Theory

[tauzero]

[quote name='endorka' post='702631' date='Jan 6 2010, 11:31 AM']Oh yeah. Drummers are good with words for these rhythms, one I work with uses "hippopotamus" (hip-o-pot-a-mus) for 5 in the space of four.[/quote]
As in "I made a right hippopotamus of that fill"?

[Pete Academy]

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='702513' date='Jan 6 2010, 10:04 AM']Its actually Kool & The Gang[/quote]

Good choice.

[Doddy]

[quote name='endorka' post='702631' date='Jan 6 2010, 11:31 AM']Oh yeah. Drummers are good with words for these rhythms, one I work with uses "hippopotamus" (hip-o-pot-a-mus) for 5 in the space of four. Do you have any others?

Jennifer[/quote]


I've got a real dislike for using words to describe rhythms. It always seems really 'childish' to me.
I don't know any good drummers that use them either.

[jakenewmanbass]

[quote name='Doddy' post='701579' date='Jan 5 2010, 01:44 PM']I've worked with Joe aswell. Top Bloke.[/quote]

He really is.

[tauzero]

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='701675' date='Jan 5 2010, 03:00 PM']The problem is that there is no one route through this, there is no one-way to go so you will never know it all in the right order. My advice is to start with the concept of intervals - the distance between any two notes, irrespective of which notes they are. Know a semi-tone/diminshed second (one fret), tone/second (two frets), minor third (three frets), major third (four frets), fourth (five frets), augmented fourth/flattended or diminished fifth (six frets), fifth (seven frets), augmented fifth/flattened or diminished sixth (eight frets), sixth (nine frets), dominant seventh (ten frets), major seventh (eleven frets), octave (tweleve frets). An awful lot comes out of this.[/quote]
It's all annoyingly illogical. I mean augmented and diminished - easy enough, you sharpen or flatten the note. Major and minor third, fair enough, that's what distinguishes the major from the minor, although this is multiplying terminology, and if you know enough to know what augmented and diminished mean, you should know what flattening a major third does, so why can't it be a third and a diminished third? And as for the dominant 7th, that's really confusing. TBH, I really don't understand why it gets to be referred to as the 7th because to me that would imply it was the 7th in the major scale, but it isn't, that's the major 7th. And the dominant (when referring to notes in a scale) is the 5th, thus adding another nomenclative confusion.

[endorka]

[quote name='Doddy' post='702852' date='Jan 6 2010, 02:14 PM']I've got a real dislike for using words to describe rhythms. It always seems really 'childish' to me.
I don't know any good drummers that use them either.[/quote]



Childish is irrelevant - it is a mnemonic, and if it works it works. As a learning tool I and others find it useful for "auralising" (?) unfamiliar rhythms.

"Santana" is a good one for crotchet triplets, which many people can't seem to hear/play properly.

For the record, the drummer who told me of this stuff is excellent - and I do not use the word lightly!

Jennifer

[Doddy]

[quote name='endorka' post='702946' date='Jan 6 2010, 03:30 PM']

Childish is irrelevant - it is a mnemonic, and if it works it works. As a learning tool I and others find it useful for "auralising" (?) unfamiliar rhythms.

"Santana" is a good one for crotchet triplets, which many people can't seem to hear/play properly.

For the record, the drummer who told me of this stuff is excellent - and I do not use the word lightly!

Jennifer[/quote]

I've never found it to work, to be honest.

Take your example of 'Santana' for crotchet triplets-I automatically say it as a quaver and 2 semi quavers ( 'San-tana').
That's where confusion sets in.
I have never taught using words for rhythms,and have never had had a student who hasn't been able to grasp
rhythms by counting.

[Rayman]

[quote name='bilbo230763' post='702513' date='Jan 6 2010, 10:04 AM']Its actually Kool & The Gang[/quote]

NOW you're talking....git [i]DOWWWWN[/i] baby.

[endorka]

[quote name='Doddy' post='702974' date='Jan 6 2010, 03:46 PM']I've never found it to work, to be honest.

Take your example of 'Santana' for crotchet triplets-I automatically say it as a quaver and 2 semi quavers ( 'San-tana').
That's where confusion sets in.
I have never taught using words for rhythms,and have never had had a student who hasn't been able to grasp
rhythms by counting.[/quote]

I agree that there are no universal teaching methods, and I agree about the flexibility of interpretation of the rhythm of these words.

It's just that in the context of this thread, where some are having difficulty understanding theory, or find it intimidating, the ability to say "hippopotamus" within a certain period of time is probably easier to comprehened than Jakes (admittedly jokey) other explanation of the same rhythm;

"it's simple five over four, thats five evenly spaced crotchets in the space of four"

It's just a friendlier way of looking at the same thing for those who can't read music :-)

I also agree (in a broader sense) that if you explain things to students well they can be helped to understand something within the space of a half hour lesson that has puzzled them for decades. A lot of the things mentioned in this thread are good candidates for this - simple harmony, modes, etc.

Jennifer

[Marvin]

[quote name='tauzero' post='702923' date='Jan 6 2010, 03:04 PM']It's all annoyingly illogical. I mean augmented and diminished - easy enough, you sharpen or flatten the note. Major and minor third, fair enough, that's what distinguishes the major from the minor, although this is multiplying terminology, and if you know enough to know what augmented and diminished mean, you should know what flattening a major third does, so why can't it be a third and a diminished third? And as for the dominant 7th, that's really confusing. TBH, I really don't understand why it gets to be referred to as the 7th because to me that would imply it was the 7th in the major scale, but it isn't, that's the major 7th. And the dominant (when referring to notes in a scale) is the 5th, thus adding another nomenclative confusion.[/quote]

I'm ready to stand corrected but from my limited knowledge in a major key if you lower the 3rd by a semi-tone the 3rd it becomes a minor. It only becomes diminished if you lower it by a whole tone, or if the interval you or lowering is a perfect interval.
Is that right?
Calling it a dominant 7th does seem counter intuitive. I often see the 5th referred to as a perfect 5th.

[Pete Academy]

Crochet? Isn't that like knitting? I love quavers, though...cheesy!

Edited January 6, 2010 by Pete Academy

[Rayman]

Bet you're made up you started this thread Pete?

[urb]

[quote name='Doddy' post='702974' date='Jan 6 2010, 03:46 PM']I've never found it to work, to be honest.

Take your example of 'Santana' for crotchet triplets-I automatically say it as a quaver and 2 semi quavers ( 'San-tana').
That's where confusion sets in.
I have never taught using words for rhythms,and have never had had a student who hasn't been able to grasp
rhythms by counting.[/quote]

Here's a phonetic rhythmic language that works perfectly

[url="http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konnakol?wasRedirected=true"]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konnakol?wasRedirected=true[/url]

I've only learnt a little of it but it really does work and is founded on hundreds of years of development, but can easily ne applied to any playing situation, it's well worth a look

Cheers

Mike

[Pete Academy]

[quote name='Rayman' post='703310' date='Jan 6 2010, 07:21 PM']Bet you're made up you started this thread Pete? [/quote]

Er, yeah...but I feel a little humbled

Edited January 6, 2010 by Pete Academy

[EssentialTension]

[Happy Jack]

Finally got around to reading this thread. Fascinating stuff, but I was surprised how long it took to connect back to what is - for most people here - the "real world" of day jobs, families, and competing other interests. Page 6 of the thread, in fact.

There's a depressingly long list of things I'd love to have the time for, and musical theory is definitely pretty high up that list, but it hasn't quite reached the top of the list yet and it is, frankly, not essential for the level of bass-playing to which I aspire, or the covers band in which I play.

Desirable, yes, but not essential.

The other factor that interests me hasn't been mentioned at all - age.

I learned some basic musical theory as a teenager (singing in choirs, piano lessons) but that was [i][size=1]mumble mumble [/size][/i]years ago. Do I really want to be starting musical theory all over again at my age?

In similar vein, I could easily have memorised every note on the fretboard when I was 17; I'd have hated doing it at the time but my mind was far more malleable then. Doing the same thing now would be a real challenge.

[Pete Academy]

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='706892' date='Jan 9 2010, 06:53 PM']Finally got around to reading this thread. Fascinating stuff, but I was surprised how long it took to connect back to what is - for most people here - the "real world" of day jobs, families, and competing other interests. Page 6 of the thread, in fact.

There's a depressingly long list of things I'd love to have the time for, and musical theory is definitely pretty high up that list, but it hasn't quite reached the top of the list yet and it is, frankly, not essential for the level of bass-playing to which I aspire, or the covers band in which I play.

Desirable, yes, but not essential.

The other factor that interests me hasn't been mentioned at all - age.

I learned some basic musical theory as a teenager (singing in choirs, piano lessons) but that was [i][size=1]mumble mumble [/size][/i]years ago. Do I really want to be starting musical theory all over again at my age?

In similar vein, I could easily have memorised every note on the fretboard when I was 17; I'd have hated doing it at the time but my mind was far more malleable then. Doing the same thing now would be a real challenge.[/quote]

[BenTunnicliffe]

*Sorry, Bit of a rant here*

Without trawling through the many valid replies to this thread to quote people I just see theory as another tool in a bag of tricks/arsenal/toolbelt or whatever you want to call it.

Having a good ear that can hear things such as "oh we just went up a fret/semitone/halfstep/one metal line on my long wood thingy", when a chord goes from major to minor or things that to most us by now are very simple wether we know theory or not such as "oh sh*t we're in the chorus now....*moves hands accordingly* is a good tool to have but not everyone by far has this kind of hearing in music and the people who do develop it at different times in their playing.

Being able to see patterns is a fantastic skill also but doesn't have to mean knowing theory.
For instance in a huge list if not a majority of pop records or something like a blues learning a riff of notes as just a geometric pattern on the fretboard is far quicker than breaking it down into scale or chord degrees (R, m3, b7, #11) and as I believe in msot situations the faster you get stuff learnt or to a level of them being playable the more time you have to rehearse, or perform I would in a such instance take THAT approach.
In a classical piece of music though there is a lot of patterns being played that are descending down a scale in which case if the music is being read from dots having the ability to VISUALLY spot such a pattern saves time, panicking and a lot of hastle. Also when a pattern of degrees is being applied to different chords of a scale (I, V, vi etc) being able to see this as a diatonic progression will save a lot of stress too.

How we apply songs to memory or furthermore remember them is also soemthign that has many approaches.
Some people will hear a new song as fragments of other things they've heard before, some people have perfect pitch and can play back verbatim, some people watch the other isntruments and apply what they see to their instrument and on the other side of the scale I know a good amount of musicians (a majority are from formal, classical or very structured learning kind of backgrounds such as brass bands or have had a number of lessons from someone with such a background) who almost refuse to play songs unless they're writen out in some form or another i.e. a chord chart or complete dots and just don't really apply things to memory.

My overall view is that in any situation the more of these skills I have available to me then the more flexible I can be and ultimately get the job done.
I enjoy listening to, playing along to, studying, recording and performing a very wide variety of music styles which is what's lead me to end up with this mentality.
If you're thing is playing every weekend with some old friends in your (insert genre of choice here) band and that's what makes up 70% of your music collection the chances are you wont need ALL these skills by far and that without thinking about it you'll already have your own process with varying levels of music theory included in that.

Frankly I was lead to teach myself music theory (i'm self taught) when I went through a good couple of years being besotted with Jaco and I'd heard he was a music theory buff and so I sent out to find, learn and apply all these scales and books he'd studied. From that I have all my diatonic harmony, scales, arpeggios, understanding of chord progressions, gave my hands a good workout and it really improved the way I can see a piece of music and it be something i can understand and draw from rather than listen, be amazed but have no idea how i'd approach trying to create something of that nature.
A few years ago, after deciding that my aim was to play as much as possible to try and make a living out of it I sat down and decided to really concentrate on my reading music purely because I've been aware for a long time how little amount of bassists there are in North Wales who read dots and that if I could get to a level of being able to confidently play most charts thrown in front of me and thus be getting a larger run of the work available around here; it really has worked very well.

No idea how to end this post so....yes....there's my 2p.