Posts
The Equipment
This article answers your sound questions. We’ll find out how to distinguish good and bad speakers, and the steps to reducing noise and hum from a PA.
By: debo
Topics: sound engineering
This article is based on some emails I have received. Please feel free to send me your specific questions, although I will refrain from making brand-name recommendations.
Q: How can I tell if used speakers are any good?
A: Always do a listening test with recorded material. In general, PA speakers will either work or they won’t, and a quick listening test will be sufficient. However, there are some extra items to check that can save you hassles later, or allow you to knock down the price.
First, check that the cabinet is strong. It may look pristine, or bedraggled, but if the box is not rigid, it won’t sound right. This may not be obvious during a casual sound test, because the changes to the acoustic resonances may not be exposed by what you play through them. Pick up the speaker, or lean on it, and verify that the corners are strong and none of the panels are cracked.
Next, check the woofer. If it is made of a paper material, check that there is no water damage. If the cone is made of a polymer/plastic, then it is likely to last a very long time. If the center dome is pushed in, don’t worry, it just looks bad. Then check that the coil is moving freely. To do this, place your hands on either side of the woofer, with your thumb on the speaker cone. Place your ear as close to the cone as you can, and gently push the cone in a little. Try to push both side evenly. Listen for any scratching that might be the coil rubbing on the magnet. Try this on your home stereo first so that you have an idea of what an undamaged speaker should sound like. If you are convinced that the coil is rubbing, avoid this speaker because the coil wires will eventually wear through and break.
Next, check the port and padding. If there is a port or vent, check that it is not damaged. Some speakers have tubes, others do not. Also check for any padding (looks like house insulation or packing foam). If there is some present, check for water damage or bugs (yikes!). So long as no permanent harm has been done, this type of damage is OK.
Last, check the wiring. If you can, remove the jack panel and observe that all of the wires are undamaged. Usually, these wires are loose and perhaps disorganized, but so long as there are no temporary splices, it should be OK. Make sure that the panel jacks themselves are tightened. Check for fuses. There should not be any fuses for the woofer, but it is OK to have one for the horn or tweeters.
Q: What is the best way to reduce hum and noise in our PA?
A: Here are some simple steps to take. but remember that noise is sneaky, it gets into the system in some really weird ways.
Step 1: Buy an outlet tester. Just because an outlet has 3 holes, doesn’t mean that they are all wired. Proper grounding is important for two reasons. First is safety; ungrounded systems can cause minor (and major!) shocks. Second is hum; hum can really ruin an otherwise excellent sound system. If there is no “earth ground”, don’t use that outlet. If you are at a bar, and none of the outlets are grounded, suggest that the building inspector be contacted (no joke). (As an aside, I don’t know what the standards are for non-US systems)
Step 2: Plug all your PA electronics and amps into the same outlet. Assuming that you have a reasonable bar PA sound system, you won’t draw more than 5 amps (figure 1 amp = 100 watts) for all of your gear, so plug it all into one outlet strip. If you like to keep your power amps near your speakers (a good idea, but not crucial), then it is probably OK to plug them in near the stage, and plug in your mix board, etc wherever you set up. (If you do get a bit of hum, try running an extension cord from the amps to the mixer, just don’t lay it too close to the snake or mic cables.)
Step 3: Avoid the lighting outlets. Lights draw an incredible amount of power, and dimmers create an enormous amount of electronic noise. If you hear a high-pitched buzzing like a mosquito, and if it changes as the lights are dimmed, then you are sharing a circuit with the lighting system. If you have to, run a long cord to the other end of the building just to get away from it.
Step 4: Always use the correct cables. Don’t use speaker cables for microphones or guitars, and vice versa. They may all have ¼ jacks, but they are not the same. Also, use 3-pin XLRs for your mics, and don’t forget the shielding on the cables.
Friday, November 13, 2009
More With Feeling…
The trick to being a better guitarist is you have to be able to work both inside and outside of the box. Imagination plays an important part.
By: debo
Topics: guitar columns, soloing and improvisation
“…D minor, the saddest of all keys…” – Nigel Tufnel, This Is Spinal Tap
It’s the hardest fact for any teacher to accept. You can teach a person how to hold a guitar, how to play a chord, how to strum a rhythm. You can show them tricks and have them memorize scales and riffs and leads and fills. You can demonstrate why it’s important to be able to hear an interval or whether a song is in a major or minor key. In short, you can “make” a student the best guitarist you can…
But ultimately what will separate the guitarist from the artist can never be taught. Oh you can coach and coax and go over things with your student over and over and over and over and over again. But you cannot give him or her an intimate connection to music. You cannot give your pupils, for lack of a better word, soul.
I think that it’s talking about leads and lead guitarists that brings this out in me. Maybe it was seeing the Patti Smith Group here in town last night. Maybe it was playing Wish You Were Here for the God-knows-how-many-eth time last weekend with a group of musicians and marveling at how it never gets old.
Way, way too often a guitarist is much more concerned about being the loudest, fastest, hippest new thing to come along since (insert the name of your favorite guitarist here). The philosophy is often, “Hey, I can play, therefore I’m (insert your greatest adjective here).”
But the truth, for those of us who are able to admit it to ourselves and others, is that while we may be in utter awe of a player’s technical prowess, it’s the music that moves us to laughter or tears that really makes us jealous. A simple riff that takes me out of my office or car or room and plants me smack dab in the middle of a long forgotten summer romance’s kiss. A turn of phrase that has me talking to my dad again. A chord or two that reunites me with bandmates now scattered across the globe. A long sustained note that lets me gaze into eyes that I know I will never look into again in this lifetime.
The satisfaction that I get when someone says, “Wow, you can really play!” is an unbelievably small fraction of the sheer joy I experience when someone tells me, “That song made me feel…” and then goes into some deeply personal memory or dream. If I could ever figure out how to always connect with music like that, I would never work a day in my life ever again.
Now the really ironic thing is this: while the art of developing this kind of connection between music and emotion cannot be taught, it can be learned. But this learning process is very involving (evolving would be a better term) and the guitarist has to be willing to change many of his or her conceptions of musicianship.
Getting Connected
Any of my friends will tell you that paradoxes positively enchant me (they bring out the best and worst in me – ha ha). And this topic is rife with them, the first being that the most vital component to become a “connected” or “feeling” guitarist is knowledge. You have to be emotional enough to recognize and identify the strongest feelings you (or someone else) can have and remain detached enough to try to figure what triggers that particular emotion. Certain sounds have the ability to create emotional responses, occasionally intense ones. If you don’t believe me, a demonstration may be in order. The next time you’re with a friend who doesn’t play an instrument, ask him or her to help you with a little experiment. Play two chords, one a major and one a minor (try to pick two different keys) (and don’t say what the names of the chords are) and ask your friend which of the two chords should be described as “happy” and which one as “sad.” Nine times out of ten they will pick the minor chord as the “sad” one. It’s astonishing how ingrained this is.
And this is just a simple major vs. minor comparison with chords. You can also create moods with the voicing and phrasing of a chord or even with a riff. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. has talked about how the Peter Buck’s guitar riff in Shiny Happy People inspired him to write a bouncy happy lyric to match it. And David Gilmour’s simple yet incredibly melancholy four- note guitar motif (heard in Shine On You Crazy Diamond (part III)) set the stage for the entire Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here. To illustrate the powerful difference phrasing can make, try this out: first play the straight chord from which the motif is derived and then play the actual motif itself, as illustrated here:
Quite a striking contrast, huh? Now, while the Gm13 is in and of itself an interesting chord, Gilmour’s motif truly evokes an emotional response, whether it is one of sadness or of what I call “unresolved-ness.”
So how does one come up with music like this? It’s another paradox – knowledge combined with experimentation and the occasional blessing of good fortune. If you’re a frequent reader of these pages you know how I’m always harping on people to “write things down.” In addition to my “practice” time, I also make it a point to spend so much time a week in “experimentation”(not to be confused with “goofiness”). I may work on coming up with a new tuning or a new chord voicing or a way to work out a new arrangement, but there’s always a purpose to it, which is what separates “experimenting” from “fun.” It’s a “controlled goofiness,” if you will.
And sometimes I can come up with a voicing, or a phrase or a chord progression, which sets off all my internal alarms. Then I have to make absolutely certain that I don’t forget it at a later point (and this does happen, more often than I’d ever care to admit).
I’m going to use of my songs, When You Come Home, to further demonstrate the use of chord voicing to evoke an emotion. When I was writing this in 1983, I initially had a simple chord structure for the verses, which looked like this (this is the first half of the first verse):
But I really wanted something more spooky and ominous (it’s about a plane crash ) (no, don’t ask…) so I spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways of making it sound darker. By playing with different chord voicings and by using my low E string as sort of rhythmic drone, I managed to come up with this:
Yes, you can tell that I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, but this version definitely creates a more uneasy feeling than the original chord arrangement did.
And, thinking about it, this may be another reason why it takes me longer to come up with the lyrics of a song than it does to finish the music. It’s important to me that the music and the lyrics are in sync with each other. Even when being “in sync” means being in complete contrast with each other – another paradox, I know, and one we’ll examine at a later date.
Again, you can’t just come up with things like this if you play guitar strictly by the book. I guess this is why I don’t encourage people to learn anything – whether it’s leads or strumming or songwriting – simply by copying. Using your imagination, even when you’re not really certain of what you’re doing, can lead down much more interesting roads. Musically, it’s pretty easy to go back and find out why things work the way they do. And, really, you may very likely come up with something that someone else has already done (there are only so many things you can do with a guitar) (not that they’ve all been done yet). But the thing is that you came up with it, too.
You can see that the “connected” guitarist is ultimately more concerned with sound than he or she is with technique. And “sound” covers a lot of ground. Not only just the actual notes that your guitar produces but the countless ways of bringing them out of your guitar. This is where there is no end to one’s imagination. We tend to be pretty spoiled in this day and age. Effects are cheap and easy to come by. Push a button, get distortion. If you don’t like it, push another button and edit your distortion. But just like coming up with leads and fills, any effect should be there to enhance the song, not to draw attention to itself.
And a lot of times you don’t even need the effects. The very first time I went into a recording studio was 1977 to record a song called Sapphire. My friend Greg played the lead part, which basically consisted of him playing a note on his electric guitar with the volume knob turned to its lowest setting. By wrapping his pinky around the volume control, he would gradually turn it up after striking a note. This created an eerie synthetic tone that ideally suited that particular version of the song. This is done all the time these days.
If you listen to some older music, especially from the late sixties, you can’t help but marvel at the various sounds they were able to create with four track recording equipment that most of us would be embarrassed to own these days. It’s all a matter of trying things out just to hear what they might sound like.
And it’s not just “ancient” stuff. On the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, listen very closely to the bridge. Things get very hushed while Annie Lennox sings “Hold your head up…” but you can hear a very distinct chiming in the background. Know what that is? Glass milk bottles filled to various levels with water! Isn’t that great? How incredibly low-tech!
This is what I mean about seeing things as if it’s the first time. More often than not, creating an atmosphere or evoking an emotion is a relatively simple thing. And that makes perfect sense since we’re concerning ourselves with connecting with our listeners on such a basic level. Sometimes the more overproduced or technical the music, the easier it is to lose your audience.
Take classical music (and I happen to love classical music). No musician should ever look down on a classical musician. It’s harder to make a living in that field than it is as a professional athlete. Even the “average” classical musician has more technique and training than the vast majority of us.
But the “average” listener is not really concerned with all that, anymore than he or she can really appreciate how fast your fingers can fly on the fretboard. When it comes to classical music, most people only remember bits and pieces and those bits and pieces, more often than not, are simple melodies or motifs (like the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony). You may not believe it, but there are numerous rock riffs lifted from classical pieces (and yes, the heavy metal Mozart solo in the movie This Is Spinal Tap is one of my favorites!). A big reason for this is because they do carry a great deal of emotional weight. Listening to classical music can be a great source of inspiration for any guitarist trying to find new and interesting lead lines.
Speaking of which, another great way to study “emotional” music is through films and television programs. Scores for movies are often written around small themes that pop up whenever the music director wants to underscore a point. Just think of the theme from Jaws if you’re hard pressed for an example. Even people who’ve never seen the movie get noticeably tense when they hear it. And let’s not even talk about the music from Psycho…
People are much more likely to connect with your music when you make the connection with something in their lives. Last September, I was at a former bandmate’s wedding and we played Sapphire again. It’s a song about someone I knew an incredibly long time ago. Afterwards one of the guests came up to me and said, “You know, I went out with her, too.” Of course, he couldn’t have. His “Sapphire” and my “Sapphire” were two totally different people but he and I were both able to share common feelings evoked by remembering different women.
What this should illustrate is that you don’t have to cater to popular cliches in order to connect with people. Even when you write something that you think is incredibly personal, the emotions that you convey by people who do not share in the same experience. Of course, the level of emotion will be different from person to person but the connection will be there. Often the more personal your writing the more universal the connection can be.
This is the crux of being a better guitarist (musician, songwriter, student, person, whatever): You have to be able to work both inside and outside of the box. You have to know your fundamentals – scales, chords, rhythms, theory, fingerboard and everything else. But you’ve also got to be able to start from scratch, to look at everything as if it were the first time you’d ever seen it before. I know that this sounds crazy, let alone perplexing as all hell, but it’s true.
Being out of the box lets you connect with your creativity, being in connects you with the rest of the world, whether it’s your friends or other guitarists/musicians or whatever. And regardless of what you think, you do have to connect with both.
By: debo
Topics: guitar columns, soloing and improvisation
“…D minor, the saddest of all keys…” – Nigel Tufnel, This Is Spinal Tap
It’s the hardest fact for any teacher to accept. You can teach a person how to hold a guitar, how to play a chord, how to strum a rhythm. You can show them tricks and have them memorize scales and riffs and leads and fills. You can demonstrate why it’s important to be able to hear an interval or whether a song is in a major or minor key. In short, you can “make” a student the best guitarist you can…
But ultimately what will separate the guitarist from the artist can never be taught. Oh you can coach and coax and go over things with your student over and over and over and over and over again. But you cannot give him or her an intimate connection to music. You cannot give your pupils, for lack of a better word, soul.
I think that it’s talking about leads and lead guitarists that brings this out in me. Maybe it was seeing the Patti Smith Group here in town last night. Maybe it was playing Wish You Were Here for the God-knows-how-many-eth time last weekend with a group of musicians and marveling at how it never gets old.
Way, way too often a guitarist is much more concerned about being the loudest, fastest, hippest new thing to come along since (insert the name of your favorite guitarist here). The philosophy is often, “Hey, I can play, therefore I’m (insert your greatest adjective here).”
But the truth, for those of us who are able to admit it to ourselves and others, is that while we may be in utter awe of a player’s technical prowess, it’s the music that moves us to laughter or tears that really makes us jealous. A simple riff that takes me out of my office or car or room and plants me smack dab in the middle of a long forgotten summer romance’s kiss. A turn of phrase that has me talking to my dad again. A chord or two that reunites me with bandmates now scattered across the globe. A long sustained note that lets me gaze into eyes that I know I will never look into again in this lifetime.
The satisfaction that I get when someone says, “Wow, you can really play!” is an unbelievably small fraction of the sheer joy I experience when someone tells me, “That song made me feel…” and then goes into some deeply personal memory or dream. If I could ever figure out how to always connect with music like that, I would never work a day in my life ever again.
Now the really ironic thing is this: while the art of developing this kind of connection between music and emotion cannot be taught, it can be learned. But this learning process is very involving (evolving would be a better term) and the guitarist has to be willing to change many of his or her conceptions of musicianship.
Getting Connected
Any of my friends will tell you that paradoxes positively enchant me (they bring out the best and worst in me – ha ha). And this topic is rife with them, the first being that the most vital component to become a “connected” or “feeling” guitarist is knowledge. You have to be emotional enough to recognize and identify the strongest feelings you (or someone else) can have and remain detached enough to try to figure what triggers that particular emotion. Certain sounds have the ability to create emotional responses, occasionally intense ones. If you don’t believe me, a demonstration may be in order. The next time you’re with a friend who doesn’t play an instrument, ask him or her to help you with a little experiment. Play two chords, one a major and one a minor (try to pick two different keys) (and don’t say what the names of the chords are) and ask your friend which of the two chords should be described as “happy” and which one as “sad.” Nine times out of ten they will pick the minor chord as the “sad” one. It’s astonishing how ingrained this is.
And this is just a simple major vs. minor comparison with chords. You can also create moods with the voicing and phrasing of a chord or even with a riff. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. has talked about how the Peter Buck’s guitar riff in Shiny Happy People inspired him to write a bouncy happy lyric to match it. And David Gilmour’s simple yet incredibly melancholy four- note guitar motif (heard in Shine On You Crazy Diamond (part III)) set the stage for the entire Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here. To illustrate the powerful difference phrasing can make, try this out: first play the straight chord from which the motif is derived and then play the actual motif itself, as illustrated here:
Quite a striking contrast, huh? Now, while the Gm13 is in and of itself an interesting chord, Gilmour’s motif truly evokes an emotional response, whether it is one of sadness or of what I call “unresolved-ness.”
So how does one come up with music like this? It’s another paradox – knowledge combined with experimentation and the occasional blessing of good fortune. If you’re a frequent reader of these pages you know how I’m always harping on people to “write things down.” In addition to my “practice” time, I also make it a point to spend so much time a week in “experimentation”(not to be confused with “goofiness”). I may work on coming up with a new tuning or a new chord voicing or a way to work out a new arrangement, but there’s always a purpose to it, which is what separates “experimenting” from “fun.” It’s a “controlled goofiness,” if you will.
And sometimes I can come up with a voicing, or a phrase or a chord progression, which sets off all my internal alarms. Then I have to make absolutely certain that I don’t forget it at a later point (and this does happen, more often than I’d ever care to admit).
I’m going to use of my songs, When You Come Home, to further demonstrate the use of chord voicing to evoke an emotion. When I was writing this in 1983, I initially had a simple chord structure for the verses, which looked like this (this is the first half of the first verse):
But I really wanted something more spooky and ominous (it’s about a plane crash ) (no, don’t ask…) so I spent a lot of time trying to come up with ways of making it sound darker. By playing with different chord voicings and by using my low E string as sort of rhythmic drone, I managed to come up with this:
Yes, you can tell that I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, but this version definitely creates a more uneasy feeling than the original chord arrangement did.
And, thinking about it, this may be another reason why it takes me longer to come up with the lyrics of a song than it does to finish the music. It’s important to me that the music and the lyrics are in sync with each other. Even when being “in sync” means being in complete contrast with each other – another paradox, I know, and one we’ll examine at a later date.
Again, you can’t just come up with things like this if you play guitar strictly by the book. I guess this is why I don’t encourage people to learn anything – whether it’s leads or strumming or songwriting – simply by copying. Using your imagination, even when you’re not really certain of what you’re doing, can lead down much more interesting roads. Musically, it’s pretty easy to go back and find out why things work the way they do. And, really, you may very likely come up with something that someone else has already done (there are only so many things you can do with a guitar) (not that they’ve all been done yet). But the thing is that you came up with it, too.
You can see that the “connected” guitarist is ultimately more concerned with sound than he or she is with technique. And “sound” covers a lot of ground. Not only just the actual notes that your guitar produces but the countless ways of bringing them out of your guitar. This is where there is no end to one’s imagination. We tend to be pretty spoiled in this day and age. Effects are cheap and easy to come by. Push a button, get distortion. If you don’t like it, push another button and edit your distortion. But just like coming up with leads and fills, any effect should be there to enhance the song, not to draw attention to itself.
And a lot of times you don’t even need the effects. The very first time I went into a recording studio was 1977 to record a song called Sapphire. My friend Greg played the lead part, which basically consisted of him playing a note on his electric guitar with the volume knob turned to its lowest setting. By wrapping his pinky around the volume control, he would gradually turn it up after striking a note. This created an eerie synthetic tone that ideally suited that particular version of the song. This is done all the time these days.
If you listen to some older music, especially from the late sixties, you can’t help but marvel at the various sounds they were able to create with four track recording equipment that most of us would be embarrassed to own these days. It’s all a matter of trying things out just to hear what they might sound like.
And it’s not just “ancient” stuff. On the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This, listen very closely to the bridge. Things get very hushed while Annie Lennox sings “Hold your head up…” but you can hear a very distinct chiming in the background. Know what that is? Glass milk bottles filled to various levels with water! Isn’t that great? How incredibly low-tech!
This is what I mean about seeing things as if it’s the first time. More often than not, creating an atmosphere or evoking an emotion is a relatively simple thing. And that makes perfect sense since we’re concerning ourselves with connecting with our listeners on such a basic level. Sometimes the more overproduced or technical the music, the easier it is to lose your audience.
Take classical music (and I happen to love classical music). No musician should ever look down on a classical musician. It’s harder to make a living in that field than it is as a professional athlete. Even the “average” classical musician has more technique and training than the vast majority of us.
But the “average” listener is not really concerned with all that, anymore than he or she can really appreciate how fast your fingers can fly on the fretboard. When it comes to classical music, most people only remember bits and pieces and those bits and pieces, more often than not, are simple melodies or motifs (like the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony). You may not believe it, but there are numerous rock riffs lifted from classical pieces (and yes, the heavy metal Mozart solo in the movie This Is Spinal Tap is one of my favorites!). A big reason for this is because they do carry a great deal of emotional weight. Listening to classical music can be a great source of inspiration for any guitarist trying to find new and interesting lead lines.
Speaking of which, another great way to study “emotional” music is through films and television programs. Scores for movies are often written around small themes that pop up whenever the music director wants to underscore a point. Just think of the theme from Jaws if you’re hard pressed for an example. Even people who’ve never seen the movie get noticeably tense when they hear it. And let’s not even talk about the music from Psycho…
People are much more likely to connect with your music when you make the connection with something in their lives. Last September, I was at a former bandmate’s wedding and we played Sapphire again. It’s a song about someone I knew an incredibly long time ago. Afterwards one of the guests came up to me and said, “You know, I went out with her, too.” Of course, he couldn’t have. His “Sapphire” and my “Sapphire” were two totally different people but he and I were both able to share common feelings evoked by remembering different women.
What this should illustrate is that you don’t have to cater to popular cliches in order to connect with people. Even when you write something that you think is incredibly personal, the emotions that you convey by people who do not share in the same experience. Of course, the level of emotion will be different from person to person but the connection will be there. Often the more personal your writing the more universal the connection can be.
This is the crux of being a better guitarist (musician, songwriter, student, person, whatever): You have to be able to work both inside and outside of the box. You have to know your fundamentals – scales, chords, rhythms, theory, fingerboard and everything else. But you’ve also got to be able to start from scratch, to look at everything as if it were the first time you’d ever seen it before. I know that this sounds crazy, let alone perplexing as all hell, but it’s true.
Being out of the box lets you connect with your creativity, being in connects you with the rest of the world, whether it’s your friends or other guitarists/musicians or whatever. And regardless of what you think, you do have to connect with both.
Guitar columns, soloing and improvisation
Tricks of the Trade
In this beginner lesson we’ll learn a few basic techniques for both the rhythm and lead guitarist. They are hammer ons, pull offs, slides and bends.
By: debo
Topics: guitar columns, soloing and improvisation
Before moving on with leads, it’s important that we all get on the same page regarding guitar “tricks.” Today we’ll look at the four most basic ones, go over some examples and also take a look at how they can be used as fills for rhythm players. We’ll also continue to play Bob Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door to death (no pun intended). I’d also like to note that if you’re really interested in this topic, you owe it to yourself to spend some quality time at the Guitar Lesson pages here at Guitar Noise. I can’t begin to tell you how much there is there to look through.
Some things come quickly to some people. Students who cannot tell the difference between 4 / 4 and 3 / 4 time will be able to flawlessly perform a complex riff. A guitarist who has no trouble fingering complicated chords will struggle to play a descending bass line. We all approach learning things differently and how easily we can grasp something does not always translate into how quickly we’ll incorporate it into our playing, if we ever do.
The techniques or “tricks” that we’ll examine today are hammer-ons, pick-offs, slides and bends. Just how quickly you catch on to these – which come easily and which require a bit of work – is, as always, up to you. But that really is the secondary lesson. What I hope to do is show you how the rhythm guitarist or solo performer can also make use of these four techniques – generally considered solely as tools of the lead guitarist. And how, by adding these tricks to your playing, one can add new depths to one’s style.
Oh yes, lest we forget:
These files are the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of the song. It is intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.
The Amazing Second Fret
Let’s take a really quick look at the lower end of our fret board – the first five frets, shall we? For most guitarists, this is where ninety percent of one’s playing occurs. One of the reasons the guitar is tuned the way it is (as well as why so much guitar music is written in the keys you all know so well), is to give the player (relatively) easy access to all the notes in any given scale. Granted it’s not as easy as it is in the bass (as you can read in Dan Lasley’s great article on the subject (Bass for Beginners # 1), but it’s still not like trying to stretch your hand an octave-and-a-half on a keyboard. Since Knocking On Heaven’s Door is in the key of G major, we’re going to concern ourselves with only the notes in that scale:
Okay, there are two important things to note here: first, the fifth fret is, except on the G string, always the note of the next open string. You already knew this because this is how you tune your guitar, right. On the G string, it’s the fourth fret that sounds the next open string. Why is this important? Well, if you want to run a G major scale (or a natural E minor), you can now pretty much stay on the first three frets. The only note beyond this short range of movement is the F#, which is on the fourth fret of the D string. You’ve drastically cut down on the amount of area for your fingers to cover which in turn will allow you to be quicker. See?
This is why it pays to think ahead about these things…
The second thing to notice is how full of useable notes the second fret is. And this is almost always the case in whichever key you might want to play in. Really. And once you are in on this “secret, ” hammer-ons and pick-offs become a breeze. In the first position, anyway. And that’s where we’re concentrating our energies today.
A hammer-on is done exactly as it’s said. Strike an open string (use the G or D to start) and after you strum it, tap a finger solidly onto a fret, just as you would if you were fingering a chord. You should hear two distinct notes, one following the other, if you’re doing it correctly. If we do this on the open G and hammer on the second fret, it would look like this (in notation and tablature):
This is an incredibly useful tool to have when strumming patterns where you have to hold a chord a while. For instance, say you were playing a song that had several measures in a row of E minor. Instead of a straight strum or even a rhythmic strumming of all six strings, you could do something like this:
That adds a little more fun and interest to the proceedings, doesn’t it? Now a quick bit of advice – you have to hammer on the string harder than you might think, but not as hard as you might think either. That’s really helpful, huh? A good way of practicing this technique is to simply tap on the string without strumming it first. If you can produce a clean note that sustains itself while your finger is on the fret, then you’re doing fine. If not, don’t worry. As I explained earlier, some things take time for different people. Keep at it and it will come. And while you’re practicing, be sure to practice your hammer-ons using each of the fingers of your neck hand. At some point you will need to (or wish you could) use this device with your pinky and ring finger as well as with your index or middle finger. So get used to using it now. And while you’re practicing this way, whether you want to or not, you will also be learning pick-offs.
Pick-offs, as you already know or have guessed, are also literal-named. Do a practice hammer-on (no strum). Now take the tapping finger away. You should get another sounding of the open string. This is the easy way.
Now let’s try the hard way. Place your finger on the second fret of the G string. Pick or strum the string with your strumming hand. This will sound the A note. Now pull your finger off. It’s not as easy to produce that second note, the open G, is it? If you’re lifting your finger straight off the string, you will not get much of a sounding of the open G. What you need to do is pull the string when you’re removing the finger and the best way to do this is with a slightly downward motion. Basically what you are doing is “picking” the string with the finger on the neck. Yes, this takes a bit of practice for some people and a bit more for others. The musical notation for a pick-off looks like this (and we’re using our A to G example again):
The pick-off can also be used as a rhythmic fill, much in the same way as the hammer-on. Here’s another E minor strum, this time with pick-offs:
Once you get yourself familiar with the notes on the second fret, you can have a lot of fun. And you don’t have to be in the key of G all the time. So many first position chords (and their respective scales) make use of the notes found on the second fret that it becomes a challenge not to go overboard with hammer-ons and pick-offs. Here’s an exercise you can use to practice both techniques using the key of C:
You’ll find that if you maintain the basic chord shapes, hammering-on and picking-off with the fingers that would normally be on a given fret for a particular chord, the technique is more natural and it will become second nature for you to use these as part of your rhythm patterns. This is yet another way how guitarists develop an individual style.
The Equally Amazing D Major Chord
One of the easiest examples of using hammer-ons and pick-offs as rhythm techniques can be demonstrated with the use of a first position D major chord (”…it’s an ordinary D major chord – one that you might find around the house…”). Start with a simple D major, then hammer-on your pinky on the third fret of the high E (first) string.
This is a D sus4. Then do a pick-off to return to D again and then pick off what ever finger you use to cover the second fret of the E string. This gives you a D add9. Finally, hammer-on back to the original D chord again.
I can’t begin to tell you how many songs use this particular progression or how many people use it (or variations of it) whenever they find themselves strumming long expanses of D major chords. But it’s a pretty good way to develop your little finger and get it into the action.
Another good exercise to develop the little finger is to play a D major chord and hammer-on the fourth frets of the D and G strings like this:
Again, this can be (and is) used in numerous songs. It’s up to you to experiment with where and how you want to use it.
Sliding Through The Bends
The two other techniques we’re going to cover are slides and bends. Again, they’re self-explanatory. Sliding up or down to a note in a lead creates a distinct tone, which some people call jazzy and some call mellow. Usually a guitarist will start his or her slide two frets away from the target note. I’ve heard longer and shorter slides. And you don’t only have to slide a single note. Two well-known examples of this technique are the opening riff from the Beatles’ Revolution and the second lead acoustic fill in Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. Here are the standard notations for slides and bends:
Bending strings in one of those things that can take time to learn. I absolutely hated bending strings for the longest time because I just couldn’t do it. Do it well, I should say. Then one day while listening to a group at a club I really watched the guitarist and saw this guy using two or three fingers to bend strings. That was a big turning point for me.
When you bend a string, you actually push the string in towards the center of the neck (if it’s one of the first three strings). By bending, you are altering the pitch of the string, making it higher than normal. How much higher depends on how hard you bend. Normally a bend of a half-step is done but some guitarists bend notes up a full step. On the Dire Straits song Down to the Waterline, Mark Knopfler does a solo that includes a bend of a step-and-a-half. Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd will throw in a few of these “super-bends” into his solos as well. It takes a lot of practice and not just on the fingers. Your ears have to be able to discern the interval you want to achieve in your bend. Yes, it’s just another shining example of why it equally important to practice your listening as well as your playing. If you can’t discern the intervals you’ll never know whether your bends are in key or not.
A favorite blues/rock trick is to bend on one string while playing the “end note” on the adjacent higher string. I call this a “unison bend,” but, as always, there are more names for it than are worth going into. This effect is probably best recognized as the one Jimmy Page uses at the end of the solo on Stairway to Heaven. Again, if you take a moment to think about it, you’ll find that it’s easiest to perform between the G and B strings (since the interval between these strings is smaller than the intervals between the others).
Filling In The Blanks
I’ve always thought that the reason blues guitar is almost always in vogue is because this style of playing appeals to the would-be lead player in every guitarist. Typical blues songs are done in what is known as call-and-response. The vocalist will sing a line (call) and the guitarist (and of course they can be the same person) will follow that up with a short lead (which is usually called a fill). This fill is the response.
This call-and-response mode of playing extends way beyond blues, not only in terms of musical styles but also in terms of musical history. Pop, rock, country, metal and world music is full of examples of it. Go back to the early classics of Cream or come forward in time to Dire Straits. Here in the shining new millennium you can pick almost any song of the latest Santana album and you will hear it.
And it’s waaaaaaaayyy older than you think. While I was visiting Marrakech last year I had the pleasure of listening to traditional Berber music. While I couldn’t decipher a single word, I found that I was already intimate with the style. The narrator would chant a phrase or a number of phrases and then he play a burst of music on the rbab. This music predates much of “modern” Western civilization, so you can see that, while we’d like to think we’re hip to the next big thing, we’re actually just the latest to jump on a very long bandwagon.
Because a typical response is usually less than a whole measure long, it’s a great place for a guitarist to hone his or her skills with the various techniques that we’ve been discussing today. You may not believe me, but it’s really a relatively short step from handling these fills to coming up with leads.
I want to close our session today by revisiting Knocking On Heaven’s Door, only this time we’re going to look at it as an exercise in call-and-response. Basically, I’m going to go through the sequence of the first verse and chorus and add some fills. Each fill occupies the last two beats of the phrase (okay, really one and three quarter of a beat…) and, to make matters even more interesting, each of the first four fills that I’ve laid out deals (primarily) with one of our four techniques covered today. The fills in the chorus are mix-and-match – just whatever came off the top of my head. And yes I know (thank you very much) there hasn’t been anything on the top of my head for ages. Please note that to make things easier on myself I’ve based most of my “responses” on the chord forms that I’m playing and that I always end up back on that trusty G chord which begins the next phrase.
You could go on playing this sequence for hours and keep coming up with different ideas. And that’s essentially the point. Give yourself room to experiment. See what you like, what comes easily, what needs work. The very least that will happen to you is that you’ll spice up your rhythm playing. The optimum goal, of course, is that you’ll start getting ideas and seeing how you can apply this to other music, including your own stuff.
In this beginner lesson we’ll learn a few basic techniques for both the rhythm and lead guitarist. They are hammer ons, pull offs, slides and bends.
By: debo
Topics: guitar columns, soloing and improvisation
Before moving on with leads, it’s important that we all get on the same page regarding guitar “tricks.” Today we’ll look at the four most basic ones, go over some examples and also take a look at how they can be used as fills for rhythm players. We’ll also continue to play Bob Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door to death (no pun intended). I’d also like to note that if you’re really interested in this topic, you owe it to yourself to spend some quality time at the Guitar Lesson pages here at Guitar Noise. I can’t begin to tell you how much there is there to look through.
Some things come quickly to some people. Students who cannot tell the difference between 4 / 4 and 3 / 4 time will be able to flawlessly perform a complex riff. A guitarist who has no trouble fingering complicated chords will struggle to play a descending bass line. We all approach learning things differently and how easily we can grasp something does not always translate into how quickly we’ll incorporate it into our playing, if we ever do.
The techniques or “tricks” that we’ll examine today are hammer-ons, pick-offs, slides and bends. Just how quickly you catch on to these – which come easily and which require a bit of work – is, as always, up to you. But that really is the secondary lesson. What I hope to do is show you how the rhythm guitarist or solo performer can also make use of these four techniques – generally considered solely as tools of the lead guitarist. And how, by adding these tricks to your playing, one can add new depths to one’s style.
Oh yes, lest we forget:
These files are the author’s own work and represents his interpretation of the song. It is intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.
The Amazing Second Fret
Let’s take a really quick look at the lower end of our fret board – the first five frets, shall we? For most guitarists, this is where ninety percent of one’s playing occurs. One of the reasons the guitar is tuned the way it is (as well as why so much guitar music is written in the keys you all know so well), is to give the player (relatively) easy access to all the notes in any given scale. Granted it’s not as easy as it is in the bass (as you can read in Dan Lasley’s great article on the subject (Bass for Beginners # 1), but it’s still not like trying to stretch your hand an octave-and-a-half on a keyboard. Since Knocking On Heaven’s Door is in the key of G major, we’re going to concern ourselves with only the notes in that scale:
Okay, there are two important things to note here: first, the fifth fret is, except on the G string, always the note of the next open string. You already knew this because this is how you tune your guitar, right. On the G string, it’s the fourth fret that sounds the next open string. Why is this important? Well, if you want to run a G major scale (or a natural E minor), you can now pretty much stay on the first three frets. The only note beyond this short range of movement is the F#, which is on the fourth fret of the D string. You’ve drastically cut down on the amount of area for your fingers to cover which in turn will allow you to be quicker. See?
This is why it pays to think ahead about these things…
The second thing to notice is how full of useable notes the second fret is. And this is almost always the case in whichever key you might want to play in. Really. And once you are in on this “secret, ” hammer-ons and pick-offs become a breeze. In the first position, anyway. And that’s where we’re concentrating our energies today.
A hammer-on is done exactly as it’s said. Strike an open string (use the G or D to start) and after you strum it, tap a finger solidly onto a fret, just as you would if you were fingering a chord. You should hear two distinct notes, one following the other, if you’re doing it correctly. If we do this on the open G and hammer on the second fret, it would look like this (in notation and tablature):
This is an incredibly useful tool to have when strumming patterns where you have to hold a chord a while. For instance, say you were playing a song that had several measures in a row of E minor. Instead of a straight strum or even a rhythmic strumming of all six strings, you could do something like this:
That adds a little more fun and interest to the proceedings, doesn’t it? Now a quick bit of advice – you have to hammer on the string harder than you might think, but not as hard as you might think either. That’s really helpful, huh? A good way of practicing this technique is to simply tap on the string without strumming it first. If you can produce a clean note that sustains itself while your finger is on the fret, then you’re doing fine. If not, don’t worry. As I explained earlier, some things take time for different people. Keep at it and it will come. And while you’re practicing, be sure to practice your hammer-ons using each of the fingers of your neck hand. At some point you will need to (or wish you could) use this device with your pinky and ring finger as well as with your index or middle finger. So get used to using it now. And while you’re practicing this way, whether you want to or not, you will also be learning pick-offs.
Pick-offs, as you already know or have guessed, are also literal-named. Do a practice hammer-on (no strum). Now take the tapping finger away. You should get another sounding of the open string. This is the easy way.
Now let’s try the hard way. Place your finger on the second fret of the G string. Pick or strum the string with your strumming hand. This will sound the A note. Now pull your finger off. It’s not as easy to produce that second note, the open G, is it? If you’re lifting your finger straight off the string, you will not get much of a sounding of the open G. What you need to do is pull the string when you’re removing the finger and the best way to do this is with a slightly downward motion. Basically what you are doing is “picking” the string with the finger on the neck. Yes, this takes a bit of practice for some people and a bit more for others. The musical notation for a pick-off looks like this (and we’re using our A to G example again):
The pick-off can also be used as a rhythmic fill, much in the same way as the hammer-on. Here’s another E minor strum, this time with pick-offs:
Once you get yourself familiar with the notes on the second fret, you can have a lot of fun. And you don’t have to be in the key of G all the time. So many first position chords (and their respective scales) make use of the notes found on the second fret that it becomes a challenge not to go overboard with hammer-ons and pick-offs. Here’s an exercise you can use to practice both techniques using the key of C:
You’ll find that if you maintain the basic chord shapes, hammering-on and picking-off with the fingers that would normally be on a given fret for a particular chord, the technique is more natural and it will become second nature for you to use these as part of your rhythm patterns. This is yet another way how guitarists develop an individual style.
The Equally Amazing D Major Chord
One of the easiest examples of using hammer-ons and pick-offs as rhythm techniques can be demonstrated with the use of a first position D major chord (”…it’s an ordinary D major chord – one that you might find around the house…”). Start with a simple D major, then hammer-on your pinky on the third fret of the high E (first) string.
This is a D sus4. Then do a pick-off to return to D again and then pick off what ever finger you use to cover the second fret of the E string. This gives you a D add9. Finally, hammer-on back to the original D chord again.
I can’t begin to tell you how many songs use this particular progression or how many people use it (or variations of it) whenever they find themselves strumming long expanses of D major chords. But it’s a pretty good way to develop your little finger and get it into the action.
Another good exercise to develop the little finger is to play a D major chord and hammer-on the fourth frets of the D and G strings like this:
Again, this can be (and is) used in numerous songs. It’s up to you to experiment with where and how you want to use it.
Sliding Through The Bends
The two other techniques we’re going to cover are slides and bends. Again, they’re self-explanatory. Sliding up or down to a note in a lead creates a distinct tone, which some people call jazzy and some call mellow. Usually a guitarist will start his or her slide two frets away from the target note. I’ve heard longer and shorter slides. And you don’t only have to slide a single note. Two well-known examples of this technique are the opening riff from the Beatles’ Revolution and the second lead acoustic fill in Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. Here are the standard notations for slides and bends:
Bending strings in one of those things that can take time to learn. I absolutely hated bending strings for the longest time because I just couldn’t do it. Do it well, I should say. Then one day while listening to a group at a club I really watched the guitarist and saw this guy using two or three fingers to bend strings. That was a big turning point for me.
When you bend a string, you actually push the string in towards the center of the neck (if it’s one of the first three strings). By bending, you are altering the pitch of the string, making it higher than normal. How much higher depends on how hard you bend. Normally a bend of a half-step is done but some guitarists bend notes up a full step. On the Dire Straits song Down to the Waterline, Mark Knopfler does a solo that includes a bend of a step-and-a-half. Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd will throw in a few of these “super-bends” into his solos as well. It takes a lot of practice and not just on the fingers. Your ears have to be able to discern the interval you want to achieve in your bend. Yes, it’s just another shining example of why it equally important to practice your listening as well as your playing. If you can’t discern the intervals you’ll never know whether your bends are in key or not.
A favorite blues/rock trick is to bend on one string while playing the “end note” on the adjacent higher string. I call this a “unison bend,” but, as always, there are more names for it than are worth going into. This effect is probably best recognized as the one Jimmy Page uses at the end of the solo on Stairway to Heaven. Again, if you take a moment to think about it, you’ll find that it’s easiest to perform between the G and B strings (since the interval between these strings is smaller than the intervals between the others).
Filling In The Blanks
I’ve always thought that the reason blues guitar is almost always in vogue is because this style of playing appeals to the would-be lead player in every guitarist. Typical blues songs are done in what is known as call-and-response. The vocalist will sing a line (call) and the guitarist (and of course they can be the same person) will follow that up with a short lead (which is usually called a fill). This fill is the response.
This call-and-response mode of playing extends way beyond blues, not only in terms of musical styles but also in terms of musical history. Pop, rock, country, metal and world music is full of examples of it. Go back to the early classics of Cream or come forward in time to Dire Straits. Here in the shining new millennium you can pick almost any song of the latest Santana album and you will hear it.
And it’s waaaaaaaayyy older than you think. While I was visiting Marrakech last year I had the pleasure of listening to traditional Berber music. While I couldn’t decipher a single word, I found that I was already intimate with the style. The narrator would chant a phrase or a number of phrases and then he play a burst of music on the rbab. This music predates much of “modern” Western civilization, so you can see that, while we’d like to think we’re hip to the next big thing, we’re actually just the latest to jump on a very long bandwagon.
Because a typical response is usually less than a whole measure long, it’s a great place for a guitarist to hone his or her skills with the various techniques that we’ve been discussing today. You may not believe me, but it’s really a relatively short step from handling these fills to coming up with leads.
I want to close our session today by revisiting Knocking On Heaven’s Door, only this time we’re going to look at it as an exercise in call-and-response. Basically, I’m going to go through the sequence of the first verse and chorus and add some fills. Each fill occupies the last two beats of the phrase (okay, really one and three quarter of a beat…) and, to make matters even more interesting, each of the first four fills that I’ve laid out deals (primarily) with one of our four techniques covered today. The fills in the chorus are mix-and-match – just whatever came off the top of my head. And yes I know (thank you very much) there hasn’t been anything on the top of my head for ages. Please note that to make things easier on myself I’ve based most of my “responses” on the chord forms that I’m playing and that I always end up back on that trusty G chord which begins the next phrase.
You could go on playing this sequence for hours and keep coming up with different ideas. And that’s essentially the point. Give yourself room to experiment. See what you like, what comes easily, what needs work. The very least that will happen to you is that you’ll spice up your rhythm playing. The optimum goal, of course, is that you’ll start getting ideas and seeing how you can apply this to other music, including your own stuff.
Bass for Beginners # 1
Introduction
It sometimes seems that no one else besides you wants to play the bass. Bass players are often perceived to be less important than the vocalist, drummer, and lead guitarist. We once opened for a southern rock band that had several guitarists, and I could tell that the bass player used to be a lead guitarist. He had been “demoted” to bass because the original musician had left the band. I could tell by the way he held the guitar, by the shape of his hands, and by his attitude, that bass was not his true calling.
In reality, a bass player has to have an entirely different attitude about the music. A bass player doesn’t have to be flashy or loud, but a band can not survive very long with a weak bass. Bass players have to be stable, since they build the rhythm “foundation” of each song. The bass player and drummer will determine whether your band is mediocre, good, or great. The other musicians will determine if your band is creative, fun, energetic, or talented.
Remember: while it is typical for a band to have at least 2 6-string guitars, and as many as 4 or more, and while you will see quite a few bands that have two keyboardists or even two drummers (or a drummer and several percussion players), it is extremely rare for a band to have more than one bass player.
Getting Started
Recently, there have been more books and other guides for bass players, but they seem to take a long time to get to the real goal, playing in a band. Often the bass line is not charted anywhere and you’ll have to make it up as you go along. I hope my future notes will help you become prepared to play with your band as quickly as possible. Whenever you listen to music, try to pick out the bass line. Play it in your head, in whatever key you want. You can be the first air-bass guitarist on your block!
Another problem with the bass is that it is hard to practice. As a beginner, it may be difficult to create enough notes to make a song. Be patient and remember that you only have to play one note at a time. If you have a good ear, you can practice with recorded music, but it is often too fast, or not in the same key as is written. When you can, practice with a rhythm guitarist, who can give you the “musical environment” needed to learn a new song.
A Bass is not two-thirds of a 6-string guitar:
The bass is a totally different instrument. You should recognize the important similarities, but don’t get caught up trying to correlate the two. The 6-string guitar is played using hand shapes and forms, followed by scales and keys. The bass is more about patterns and relationships between the notes (followed by scales and keys). For example: if the music calls for a C-chord, and you play a C (3rd fret, A-string), all of the important notes are close by. The lower 5th (G) is right next to the C on the E-string, the upper 5th (G) is just 2 frets up on the D-string, and the octave C is right next to that on the G-string.
This relationship holds for all chords on all strings: The upper 5th is 2-up one string over, the octave is 2-up, two strings over, and the lower 5th is same fret one string lower. Here it is again in C:
And here it is if you tried it in Eb (Eb is the 6th fret on the A string):
Now obviously, if you’re playing a low G-chord (3rd fret E-string), then you can’t play the lower 5th, and if you play a higher G (5th fret D-string) then you can’t play the octave. So a simple way to decide which G to play, is whether you want to go up or down from the root.
Note, if you play G (E-3), C (A-3), G (D-5), and C (G-5) all at once, you have the bottom of the 6-string guitar’s “4th form C bar-chord”. Many guitarists know all of the chords and forms, but don’t understand the notes and theory that is contained under their fingers.
While the 6-string guitarists hand often changes shape, the bass player’s fretting hand is almost always in the same position, covering one fret per finger. Some people may have trouble with the wide fret spacing at the top of the neck, but you can adjust. You can almost always play an entire song without moving your hand at all – but it’s more fun when you do!
The important part of all of this is that the bass player almost never cares what key you’re playing in. You can almost always slide up the neck, or over one string, and all of the relationships will remain the same. There are some cases where a change of key can really mess up some fancy melody or a sophisticated slapping thing that needs to use open strings, but in general, you can make it work.
Unlike the 6-string, there is no anomalous tuning of the strings, they are always tuned in fourths (a 6-string has a 3rd between the G and B strings). In fact, most 5 and 6 string basses stick with the 4th tuning, adding either a B on the low end, or a C and possibly and F on the high side.
Rhythm
The bass is always considered part of the rhythm section, along with the drums and rhythm guitar. Together, their main job is to keep time and to set the style of the song. Sometimes, the rhythm guitarist is playing counter-beat, and the drummer is counting a straight four, and it comes down to the bass player to set the style. Rhythms can be boring, even fast ones. Be careful that you don’t lose your concentration and get sloppy.
Bass for Beginners # 1
Introduction
It sometimes seems that no one else besides you wants to play the bass. Bass players are often perceived to be less important than the vocalist, drummer, and lead guitarist. We once opened for a southern rock band that had several guitarists, and I could tell that the bass player used to be a lead guitarist. He had been “demoted” to bass because the original musician had left the band. I could tell by the way he held the guitar, by the shape of his hands, and by his attitude, that bass was not his true calling.
In reality, a bass player has to have an entirely different attitude about the music. A bass player doesn’t have to be flashy or loud, but a band can not survive very long with a weak bass. Bass players have to be stable, since they build the rhythm “foundation” of each song. The bass player and drummer will determine whether your band is mediocre, good, or great. The other musicians will determine if your band is creative, fun, energetic, or talented.
Remember: while it is typical for a band to have at least 2 6-string guitars, and as many as 4 or more, and while you will see quite a few bands that have two keyboardists or even two drummers (or a drummer and several percussion players), it is extremely rare for a band to have more than one bass player.
Getting Started
Recently, there have been more books and other guides for bass players, but they seem to take a long time to get to the real goal, playing in a band. Often the bass line is not charted anywhere and you’ll have to make it up as you go along. I hope my future notes will help you become prepared to play with your band as quickly as possible. Whenever you listen to music, try to pick out the bass line. Play it in your head, in whatever key you want. You can be the first air-bass guitarist on your block!
Another problem with the bass is that it is hard to practice. As a beginner, it may be difficult to create enough notes to make a song. Be patient and remember that you only have to play one note at a time. If you have a good ear, you can practice with recorded music, but it is often too fast, or not in the same key as is written. When you can, practice with a rhythm guitarist, who can give you the “musical environment” needed to learn a new song.
A Bass is not two-thirds of a 6-string guitar:
The bass is a totally different instrument. You should recognize the important similarities, but don’t get caught up trying to correlate the two. The 6-string guitar is played using hand shapes and forms, followed by scales and keys. The bass is more about patterns and relationships between the notes (followed by scales and keys). For example: if the music calls for a C-chord, and you play a C (3rd fret, A-string), all of the important notes are close by. The lower 5th (G) is right next to the C on the E-string, the upper 5th (G) is just 2 frets up on the D-string, and the octave C is right next to that on the G-string.
This relationship holds for all chords on all strings: The upper 5th is 2-up one string over, the octave is 2-up, two strings over, and the lower 5th is same fret one string lower. Here it is again in C:
And here it is if you tried it in Eb (Eb is the 6th fret on the A string):
Now obviously, if you’re playing a low G-chord (3rd fret E-string), then you can’t play the lower 5th, and if you play a higher G (5th fret D-string) then you can’t play the octave. So a simple way to decide which G to play, is whether you want to go up or down from the root.
Note, if you play G (E-3), C (A-3), G (D-5), and C (G-5) all at once, you have the bottom of the 6-string guitar’s “4th form C bar-chord”. Many guitarists know all of the chords and forms, but don’t understand the notes and theory that is contained under their fingers.
While the 6-string guitarists hand often changes shape, the bass player’s fretting hand is almost always in the same position, covering one fret per finger. Some people may have trouble with the wide fret spacing at the top of the neck, but you can adjust. You can almost always play an entire song without moving your hand at all – but it’s more fun when you do!
The important part of all of this is that the bass player almost never cares what key you’re playing in. You can almost always slide up the neck, or over one string, and all of the relationships will remain the same. There are some cases where a change of key can really mess up some fancy melody or a sophisticated slapping thing that needs to use open strings, but in general, you can make it work.
Unlike the 6-string, there is no anomalous tuning of the strings, they are always tuned in fourths (a 6-string has a 3rd between the G and B strings). In fact, most 5 and 6 string basses stick with the 4th tuning, adding either a B on the low end, or a C and possibly and F on the high side.
Rhythm
The bass is always considered part of the rhythm section, along with the drums and rhythm guitar. Together, their main job is to keep time and to set the style of the song. Sometimes, the rhythm guitarist is playing counter-beat, and the drummer is counting a straight four, and it comes down to the bass player to set the style. Rhythms can be boring, even fast ones. Be careful that you don’t lose your concentration and get sloppy.
Bass for Beginners # 1
Introduction
It sometimes seems that no one else besides you wants to play the bass. Bass players are often perceived to be less important than the vocalist, drummer, and lead guitarist. We once opened for a southern rock band that had several guitarists, and I could tell that the bass player used to be a lead guitarist. He had been “demoted” to bass because the original musician had left the band. I could tell by the way he held the guitar, by the shape of his hands, and by his attitude, that bass was not his true calling.
In reality, a bass player has to have an entirely different attitude about the music. A bass player doesn’t have to be flashy or loud, but a band can not survive very long with a weak bass. Bass players have to be stable, since they build the rhythm “foundation” of each song. The bass player and drummer will determine whether your band is mediocre, good, or great. The other musicians will determine if your band is creative, fun, energetic, or talented.
Remember: while it is typical for a band to have at least 2 6-string guitars, and as many as 4 or more, and while you will see quite a few bands that have two keyboardists or even two drummers (or a drummer and several percussion players), it is extremely rare for a band to have more than one bass player.
Getting Started
Recently, there have been more books and other guides for bass players, but they seem to take a long time to get to the real goal, playing in a band. Often the bass line is not charted anywhere and you’ll have to make it up as you go along. I hope my future notes will help you become prepared to play with your band as quickly as possible. Whenever you listen to music, try to pick out the bass line. Play it in your head, in whatever key you want. You can be the first air-bass guitarist on your block!
Another problem with the bass is that it is hard to practice. As a beginner, it may be difficult to create enough notes to make a song. Be patient and remember that you only have to play one note at a time. If you have a good ear, you can practice with recorded music, but it is often too fast, or not in the same key as is written. When you can, practice with a rhythm guitarist, who can give you the “musical environment” needed to learn a new song.
A Bass is not two-thirds of a 6-string guitar:
The bass is a totally different instrument. You should recognize the important similarities, but don’t get caught up trying to correlate the two. The 6-string guitar is played using hand shapes and forms, followed by scales and keys. The bass is more about patterns and relationships between the notes (followed by scales and keys). For example: if the music calls for a C-chord, and you play a C (3rd fret, A-string), all of the important notes are close by. The lower 5th (G) is right next to the C on the E-string, the upper 5th (G) is just 2 frets up on the D-string, and the octave C is right next to that on the G-string.
This relationship holds for all chords on all strings: The upper 5th is 2-up one string over, the octave is 2-up, two strings over, and the lower 5th is same fret one string lower. Here it is again in C:
And here it is if you tried it in Eb (Eb is the 6th fret on the A string):
Now obviously, if you’re playing a low G-chord (3rd fret E-string), then you can’t play the lower 5th, and if you play a higher G (5th fret D-string) then you can’t play the octave. So a simple way to decide which G to play, is whether you want to go up or down from the root.
Note, if you play G (E-3), C (A-3), G (D-5), and C (G-5) all at once, you have the bottom of the 6-string guitar’s “4th form C bar-chord”. Many guitarists know all of the chords and forms, but don’t understand the notes and theory that is contained under their fingers.
While the 6-string guitarists hand often changes shape, the bass player’s fretting hand is almost always in the same position, covering one fret per finger. Some people may have trouble with the wide fret spacing at the top of the neck, but you can adjust. You can almost always play an entire song without moving your hand at all – but it’s more fun when you do!
The important part of all of this is that the bass player almost never cares what key you’re playing in. You can almost always slide up the neck, or over one string, and all of the relationships will remain the same. There are some cases where a change of key can really mess up some fancy melody or a sophisticated slapping thing that needs to use open strings, but in general, you can make it work.
Unlike the 6-string, there is no anomalous tuning of the strings, they are always tuned in fourths (a 6-string has a 3rd between the G and B strings). In fact, most 5 and 6 string basses stick with the 4th tuning, adding either a B on the low end, or a C and possibly and F on the high side.
Rhythm
The bass is always considered part of the rhythm section, along with the drums and rhythm guitar. Together, their main job is to keep time and to set the style of the song. Sometimes, the rhythm guitarist is playing counter-beat, and the drummer is counting a straight four, and it comes down to the bass player to set the style. Rhythms can be boring, even fast ones. Be careful that you don’t lose your concentration and get sloppy.
Bass for Beginners # 1
Introduction
It sometimes seems that no one else besides you wants to play the bass. Bass players are often perceived to be less important than the vocalist, drummer, and lead guitarist. We once opened for a southern rock band that had several guitarists, and I could tell that the bass player used to be a lead guitarist. He had been “demoted” to bass because the original musician had left the band. I could tell by the way he held the guitar, by the shape of his hands, and by his attitude, that bass was not his true calling.
In reality, a bass player has to have an entirely different attitude about the music. A bass player doesn’t have to be flashy or loud, but a band can not survive very long with a weak bass. Bass players have to be stable, since they build the rhythm “foundation” of each song. The bass player and drummer will determine whether your band is mediocre, good, or great. The other musicians will determine if your band is creative, fun, energetic, or talented.
Remember: while it is typical for a band to have at least 2 6-string guitars, and as many as 4 or more, and while you will see quite a few bands that have two keyboardists or even two drummers (or a drummer and several percussion players), it is extremely rare for a band to have more than one bass player.
Getting Started
Recently, there have been more books and other guides for bass players, but they seem to take a long time to get to the real goal, playing in a band. Often the bass line is not charted anywhere and you’ll have to make it up as you go along. I hope my future notes will help you become prepared to play with your band as quickly as possible. Whenever you listen to music, try to pick out the bass line. Play it in your head, in whatever key you want. You can be the first air-bass guitarist on your block!
Another problem with the bass is that it is hard to practice. As a beginner, it may be difficult to create enough notes to make a song. Be patient and remember that you only have to play one note at a time. If you have a good ear, you can practice with recorded music, but it is often too fast, or not in the same key as is written. When you can, practice with a rhythm guitarist, who can give you the “musical environment” needed to learn a new song.
A Bass is not two-thirds of a 6-string guitar:
The bass is a totally different instrument. You should recognize the important similarities, but don’t get caught up trying to correlate the two. The 6-string guitar is played using hand shapes and forms, followed by scales and keys. The bass is more about patterns and relationships between the notes (followed by scales and keys). For example: if the music calls for a C-chord, and you play a C (3rd fret, A-string), all of the important notes are close by. The lower 5th (G) is right next to the C on the E-string, the upper 5th (G) is just 2 frets up on the D-string, and the octave C is right next to that on the G-string.
This relationship holds for all chords on all strings: The upper 5th is 2-up one string over, the octave is 2-up, two strings over, and the lower 5th is same fret one string lower. Here it is again in C:
And here it is if you tried it in Eb (Eb is the 6th fret on the A string):
Now obviously, if you’re playing a low G-chord (3rd fret E-string), then you can’t play the lower 5th, and if you play a higher G (5th fret D-string) then you can’t play the octave. So a simple way to decide which G to play, is whether you want to go up or down from the root.
Note, if you play G (E-3), C (A-3), G (D-5), and C (G-5) all at once, you have the bottom of the 6-string guitar’s “4th form C bar-chord”. Many guitarists know all of the chords and forms, but don’t understand the notes and theory that is contained under their fingers.
While the 6-string guitarists hand often changes shape, the bass player’s fretting hand is almost always in the same position, covering one fret per finger. Some people may have trouble with the wide fret spacing at the top of the neck, but you can adjust. You can almost always play an entire song without moving your hand at all – but it’s more fun when you do!
The important part of all of this is that the bass player almost never cares what key you’re playing in. You can almost always slide up the neck, or over one string, and all of the relationships will remain the same. There are some cases where a change of key can really mess up some fancy melody or a sophisticated slapping thing that needs to use open strings, but in general, you can make it work.
Unlike the 6-string, there is no anomalous tuning of the strings, they are always tuned in fourths (a 6-string has a 3rd between the G and B strings). In fact, most 5 and 6 string basses stick with the 4th tuning, adding either a B on the low end, or a C and possibly and F on the high side.
Rhythm
The bass is always considered part of the rhythm section, along with the drums and rhythm guitar. Together, their main job is to keep time and to set the style of the song. Sometimes, the rhythm guitarist is playing counter-beat, and the drummer is counting a straight four, and it comes down to the bass player to set the style. Rhythms can be boring, even fast ones. Be careful that you don’t lose your concentration and get sloppy.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
How To Transcibe Music
Transcribe! slow down music software is one of my favorite software "aids" in helping me cop my favorite licks off cd's or mp3's. I also use it to figure out those 'hard-to-hear" chords.
My students get the benefit of Transcribe! slow down music software too.
For example. They have a song they want to learn. Mostly they expect me to transcribe it for them and then show them how to play it. Amazing... they expect "me" to do the work they should be doing! But I don't work that way. It's my job to teach them "how" to do that for themselves, not do it for them! But that's where Transcribe! music slow down software comes to the rescue.
I just load their track into Transcribe! slow down music software and loop a bar or two for them to learn. The thing is though, I can slow it right down to half or even a quarter (or less) of its original speed. Having it go so slow, and looping it over and over, gives my students time to "hear" the notes, learn to sing or hum them, and then learn to play them. (I might just give them a tip by saying it's based on the Em pentatonic in the 8th position for example.)
Learning to "hear" what notes are being played is a daunting task for anyone developing their ears. But Transcribe! helps enormously. But don't make too much of a habit of using it. Learn to rely on your ears. Learn to sing everything you play. See Play Guitar by Ear.
Here's an article on "How to Transcribe" by Andy Robinson of Seventh String Software, inventors of Transcribe! slow down music software.
1. What Does it Mean to Transcribe Music?
What I am talking about here is the process of working out how to play and/or write out a piece of music starting with just a recording of the piece - a commercially released CD perhaps. We would usually be talking about non-classical music as most classical music can be obtained as printed music.
You will also hear classical musicians speak of "transcribing" to mean adapting a piece of music written for one instrument to be played on another. Thus when John Williams plays Scarlatti sonatas (originally written for keyboard) on the guitar, these would be called "transcriptions" although he didn't need to work them out from a recording because you can buy the published sheet music (for keyboard) in a shop. Non-classical musicians don't often use the word this way because they customarily rearrange music for their own combination of instruments all the time anyway.
The effort involved in transcribing music from recordings varies enormously depending on the complexity of the music, how good you ear is and how detailed you want your transcription to be. If you merely want to write down the chords to a very simple song then if your ear is good you may be able to scribble them down in real time while the music is playing. At the other extreme if you are attempting a detailed transcription of complex music then it can take hours to transcribe a single minute of music.
By the way, "the dots" is an abbreviation meaning the written-out music, because of the visual appearance of written music as dots on a stave.
2. Why Transcribe Music?
Often, it's because you want to play a tune but you don't have the dots for it, you only have a recording. Of course you might start by looking for the dots (if it's a jazz tune try the Fake Book Index) but if you can't find them what are you going to do? Also, even if you can find the dots they will often be a disappointment when compared to the version you've been listening to and enjoying. Good players will usually make more out of a piece than the standard published dots will show, so you will have to listen to the recording to find out what they're doing. I'm talking about reharmonisation, embellishing chords, added figures and riffs, good bass-line movement, voice leading, etc.
Jazz musicians regard transcribing as an important educational method. Jazz has a strong emphasis on listening and improvising. Transcribing other people's improvised solos is good for improving your ear and also for gaining insight into the musical ideas they use.
There are also quite a number of professional transcribers around. For instance, if you buy the sheet music for a popular song then this music will often have been transcribed from the record by a professional who works for the publisher.
3. Prequisites
As far as your own musicianship is concerned we could say that there is only one prerequisite which is the ability to tell whether your transcription is right or wrong when you play it and compare it to the original. The extent to which you really can't tell is the extent of possible inaccuracy in your transcription. As long as you can tell, you can keep working at it until your transcription sounds right. How long this takes depends on your ear. If you are having difficulty figuring out the chords then it might be they are too complex for you. Don't despair however. Some people seem to develop a good ear very quickly but I think most people can develop a good ear in time as long as they keep working at it. I think that it's very important to play a chordal instrument (piano or guitar) in order to understand chords and recognise their sound. When I was starting out, a 7#9 chord sounded to me like a pleasantly scrunchy sound but I wouldn't have a clue what the chord was. After a few years playing the guitar and using such chords, an association develops in the mind between playing a 7#9 and the particular flavour of the sound that comes out. Now when I hear someone play a 7#9 I recognise it immediately as an old friend. I think that almost anyone can learn this kind of familiarity with chords but for most of us it doesn't happen by magic and it doesn't happen overnight, it's the result of years of playing, practicing, listening and indeed transcribing.
Familiarity with the musical style is one of the biggest factors in making it easy to transcribe. If you have played lots of music in the same style as the piece you're transcribing then you'll find it much easier to understand what they're doing. An anecdote : when I was about 15 and knew almost nothing I tried to transcribe Charles Mingus's "Jelly Roll" from the album "Ah Um". Listening to it now it's perfectly obvious that it's a blues (14 bar as far as I remember) but I didn't know that then. I listened hard to what the piano player does, thinking that would tell me what the chords are. What I didn't know is that in this kind of music, jazz piano players typically play all sorts of notes with the right hand which don't obviously belong to the chord. If the basic harmony at some particular point is, say, C7 then almost any note except B can be used to construct a harmony which might work in this style. If you don't understand this then trying to work out the chords from the pianist's right hand is a recipe for disaster (I should have started with the bass line). My final result had the melody correct but the chord symbols I came up with were totally wrong and unusable. I'm not suggesting that it was wasted effort though. You have to accept that your first efforts will be of doubtful value but we all have to start somewhere and if you persevere you will improve.
As far as equipment is concerned, obviously you need a means of playing the recording to listen to it. Some ways are easier than others for the purpose of transcribing and every transcriber has their own favourite way of working. Here are my views.
· Vinylacility, very difficult to play from a specific point in the piece and a steady hand needed for lifting the needle and putting it back down again without damaging the record. This was transcribing for heroes. On the other hand if you had a player with 16 RPM speed you could slow the music down for the fiddly bits. Some players (the Garrard 401 for instance) allowed fine control over the speed, useful for tuning adjustment.
· CassetteI considered this to be a big step forward, and used a Walkman quite heavily for the purpose. Advantages : portability, the tape counter which although inaccurate does give some idea of where you are, and the easier start/stop/rewind controls. You could listen to the same bit again by briefly pressing the rewind button while in play mode which was very handy. Slow down was no longer possible but if I really needed it I would copy to my two-speed reel-to-reel machine then copy back to cassette at half speed so my cassette tape would then have two versions, one of them full speed and the other half speed.
· CD/MiniDiscFinally the digit was discovered (in the Peruvian jungle at the far end of the Andes) and tamed. These devices give accurate timing indication for the first time so you really can find any given point reliably. The more expensive models will also loop and some even permit tuning adjustment and speed adjustment. If you choose the right model then these are excellent transcription tools.
· Computer Software - Transcriber's AssistantsThese days pretty much all desktop computers are capable of recording and playing audio and there are various computer based player programs intended to help you transcribe music. You may be aware that we (Seventh String Software) sell one called Transcribe!
· The features offered by such programs are limited only by the imagination of the program designer (and of course by what is technically possible). It is usual to be able to set multiple loop points, adjust tuning and slow down the music without pitch change. Transcribe! also offers a feature which is as far as I know unique in such a program, which is to display a spectrum analysis of any chord or note you select, as a wavy line over a piano keyboard graphic. The peaks in the line identify the tones present, so helping to identify chords.
· The most ambitious programs attempt to actually do the transcribing for you, processing an audio file and outputting MIDI or musical notation. I admire their courage in making the attempt, but my impression is that they are not really all that useful. On music where multiple notes are being played at the same time by multiple instruments (i.e. almost all music!) they make so many mistakes that it's difficult to see them as useful for serious purposes.
This document is a discussion of how to transcribe music regardless of what device you use for playing the music on.
4. Transcribing
First try to get hold of the dots! Some people will tell you you shouldn't because transcribing is "good for you". I certainly agree that transcribing is good for you but if you are at all active musically then there will always be things you want to play for which you can't get the dots, so I think you should save your transcribing time and energy for those. Also, as I mentioned above, if you are listening to a recording you like then the chances are that the sheet music will not show the nice things the musicians are doing which make the recording special. So you will still end up doing some transcribing, but the dots may help as a starting point.
Map out the structure of the piece - verse, chorus, middle section and so on. Even if you don't intend to transcribe the whole thing it's often useful to have a complete map because if the chords are unclear to you at some point then if you know that the same thing happens elsewhere in the piece then you could listen to it there - it may be clearer second time. So listen through the whole thing making a note of what happens where. For instance if you're using a CD player then you could list the sections on a piece of paper with the start time of each section taken from the CD player's display so you can find it again. On Transcribe! or other software which has this capability, you would place markers.
If necessary then adjust the tuning of the playback to match your instrument. If the playback device you are using does not permit this then you may instead be able to adjust the tuning of your instrument to match the piece. By the way, some people recommend transcribing without any instrument in your hands, by the use of pure ear-power. That's great if you can do it but this document is aimed at less experienced transcribers. I would recommend having a guitar or keyboard handy and constantly checking your transcription by playing along and asking yourself if it sounds right.
Now it's time to start transcribing. This is rather like doing a jigsaw. When you do a jigsaw you start with the easy bits. Once enough of these are done then you can hope that the hard bits will fall into place. In the same way, start your transcription with the things you can hear easily. That usually means any prominent single-note instrument (including vocal). Hearing the inner voices of a chord is hard so don't start with that. Start with the melody. Loop it a phrase at a time and play along until you find the notes. Write them down and move on. Then tackle the bass part. If it is murky or unclear then try raising its pitch - Transcribe! and other programs will allow you to raise the pitch by an octave without speeding the music up. This can give the bass part much better definition. The bass part is crucial when you come to figure out the chords because bass players frequently play the root of the chord, or else the 3rd or 5th, so knowing the bass part gives huge clues to what the chord is. Also remember that if in doubt you should listen to other points in the piece where the same sequence occurs, to get a second opinion.
Write down any other prominent riffs and backing figures in the same way.
Now start on the harmonies. This is the hardest part so again we pick away at it bit by bit. Pick out whatever single notes you can hear in the chords - often the top note of a chord is easier to distinguish so write down whatever notes you can hear in any of the chords. Often "voice leading" is used in harmony - this is where you hear a prominent note (a "voice", but not necessarily vocal - could be any instrument) in the harmony, which moves to the next note above or below or stays the same when the chord changes. These are usually easy to hear so work them out and write them down. When you've picked out as many specific notes as you can then you try to identify the chords. This is where your experience and your knowledge of the musical style you're dealing with make a big difference. If you are experienced in the style then you will know what kinds of chords and chord progressions are likely. The bass line, melody line and top line of harmony that you have already worked out will narrow the possibilities right down and you can try out the possible chords on your instrument to see what fits. On the other hand if the chord is an altered dominant and you don't know what an altered dominant is then it won't be so easy, though you may still be able to find something that works even if you don't know what to call it. A useful technique to get further clues is to try playing single notes on your instrument, when the chord comes in the track. Try a C, does it fit? C#? D? When you find a note which fits, perhaps it belongs in the chord. Transcribe!'s spectrum analysis feature is also useful here.
The approach just described assumes that your transcription will include chord symbols but of course sometimes you will be aiming for a complete note-for-note transcription of the performance. In this case it's up to you to listen closely for each note! It can still be helpful to think in terms of chords, to help understand what is happening.
Here's a tip (courtesy of Charles Alexander) for determining the correct key that a piece is in. This often causes confusion because although for many pieces the first chord is also the key, there are many pieces where this is not so. You should look instead at the end of the piece. Play up to the end then whistle a "shave and a haircut" ending like this (written here in C major) :
Whistle it in whatever key sounds right for the piece. The last note of the "shave and a haircut" ending is the key of the piece. This works for major keys. For minor keys I think it's usually true that the starting chord of the melody is the key, unless the title contains the word "Autumn" (Autumn Leaves, Autumn in New York). However just because a piece starts on a minor chord doesn't mean it's in a minor key - for instance "It Don't Mean A Thing" starts on G minor but is in Bb major, as the "shave and a haircut" test reveals.
Here's a tip for determining rhythmic values of fast notes. Suppose someone plays two notes quite quickly, "duh-duh" and you're asking yourself are they eighth notes? Sixteenths? Part of a triplet? The answer is to tap your hand in time with the quarter-note pulse of the piece and sing along with the "duh-duh" notes but extend them to an endless sequence at the same speed "duh-duh-duh-duh...". Then all you have to do is count how many fit into a quarter note. Two? then they're eighth notes. Six? then they're triplet sixteenths. For more complicated phrases learn the phrase so you can sing it accurately, then sing it on your own with your hand tapping the beat (switch off playback) then get slower and subdivide the beat by tapping your hand more rapidly. When you subdivide the beat into small enough pieces then you will find every note of the phrase will be on one of the subdivisions so by noting how many subdivisions per quarter note you are tapping and which subdivision each note falls on, you can work out the rhythm.
Finally, here's a heretical suggestion. If the purpose of your transcription is to perform the piece yourself then remember that it isn't necessary for your transcription to be totally accurate. If there's something complicated going on and you just can't figure it out, remember that it's always an option to just make up something else to play at that point! As long as it sounds good, who's going to complain?
About Bass Technique
Technique Is About Adapting
No one was physically born to play bass (or any instrument but voice for that matter). As a bass player you are adapting your hands and body to this musical instrument. A musical instrument is designed the way it is because of 1) the sound it needs to create, coupled with 2) the average human body in mind. The technique to play it lies somewhere in-between the two.
In my opinion, there is no single, correct way of playing the bass — only better and worse ways. Rigidly thinking there is only one way to play the bass can really stunt you as a bassist and crush the development of an original voice. Just because something works for one bassist doesn’t make it so for all of them.
Results of Bass Technique
While there are no "correct" ways of playing the bass guitar, what does exist are correct results of playing the bass guitar. It needs to sound and feel good. How you accomplish those results is up to you. If you find a way to achieve those results by throwing rocks at your bass, more power to you! (Maybe practice that with someone else’s bass first.)
Thinking about the results end of things gives you creative freedom to experiment. Try things your own way. Try things the way other successful bassists before you have.
Why do so many great bass players sound so different from one another? The most revered bassists rarely sound exactly like any other bassist you can point to. If you examine the bass technique of many of the greatest bass players, you will see each has a different approach than the other. Often times he or she has a wildly different approach. And, it is often this different approach that brought about his or her greatness or uniqueness.
If you look more closely at these great bassists you will notice there are a lot of common results from all of their different bass techniques. It is these results we need to pay attention to and figure out various ways to accomplish them — whether we copy the techniques of other bassists, or blaze our own path.
Studying bass technique is about examining the better and worse ways of producing good bass-playing results.
Be Deliberate
You should deliberately choose the bass techniques you use for the results they produce. A big mistake, especially for the self-taught, is to choose what comes easiest. The path of least resistance doesn’t always work so well. Some results are going to be hard to achieve. You’re going to have to work at it. When people listen to you play they don’t care how easy it is for you. They only care about the results of your bass playing. Does it sound good? That is what should determine the bass techniques you use.
The Goals of Bass Technique
In my opinion, these are the 4 main bass technique goals from which good bass technique will flow:
Goal #1: Avoiding Injury and Musician Health Problems
The most important goal of your bass technique is to avoid injuring your hands, back, ears, or anything else that may arrest your ability to play bass. You want to play bass for the rest of your life. Your bass technique must support this goal or you are doomed to a very short career.
Goal #2: Clarity and Good Tone
Each note you play should ring clearly with a full, pleasing tone. That means:
· No unwanted buzzing
· No unintentional muffled, or muted, notes
· No unwelcome open strings ringing in the background
· No unintentional harmonics, and
· No other accidentally produced extraneous noises
It is quite a tall order, but you have to learn to control all of these aspects of the bass guitar. Notice I say unintentional a lot here. These are all valid sounds the bass guitar can make. Make sure you are making them intentionally.
Goal #3: Efficiency/Economy
I tell students all the time I want them to be lazy when they play. You should use the least amount of effort possible to produce the desired results. This will help you play more quickly, more accurately, and more comfortably for longer periods of time.
Early on this is difficult. Your attention is divided and you’re just trying so hard to play something. With time and practice, things will become more and more effortless. But, you must develop a relaxed technique by consciously working on and thinking about it. You need to make a habit of being relaxed. It takes work to not work so much!
Goal #4: Accuracy
You need to develop accuracy with where you place your fingers, your tone, and your rhythm. It’s important to know exactly what is about to come out of your fingers. If you don’t know what to expect from your playing, you will lack confidence as you play. That lack of confidence will translate into some shaky bass playing.
Accuracy comes from a lot of patient, mindful practice. Early in your playing you will have a lot of problems with consistency. Time and experience are your greatest teachers.
About the Bass Technique Lessons
As I said earlier, there are better and worse ways of accomplishing all of these goals and results I’ve outlined. In the forthcoming bass technique lessons, I will show you ways I approach accomplishing these bass-playing goals and results. I’ve taught these techniques to hundreds of bass students with much success. Mainly, it is the logic behind each bass technique I want to convey. I don’t want you to take my word that these are the ways to play bass. They aren’t. They are just some ways that work pretty well for me and might for you.
Breaking Bad Habits
Even if you’ve only been playing bass for a couple of months, you’ve already developed some playing habits. If you’ve developed some bad ones, here’s what I recommend to help fix them:
Stick to the Unfamiliar
Take a break from playing anything you may have already learned to play on your bass. If you play things you are familiar with, you will quickly jump back into your old bass playing techniques. It will be easier to adapt new techniques to new, unfamiliar exercises, basslines and patterns. Once you’ve gotten better with the new bass techniques, it will be easier to go back and apply them to the music you were playing before.
Avoiding songs you often play can be difficult if you currently play in a band. You will have to make an extra effort to work on your band’s songs applying the new techniques you want to develop.
Slow Down
If you’ve been playing for a while, you’ve built up some facility to play things quickly. You need to slow things down and pay attention to what your hands are doing. The faster you go, the more likely you will jump back into your old habits and make mistakes. Pace yourself with a metronome. There's no shame in working at things slowly.
Get Feedback
Watch yourself in a mirror. Point the neck of the bass at the mirror so you can see the reflection of your plucking hand and, at the same time, you can see your fretting hand. If you want more feedback try recording yourself with a video camera. That can be very eye opening!
Overall, just be patient with yourself. Always try to learn things correctly as soon as possible. The more you delay, the harder it will be to change later.
Holding The Bass
How you hold and support your bass guitar is very important and should not be over-looked. Poorly holding your bass will negatively influence all other bass technique.
Strap In
You should use a guitar strap 100% of the time when you play your bass. The strap is an essential part of your bass technique. Your strap should hold your bass for you. Your hands shouldn’t be doing any of the bass holding or balancing. Your hands need to be free to play. I can't emphasize enough that you should always be using a strap!
Purchase a very comfortable strap. You, your back and your shoulders will be glad you did.
Bass Height
The strap should comfortably hold your bass somewhere above your hips and below your collarbone. Most people have it belly button level. Everyone is a bit different. Experiment.
Try to adjust your bass so that it sits at the same height whether you are sitting or standing. If you sit while practicing and stand while playing, this will help you play just like you practice. Being consistent is a big part of learning to play bass well.
The Cool Factor
You will see a lot of people letting the bass hang around their ankles thinking it looks cool. Don't. It doesn’t look that cool and you will cause yourself many back problems, technique problems and hand injuries. Eventually people will think it’s cool how well you play bass.
Posture
Your mother was right — sit or stand up straight. You shouldn't be leaning back in a chair or hunching over as you play.
Angle of the Bass Guitar
Hold your bass guitar at about a 30-degree angle. You will notice if you hold the bass perfectly level your plucking hand/arm is forced upwards while your fretting hand/arm is forced to reach down and around more and at a bad angle. This can cause a lot of posture problems and forces you to bend your wrists more. Sharply bent wrists lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. By angling the bass guitar you help straighten out your wrists, straightening your back, and leveling your shoulders.
Don't underestimate the importance of how you hold the bass guitar.
Plucking
The following is just the text from the above bass technique tutorial in case you don't have Flash 7 installed....
About the Plucking Technique Lesson
This is just one perspective on how to pluck the strings of the bass. As I pointed out in my article about bass technique, there is not one right way. But, there are better and worse ways. As a student of the bass you should seek as many perspectives as you can find. There are as many ways as there are players. Experiment with your own ideas, too. What follows is a combination of what I've learned from others and things I've discovered on my own.
I will explain the reasoning behind all the technique I show here. The reason is almost always that it sounds better. You should judge this for yourself. Another common reason for these techniques is it is more efficient and will be easier in the long run...
Finger Numbering
Unlike on piano and some other instruments, on bass your fingers are numbered:
· T = thumb
· 1 = index finger
· 2 = middle finger
· 3 = ring finger
· 4 = pinky finger FingernailsYou will need to keep your fingernails trimmed short to avoid your nail catching the string. (Unless, of course, you like the sound of it.)Avoiding Hand InjuriesKeep your wrists as straight as possible to keep from getting carpal tunnel syndrome and other nasty hand injuries. Most musicians don't discover they've injured their hands until after 10-20 years of playing. By then it's too late. The damage is done. And, it will be difficult to break those old habits. Just because it doesn't hurt now, doesn't mean it won't later.Relax Your HandLet your plucking hand hang limp. This is the natural shape of your hand. Keep your hand in that loose, relaxed shape as much as you can. There's no need for tension...Alternating FingersTo develop plucking speed and efficiency, it is important that you use at least two fingers to pluck. Most people use their index (1) and middle (2) fingers and alternate them. Using two fingers is half the work for each finger. Always do as little work as possible. Using two fingers is sufficient for most playing styles. Work on consistently alternating your fingers 1-2-1-2 (or 2-1-2-1). It doesn't matter on which finger you start. It might be a good idea to be able to start on either one. Just don't use one finger for a while, then the other, or one finger by itself. It might seem easier in the beginning to use one finger, but you will quickly hit a ceiling and you will have learned a very hard habit to break...Where to PluckYou will discover the bass guitar has a wide range of tones depending on where, along the string, you pluck. Plucking nearer to the neck offers a fatter, warmer tone. Plucking nearer to the bridge of the bass provides a brighter, more percussive tone. As you develop, you will become more comfortable with moving your plucking hand around to access these different tones. In the beginning, I recommend finding one place and staying there while you develop other, more important plucking habits...Positioning Your ThumbPlace your thumb on the face (not on top) of your pickup closest to the neck. Let your thumb linger just above the E-string. You will see why shortly. On most bass guitars this should put your plucking fingers in a central position between the neck and the bridge. You should get a good, all-purpose tone from your bass in this area.Muting the StringsPlaying the bass requires about as much work keeping the strings quiet as it does getting the notes to ring out. Most of the time you only want one string ringing at a time. That means on a 4-string bass you have 3 strings to keep quiet. You can't just let open strings ring freely in the background. This will muddy up your sound and often create some unwanted dissonance. You should strive to have control over every sound that comes out of your bass. This requires you to develop a solid string muting strategy...Muting with the ThumbYour thumb will be sliding down to help mute the E-string whenever it is not being played. To be efficient, you will want your thumb as close to the E-string as possible. That's why you want to keep your thumb on the face of the pickup. It will be much easier to slide your thumb down to mute the string. If you're on top, your thumb has to hop. You only need to lightly touch the E-string to mute it. No need to waste energy pushing on the E-string...Plucking MotionWhen you pluck the string your finger should roll over the top over the string. Most beginners and converting guitar players have the tendency to pull out away from the strings. This results in a very thin, scratchy tone. You will get a meatier, bassier tone by rolling over the string. It is much like the stroke of a paintbrush. Your plucking finger should follow through towards your palm, or to rest on the next string below the one you are plucking. There's no need to pluck very hard. Let your bass amplifier do the work. That's what it's for. Your fingers aren't amplifiers! Developing a light touch is a very important part of developing speed and accuracy...Follow-Through MutingAfter plucking a string, follow-through with your plucking motion letting your plucking finger come to rest on the string below. Letting your finger rest on the string below mutes that string. As you pluck using alternating fingers, one finger is plucking while the other one is muting. This is essential to keeping the strings quiet. Use this same motion for plucking on each string.Yet More Muting...As you ascend the strings (going from the fattest string to the skinniest) or skip strings, you will find you can't mute them all with these techniques alone. There are two solutions I show students: (1) use another finger to help with muting or, (2) use your thumb to mute more strings. Let's look at these two solutions...Ring Finger MutingThe technique I prefer uses your ring finger (3) to mute the A-string whenever you are plucking on the G-string. This is the only time you'll need it on a 4-string bass. Your ring finger (3) just needs to lightly touch the A-string to keep it from ringing. Placing your ring finger on the A-string every time you switch to pluck the G-string may seem awkward at first. With practice the motion will become automatic. When you are plucking the G-string the muting will be as follows:
· E-string is muted with thumb (T)
· A-string is muted with ring finger (3)
· D-string is muted with plucking fingers (1 or 2) landing on the D-string Wandering Thumb MutingAnother popular way of muting the bass strings is what I call the Wandering Thumb Method. Instead of leaving your thumb on the E-string, your thumb moves up the strings muting them. This is very useful to develop especially if you play, or plan to play, 5-string or 6-string bass. Either string muting method is effective. You will have to decide which you prefer and stick with it. If you are just starting or trying to change some old habits, it will be strange and frustrating no matter what. Practice slowly and accurately. It will come. When plucking the G-string with this method the muting will be as follows:
· E-string is muted with thumb (T)
· A-string is muted with thumb (T)
· D-string is muted with plucking fingers (1 or 2) landing on the D-string Bass Plucking VideoNow, watch the video and see it all put together.Bass Plucking ExercisesNow that you have an idea of what to do, you need something to practice! Follow the link below for bass plucking exercises which work on these basic techniques. Remember to play slowly and accurately. Don't rush through this stuff. You use it in everything you play! You are practicing every song you will ever play. bass plucking exercises
View from the Bottom...
The figure below shows a major scale as you would play it on a bass guitar. The bottom line is the low "E" string, and the top line is the "G" string. Think of the neck as being turned on its side, facing you, with the end of the neck being at the left-hand side of the diagram. The numbers in the middle of the neck represent the number of the fret. The first few numbers at the bottom of the figure represent which fingers should be holding the string down, and the exes represent the rest of the scale. The first note played in either a major or minor scale is always the tonic. In this case the tonic is A. The seven notes of any scale are numbered as such, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, with 8 being the tonic, just an octave higher. It is important to notice that in this diagram, the numbers in the diagram DO NOT correspond to the numbers in the scale, they are fret and finger numbers.
Referring to the numbers in a major scale, it's important to notice that the third and fourth notes and the seventh and tonic notes are a half step apart, all the other notes are a whole step apart. To better illustrate what I'm talking about in a theoretical sense applicable to music across the spectrum, there is a site that shows the musical staff of a major scale here.
Below is a diagram of an A minor scale. Notice how it differs from its major counterpart: the second and third notes of the scale are a half step apart this time, along with the fifth and sixth notes of the scale. There is also a musical staff diagram of the A minor scale here.
For full diagrams of every bass scale regardless of the tonic, click here. For full diagrams of guitar scales, click here. Remember, because the four strings of the bass and the first four strings of the guitar are commonly tuned to the same notes, a bass scale and a guitar scale will involve the same fingering for the first eight notes or so. That's a big reason why scales are dealt with in the bass section of this site -- it is more economical in terms of space and it covers most of the same material.
Transcribe! slow down music software is one of my favorite software "aids" in helping me cop my favorite licks off cd's or mp3's. I also use it to figure out those 'hard-to-hear" chords.
My students get the benefit of Transcribe! slow down music software too.
For example. They have a song they want to learn. Mostly they expect me to transcribe it for them and then show them how to play it. Amazing... they expect "me" to do the work they should be doing! But I don't work that way. It's my job to teach them "how" to do that for themselves, not do it for them! But that's where Transcribe! music slow down software comes to the rescue.
I just load their track into Transcribe! slow down music software and loop a bar or two for them to learn. The thing is though, I can slow it right down to half or even a quarter (or less) of its original speed. Having it go so slow, and looping it over and over, gives my students time to "hear" the notes, learn to sing or hum them, and then learn to play them. (I might just give them a tip by saying it's based on the Em pentatonic in the 8th position for example.)
Learning to "hear" what notes are being played is a daunting task for anyone developing their ears. But Transcribe! helps enormously. But don't make too much of a habit of using it. Learn to rely on your ears. Learn to sing everything you play. See Play Guitar by Ear.
Here's an article on "How to Transcribe" by Andy Robinson of Seventh String Software, inventors of Transcribe! slow down music software.
1. What Does it Mean to Transcribe Music?
What I am talking about here is the process of working out how to play and/or write out a piece of music starting with just a recording of the piece - a commercially released CD perhaps. We would usually be talking about non-classical music as most classical music can be obtained as printed music.
You will also hear classical musicians speak of "transcribing" to mean adapting a piece of music written for one instrument to be played on another. Thus when John Williams plays Scarlatti sonatas (originally written for keyboard) on the guitar, these would be called "transcriptions" although he didn't need to work them out from a recording because you can buy the published sheet music (for keyboard) in a shop. Non-classical musicians don't often use the word this way because they customarily rearrange music for their own combination of instruments all the time anyway.
The effort involved in transcribing music from recordings varies enormously depending on the complexity of the music, how good you ear is and how detailed you want your transcription to be. If you merely want to write down the chords to a very simple song then if your ear is good you may be able to scribble them down in real time while the music is playing. At the other extreme if you are attempting a detailed transcription of complex music then it can take hours to transcribe a single minute of music.
By the way, "the dots" is an abbreviation meaning the written-out music, because of the visual appearance of written music as dots on a stave.
2. Why Transcribe Music?
Often, it's because you want to play a tune but you don't have the dots for it, you only have a recording. Of course you might start by looking for the dots (if it's a jazz tune try the Fake Book Index) but if you can't find them what are you going to do? Also, even if you can find the dots they will often be a disappointment when compared to the version you've been listening to and enjoying. Good players will usually make more out of a piece than the standard published dots will show, so you will have to listen to the recording to find out what they're doing. I'm talking about reharmonisation, embellishing chords, added figures and riffs, good bass-line movement, voice leading, etc.
Jazz musicians regard transcribing as an important educational method. Jazz has a strong emphasis on listening and improvising. Transcribing other people's improvised solos is good for improving your ear and also for gaining insight into the musical ideas they use.
There are also quite a number of professional transcribers around. For instance, if you buy the sheet music for a popular song then this music will often have been transcribed from the record by a professional who works for the publisher.
3. Prequisites
As far as your own musicianship is concerned we could say that there is only one prerequisite which is the ability to tell whether your transcription is right or wrong when you play it and compare it to the original. The extent to which you really can't tell is the extent of possible inaccuracy in your transcription. As long as you can tell, you can keep working at it until your transcription sounds right. How long this takes depends on your ear. If you are having difficulty figuring out the chords then it might be they are too complex for you. Don't despair however. Some people seem to develop a good ear very quickly but I think most people can develop a good ear in time as long as they keep working at it. I think that it's very important to play a chordal instrument (piano or guitar) in order to understand chords and recognise their sound. When I was starting out, a 7#9 chord sounded to me like a pleasantly scrunchy sound but I wouldn't have a clue what the chord was. After a few years playing the guitar and using such chords, an association develops in the mind between playing a 7#9 and the particular flavour of the sound that comes out. Now when I hear someone play a 7#9 I recognise it immediately as an old friend. I think that almost anyone can learn this kind of familiarity with chords but for most of us it doesn't happen by magic and it doesn't happen overnight, it's the result of years of playing, practicing, listening and indeed transcribing.
Familiarity with the musical style is one of the biggest factors in making it easy to transcribe. If you have played lots of music in the same style as the piece you're transcribing then you'll find it much easier to understand what they're doing. An anecdote : when I was about 15 and knew almost nothing I tried to transcribe Charles Mingus's "Jelly Roll" from the album "Ah Um". Listening to it now it's perfectly obvious that it's a blues (14 bar as far as I remember) but I didn't know that then. I listened hard to what the piano player does, thinking that would tell me what the chords are. What I didn't know is that in this kind of music, jazz piano players typically play all sorts of notes with the right hand which don't obviously belong to the chord. If the basic harmony at some particular point is, say, C7 then almost any note except B can be used to construct a harmony which might work in this style. If you don't understand this then trying to work out the chords from the pianist's right hand is a recipe for disaster (I should have started with the bass line). My final result had the melody correct but the chord symbols I came up with were totally wrong and unusable. I'm not suggesting that it was wasted effort though. You have to accept that your first efforts will be of doubtful value but we all have to start somewhere and if you persevere you will improve.
As far as equipment is concerned, obviously you need a means of playing the recording to listen to it. Some ways are easier than others for the purpose of transcribing and every transcriber has their own favourite way of working. Here are my views.
· Vinylacility, very difficult to play from a specific point in the piece and a steady hand needed for lifting the needle and putting it back down again without damaging the record. This was transcribing for heroes. On the other hand if you had a player with 16 RPM speed you could slow the music down for the fiddly bits. Some players (the Garrard 401 for instance) allowed fine control over the speed, useful for tuning adjustment.
· CassetteI considered this to be a big step forward, and used a Walkman quite heavily for the purpose. Advantages : portability, the tape counter which although inaccurate does give some idea of where you are, and the easier start/stop/rewind controls. You could listen to the same bit again by briefly pressing the rewind button while in play mode which was very handy. Slow down was no longer possible but if I really needed it I would copy to my two-speed reel-to-reel machine then copy back to cassette at half speed so my cassette tape would then have two versions, one of them full speed and the other half speed.
· CD/MiniDiscFinally the digit was discovered (in the Peruvian jungle at the far end of the Andes) and tamed. These devices give accurate timing indication for the first time so you really can find any given point reliably. The more expensive models will also loop and some even permit tuning adjustment and speed adjustment. If you choose the right model then these are excellent transcription tools.
· Computer Software - Transcriber's AssistantsThese days pretty much all desktop computers are capable of recording and playing audio and there are various computer based player programs intended to help you transcribe music. You may be aware that we (Seventh String Software) sell one called Transcribe!
· The features offered by such programs are limited only by the imagination of the program designer (and of course by what is technically possible). It is usual to be able to set multiple loop points, adjust tuning and slow down the music without pitch change. Transcribe! also offers a feature which is as far as I know unique in such a program, which is to display a spectrum analysis of any chord or note you select, as a wavy line over a piano keyboard graphic. The peaks in the line identify the tones present, so helping to identify chords.
· The most ambitious programs attempt to actually do the transcribing for you, processing an audio file and outputting MIDI or musical notation. I admire their courage in making the attempt, but my impression is that they are not really all that useful. On music where multiple notes are being played at the same time by multiple instruments (i.e. almost all music!) they make so many mistakes that it's difficult to see them as useful for serious purposes.
This document is a discussion of how to transcribe music regardless of what device you use for playing the music on.
4. Transcribing
First try to get hold of the dots! Some people will tell you you shouldn't because transcribing is "good for you". I certainly agree that transcribing is good for you but if you are at all active musically then there will always be things you want to play for which you can't get the dots, so I think you should save your transcribing time and energy for those. Also, as I mentioned above, if you are listening to a recording you like then the chances are that the sheet music will not show the nice things the musicians are doing which make the recording special. So you will still end up doing some transcribing, but the dots may help as a starting point.
Map out the structure of the piece - verse, chorus, middle section and so on. Even if you don't intend to transcribe the whole thing it's often useful to have a complete map because if the chords are unclear to you at some point then if you know that the same thing happens elsewhere in the piece then you could listen to it there - it may be clearer second time. So listen through the whole thing making a note of what happens where. For instance if you're using a CD player then you could list the sections on a piece of paper with the start time of each section taken from the CD player's display so you can find it again. On Transcribe! or other software which has this capability, you would place markers.
If necessary then adjust the tuning of the playback to match your instrument. If the playback device you are using does not permit this then you may instead be able to adjust the tuning of your instrument to match the piece. By the way, some people recommend transcribing without any instrument in your hands, by the use of pure ear-power. That's great if you can do it but this document is aimed at less experienced transcribers. I would recommend having a guitar or keyboard handy and constantly checking your transcription by playing along and asking yourself if it sounds right.
Now it's time to start transcribing. This is rather like doing a jigsaw. When you do a jigsaw you start with the easy bits. Once enough of these are done then you can hope that the hard bits will fall into place. In the same way, start your transcription with the things you can hear easily. That usually means any prominent single-note instrument (including vocal). Hearing the inner voices of a chord is hard so don't start with that. Start with the melody. Loop it a phrase at a time and play along until you find the notes. Write them down and move on. Then tackle the bass part. If it is murky or unclear then try raising its pitch - Transcribe! and other programs will allow you to raise the pitch by an octave without speeding the music up. This can give the bass part much better definition. The bass part is crucial when you come to figure out the chords because bass players frequently play the root of the chord, or else the 3rd or 5th, so knowing the bass part gives huge clues to what the chord is. Also remember that if in doubt you should listen to other points in the piece where the same sequence occurs, to get a second opinion.
Write down any other prominent riffs and backing figures in the same way.
Now start on the harmonies. This is the hardest part so again we pick away at it bit by bit. Pick out whatever single notes you can hear in the chords - often the top note of a chord is easier to distinguish so write down whatever notes you can hear in any of the chords. Often "voice leading" is used in harmony - this is where you hear a prominent note (a "voice", but not necessarily vocal - could be any instrument) in the harmony, which moves to the next note above or below or stays the same when the chord changes. These are usually easy to hear so work them out and write them down. When you've picked out as many specific notes as you can then you try to identify the chords. This is where your experience and your knowledge of the musical style you're dealing with make a big difference. If you are experienced in the style then you will know what kinds of chords and chord progressions are likely. The bass line, melody line and top line of harmony that you have already worked out will narrow the possibilities right down and you can try out the possible chords on your instrument to see what fits. On the other hand if the chord is an altered dominant and you don't know what an altered dominant is then it won't be so easy, though you may still be able to find something that works even if you don't know what to call it. A useful technique to get further clues is to try playing single notes on your instrument, when the chord comes in the track. Try a C, does it fit? C#? D? When you find a note which fits, perhaps it belongs in the chord. Transcribe!'s spectrum analysis feature is also useful here.
The approach just described assumes that your transcription will include chord symbols but of course sometimes you will be aiming for a complete note-for-note transcription of the performance. In this case it's up to you to listen closely for each note! It can still be helpful to think in terms of chords, to help understand what is happening.
Here's a tip (courtesy of Charles Alexander) for determining the correct key that a piece is in. This often causes confusion because although for many pieces the first chord is also the key, there are many pieces where this is not so. You should look instead at the end of the piece. Play up to the end then whistle a "shave and a haircut" ending like this (written here in C major) :
Whistle it in whatever key sounds right for the piece. The last note of the "shave and a haircut" ending is the key of the piece. This works for major keys. For minor keys I think it's usually true that the starting chord of the melody is the key, unless the title contains the word "Autumn" (Autumn Leaves, Autumn in New York). However just because a piece starts on a minor chord doesn't mean it's in a minor key - for instance "It Don't Mean A Thing" starts on G minor but is in Bb major, as the "shave and a haircut" test reveals.
Here's a tip for determining rhythmic values of fast notes. Suppose someone plays two notes quite quickly, "duh-duh" and you're asking yourself are they eighth notes? Sixteenths? Part of a triplet? The answer is to tap your hand in time with the quarter-note pulse of the piece and sing along with the "duh-duh" notes but extend them to an endless sequence at the same speed "duh-duh-duh-duh...". Then all you have to do is count how many fit into a quarter note. Two? then they're eighth notes. Six? then they're triplet sixteenths. For more complicated phrases learn the phrase so you can sing it accurately, then sing it on your own with your hand tapping the beat (switch off playback) then get slower and subdivide the beat by tapping your hand more rapidly. When you subdivide the beat into small enough pieces then you will find every note of the phrase will be on one of the subdivisions so by noting how many subdivisions per quarter note you are tapping and which subdivision each note falls on, you can work out the rhythm.
Finally, here's a heretical suggestion. If the purpose of your transcription is to perform the piece yourself then remember that it isn't necessary for your transcription to be totally accurate. If there's something complicated going on and you just can't figure it out, remember that it's always an option to just make up something else to play at that point! As long as it sounds good, who's going to complain?
About Bass Technique
Technique Is About Adapting
No one was physically born to play bass (or any instrument but voice for that matter). As a bass player you are adapting your hands and body to this musical instrument. A musical instrument is designed the way it is because of 1) the sound it needs to create, coupled with 2) the average human body in mind. The technique to play it lies somewhere in-between the two.
In my opinion, there is no single, correct way of playing the bass — only better and worse ways. Rigidly thinking there is only one way to play the bass can really stunt you as a bassist and crush the development of an original voice. Just because something works for one bassist doesn’t make it so for all of them.
Results of Bass Technique
While there are no "correct" ways of playing the bass guitar, what does exist are correct results of playing the bass guitar. It needs to sound and feel good. How you accomplish those results is up to you. If you find a way to achieve those results by throwing rocks at your bass, more power to you! (Maybe practice that with someone else’s bass first.)
Thinking about the results end of things gives you creative freedom to experiment. Try things your own way. Try things the way other successful bassists before you have.
Why do so many great bass players sound so different from one another? The most revered bassists rarely sound exactly like any other bassist you can point to. If you examine the bass technique of many of the greatest bass players, you will see each has a different approach than the other. Often times he or she has a wildly different approach. And, it is often this different approach that brought about his or her greatness or uniqueness.
If you look more closely at these great bassists you will notice there are a lot of common results from all of their different bass techniques. It is these results we need to pay attention to and figure out various ways to accomplish them — whether we copy the techniques of other bassists, or blaze our own path.
Studying bass technique is about examining the better and worse ways of producing good bass-playing results.
Be Deliberate
You should deliberately choose the bass techniques you use for the results they produce. A big mistake, especially for the self-taught, is to choose what comes easiest. The path of least resistance doesn’t always work so well. Some results are going to be hard to achieve. You’re going to have to work at it. When people listen to you play they don’t care how easy it is for you. They only care about the results of your bass playing. Does it sound good? That is what should determine the bass techniques you use.
The Goals of Bass Technique
In my opinion, these are the 4 main bass technique goals from which good bass technique will flow:
Goal #1: Avoiding Injury and Musician Health Problems
The most important goal of your bass technique is to avoid injuring your hands, back, ears, or anything else that may arrest your ability to play bass. You want to play bass for the rest of your life. Your bass technique must support this goal or you are doomed to a very short career.
Goal #2: Clarity and Good Tone
Each note you play should ring clearly with a full, pleasing tone. That means:
· No unwanted buzzing
· No unintentional muffled, or muted, notes
· No unwelcome open strings ringing in the background
· No unintentional harmonics, and
· No other accidentally produced extraneous noises
It is quite a tall order, but you have to learn to control all of these aspects of the bass guitar. Notice I say unintentional a lot here. These are all valid sounds the bass guitar can make. Make sure you are making them intentionally.
Goal #3: Efficiency/Economy
I tell students all the time I want them to be lazy when they play. You should use the least amount of effort possible to produce the desired results. This will help you play more quickly, more accurately, and more comfortably for longer periods of time.
Early on this is difficult. Your attention is divided and you’re just trying so hard to play something. With time and practice, things will become more and more effortless. But, you must develop a relaxed technique by consciously working on and thinking about it. You need to make a habit of being relaxed. It takes work to not work so much!
Goal #4: Accuracy
You need to develop accuracy with where you place your fingers, your tone, and your rhythm. It’s important to know exactly what is about to come out of your fingers. If you don’t know what to expect from your playing, you will lack confidence as you play. That lack of confidence will translate into some shaky bass playing.
Accuracy comes from a lot of patient, mindful practice. Early in your playing you will have a lot of problems with consistency. Time and experience are your greatest teachers.
About the Bass Technique Lessons
As I said earlier, there are better and worse ways of accomplishing all of these goals and results I’ve outlined. In the forthcoming bass technique lessons, I will show you ways I approach accomplishing these bass-playing goals and results. I’ve taught these techniques to hundreds of bass students with much success. Mainly, it is the logic behind each bass technique I want to convey. I don’t want you to take my word that these are the ways to play bass. They aren’t. They are just some ways that work pretty well for me and might for you.
Breaking Bad Habits
Even if you’ve only been playing bass for a couple of months, you’ve already developed some playing habits. If you’ve developed some bad ones, here’s what I recommend to help fix them:
Stick to the Unfamiliar
Take a break from playing anything you may have already learned to play on your bass. If you play things you are familiar with, you will quickly jump back into your old bass playing techniques. It will be easier to adapt new techniques to new, unfamiliar exercises, basslines and patterns. Once you’ve gotten better with the new bass techniques, it will be easier to go back and apply them to the music you were playing before.
Avoiding songs you often play can be difficult if you currently play in a band. You will have to make an extra effort to work on your band’s songs applying the new techniques you want to develop.
Slow Down
If you’ve been playing for a while, you’ve built up some facility to play things quickly. You need to slow things down and pay attention to what your hands are doing. The faster you go, the more likely you will jump back into your old habits and make mistakes. Pace yourself with a metronome. There's no shame in working at things slowly.
Get Feedback
Watch yourself in a mirror. Point the neck of the bass at the mirror so you can see the reflection of your plucking hand and, at the same time, you can see your fretting hand. If you want more feedback try recording yourself with a video camera. That can be very eye opening!
Overall, just be patient with yourself. Always try to learn things correctly as soon as possible. The more you delay, the harder it will be to change later.
Holding The Bass
How you hold and support your bass guitar is very important and should not be over-looked. Poorly holding your bass will negatively influence all other bass technique.
Strap In
You should use a guitar strap 100% of the time when you play your bass. The strap is an essential part of your bass technique. Your strap should hold your bass for you. Your hands shouldn’t be doing any of the bass holding or balancing. Your hands need to be free to play. I can't emphasize enough that you should always be using a strap!
Purchase a very comfortable strap. You, your back and your shoulders will be glad you did.
Bass Height
The strap should comfortably hold your bass somewhere above your hips and below your collarbone. Most people have it belly button level. Everyone is a bit different. Experiment.
Try to adjust your bass so that it sits at the same height whether you are sitting or standing. If you sit while practicing and stand while playing, this will help you play just like you practice. Being consistent is a big part of learning to play bass well.
The Cool Factor
You will see a lot of people letting the bass hang around their ankles thinking it looks cool. Don't. It doesn’t look that cool and you will cause yourself many back problems, technique problems and hand injuries. Eventually people will think it’s cool how well you play bass.
Posture
Your mother was right — sit or stand up straight. You shouldn't be leaning back in a chair or hunching over as you play.
Angle of the Bass Guitar
Hold your bass guitar at about a 30-degree angle. You will notice if you hold the bass perfectly level your plucking hand/arm is forced upwards while your fretting hand/arm is forced to reach down and around more and at a bad angle. This can cause a lot of posture problems and forces you to bend your wrists more. Sharply bent wrists lead to carpal tunnel syndrome. By angling the bass guitar you help straighten out your wrists, straightening your back, and leveling your shoulders.
Don't underestimate the importance of how you hold the bass guitar.
Plucking
The following is just the text from the above bass technique tutorial in case you don't have Flash 7 installed....
About the Plucking Technique Lesson
This is just one perspective on how to pluck the strings of the bass. As I pointed out in my article about bass technique, there is not one right way. But, there are better and worse ways. As a student of the bass you should seek as many perspectives as you can find. There are as many ways as there are players. Experiment with your own ideas, too. What follows is a combination of what I've learned from others and things I've discovered on my own.
I will explain the reasoning behind all the technique I show here. The reason is almost always that it sounds better. You should judge this for yourself. Another common reason for these techniques is it is more efficient and will be easier in the long run...
Finger Numbering
Unlike on piano and some other instruments, on bass your fingers are numbered:
· T = thumb
· 1 = index finger
· 2 = middle finger
· 3 = ring finger
· 4 = pinky finger FingernailsYou will need to keep your fingernails trimmed short to avoid your nail catching the string. (Unless, of course, you like the sound of it.)Avoiding Hand InjuriesKeep your wrists as straight as possible to keep from getting carpal tunnel syndrome and other nasty hand injuries. Most musicians don't discover they've injured their hands until after 10-20 years of playing. By then it's too late. The damage is done. And, it will be difficult to break those old habits. Just because it doesn't hurt now, doesn't mean it won't later.Relax Your HandLet your plucking hand hang limp. This is the natural shape of your hand. Keep your hand in that loose, relaxed shape as much as you can. There's no need for tension...Alternating FingersTo develop plucking speed and efficiency, it is important that you use at least two fingers to pluck. Most people use their index (1) and middle (2) fingers and alternate them. Using two fingers is half the work for each finger. Always do as little work as possible. Using two fingers is sufficient for most playing styles. Work on consistently alternating your fingers 1-2-1-2 (or 2-1-2-1). It doesn't matter on which finger you start. It might be a good idea to be able to start on either one. Just don't use one finger for a while, then the other, or one finger by itself. It might seem easier in the beginning to use one finger, but you will quickly hit a ceiling and you will have learned a very hard habit to break...Where to PluckYou will discover the bass guitar has a wide range of tones depending on where, along the string, you pluck. Plucking nearer to the neck offers a fatter, warmer tone. Plucking nearer to the bridge of the bass provides a brighter, more percussive tone. As you develop, you will become more comfortable with moving your plucking hand around to access these different tones. In the beginning, I recommend finding one place and staying there while you develop other, more important plucking habits...Positioning Your ThumbPlace your thumb on the face (not on top) of your pickup closest to the neck. Let your thumb linger just above the E-string. You will see why shortly. On most bass guitars this should put your plucking fingers in a central position between the neck and the bridge. You should get a good, all-purpose tone from your bass in this area.Muting the StringsPlaying the bass requires about as much work keeping the strings quiet as it does getting the notes to ring out. Most of the time you only want one string ringing at a time. That means on a 4-string bass you have 3 strings to keep quiet. You can't just let open strings ring freely in the background. This will muddy up your sound and often create some unwanted dissonance. You should strive to have control over every sound that comes out of your bass. This requires you to develop a solid string muting strategy...Muting with the ThumbYour thumb will be sliding down to help mute the E-string whenever it is not being played. To be efficient, you will want your thumb as close to the E-string as possible. That's why you want to keep your thumb on the face of the pickup. It will be much easier to slide your thumb down to mute the string. If you're on top, your thumb has to hop. You only need to lightly touch the E-string to mute it. No need to waste energy pushing on the E-string...Plucking MotionWhen you pluck the string your finger should roll over the top over the string. Most beginners and converting guitar players have the tendency to pull out away from the strings. This results in a very thin, scratchy tone. You will get a meatier, bassier tone by rolling over the string. It is much like the stroke of a paintbrush. Your plucking finger should follow through towards your palm, or to rest on the next string below the one you are plucking. There's no need to pluck very hard. Let your bass amplifier do the work. That's what it's for. Your fingers aren't amplifiers! Developing a light touch is a very important part of developing speed and accuracy...Follow-Through MutingAfter plucking a string, follow-through with your plucking motion letting your plucking finger come to rest on the string below. Letting your finger rest on the string below mutes that string. As you pluck using alternating fingers, one finger is plucking while the other one is muting. This is essential to keeping the strings quiet. Use this same motion for plucking on each string.Yet More Muting...As you ascend the strings (going from the fattest string to the skinniest) or skip strings, you will find you can't mute them all with these techniques alone. There are two solutions I show students: (1) use another finger to help with muting or, (2) use your thumb to mute more strings. Let's look at these two solutions...Ring Finger MutingThe technique I prefer uses your ring finger (3) to mute the A-string whenever you are plucking on the G-string. This is the only time you'll need it on a 4-string bass. Your ring finger (3) just needs to lightly touch the A-string to keep it from ringing. Placing your ring finger on the A-string every time you switch to pluck the G-string may seem awkward at first. With practice the motion will become automatic. When you are plucking the G-string the muting will be as follows:
· E-string is muted with thumb (T)
· A-string is muted with ring finger (3)
· D-string is muted with plucking fingers (1 or 2) landing on the D-string Wandering Thumb MutingAnother popular way of muting the bass strings is what I call the Wandering Thumb Method. Instead of leaving your thumb on the E-string, your thumb moves up the strings muting them. This is very useful to develop especially if you play, or plan to play, 5-string or 6-string bass. Either string muting method is effective. You will have to decide which you prefer and stick with it. If you are just starting or trying to change some old habits, it will be strange and frustrating no matter what. Practice slowly and accurately. It will come. When plucking the G-string with this method the muting will be as follows:
· E-string is muted with thumb (T)
· A-string is muted with thumb (T)
· D-string is muted with plucking fingers (1 or 2) landing on the D-string Bass Plucking VideoNow, watch the video and see it all put together.Bass Plucking ExercisesNow that you have an idea of what to do, you need something to practice! Follow the link below for bass plucking exercises which work on these basic techniques. Remember to play slowly and accurately. Don't rush through this stuff. You use it in everything you play! You are practicing every song you will ever play. bass plucking exercises
View from the Bottom...
The figure below shows a major scale as you would play it on a bass guitar. The bottom line is the low "E" string, and the top line is the "G" string. Think of the neck as being turned on its side, facing you, with the end of the neck being at the left-hand side of the diagram. The numbers in the middle of the neck represent the number of the fret. The first few numbers at the bottom of the figure represent which fingers should be holding the string down, and the exes represent the rest of the scale. The first note played in either a major or minor scale is always the tonic. In this case the tonic is A. The seven notes of any scale are numbered as such, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, with 8 being the tonic, just an octave higher. It is important to notice that in this diagram, the numbers in the diagram DO NOT correspond to the numbers in the scale, they are fret and finger numbers.
Referring to the numbers in a major scale, it's important to notice that the third and fourth notes and the seventh and tonic notes are a half step apart, all the other notes are a whole step apart. To better illustrate what I'm talking about in a theoretical sense applicable to music across the spectrum, there is a site that shows the musical staff of a major scale here.
Below is a diagram of an A minor scale. Notice how it differs from its major counterpart: the second and third notes of the scale are a half step apart this time, along with the fifth and sixth notes of the scale. There is also a musical staff diagram of the A minor scale here.
For full diagrams of every bass scale regardless of the tonic, click here. For full diagrams of guitar scales, click here. Remember, because the four strings of the bass and the first four strings of the guitar are commonly tuned to the same notes, a bass scale and a guitar scale will involve the same fingering for the first eight notes or so. That's a big reason why scales are dealt with in the bass section of this site -- it is more economical in terms of space and it covers most of the same material.
CARING FOR YOUR PIANO.
We at Piano & Keyboard Centre have prepared this information page especially for YOU, the owner of a piano manufactured in Europe, Japan, China, Korea or North America. It will answer questions you may have on how to maintain your piano in its original beautiful condition. Your piano is an investment that will give you and your family many years of pleasure.
It can be the centre of your home, a lasting source of fun and entertainment.
Your piano is an intricate musical instrument encased in a beautiful cabinet. It needs and deserves intelligent care.
Your piano is a complex blending of many diverse raw materials. There are more than 9,000 parts in the key and action combination alone. If you were to analyze the materials in your piano, you would find top quality wood of many species, iron, steel, copper, brass, plastics, wool, cotton, various adhesives, etc. Piano strings are known as the "Blue Chip" of the steel industry. They represent the highest development in steel wire and only a few mills are capable of manufacturing them. Remember that there are more than 200 strings in a standard piano and that their combined tension exerts a pull of better than eighteen tons! These strings bear upon the sounding board by means of wooden bridges and a system of reverse bearings that practically lock the strings and board together. Each of these strings must be kept at the proper tension or it will be off pitch and produce an inharmonious tone. In other words, your piano will be OUT OF TUNE!
It will take some time for your piano to become thoroughly settled and adjusted to the atmospheric conditions in your home. This is true of all makes and models. Therefore it is of special importance that your piano receive proper service during the first year after purchase.
During the first year it is advisable to have your piano tuned at least two times. In the following years have it tuned as often as necessary, but a minimum of once. For your information, a concert pianist has his piano tuned before each performance. The frequency of tuning depends on the use the piano receives and the conditions peculiar to its location. A piano will stay in tune better if atmospheric conditions remain consistent. Changes from moist air to dry air cause wood to swell and shrink, thus changing the tension on the strings. Keeping the humidity as constant as possible means your piano will need to be tuned less frequently.
Your piano's action must be checked and "regulated" regularly. Do not confuse the words "tuning", which has to do solely with the pitch of the strings, and ''regulating", which has to do with the adjustment of the mechanism by which the string is put into motion.
CLEANING THE KEYSTo clean keys, slightly moisten a soft white cloth with water, to which a very slight amount of mild dishwashing detergent has been added. This method can be used on both the black and white keys, with different cloths. (As black keys may leave some colour). Remember to dampen the cloth only slightly and rub gently. Dry with a soft cloth.
PLACING YOUR PIANO
It can be the centre of your home, a lasting source of fun and entertainment.
Your piano is an intricate musical instrument encased in a beautiful cabinet. It needs and deserves intelligent care.
Your piano is a complex blending of many diverse raw materials. There are more than 9,000 parts in the key and action combination alone. If you were to analyze the materials in your piano, you would find top quality wood of many species, iron, steel, copper, brass, plastics, wool, cotton, various adhesives, etc. Piano strings are known as the "Blue Chip" of the steel industry. They represent the highest development in steel wire and only a few mills are capable of manufacturing them. Remember that there are more than 200 strings in a standard piano and that their combined tension exerts a pull of better than eighteen tons! These strings bear upon the sounding board by means of wooden bridges and a system of reverse bearings that practically lock the strings and board together. Each of these strings must be kept at the proper tension or it will be off pitch and produce an inharmonious tone. In other words, your piano will be OUT OF TUNE!
It will take some time for your piano to become thoroughly settled and adjusted to the atmospheric conditions in your home. This is true of all makes and models. Therefore it is of special importance that your piano receive proper service during the first year after purchase.
During the first year it is advisable to have your piano tuned at least two times. In the following years have it tuned as often as necessary, but a minimum of once. For your information, a concert pianist has his piano tuned before each performance. The frequency of tuning depends on the use the piano receives and the conditions peculiar to its location. A piano will stay in tune better if atmospheric conditions remain consistent. Changes from moist air to dry air cause wood to swell and shrink, thus changing the tension on the strings. Keeping the humidity as constant as possible means your piano will need to be tuned less frequently.
Your piano's action must be checked and "regulated" regularly. Do not confuse the words "tuning", which has to do solely with the pitch of the strings, and ''regulating", which has to do with the adjustment of the mechanism by which the string is put into motion.
CLEANING THE KEYSTo clean keys, slightly moisten a soft white cloth with water, to which a very slight amount of mild dishwashing detergent has been added. This method can be used on both the black and white keys, with different cloths. (As black keys may leave some colour). Remember to dampen the cloth only slightly and rub gently. Dry with a soft cloth.
PLACING YOUR PIANO
VOICING.
Piano hammers are made of a very dense felt wrapped around a piece of wood. The manufacture of the hammer builds forces of tension and compression into it, which creates an elastic striking surface. The nature of the hammer and the way it strikes and rebounds from the string has a lot to do with the characteristic tone of the piano. Over time, and with use, the surface of the hammer gets compressed and flattened, which produces a less and less desirable sound. The piano may seem very "bright" or harsh, and the sound may appear to die away more quickly than when it was new. It may be hard to play quietly. On the other hand, if the hammers are too soft, the piano will produce a "muted" or muffled sound. Both of these situations can be improved by working with the hammers, although in some cases new hammers are a better solution.
Regulation
Regulation refers to adjustments made to the piano action—the keys, hammers, pedals, dampers, and the mechanisms in between. A piano that is out of regulation will often still work, but might be compromised in several ways. The action might not be delivering the player’s full power to the strings. The touch may be unpredictable from note to note, making quiet playing impossible. The hammers might not reset quickly enough for fast repetition, making it hard to play repeated notes and trills. Some notes may not even play in certain circumstances or with a certain touch. A complete regulation should not be required very often for a home piano, but frequent touch-ups help keep the piano playing well.
Piano hammers are made of a very dense felt wrapped around a piece of wood. The manufacture of the hammer builds forces of tension and compression into it, which creates an elastic striking surface. The nature of the hammer and the way it strikes and rebounds from the string has a lot to do with the characteristic tone of the piano. Over time, and with use, the surface of the hammer gets compressed and flattened, which produces a less and less desirable sound. The piano may seem very "bright" or harsh, and the sound may appear to die away more quickly than when it was new. It may be hard to play quietly. On the other hand, if the hammers are too soft, the piano will produce a "muted" or muffled sound. Both of these situations can be improved by working with the hammers, although in some cases new hammers are a better solution.
Regulation
Regulation refers to adjustments made to the piano action—the keys, hammers, pedals, dampers, and the mechanisms in between. A piano that is out of regulation will often still work, but might be compromised in several ways. The action might not be delivering the player’s full power to the strings. The touch may be unpredictable from note to note, making quiet playing impossible. The hammers might not reset quickly enough for fast repetition, making it hard to play repeated notes and trills. Some notes may not even play in certain circumstances or with a certain touch. A complete regulation should not be required very often for a home piano, but frequent touch-ups help keep the piano playing well.
Regulation
Regulation refers to adjustments made to the piano action—the keys, hammers, pedals, dampers, and the mechanisms in between. A piano that is out of regulation will often still work, but might be compromised in several ways. The action might not be delivering the player’s full power to the strings. The touch may be unpredictable from note to note, making quiet playing impossible. The hammers might not reset quickly enough for fast repetition, making it hard to play repeated notes and trills. Some notes may not even play in certain circumstances or with a certain touch. A complete regulation should not be required very often for a home piano, but frequent touch-ups help keep the piano playing well.
Piano hammers are made of a very dense felt wrapped around a piece of wood. The manufacture of the hammer builds forces of tension and compression into it, which creates an elastic striking surface. The nature of the hammer and the way it strikes and rebounds from the string has a lot to do with the characteristic tone of the piano. Over time, and with use, the surface of the hammer gets compressed and flattened, which produces a less and less desirable sound. The piano may seem very "bright" or harsh, and the sound may appear to die away more quickly than when it was new. It may be hard to play quietly. On the other hand, if the hammers are too soft, the piano will produce a "muted" or muffled sound. Both of these situations can be improved by working with the hammers, although in some cases new hammers are a better solution.
Regulation
Regulation refers to adjustments made to the piano action—the keys, hammers, pedals, dampers, and the mechanisms in between. A piano that is out of regulation will often still work, but might be compromised in several ways. The action might not be delivering the player’s full power to the strings. The touch may be unpredictable from note to note, making quiet playing impossible. The hammers might not reset quickly enough for fast repetition, making it hard to play repeated notes and trills. Some notes may not even play in certain circumstances or with a certain touch. A complete regulation should not be required very often for a home piano, but frequent touch-ups help keep the piano playing well.
WHY PIANOS GO OF TUNE.
Humidity changes are the main cause. In humid weather, the piano’s soundboard absorbs moisture and drives the pitch up; in dry weather, the reverse is true. These changes do not affect each string to exactly the same extent, so your piano doesn’t just shift to a higher or lower relative pitch—it goes out of tune.
The great lakes region is particularly prone to seasonal humidity fluctuations. This not only affects the piano's pitch, but can also significantly shorten the life of a piano. It is impractical for most homes to maintain a perfectly stable level of humidity, though keeping the piano away from heat sources, direct sunlight, outside walls, draughts and out of basements will prevent the worst effects. The installation of a humidity control device in the piano itself can protect it from the changes in the surrounding air and is generally cheaper than controlling the environment in an entire room or house. Ask me about prices for installation in your piano.
Tuning
I tune by ear. Aural tuning, as it is called, is and age-old art which uses the ear’s natural capacity to gauge the interference between two closely related sounds. This concrete information is weighed against the tuner’s musical sense. Tuning the piano is not a simple matter of finding the “right” note, because the exact pitches which will work best vary from piano to piano. They are also, to some extent, a matter of personal taste. Whether or not an electronic tuning aid is used, the ear is the final judge. However your piano is tuned, it should sound good to you, and it’s a good idea to find a tuner who can please your own musical taste.
Regular tuning stabilizes the piano at the correct pitch and ensures that each tuning lasts longer—the piano sounds better all the time, even between tunings.
Pitch Adjustment is simply the extra tuning required when a piano has not been tuned for a significant length of time. Changing the pitch a large amount means changing the tension of each string. This has a cumulative effect of changing the shape of the soundboard slightly—which in turn changes the tension of the strings—so that by the time the last string has been tuned, the first string is out of tune again. Often several quick tunings are necessary before fine tuning can be done.
Humidity changes are the main cause. In humid weather, the piano’s soundboard absorbs moisture and drives the pitch up; in dry weather, the reverse is true. These changes do not affect each string to exactly the same extent, so your piano doesn’t just shift to a higher or lower relative pitch—it goes out of tune.
The great lakes region is particularly prone to seasonal humidity fluctuations. This not only affects the piano's pitch, but can also significantly shorten the life of a piano. It is impractical for most homes to maintain a perfectly stable level of humidity, though keeping the piano away from heat sources, direct sunlight, outside walls, draughts and out of basements will prevent the worst effects. The installation of a humidity control device in the piano itself can protect it from the changes in the surrounding air and is generally cheaper than controlling the environment in an entire room or house. Ask me about prices for installation in your piano.
Tuning
I tune by ear. Aural tuning, as it is called, is and age-old art which uses the ear’s natural capacity to gauge the interference between two closely related sounds. This concrete information is weighed against the tuner’s musical sense. Tuning the piano is not a simple matter of finding the “right” note, because the exact pitches which will work best vary from piano to piano. They are also, to some extent, a matter of personal taste. Whether or not an electronic tuning aid is used, the ear is the final judge. However your piano is tuned, it should sound good to you, and it’s a good idea to find a tuner who can please your own musical taste.
Regular tuning stabilizes the piano at the correct pitch and ensures that each tuning lasts longer—the piano sounds better all the time, even between tunings.
Pitch Adjustment is simply the extra tuning required when a piano has not been tuned for a significant length of time. Changing the pitch a large amount means changing the tension of each string. This has a cumulative effect of changing the shape of the soundboard slightly—which in turn changes the tension of the strings—so that by the time the last string has been tuned, the first string is out of tune again. Often several quick tunings are necessary before fine tuning can be done.
The great lakes region is particularly prone to seasonal humidity fluctuations. This not only affects the piano's pitch, but can also significantly shorten the life of a piano. It is impractical for most homes to maintain a perfectly stable level of humidity, though keeping the piano away from heat sources, direct sunlight, outside walls, draughts and out of basements will prevent the worst effects. The installation of a humidity control device in the piano itself can protect it from the changes in the surrounding air and is generally cheaper than controlling the environment in an entire room or house. Ask me about prices for installation in your piano.
Tuning
I tune by ear. Aural tuning, as it is called, is and age-old art which uses the ear’s natural capacity to gauge the interference between two closely related sounds. This concrete information is weighed against the tuner’s musical sense. Tuning the piano is not a simple matter of finding the “right” note, because the exact pitches which will work best vary from piano to piano. They are also, to some extent, a matter of personal taste. Whether or not an electronic tuning aid is used, the ear is the final judge. However your piano is tuned, it should sound good to you, and it’s a good idea to find a tuner who can please your own musical taste.
Regular tuning stabilizes the piano at the correct pitch and ensures that each tuning lasts longer—the piano sounds better all the time, even between tunings.
Pitch Adjustment is simply the extra tuning required when a piano has not been tuned for a significant length of time. Changing the pitch a large amount means changing the tension of each string. This has a cumulative effect of changing the shape of the soundboard slightly—which in turn changes the tension of the strings—so that by the time the last string has been tuned, the first string is out of tune again. Often several quick tunings are necessary before fine tuning can be done.
Humidity changes are the main cause. In humid weather, the piano’s soundboard absorbs moisture and drives the pitch up; in dry weather, the reverse is true. These changes do not affect each string to exactly the same extent, so your piano doesn’t just shift to a higher or lower relative pitch—it goes out of tune.
The great lakes region is particularly prone to seasonal humidity fluctuations. This not only affects the piano's pitch, but can also significantly shorten the life of a piano. It is impractical for most homes to maintain a perfectly stable level of humidity, though keeping the piano away from heat sources, direct sunlight, outside walls, draughts and out of basements will prevent the worst effects. The installation of a humidity control device in the piano itself can protect it from the changes in the surrounding air and is generally cheaper than controlling the environment in an entire room or house. Ask me about prices for installation in your piano.
Tuning
I tune by ear. Aural tuning, as it is called, is and age-old art which uses the ear’s natural capacity to gauge the interference between two closely related sounds. This concrete information is weighed against the tuner’s musical sense. Tuning the piano is not a simple matter of finding the “right” note, because the exact pitches which will work best vary from piano to piano. They are also, to some extent, a matter of personal taste. Whether or not an electronic tuning aid is used, the ear is the final judge. However your piano is tuned, it should sound good to you, and it’s a good idea to find a tuner who can please your own musical taste.
Regular tuning stabilizes the piano at the correct pitch and ensures that each tuning lasts longer—the piano sounds better all the time, even between tunings.
Pitch Adjustment is simply the extra tuning required when a piano has not been tuned for a significant length of time. Changing the pitch a large amount means changing the tension of each string. This has a cumulative effect of changing the shape of the soundboard slightly—which in turn changes the tension of the strings—so that by the time the last string has been tuned, the first string is out of tune again. Often several quick tunings are necessary before fine tuning can be done.
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