest triad pitch), then in some way moves to the V-chord and quickly returns to the I.

That would be it. Ok, if you wonder about some chords you find in songs, take this one:

8.  For each major triad (with the major third) there waits a "relative" minor triad (with a minor third) as a replacement to make song smoother and more elegant. The minor triad always starts a minor third lower than the corresponding major triad. And reverse: a minor triad may be replaced by the related major. Songs in minor get fresher and stronger by these replacements.

That's it. Try the songs you know by using the replacement possibilities. After you know how to handle this you may read further. Refinement:
 
9. In a song based on a minor scale, the working V-triad (V-Chord, dominant chord) may be major, even if the pure scale says it should be a minor triad. Trust me, even if I don't want to explain it here. Let me just say: First is music, then the scales. Scales are theoretical ideas. Sounding music rules. Don't believe in scales.

10. Add some spice: try putting the minor seventh on the V's (dominants), maybe the major seventh on the IV's (subdominants). Extend it to the ninth. (the additional pitch always one further third above) On some chords there may be additional fourths and sixths (and here the deeper harmony theory would start). You may discover that if you spice up the related minor chords the effects will be different. A minor chord with a seventh integrates it's related major chord. The effect of the major's seventh would be done by the related minor's ninth. Got me? That's why you find the ninth more often with the minor chords. 

11. Now be prepared for real music that doesn't fit into this micro-theory of making chords. Take "If I were a carpenter". Where does it start harmonically, where does it end? What is it's scale? Do not freak out if reality is more complex than this DIY, o.k? Enjoy it if a song defies this simple theory. There are so many progressions in beautiful songs that will not fit in here. Music theory has wondered ever since and created lots of words for all the cases. I-V-IV-I instead of I-IV-V-I is very mellow and mild. Highly likely it is the melody which demands the chords in this order, see rule number 5.

Some other things may happen. Don't worry, try out. Don't believe in the rules we already know alone. Here just one example where advanced harmony theory starts once again:

12. This is about power. Every (!) major triad with an additional minor seventh (dominant seveth) is a Dominant (a V-chord) and wants the corresponding basic chord to follow. This can change the scale of the song! One could emphasize this by saying the major-7-chords are the masters of harmony. They rule. So if in C-Major for example you add a minor seventh to the  F-Major-chord, which would be the IV, then this F-Major-7 or "Fj" becomes a V-Chord (Dominant) which demands IT's corresponding (!) tonic, IT's I (or the relative minor replacement) to follow, which is not the C-Major anymore, but the Bb-Major. Other chords don't sound that good here. But as always there are exceptions. (I've met songs even ending on a dominant chord ot there in the wilderness) Don't fear them. Enjoy them, because herein lie a whole dimension of individuality and an exceptional form of beauty.

13. There may be double dominants. If you understand article 12, then don't have to wonder anymore if in C-Major there might be a D7  (major chord mith minor seventh) at some point. It should be followed by a G(7) which is the dominant. In this case the dominant had declared itself as the root triad (tonic) and carried with it's own related dominant, the D7. You may call this a short-timed scale change. This is nothing too special.

14. This is a reasonable point to start looking at the less accentuated notes, for example on the 2 and 4 in 4/4. Why not enhance such one a bit by a dominant according to that following chord at the next accentuated time.

15. Here we have already touched the thinking of targets. Every cadence is a movement towards a target and every cadence includes as it's main ingredient a movement from V (dominant) to I (tonic), no matter how disguised it might be. The target might be considered as always being a I (root triad, tonic) which is approached by it's related V (dominant). In a song there are some preliminary targets. One of them is the dominant. The above said means that this V if it is regarded as a preliminary target I is a I (tonic) in it's own domain. From this follows that a chord change into the dominant can be regarded as a smooth scale change or "modulation". (This is why it is no big deal to use the mixolydian scale of the dominant's root, what means you would indeed simply stay within the basic scale of the song, right?. To start thinking in chord-function-adapted scales you may simply take simply the major scale of the dominant's root pitch, because you have modulated into another scale. According to the basic scale of the song this would be the lydian scale. This idea of "changing the scale into the chord" is not universal, but to my opinion it opens the view into a less complicated and more practical thinking for beginners and lazy ones.) It is to the harmonizer's decision how strong to approach these targets. An approach puts some emphasis on the target. By the way this is what walking bass is also about.

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13 Reply by rockclimber

(15 replies, posted in Music theory)

Holy Moses, this thread is years old! I wrote all this rubbish for nothing. Sorry. Should I delete it or leave it for fun?

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14 Reply by rockclimber

(15 replies, posted in Music theory)

I think it would be more helpful to bring some latin in than lots of music theory. The mathematically more complex pythagorean theory of Boethius was widely taught, but more as a philosophical subject (math, physics, ontology, theology, astronomy ...). The idea was: first think math (math is ideal reason and like god), then world follows. The real music didn't make it into the academics and reverse. There were the preparative schools for the pueri where they actually sang, but that might have been all.The music theory which dealt with real things out of mouths and into ears of real humans started with the intellectual benefit of the crusades in the 13th century, and this kind of theory was arabic-aristotelian: first what there is to be experienced (what you see and hear people doing) and secondly the maths. So you will be surprised how little of the modern theory you'll need. There is nearly no harmony theory, because there were no chords because the music was widely monophonic. Mostly the movement is I-Area V-Area I-Area, that's it. In the little polyphonic music we have left the rudimentary harmony progressions (call it chord successions if you like) are not purely random, but very secondary to the overlay effects of melodic figures in the different voices. Now you understand why the scales (and sometimes the scale changes) provide expression and meaning, as well as the melodic figures do and their pattern-like repetitions and modifications. Imagine them monks having to sing-pray these melodies for hours each day and night each day of the year - and no one knows totally if they read or remembered or mentally constructed (in the moment of singing!) this huge amount of melodies. If you got this the rest follows: they didn't sing monophonic because of being too stupid for harmony or counterpoint. Maybe this is just the only kind of music which can be beard in these large amounts. (By the way here is no deprived music in history. In each age the music people made was the perfect fulfillment for their needs and expanded their imagination. They simply recognized other details than we do nowadays. The student's encounter with medieval music resembles much the study of far-eastern classical music.) There had been all kinds of chants throughout Europe until they were standardized by the court of emperor charlemagne around 800. This was imperial power politics. Pope Gregor has depicted as having them received from an even higher power. Some scientists say that the music notation from which our present one stems was invented for exactly this purpose: teach the unified melodies throughout Europe in the same manner. (This notation does not "show" the pitch to the eyes. It tells: go up. go down, rest, do this or that little figure. In order to find out the pitch of one certain syllable you have to follow the whole melodic line from the beginning on, which is sophisticated and needs knowledge and experience.) Nevertheless in some places some old chants survived, but the vast majority is lost forever. Well and don't forget the mavericks who might have sung in more than one voices from quite early on. This could be related to rural poiyphonic singing e.g. by mediterranean shepards from antiquity on. Be aware: we only have left what was written down by monks as working musician's sheet material. And even of these sheets we only have left some luckily preserved ones. And we don't know at all what humans did outside of the monasteries. They just hadn't to write anything down. Here is much room for your fantastic speculation.
Be prepared for terminological twists: what we call Modes or scales might be called Tonus/toni and what they call modi might belong to rhythms. Definite rhythms are needed not for monophonic singning but to organize more-than-one-voices, which elaborately happened in the school of Notre Dame, Paris. After Boethius there are mainly two books: musica enchiriadis around 900 by no one knows exactly and the masterpiece Micrologus of Guido of Arezzo around 10xx. For the first one understand what a tetrachord is. The second one is a revolutionary explosion of techniques, even of polyphonic ones. In their down-to-eath clarity and intellectual precision both appear to be future alien artefacts in a way but on the other hand both also show what is already being done at their time. (There are descriptive and more speculative/theoretical parts, but no nonsense at all.) In Paris around 1200 it went up to 4 independent intermingling voices. It sounds totally mind blowing and futuresque. One thing I forgot to say: the idea of the dominance of the line can be driven further. Our chord progressions (I IV V7 I and others) can be derived from ruled characteristic melodic line endings in the renaissance, which are in turn based on the characteristic melodic outlines in the pure-melody-music of the middle ages. Yes, chordie's grandpa was monk.

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15 Reply by rockclimber

(2 replies, posted in About Chordie)

OK, thanks. I suppose you got my point.

Then sooner or later someone will find a workaround. Wel, sooner or later there will be some sophisticated database functions anyway. If it is an OOP. Just let it, for say 210 songs, automatically create three songbooks. beatles-username-1, beatles-username-2, beatles-username-3.

Or the word search function: Let there be a private rabbit breeder meeting somewhere without wifi. You might quickly sort the songs by using the search engine and take with you a songbook about white rabbits, one about black rabbits and so on. Then you might make a stage gag out of it. "You really want another white rabbit song? No, I don't have to google, I'm prepared" I mean, not that the website wouldn't be a creativity tool already, but it might be a quick-and-easy (and a little dirty) tool. To my experience working musicians love these things, especially the ones that play all kinds of stuff.

Sorry, each time I discover a software tool I soon slip into raving about it's future capabilities. Of course I didn't take into account if this kind of usage in in the operators' interest.

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16 Reply by rockclimber

(3 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Thanks a lot!

The link you gave me ate up the URL without any further message. If this means I was able to add the song then I am well and quite happy right now.

Last time I tried to do it in the forum, as you described well in your answer. It was there where it didn't work. At the moment I just want to contribute some excellent songs by Melanie Safka.

But there might be more to come. I just called two befriended musicologists-and-campfire-singers and told them about chordie and asked them to collaborate to make some extraordinary songbooks. I myself know this site for some years but never really grasped for what it really was good, until I now felt that my collection of physical songbooks has simply become too huge to carry around.

Too bad that many of the great songs of other ages aren't yet chord-tabbed in lyrics servers, although they are royalty-free. There is work to be done.

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17 Reply by rockclimber

(5 replies, posted in Electric)

I remember that long ago I didn't want the wah influence the distortion that much.  So I experimented with putting even the wah into the effect out-in line and being pleased about the outcome. I was pleased as well to have it behind the loop delay, so that the loop could be wah't. After all the wah ended again in the first place after the guitar, just because it was the morley and had the volume function in it, which creates crazy effects together with the loop. I didn't use the delay functions of the loop at all, because before delaying there should be the preamp distortion.

By  the way: is this diagram supposed to be a realistic setting or is it a setup order suggestion? As long as these effect pedals don't have really true bypass i would never stick so many together, furthermore, I would try to bypass some of them by using a loop-switch-pedal. In the effect line of the amp I ended up using just one multieffect virtual-room rack delay with some effects like delay and flanger, but at a very low level - so low that you wouldn't hear the effect as such. The sound was amazing because the character of pure tube amplification was preserved. The amp sound still reacted to any slightest action on the instrument but was somehow enhanced. People in the audience, even players themselves, were very impressed by the sound of this ensemble of throughout definitely only old middle-class gear. And I was the melodic player of an instrumental trio with bass and drums and had to amuse the audience several hours with this very one setting, because on stage I didn't want to get distracted by thinking of the sound at all so that I would leave the entire thing as it was for the whole concert.

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18 Topic by rockclimber

(2 replies, posted in About Chordie)

First of all: great website, great idea

So now for my suggestion. In order to create a songbook related to some artist wouldn't it be fine if one could at first select all songs by them with one click and afterwards deselect the ones one doesn't want in the book by one click for each of them in the songbook's content index. You wouldn't have to open each song one by one  at first.

With this tool there could be more artist songbooks even for the recently not so popular ones. Then it would be easier to compilate specific songbooks by selecting from more artist songbooks.

I see that for some artists the initial all-select would make a huge songbook including duplicates that no one would ever actually use nor downoad nor print. But these artist songbooks could be a database for easier creating songbooks. I don't know how a songbook is stored, but i suppose it is just the link-database-references and not the text. In this case the existence of whole-artist-songbooks would not fill the server with trash.


Thanks for reading.

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19 Topic by rockclimber

(3 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Hi.

The request page won't let me post a song link because I am too new a member. Well, let me explain. I am playing the guitar for 26 years in all tastes and shapes, had several bands of rock and jazz, and I have studied musicology up to Master of Arts degree. So come on, I know what a good song is. And I know that for me it is definitely the hardest thing to do in music. A good song is a mystery to me. I have already written one that I would call "good". This has been 23 years ago. I don't know how I did it and since then never did it again. For me a good song is the holy grail. But when one of them comes along I recognize it. I am like the elder lady in the movie that recognizes the unicorn even if it is transformed. Apropos: great songs in this movie.

So please let me contribute my link. I don't know if I may name the title and artist here, or if this is already covered by the term "lyrics".

Thanks

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