Archive for category Learning Music

About Learning Grooves and Guitar Strums

Oct 27

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music, Practicing an Instrument | No Comments

 

Here’s a quick, yet important, note about practicing rhythms.

 

Rhythm patterns should be practiced to a steady pulse,
whether a drum machine or metronome.

 

A groove is a repetitive rhythm, most often for an accompaniment. Guitar strums can be random, but are usually repetitive: a groove. That’s what provides support for the melody or solo.

A stable groove is predictable. It feels good and gives the main melody, or solo, a stable point to play/sing on top of.

This blog isn’t about creating grooves; it’s about how to practice them! (And about how to not practice them!)

“Popular” music is based on a steady pulse, so practice grooves to a steady pulse. Because of this fact, practicing a groove without a steady pulse can be a waste of time. More often then not, the rhythm ends up being uneven and shaky, so not fun to play or to listen to.

First you work out the technique of the groove, e.g., picking pattern or fingering pattern on piano or bass, then learn to play it in tempo. Groove-rhythms won’t make musical sense unless you align them to a pulse. If your internal pulse is good, you don’t always need a mechanical device as an aid. However, most beginning and intermediate players should always practice to a steady pulse.

So…

 

Rhythm patterns should be practiced to a steady pulse,
whether a drum machine or metronome.

 

If you’re not already doing this, check it out and let me know how it goes!

 

Marty B.
Email

 

Related Articles
Guidelines for practicing a Musical Instrument

Practicing Music at the Right Speed

Glossary of Musical Terms

 

 

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Making Chords on a Guitar or Piano

Jan 14

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music, Music Lessons | 1 Comment

 

Pressing a piano key down plays a note, while lifting a finger off of a key releases it. On a guitar, however, lifting a finger off of a note can create a new note by leaving an open string! This is always an enlightenment for a beginning guitarist, and a reason why it is easier to understand chords on a piano then on a guitar.

A chord is a specific group of three or more notes. If you go up every other note, alphabetically, from a specific note you have a chord. For example: C D E F G is an alphabet grouping. Start on the C, go every other note and you get C E G, which is a “C Chord”. What makes a chord a chord, are the specific notes within it, and there are many types of chords. It doesn’t matter what order the notes are in: it’s the notes that matter. A “C Chord” is CEG whether it’s play EGC or GCE or GCEGCE. Those are all C Chords.

On a piano, you add a note by pressing down an additional key. On a guitar, you either add a note by pressing an finger down OR lifting up a finger to let the open string or barred note ring out. (The glossary at my website will define any term you don’t already know.)

So when learning chords on a guitar, look for the notes a finger is playing, as well as an open string or barred note ringing out as a result of lifting a finger!

 

Marty B.
Email
(818) 242-7551
http://personalizedmusiclessons.com

 

 

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The Secret to Walking Bass Lines

Dec 30

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | 2 Comments

A “Walking Bass Line” is a type of bass part playing a specific series of notes on the pulse of the song.

The primary functions of a walking bass line are to outline the chords while supporting the rhythm by playing the pulse of the music. There are many books on the musical specifics, and here is the “bottom line”:

A walking bass line needs to be:

1. Theoretically perfect
2. Musically appropriate
3. Artistically played

Theoretical perfection can start with arpeggios, expanded by adding consecutive scale tones then elaborated with chromatic passing tones. (All of these terms are defined in the glossary at buttwinickmusic.com.)

Musical appropriateness is determined by the style of music, i.e., Broadway, swing, jazz, blues, etc. And the artistic execution is determined by how the musician puts it all together according to his sense of pitch, rhythm and group dynamic.

Trying to be artistic or musically appropriate before having theoretical perfection is a waste of time simply because it can’t be done. Certain styles of music can be “faked” while other styles cannot. (Though I did have a student once who was theoretically illiterate and musical brilliant.)

Walking bass lines are a skill that needs to be developed and nurtured. They are a joy to play and listen to. Ray Brown is probably the God of this, and listening to him play will give you good examples of all three levels mentioned above.

Marty B.
Email
(818) 242-7551

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Guitar and Bass: Which Way is Up?

Dec 28

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | 3 Comments

Learning what “up or down the neck” means is one of the funniest things about learning beginning bass and guitar. This has perplexed and embarrassed more adult students then almost any other point! (Almost…)

Musically, the words “up” and “down” most often refer to pitch. “Pitch” is the highness or lowness of a note determined by how fast the string is vibrating. (More about pitch at the glossary at my website.)

An open guitar or bass string vibrates at a certain speed. When you press the string down to a fret, it shortens the string thereby making the string vibrate faster and the pitch higher. When you play notes going from the head of the instrument towards the sound hole, or pickups, the pitch’s are getting higher and is called going “up” the neck. Using a vertical guitar as an example, going up the neck is going down in gravity, and going down the neck is going up in gravity! So down is up and up is down!

It can take a while to get used to this when learning to play. Often enough I’ll say “move your finger down one fret” and the student moves it according to gravity instead of pitch, laughs then corrects the motion. This becomes rather humorous after the 20th or 30th time it happens. Some people get used to this after a few weeks, though most actually take a few months to stabilize this concept.

After all, we’ve been dealing with gravity longer than dealing with vibrating strings!

Marty B.

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Glossary of Musical Terms

Mar 26

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | No Comments

Check out my new Glossary of Musical Terms!

It is an expanding list of musical and music-business related terms. It has brief, yet concise definitions of important words. Not everything will be here as we already have dictionaries for those terms.

There are often many definitions for a word and I will mainly list a musically-oriented, simple definition or two for each one. Sometimes simple is good! (As time goes on I will be adding more involved and more in-depth definitions that you can access by clicking on words that are hyper-linked.)

The main focus is musical terms that are commonly mis-understood, or should be known by anyone playing or studying music.

I just started this project in March or 2010 and it will be expanding over the next few months. If there is anything you need a definition for let me know.

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The Interval Song by Django Bates

Sep 14

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | 1 Comment

 

 

 

Every interval in the chromatic scale, set against a Latin jazz backdrop by Django Bates. Music theory made fun!

 

Thank you Django!

 

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Am I Too Old to Learn an Instrument?

Aug 18

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | No Comments

old young music

Am I too old to learn an instrument?

Have you ever said that? Many of my students and prospective students have said those exact words to me.

And my answer – no!

You can be too old to be a teen rock star and you can be too old or not good looking enough to be a sex-god or goddess, but never too old to learn an instrument.

I’ve had students ranging from nine to seventy-five. The main difference between learning when young and learning when older, is THINKING! Older people tend to think too much! Younger people tend to just dive in and do what they need to do. They have their weekly lesson and they go home and practice it. Since they invest themselves into the activity, they benefit from it and achieve their musical goals.
Read the rest of this entry »

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The Language of Music – Part 2

Aug 5

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | No Comments

An interesting part of teaching has been getting the idea across to students that you can’t experience something until you actually experience it; and you can’t experience it until you can actually do it. As you don’t know what it’s like to sit on a horse until you sit on a horse, you don’t really know what it’s like to play something well until you actually play something well! And until you actually hear something, recognize it and play on it on your instrument the first time you try you haven’t experienced “playing by ear.” To learn these things, calm, relaxed and efficient practicing is necessary. There’s no way around this.

On a physical level, the purpose of practicing is to work out the kinks and hesitations to develop control over what you’re playing. To play with a tense body is like driving a car with the emergency brake on. Practicing too fast is like speeding through the mountains and screeching around the corners—you will most likely end up in a tree. You need to develop relaxed control before going fast—even with playing one note. Learn to relax when you play!

For ear training, practicing achieves a familiarity with sounds and what they are called. It’s similar to knowing what words mean verses being able to say them without understanding their definitions. An infant most likely doesn’t know what “green” is until someone points to something green and says “This is green.” It’s the same thing with ear training. You take some sounds, learn what they’re called and how to play them, then drill listening and identifying them. Then as you can know and recognize a few different colors or many of them, you learn to recognize a few musical sounds or hundreds of them: small vocabulary—large vocabulary.

A major part of learning the language of music is practicing at the right speed; the speed in which you can actually DO what it is, then through repetition gaining control and certainty. (And some things need to be repeated hundreds of times before you get it so be patient!) Then once you can do whatever it is you can get it faster and more fluid. Practicing too fast is probably the number one boo-boo students make.

There are many elements to the language, and until the pieces are put together the puzzle remains unfinished. When I teach I spend a great deal of time simply filling in the holes that people have in their puzzles and creating sequences of things to do to complete the picture: small picture or big picture.

Whether you are learning your first songs, learning to read or filling in the holes, find something you want to improve and create a realistic practice routine. Put your puzzle together piece by piece and eventually the picture will appear and you’ll speak more of the language of music.

Play on!

Marty B.

Personalized Music Lessons

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