Knowing When to Proceed With Music and When to Stop

JMD_Music said:
I think the second approach is what I want. I just want to be able to know the piano enough to apply it to production.
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By apply, you mean "be able to effortlessy understand and express the musical ideas in my head"? Because, if so, that is going to take A LONG TIME. Not to say you should wait until then to compose, you should be composing as you go, but getting to the point of having fully internalized the language enough to utilize it in your production depends on your taste. Some people are happy enough using a minor pentatonic scale and make a career out of it like BB King, others feel the need to go deeper.
 
Pumpthrust said:
By apply, you mean "be able to effortlessy understand and express the musical ideas in my head"? Because, if so, that is going to take A LONG TIME. Not to say you should wait until then to compose, you should be composing as you go, but getting to the point of having fully internalized the language enough to utilize it in your production depends on your taste. Some people are happy enough using a minor pentatonic scale and make a career out of it like BB King, others feel the need to go deeper.
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I mean something like this.


 
Counting semitones should help with chords.
Since keys are in that particular pattern of 12 notes.
7 white 5 black, repeated across the board.

root note as 0, second note as 4 and last not as 7
or the 1, 3rd and 5th notes of a scale.
 
I find the simplest method of getting a melody down is to sing/hum it - then break it down bar by bar and play it in on the keys.
The human voice is a hugely powerful tool that's often underused.
 
I say go for it. Go hard 3-4 months training everything.

I spent longer than that much time in a hospital recovering.

Lol what is 4 months. Do it and prove it.
 
Seandonjuan said:
I say go for it. Go hard 3-4 months training everything.

I spent longer than that much time in a hospital recovering.

Lol what is 4 months. Do it and prove it.
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Thanks. I think some people thought I had the idea I could become a professional after a couple months, which isn't true.
 
scrapheaper said:
Well, my parents just suggested I might like it and i was like 'yeah, whatever' being 8 years old at the time and not really knowing what I was getting into.
Then I just carried on and got more and more keen as I got better.

There's two approaches to playing instruments if you are serious about it. Most players have a bit of both, but one tends to dominate.

One is the classical approach- get the sheet music, learn to read it properly from the beginning and spend weeks learning each piece until it is perfect. The result is you sound fantastic and can get into orchestras or musical theatre bands, but you are essentially an athlete who is a slave to what the composer wrote.

The second approach is the popular/jazz approach: learn to play chords, and just develop your playing from chords more and more until you have a complete arrangement. Then learn to improvise melody and solos :D.
The upside of this you understand the music a lot better and can alter it to however you want, and write music. The downside is you will never, ever, ever come close to the technical ability of a classical player. If you take the classical approach, it doesn't take very long to learn popular music better than any pop musician could. If you're a pop musician, it's really hard to become a classical musician.

There's also a third approach where you go on youtube and watch the notes people are playing and copy them. It's really really slow and you waste all your time trying to remember the notes, but the upside is anyone can do it instantly and it doesn't take as long as trying to read music for the first time.
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"you will never ever ever come close to the technical ability of a classical player."

you should probably put jazz in with classical as well. because pop and jazz are not that close to each other. jazz musicians are more classically trained than "pop" artists.

part of what you said is true. but i heard this often when i was coming up. but in something like music that's perfectly fine. i would hear this, because it was a way of downplaying the talent or ability of hip hop when people would say it's not real music. it's just stealing and ripping off other music. however the very essence of hip hop is genius in itself. record players and samplers are supposed to play music not make the music. however the sampler/playback device became the instrument.

so while premo might not be able to play classical standards like "moonlit sonata" or "la mer" i'm pretty sure most classical pianists wouldn't be able to recreate or replay (on the original sampler/tools he used) songs like "kick in the door" or "nas is like."

however hybrids pop up every once in a while like Scott Storch and Ryan Leslie, was (Teddy Riley classically trained?) JR Rottem? Chad Hugo? Anyways it's very hard to replicate feel. Hip Hop/Pop/Rnb are more of a"feel." technical ability doesn't mean everything, it's important within context. otherwise everyone that is classically trained should be able to hop into the pop, hip hop and rnb studios and knock out countless hits.

does every professional basketball player go out to the playground and automatically dominate? can every street baller ball against professionals? it's like that.

make music if it's fun to you. forget about expectations and have fun. if you're not having fun doing it, then do something you have fun doing. then the time and energy you spend getting better isn't work. it's so cliche but it's true. then you're not spending or wasting time, nor are you investing it. you're enjoying it.
 
tReHoLLa said:
you should probably put jazz in with classical as well. because pop and jazz are not that close to each other. jazz musicians are more classically trained than "pop" artists.
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I do do a lot of jazz these days, and I do think classical training is required, but the actual method is exactly the same as the pop method- you get given the chords and make it up on the spot.
It's just jazz chords tend to be more complicated and there's more you can do to develop them so you need to technical ability of a classical player to get started.

No true jazz musician would ever get the sheet music for a piece of music and decide to sit down for 3 weeks and learn it note for note.
 
Maybe jazz is just the other side of classical.
Pop is probably the most simple in terms of melodic content. However as you rarely hear anything particularly advanced unless it's everything that isn't the melody.

I only know scales and how to slowly count semitones, so I reckon that's as advanced as edm theory would usually go for most.
Jazz, seems like it's a simpler version of classical.

Come to think of it it seems like melodies over time became less varied.
Classical[entire songs usually one instrument with the most complicated pitch combinations by far]
jazz[slightly simpler version of the above but I would not know that for sure]
pop.[practically tiny riffs and a few chords here and there]
 
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