Chord Pulse (I like it because of it’s great UI and ease of use.)
For mobile devices(iOS and Android) I recommend:
iRealb
It comes with hundreds of predefined lead-sheets and different styles of music. Check out their forum and find hundreds of predefined tunes.Jazz-standards out of the Real Book series and Lego Harmony Bricks to name a few.
Can someone with no musical talent learn to play guitar as an adult? That’s what New York University psychology professor Gary Marcus wanted to find out when he turned 40. Along the way, he discovered that the struggle to learn was as rewarding as playing music itself.
To take the first step in improvising, get yourself a lead sheet of your favorite song. It could be simple 12-bar blues (like: | I7 | IV7 | I7 | I7 | IV7 | IV7 | I7 | VI7 | II-7 | V7 | I7 | V7 |)
and identify the chords. Set your metronome to a tempo that you can easy follow, like 80 bpm, and play quarter notes.
Play the root notes only. This gets the basic sound of the overall progression into your ears.
Play the root and third notes. The third is the qualifier for major or minor chords.
Play the root and fifth notes. The fifth is the dominant note of each chord.
Play the root and seventh notes. The seventh is an additional chord qualifier and tells us if the chord is major, minor, or dominant.
Now outline the chords (play arpeggios).
Play bass lines, adding swing, rhythm, and connecting notes besides the root, third, fifth and seventh, the focus being on how to connect the chords smoothly.
Now try to mix the above and play an improvised solo.
Do Question & Answer phrasing as you do in a normal conversation. Roughly speaking: questioning phrases are ascending melodies, answering phrases and statements are descending melodies. This creates a realistic and interesting movement.
An exercise on pitch class
Take a note out of a scale that matches the key, and play or sing repeated choruses of whole-note improvisations through an entire chord progression. Stay on that same note throughout the entire chorus, adjusting only when necessary. Do the same with other notes of that scale. This way your ears learn how each note sounds through the entire progression. In a performance, you will be able to land on any note with confidence.
A time exercise
Systematically practice in each time dimension, beginning with choruses of whole notes, then half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, and sixteenth notes, including various triplets as well. This will enable you to improvise while using various note lengths. Practice different tempos also.
Simplifying a melody can be done by placing all notes on the beat, and eliminating non-harmonic tones and repeated notes. This method leads you to the core of the melody.
Essential scales to learn
Begin with
Ionian (Major)
Dorian (Jazz Minor)
Mixolydian
Major & Minor Pentatonic
Move on with
Locrian
Whole Tone
Diminished
Details of all the scales will be in a later posting.
The most essential rhythm trainer for every musician still is the metronomeInfoA mechanical or electronic tool that gives audible and or visual signals in constant periods of time. There are also thousands of software metronomes for any operating system available. – true and efficient in telling us whether we’re in time or not. The easiest use is to clap your hands along to the beat; you’re exactly on the beat when the click of the metronome is no longer audible. This should be mastered in several different tempos and rhythms, and everything except sound building exercises should be practiced with a metronome – be it your instrument or your voice. A further useful rhythm training exercise with your instrument or voice is to vary the tapping of the foot. The metronome is only on the fourth beat, so start by tapping on every beat, then as you feel comfortable, on 1 and 3, then only on the 1, and finally without tapping at all. This establishes a good sense for the feeling of the placement of each beat, especially with the accents.
If you don’t have a metronome at hand, this one will do it: www.metronomeonline.com
Metronome
You can train your rhythmic feeling while you listen to music at home or on the road, and you can count it as practice time. Snap your fingers, tap your feet, clap your hands, use your fingers or hands as drumsticks, or sing or whistle along, making sure you’re on the beat and in time. Mimic your favorite musician or singer and concentrate on the phrasing and time feeling.
The reason to develop a strong rhythmic feeling is simple: if you’re not playing in time with or without other musicians, you’re not in sync, and that will destroy the whole performance.
In my ear-trainer exercise you find two media players (among others) that hold play-lists of click tracks and drum loops.
A big goal in improvisation is the ability to play at higher speeds, and this requires a lot of dedicated practice. The common approach is to start phrases slowly with a metronome, and steadily increase the speed in steps of five or ten beats per minute.
According to Hal GalperInfoForward Motion at http://www.forwardmotionpdf.com/, one of the secrets of all those great jazz masters when improvising over fast bebop chord changes is to count in half time. By playing accordingly, the length of the song is halved. This results in a more relaxed feeling while improvising, and could make a ballad sound like a fast-swinging bebop tune.
The difference in pitch between two different notes is categorized in intervals. We also need the ability to recognize these intervals in between notes and chords and it would be wonderful if you can recognize them. One of the best practice methodshttp://www.trainear.com to learn intervals is by having a small list of easy tunes in our memory whose first two notes represent a certain musical interval. I suggest the following list with well known pieces.
Table of interval songs:
Interval
Ascending Example
Descending Example
Unison
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to You
Minor 2nd
I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas
Joy to the World
Major 2nd
Silent Night
Beatles: Yesterday
Minor 3rd
Greensleeves
Beatles: Hey Jude
Major 3rd
Oh, when the Saints go marching in
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Perfect 4th
Amazing Grace
O Come All Ye Faithful
Triton
Maria (West Side Story)
Blue Seven
Perfect 5th
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Flintstones Theme
Minor 6th
Black, Orpheus
Theme from Love Story
Major 6th
My Way
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Minor 7th
Theme from Star Trek
Watermelon Man
Major 7th
Superman
I Love You (Cole Porter)
Perfect 8th
Over the Rainbow
Willow Weep For Me
Several other examples could be found following these links:
Solfège or Solfeggio, is a method of assigning a syllable to every pitch / degree of a scale.
Instead of singing the actual names of the notes in the scale (eg. C D E F G A B) we use the syllables instead (Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti). There are a few different versions of solfège in use. The basic hand signs are:
Handsigns for Solfege, Solfeggio, Solmization
Solfège, also called Solmization, is a tool which stimulates your visual and tactile sense along with the aural impression and thus strengthen the mental connection in between. It is used to accelerate the education of vocalists. This method is capable to train the site reading and helps to develop an aural sense for relative pitch thus it is not only good for vocalists but also for instrumentalists. Besides it is a very good method to train little children and their sense of musical imagination.
We distinguish between absolute and relative Solmization. The absolute Solmization keeps the Solfège syllables strictly connected to the notes.
Example: C Major scale:
C D E F G A B C
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do
D Major scale:
D E F♯ G A B C♯ D
Re Mi Fi Sol La Ti Di Re
In relative Solmization, the Do is moved to the root of the key and all other syllables move accordingly. However minor scales start with La
Example: C Major scale:
C D E F G Ab B C
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do
D Major scale:
D E F♯ G A B C♯ D
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do
A Natural Minor scale:
A B C D E F G A
La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La
C Natural Minor scale:
C D Eb F G Ab B♭ C
La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La
D Natural Minor scale:
D E F G A B♭ C D
La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La
In the harmonic minor scale with the raised 7th, Sol becomes Si. The melodic minor scale also has the raised 7th, plus Fa becomes Fi.
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. ~Leopold Stokowski
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach
All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ~Thomas Carlyle
If the King loves music, it is well with the land. ~Mencius
Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. ~Gustav Mahler
Why waste money on psychotherapy when you can listen to the B Minor Mass? ~Michael Torke
And the night shall be filled with music, and the cares that infest the day shall fold their tents like the Arabs
and as silently steal away.~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done
He who sings scares away his woes. ~Cervantes
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name
Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli
Music is what feelings sound like. ~Author Unknown
There’s music in the sighing of a reed. ~Author Unknown
There’s music in the gushing of a rill. ~Author Unknown
There’s music in all things, if men had ears. ~Author Unknown
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.~Lord Byron
Musical compositions, it should be remembered, do not inhabit certain countries, certain museums, like paintings and statues. The Mozart Quintet is not shut up in Salzburg: I have it in my pocket. ~Henri Rabaud
Music is the poetry of the air. ~Richter
If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. ~Sydney Smith
There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill
If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. ~Ludwig van Beethoven
I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet
My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar
Alas for those that never sing,But die with all their music in them! ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. ~Charlie Parker
Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~William F. Buckley, Jr.
Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Play the music, not the instrument. ~Author Unknown
Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken. ~Ludwig van Beethoven
Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. ~Robert Fripp
An intellectual is someone who can listen to the “William Tell Overture” without thinking of the Lone Ranger. ~John Chesson
Music’s the medicine of the mind. ~John A. Logan
You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot
Music is the universal language of mankind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer
Music rots when it gets too far from the dance. Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music. ~Ezra Pound
He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~Robert Browning
You can’t possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven’s Seventh and go slow. ~Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket
The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scots as a joke, but the Scots haven’t got the joke yet. ~Oliver Herford
What we provide is an atmosphere… of orchestrated pulse which works on people in a subliminal way. Under its influence I’ve seen shy debs and severe dowagers kick off their shoes and raise some wholesome hell. ~Meyer Davis, about his orchestra
…where music dwells Lingering – and wandering on as loth to die… ~William Wordsworth, “Within King’s College Chapel, Cambridge”
Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel. ~Buffy Sainte-Marie
Music is an outburst of the soul. ~Frederick Delius
Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory. ~Oscar Wilde
In music the passions enjoy themselves. ~Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886
In solfège, we already learned that our ears can be trained to recognize relative pitches and the sound of different pitches in parallel or in series. We also learned earlier that our ears are a very special organ that physically does everything for us, and we only need some sort of ear training in terms of:
My book will address the above mentioned points in detail but also check out GNU Solfege – Smarten your ears, it’s an open source software tool that can be of great help. Versions for Windows, Linux and MAC are available.
Other good resources for ear training are:
This is the key to quick success. Some things that should be seen in your imagination – one at a time – are:
chord symbols,
each chord symbol above the music staff,
the root in the chord,
the aural sense, and
the tactile sense
Do this in every key and gradually add up all the chord notes to the 13th. Visualize pairs of notes as block chords or as sequential half notes. Add more notes and be creative, and you will find that the possibilities are endless. Do this on your instrument or while singing.
The benefit of this exercise is to not only increase the speed of recognizing chords and their notations, but to hone your musical instinct and improvise with more confidence.