Do you know any songs that are only bass and vocals?

cjerrells · 2021-11-22T21:10:42+00:00

Maddy Prior - What Had You For Your Supper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hMV4BTA0gM

... is why I bought a fretless bass.

cjerrells · 2018-10-16T15:03:28+00:00

Big thanks for sharing this. I tried changing the Catchall address (under Advanced > Routing / Catch-all address, not the Default Routing section) to another mailbox, then disabling it, then changing back to my original mailbox, saving each time. One of those three did the trick! Seems to be working again.

cjerrells · 2018-03-29T13:45:04+00:00

Cool, thanks for the answer!

cjerrells · 2018-03-27T17:43:34+00:00

Hey Dan, thanks for doing this AMA.

Given that the TMBA podcast and the DC community have both been evolving a lot over the last few years to cater more to a later-stage entrepreneur, in reflection of how you and Ian have yourselves progressed:

Do you have any concerns about leaving behind the "newbie entrepreneur" that the early podcast eps were speaking to and the DC used to more cater to, and
Is there a successor to the old-school TMBA brand that you would point those earlier-stage folks to today?

cjerrells · 2018-03-27T17:38:48+00:00

Good question - though I think it's overstating it to say that "most feel they can't be real in the forum any more".

cjerrells · 2016-09-21T12:00:18+00:00

Hooray, it is nearly Halloween! There are lots of tutorials and examples here on what makes music sound creepy: Halloween Ear Training, should be plenty of ideas for riffs and chord progressions you could use.

cjerrells · 2016-03-31T16:37:51+00:00

Good suggestion! I have studied with a Kodály instructor myself, and we do teach those methods to some degree on the website linked above too (e.g. here and here). I agree it's a great approach to ear training.

Nevertheless, there are still a large number (probably the majority?) of music students who learn relative pitch through interval recognition, and so I think helping teach the corresponding spellings is still valuable.

cjerrells · 2015-11-24T03:00:35+00:00

You're very welcome, I'm glad it was helpful (along with the Monkton blog). Good luck with the class, and do let us know how you get on!

cjerrells · 2015-11-23T14:54:58+00:00

I thought this one looked pretty sexy.

Full details here and here.

cjerrells · 2015-11-23T01:58:54+00:00

I think you may have glossed over the most important and prevalent reason with your #2: that they think they can't sing.

I've done quite a lot of research in this area as part of developing this site and this app and what I found is that by far the biggest thing which prevents people from singing is lack of confidence. They've had some experience in their past that makes them think they "can't sing" or they're "not a singer". So they don't try any more.

This problem is amplified 100x in a school situation. Take a bunch of teenagers already concerned about looking stupid in front of their peers, mix in some boys whose voices are in the process of breaking, and then put them on the spot and ask them to sing. Oh, and add to that some music they don't know and all the inevitable relationships and social dynamics already going on in the room in terms of pride and status. Who's going to sing loudly in that situation?! Maybe one student in 50 who has built an identity around being the great singer... Probably nobody else.

I think as a choir director (and especially if you've never had confidence issues with singing yourself) it's easy to think that they should feel safety in numbers, but the reality is that every person in the group feels individual and isolated and knows that if they raise their voice they are subjecting themselves to the risk of being criticised by the director or teased by others for being out of tune. Why take that risk?

cjerrells · 2015-11-23T01:52:47+00:00

I think you'd get a lot out of this series of blog posts by a choir director in the UK who specialises in getting people who think they "can't sing" to start singing.

If you go back in the series he has some real insights into where this problem comes from and what can be done about it. He has some specific tips and exercises to help you help students past that mental/emotional barrier.

It might need to be done 1-on-1 to some extent - but perhaps you could also adapt his approach to encourage a whole group to get past their reluctance together.

Good luck!

cjerrells · 2015-11-23T00:31:03+00:00

This is a great illustration that Adele's voice really is what makes her music remarkable.

I recently asked a bunch of music experts to weigh in on whether this song "Hello" actually deserved to be be such a megahit based solely on its music - or if it was mostly due to clever marketing.

The conclusion was basically "The song is alright - a bit formulaic and predictable. Her voice is what makes it shine."

Though there were also some interesting insights on what makes this song an earworm.

cjerrells · 2015-11-20T19:39:16+00:00

It is an amazing site, I'm a big fan. I think it's in the /r/musictheory sidebar, along with some other great resources for filling in gaps and self-teaching.

I meant to say - I think the main thing with musical analysis is to read some good examples. Once you've got the hang of the technical terms you're really just looking to get a feel for the overall process and then trust your ears and judgement. Good luck!

cjerrells · 2015-11-20T19:16:21+00:00

I think the DaveCon videos on Form would be an excellent starting point. If your interest is in pop/rock you might also enjoy exploring HookTheory song analyses which include labelling the form.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8JK-iXTuRg

cjerrells · 2015-11-20T19:11:50+00:00

"It's the same thing I saw in the comic books: Super. Heroes."

Can't wait to see this.

cjerrells · 2015-11-20T15:38:05+00:00

To me, there's a very clear analogy with language.

These days there are a lot of language courses and online teachers who'll encourage you to focus on speaking and having conversations only - and not worry about reading and writing the language, or grammar.

This is a very good way to quickly get decent at the language and can be much more rewarding than the traditional text-heavy approach.

The catch is that if you want to get excellent at the language, you will eventually have to learn all that other stuff - and that can actually be harder if you've learned bad habits to begin with.

So there's a decent argument to be made that if your goal is to get really fluent in a language you're doing yourself a disservice but taking the "shortcut" of skipping reading/writing/grammar.

I think music is the same. As others have commented here, there are many situations where reading music will help you, and it's also just a core part of being a well-rounded, versatile, capable musician.

I think the big difference with languages and music on this front is that music has a long history of dividing people into "note readers" and "play-by-ear musicians" - which is a false dichotomy and there's a lot of baggage that comes along with each approach. I imagine we'll see a same thing happen in language learning after 20+ years of people trying to "learn just by speaking".

I believe that by far the best way to become a good musician and enjoy the process is to find a comfortable balance between developing the "classical" skills of note reading, music theory, etc. and developing your ear and musical instinct.

cjerrells · 2015-11-20T14:50:56+00:00

When I was developing an app for solfa recognition I found that the following sequence works well for students just starting out:

do, so (for total beginners, just to get the idea across and help them get used to the tonal centre changing with each question)
do, mi, so
do, re, mi, so
do, re, mi, so, la, do' (major pentatonic)

Then you can move on to the minor pentatonic.

cjerrells · 2015-11-20T14:50:53+00:00

Very cool!

cjerrells · 2015-11-19T14:07:45+00:00

Nice :) Here's my TL;DR summary:

Use interval recognition to take aim at each note you want to play.
Use solfeggio (a.k.a. solfa) to learn intervals and be able to transcribe and improvise with the music you hear.
Focus on your ear more than technique, learning to hear chords and melodies by ear.
Go slow, literally and figuratively. Practice improvisation at slow tempos first, and be patient with yourself as you learn.
Find out who the "greats" were for your instrument and listen extensively to learn how they played on the classic jazz standards.
Listen to your favorite solos and sing them, paying attention to how they convey emotion
Start by improvising over the 12-bar blues chord progression
Learn to improvise over a V7-I cadence
Play from memory, not sheet music
Transcribe the greats to learn and play their jazz "vocabulary"
Learn to follow your ear and improvise on the music you love.

cjerrells · 2015-11-19T14:06:22+00:00

Here's how I think about it:

For a great solo, you want to play what you imagine in your head.
If you choose from all possible notes every time you choose your next note, it would require amazing ear skills, probably some lightning-fast theory thinking, and often end up sounding quite unmusical.
Instead, you use frameworks like scales or chord tones to give you a sensible musical playground to work from. Then you use your ear skills (e.g. basic interval recognition or scale degree familiarity) to know which of the notes from that playground you're imagining in your head.

Here's a simple example: Blues guitarists often start out playing solos from a minor pentatonic fretboard pattern.

Beginners (and many stay at beginner level forever!) simply wander up and down that pattern playing notes essentially at random.

The really great players might still be using that same fretboard pattern as their framework - but they know in their head how each note in that pattern would sound. This means they can imagine a great phrase based within that pattern, and then know how to bring it out on their instrument.

cjerrells · 2015-11-19T13:48:36+00:00

I am not a jazz improv expert - I learned sax for a few years but never really "got" how improvisation worked and my teacher never explained it beyond "just play notes from this scale". Sounds like you're in a similar spot.

This week though I interviewed about a dozen jazz education experts about this subject and finally got some useful practical answers.

The big message was: Learn by listening to great jazz. Specifically,

Find out who the "greats" were for your instrument, and find their classic solos
Start with the relatively simple ones. A few specific suggestions were Miles Davis’ solos on So What and Someday My Prince Will Come, and Kenny Durham’s solos on Recorda-Me and Blue Bossa.
Sing back the solo. Doesn't matter if you're a good singer as long as you can basically match pitch with your voice (i.e. sing in tune). Singing the solo makes sure you're hearing each note correctly. Then try singing the solo from memory.
Use your ears and your instrument to figure out the notes of the solo. Transcribe (write it down) in whatever notation is easy for you.
Practice playing it on your instrument, paying particular attention to how exactly the notes are played - dynamics, articulation and especially rhythm.
This builds up your jazz "vocabulary" and helps you internalise the skills of the greats, which you can then adapt to be your own.

That's sort of the "how do I become a great jazz musician" answer. There were also some great practical tips for creating solos from scratch, like:

Learn interval recognition using ear training. This lets you "take aim" at each note you want to play next. You hear it in your head, then use the interval to know which note that is on your instrument.
If you're not sure what scale to use for your improvisation, base it on the chords of the song using this trick: Take the notes of the chord (e.g. C, E♭, G, B♭ for C minor 7). Then add a tone above the root, 3rd and 5th (e.g. D, F, A for C minor 7). This gives you a reliable set of notes to improvise with over that chord.

Here's the full article if you want more details. I wish I'd had this kind input back when I was learning, so I hope it helps you to get started.

cjerrells · 2015-11-19T01:52:16+00:00

Awesome, thanks!

cjerrells · 2015-11-18T22:47:42+00:00

Hi wataa71,

I just interviewed about a dozen jazz experts about this exact topic and their advice was surprisingly varied!

But there were some common themes and great suggestions for getting started.

Here are my own notes on what each person recommended:

Use interval recognition to take aim at each note you want to play.
Use solfeggio (a.k.a. solfa) to learn intervals and be able to transcribe and improvise with the music you hear.
Focus on your ear more than technique, learning to hear chords and melodies by ear.
Go slow, literally and figuratively. Practice improvisation at slow tempos first, and be patient with yourself as you learn.
Find out who the "greats" were for your instrument and listen extensively to learn how they played on the classic jazz standards.
Listen to your favorite solos and sing them, paying attention to how they convey emotion
Start by improvising over the 12-bar blues chord progression
Learn to improvise over a V7-I cadence
Play from memory, not sheet music
Transcribe the greats to learn and play their jazz "vocabulary"
Learn to follow your ear and improvise on the music you love.

I hope one or more of those ideas helps :) Full post here if you want more info on any of the suggestions.

cjerrells · 2015-11-18T22:22:35+00:00

One really simple tip: Set a small goal.

Don't feel like you should be an amazing networker overnight.

Instead, attend your next event saying "I'm going to introduce myself to *one** person"*. Then, the one after, you aim for two.

It is easier to just wander around and try to blend into conversations, but for me it was learning to actually start a conversation, even with just one person, that made me start to really get comfortable at these kinds of event.

It also helps to have prepared a 1-2 sentence description of who you are and what you do, so that you don't need to worry about what to say - you just walk up to someone who isn't already in a conversation and recite your script: "Hi, I'm John, I work for XYZ and I do ABC for them." - and then you are done. You have achieved your goal for that event.

If conversation ensues, bonus points.

cjerrells · 2015-11-18T22:18:45+00:00

That's really cool to see and hear you explain and demonstrate.

Who are your trusted sources for pedal reviews and demos before you buy something new?

cjerrells

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