Any musicians on the forum?

NewRetire18 said:
(Disclaimer: Sorry, I wasn't told there would be no math...)

Not exactly sure why, but there does seem to be a strong correlation between music and engineering. Before my EE, I had been in college as a music major. I actually dropped out for nearly a decade to actually make money in the field I was studying in college. The music curriculum entailed a lot more rigor than I expected, or was prepared for. I found it to be highly mathematical by nature (think circle of fifths, chord structures and theory, etc.). Now I find interesting correlations in physical modelling tools in use by engineers and physicists. It gets more highly focused and constrained in audio engineering, with the use of filters like compression or others for tonal modification, even Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) in recording. The funny thing to me is that it is all coming back around in a circle. My music career led to an engineering career, and now the concepts of these math constructs in music is no longer mystifying like it was when I was 19. Maybe just mental maturation, but I don't think so; there really does seem to be similar thought process when designing a circuit or product, or walking into a lead guitar solo in a jazz song. Both events are highly creative, and satisfying mentally.
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That is one of the aspects of music that appeals to me. It is so logical. Here is a paper I wrote between finishing my BS and starting an MBA program:

https://www.akordi-online.com/sites/default/files/20970330-Chord-Melody-Guitar.pdf

pdfdirff.com/download/chord-melody-guitar.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/guitarlessons/comments/1i1d4b

https://www.cyberfret.com/classic/chord_mel.htm

There are other places it can be found, but these should be enough.

To me, diatonic music theory is very logical and one idea builds on the next:

1. The set of notes used in Western music (i.e. chromatic scale)
2. The template used to start on any one of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale to extract a major scale
(i.e. whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step)
3. All other scale types can be derived from the major scale (natural, melodic, and harmonic minor scales, pentatonic scale, etc.)
4. Spelling chords - templates for extracting chords (stacking thirds) from the major scale

Everything else comes from these 4 points. Essentially that is the gist of my paper, and then all of that maps into the CAGED system on the guitar fretboard.

By the way, in my observation, music moves by fourths, which is backwards through the cycle of fifths. It seems to me that the cycle of fifths is useful for keeping tracks of the sharps or flats in a key, though the typical useful chords in a key are adjacent, and the tritone sub is across the circle from any point in the circle.

Tony
 

tbeltrans said:
That is one of the aspects of music that appeals to me. It is so logical. Here is a paper I wrote between finishing my BS and starting an MBA program:

https://www.akordi-online.com/sites/default/files/20970330-Chord-Melody-Guitar.pdf

pdfdirff.com/download/chord-melody-guitar.pdf

https://www.reddit.com/r/guitarlessons/comments/1i1d4b

https://www.cyberfret.com/classic/chord_mel.htm

There are other places it can be found, but these should be enough.

To me, diatonic music theory is very logical and one idea builds on the next:

1. The set of notes used in Western music (i.e. chromatic scale)
2. The template used to start on any one of the 12 notes of the chromatic scale to extract a major scale
(i.e. whole step, whole step, half step, whole step, whole step, whole step, half step)
3. All other scale types can be derived from the major scale (natural, melodic, and harmonic minor scales, pentatonic scale, etc.)
4. Spelling chords - templates for extracting chords (stacking thirds) from the major scale

Everything else comes from these 4 points. Essentially that is the gist of my paper, and then all of that maps into the CAGED system on the guitar fretboard.

By the way, in my observation, music moves by fourths, which is backwards through the cycle of fifths. It seems to me that the cycle of fifths is useful for keeping tracks of the sharps or flats in a key, though the typical useful chords in a key are adjacent, and the tritone sub is across the circle from any point in the circle.

Tony
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Yep. But the beauty of it all really starts to mess with your head sometimes. In 2001, I was working with some physicists in a project, and one of them was from Turkey. When he found out about me and guitar, he invited me over to his house to play with him. Boy was I surprised when he pulled out a Saz. They are microtonal, with between 17 and 22 intervals in their neck scale. Trying to match a guitar to that is a chore!! Fun, though!
 
NewRetire18 said:
Yep. But the beauty of it all really starts to mess with your head sometimes. In 2001, I was working with some physicists in a project, and one of them was from Turkey. When he found out about me and guitar, he invited me over to his house to play with him. Boy was I surprised when he pulled out a Saz. They are microtonal, with between 17 and 22 intervals in their neck scale. Trying to match a guitar to that is a chore!! Fun, though!
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Well, everything I posted is using the chromatic scale we use in Western music. When discussing music, I always am quite clear about the boundaries of my part of the discussion, which I did in my previous post. So, Hopefully no mystery or confusion there.

Yes, different cultures can, and will, have very different musical references. There have certainly been a number of Westerners who have experimented with microtonal music, but it has never been generally accepted by Western listeners, as beautiful as it might be.

The guitar fretboard, even with clearly marked frets, presents a never ending puzzle if one is willing to explore its depths. A third dimension to the whole thing is retuning the guitar to various open and alternate tunings. This has become quite popular in recent years, but has been around a long time, particularly with Hawaiian Slack Key guitar.

One unfortunate development in the acoustic guitar world (at least to me) is people slapping their guitars around more like a drum than a guitar. That seems to go along with the two-handed tapping stuff. I much prefer to always hear a clearly defined melody, but a lot of the tapping seems to lend itself more to a textural format.

Tony
 

NewRetire18 said:
Thank you for all the great responses. I'll back off a little to let others have a say...I could talk all night about this. 😴
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Great subject and no reason not to talk about it more often. Maybe, with all the guitar players around here we could have a thread with that as its focus.

So, out of curiosity, did you pursue microtonal tuning any further than that one time? I never got into it myself, but I know that a number of synthesizers provide that capability and it seems a natural for fretless string instruments such as violin, viola, cello, upright bass, fretless bass, etc., and possibly some of the brass instruments. The main concern would be, as I mentioned in my prior post, that Western ears are not at all accustomed to that music. But, then, 12 tone rows never really gained an audience either. :cool:

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
Great subject and no reason not to talk about it more often. Maybe, with all the guitar players around here we could have a thread with that as its focus.

So, out of curiosity, did you pursue microtonal tuning any further than that one time? I never got into it myself, but I know that a number of synthesizers provide that capability and it seems a natural for fretless string instruments such as violin, viola, cello, upright bass, fretless bass, etc., and possibly some of the brass instruments. The main concern would be, as I mentioned in my prior post, that Western ears are not at all accustomed to that music. But, then, 12 tone rows never really gained an audience either. :cool:

Tony
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No, but I seriously enjoyed learning about it. It broadened my view, and I ended up with a CD somewhere where a jazz group incorporated mictotonal instruments into an album. Beautiful sounds. The closest I ever came to exploring it was by playing a fretless electric bass. I ended up with a Jazzmaster fretted bass instead, but people who are good on bass (any kind, actually) are amazing. (Along with all other musicians/singers to me).
 
ohioboy said:
Tony, what always amazes me is the great ability of the Classical Masters to sheet arrange music without the aids of today, recording devices etc. I don't think I could arrange music in a hundred years, too much for my mind.
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Agreed. I have done arranging for solo fingerstyle guitar, but am not a composer. I do it with guitar in hand and pencil and staff paper. I am too lazy to write out TAB though. It is pretty much standard notation for me.

However, I have moved away from arranging and also playing other people's arrangements. My problem has always been a poor memory for that sort of thing. In grade school, we had to memorize poems and famous speeches. I never did well with that. I am better at learning a vocabulary and using it. That is a big reason why chord melody appeals to me. It is in the moment.

I have a pile of Real Books and can just play from a lead sheet however I want to. There is nothing to memorize and I can still enjoy playing. If anything, my repertoire is limited by the hundreds of tunes in those fakebooks unless I want to pick up the melody and chords off a recording.

I was never a good sight reader beyond a lead sheet melody line. To me sight reading is reading and playing in real time, like reading out loud to somebody. I never cared enough to develop that skill. I can read just fine, but it takes a several passes to work out fingerings and get the timing down.

Tony
 
NewRetire18 said:
No, but I seriously enjoyed learning about it. It broadened my view, and I ended up with a CD somewhere where a jazz group incorporated mictotonal instruments into an album. Beautiful sounds. The closest I ever came to exploring it was by playing a fretless electric bass. I ended up with a Jazzmaster fretted bass instead, but people who are good on bass (any kind, actually) are amazing. (Along with all other musicians/singers to me).
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Anything to broaden one's view is certainly a good thing. :)

There definitely are some great bass players, that's for sure. I always liked Scott LaFaro with Bill Evans' trio. There are many others, but the thing with that trio is that it is difficult to consider one musician apart from the others because they were so free yet tight knit.

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
Agreed. I have done arranging for solo fingerstyle guitar, but am not a composer. I do it with guitar in hand and pencil and staff paper. I am too lazy to write out TAB though. It is pretty much standard notation for me.

However, I have moved away from arranging and also playing other people's arrangements. My problem has always been a poor memory for that sort of thing. In grade school, we had to memorize poems and famous speeches. I never did well with that. I am better at learning a vocabulary and using it. That is a big reason why chord melody appeals to me. It is in the moment.

I have a pile of Real Books and can just play from a lead sheet however I want to. There is nothing to memorize and I can still enjoy playing. If anything, my repertoire is limited by the hundreds of tunes in those fakebooks unless I want to pick up the melody and chords off a recording.

I was never a good sight reader beyond a lead sheet melody line. To me sight reading is reading and playing in real time, like reading out loud to somebody. I never cared enough to develop that skill. I can read just fine, but it takes a several passes to work out fingerings and get the timing down.

Tony
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NewRetire18 said:
No, but I seriously enjoyed learning about it. It broadened my view, and I ended up with a CD somewhere where a jazz group incorporated mictotonal instruments into an album. Beautiful sounds. The closest I ever came to exploring it was by playing a fretless electric bass. I ended up with a Jazzmaster fretted bass instead, but people who are good on bass (any kind, actually) are amazing. (Along with all other musicians/singers to me).
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Funny thing here; I just started composing again. The secret for me was a program called MuseScore. It allows you to notate drums and a multitude of synthesized instruments in the score. Since I don't have any musicians to play with at the present time, I am going to be using it to write music fill for the instruments I want to accompany in some of my compositions. It's really interactive notation where you can assign a voice/register of an instrument to the notes. Drums, base, hammond B3/M3 organ, strings are all available. Worth learning, and fun!!
 
NewRetire18 said:
Funny thing here; I just started composing again. The secret for me was a program called MuseScore. It allows you to notate drums and a multitude of synthesized instruments in the score. Since I don't have any musicians to play with at the present time, I am going to be using it to write music fill for the instruments I want to accompany in some of my compositions. It's really interactive notation where you can assign a voice/register of an instrument to the notes. Drums, base, hammond B3/M3 organ, strings are all available. Worth learning, and fun!!
Click to expand...
Yes, I have MuseScore. It is a weird thing for me that my career was software engineering (the low level kernel and driver stuff, not writing programs), but when it comes to music, I am just more comfortable with pencil and paper and my guitar in hand.

My wife has the entire collection of West Wing on DVD. In one of the "behind the scenes" extra features, the composer of the score talks about how he composes on the acoustic guitar and then scores it on the computer with his DAW and plugin VST synths.

I don't seem to have the mind for putting a whole bunch of instruments together. I much prefer doing my music on just the guitar or piano. But then that is also what I prefer to listen to.

Tony
 
get it. Too many instruments are tough to balance, and can be distracting. I have a DAW, and once I found out that I could export a MuseScore mp3 as a track in my DAW, and could play/mix along with it live, it made the possibility of a home studio possible. I could see this on the horizon a couple years ago before I retired, and my basement at that house looked like this...

gitroom.jpg
I should have known that this thing would expand. Fortunately, my wife loves music too, so I am finding support for this from her too!
 
Even though I recorded and produced an album on my Clavinova (digital piano) years ago and finally released three new singles last summer, I consider myself a composer/arranger more so than a musician. My instrument allows me to "play" several instruments. LOL I need to practice my piano technique. I was more proficient on the organ, after taking lessons as an adult even though I started piano lessons as a child. I played for the church for a while but didn't like it, although as choir director, I changed that tired sounding choir to one that had the church rocking.

Now my BFF...she's a musician (pianist). She's played for several famous artists in the Pop/Rock, R & B and Jazz genres. She's toured with single artists and theater groups. And after impromptu invitations on separate occasions, she perfectly laid down electric piano tracks on two of my songs without ever hearing them before or having sheet music.
 
tbeltrans said:
That is one of the greatest things about playing music - it is an endless and gratifying journey. That is why, at least to me, it would be a real shame for it to become just a job. That is what it was feeling like for me toward the end of my time on the road and I knew I wanted it to be more than that.

I met many people in the towns we played in who had regular jobs and lives, and played music for the love of it. That is what I realized I wanted. It seems to me that is also what you have.

Tony
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YES! It’s an endless journey of learning and enjoying. There’s nothing quite like playing from sheer passion. It’s like a perfect way to express self without words. Nobody ‘has’ to like it since you are playing for you. Of course it’s nice to be complimented but that’s not the reason you play.
Priceless!😎
 
NewRetire18 said:
get it. Too many instruments are tough to balance, and can be distracting. I have a DAW, and once I found out that I could export a MuseScore mp3 as a track in my DAW, and could play/mix along with it live, it made the possibility of a home studio possible. I could see this on the horizon a couple years ago before I retired, and my basement at that house looked like this...

View attachment 162734
I should have known that this thing would expand. Fortunately, my wife loves music too, so I am finding support for this from her too!
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Sweet. Nice selection of instruments. I’m messing around some with GarageBand but haven’t done much in the way of recording but would like to. That’s nice that your wife joins in with you. What a nice hobby to share.
 
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@Poco Dennis
Paco Dennis said:
I think the best way to share your music is upload it to a music site and then just post the url where it is in your post.

It took me about 5 minutes to sign up and upload a song at "Audiomack". Free and unlimited space.

https://audiomack.com/paco-dennis/song/13324942
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Nice tune and good work on the recording. I also enjoyed watching your videos. Boy, we were all so much younger then. Thanks for your nice words and for posting your music. I didn't know about Audiomack, nice to know there's another free site out there. Thanks again, Davey..
 
Paco Dennis said:
I think the best way to share your music is upload it to a music site and then just post the url where it is in your post.

It took me about 5 minutes to sign up and upload a song at "Audiomack". Free and unlimited space.

https://audiomack.com/paco-dennis/song/13324942
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This is where I’m way behind. Even with having free software with using Apple technology, ( GarageBand)I still have been very slow to learn music sharing. While my music skills aren’t too shabby, my computer skills leave much to be desired.
Thanks for the free software link. One day maybe I’ll actually record something.
Nice music recording .
 
I play by ear, as did my Welsh. grandmother. I have her piano. I recall as a teen, I could sing her a song, twice, and she would play it back to me, for some reason, she only used the black keys. This gave her music a haunting mournful quality. Since then, I have learned to play spoons, a small handsaw, just as she did, native flute, and some guitar.


During corona, many long nights have been made easier by the addition of jazz and blues melodies pulled out of my beloved piano. Singing also.
 
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tbeltrans said:
Back around 1976-78, I played full time in a trio as a union sideman (AF of M). We played a week at each gig which included Holiday Inn circuit, decent supper clubs, and resorts. We played what was then called MOR (middle of the road) music and the Great American Songbook material. Each of us did two things. The drummer did vocals, the band leader played sax and one of those electronic keyboards (essentially bass when I took a solo), and I played guitar and a Crumar foot pedal bass.

Over time, I realized I really didn't like being on the road all the time and left the band. I went through a variety of paths until I landed in college and got into engineering (considering other posts here, this is starting to sound familiar).

I also taught guitar on the side for a while. My suspicion is that there are several of us who have travelled similar paths.

Tony
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I have read many books on musicians over the years and have come to the conclusion that road life is far from glamorous. It's hard work! Another night another town, over and over and over. Guess that is why some "stars" have set up in places like Las Vegas or Branson, Missouri; just to have some sort of more "normal" life.
 
Packerjohn said:
I have read many books on musicians over the years and have come to the conclusion that road life is far from glamorous. It's hard work! Another night another town, over and over and over. Guess that is why some "stars" have set up in places like Las Vegas or Branson, Missouri; just to have some sort of more "normal" life.
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We used to call those "sit down jobs", and they were the dream of many road musicians. Other musicians retired from the road to become agents or union reps. Every town had union reps who made sure you paid your work dues in to that local for working in their area, that all the musicians in the band had up to date union cards, but when it came time to help the musicians in situations such as getting stiffed by a club manager, the reps couldn't be bothered.

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
We used to call those "sit down jobs", and they were the dream of many road musicians. Other musicians retired from the road to become agents or union reps. Every town had union reps who made sure you paid your work dues in to that local for working in their area, that all the musicians in the band had up to date union cards, but when it came time to help the musicians in situations such as getting stiffed by a club manager, the reps couldn't be bothered.

Tony
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Yes, life on the road was brutal a lot of the time. Lots of good and bad memories, though, and fortunately the good ones are the ones that stick the most, so I'm good with the past. Little things, like tricks the lead singers wife played on him by putting raw eggs into his motorcycle boots he needed to jump into during a quick costume change. He normally bolted out onto the stage, and slid to the mike; this time he sloshed...
 
In 1999 I was using windows 95. I bought a $100 midi guitar pickup that plugged into the printer port. I also used a hacked Yamaha 50-YXG software synthesizer. It had over 128 different instrument samples on it. I really like creating songs with that setup and made a whole bunch of them. Here is an example of what came out. :)

https://audiomack.com/paco-dennis/song/charlene
 


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