Would be nice if folks here knew the language of music

[Stuart Legg]

Music theory is a practice musicians use to understand and communicate the language of music.
I should think the language of music an asset, as this is after all a Forum.

[Edward Dixon]

Music theory is a practice musicians use to understand and communicate the language of music.
I should think the language of music an asset, as this is after all a Forum.

Not all of us speak the language of Music Theory. I can but when I do most people's eyes start glassing over so I try to avoid it.

[Steve Spitz]

If you want to communicate with others, you’ll need a common language.

[Doug Earnest]

That's just for people that play a real musical instrument.

[Rick McNamara]

Hey Stuart,

I feel like you are missing the entire point of the SGF!

For instance, wouldn’t it be nice if:

Everyone could tune their guitar
Everyone could re-rod their guitar
Everyone could add a knee lever to their guitar
Everyone could build a beautiful PSG for themselves
Everyone could sing and play PSG at the same time
Everyone understood the Nashville number system
Everyone knew as much as you do

But alas, we don’t all know everything so, we turn to our friends on the SGF, ask questions, and get the answers from folks who know!

That is the purpose of a forum! Not to try showing everyone how little you really know about the instrument we all love!

After all Stuart the first axiom of music is a PSG standard! I’m sure you’ve heard it if your involved with PSG? “If it sounds good play it!”

IMHO,
Rick McNamara

Ps. I had 6 years of musical theory and voice lessons. At 75 I can hardly remember my own cell phone number!

[Larry Dering]

A friend who is a fine jazz guitarist was talking to me during a break. I started explaining the C6 tuning and chords when he stops me saying that's more than I need to know. This man studied music with some of the all time greats. Needless to say I was floored with that statement. So yes, their eyes glaze over.

[Glenn Demichele]

That’s funny. Music theory is just math for music. Math is only a man-made contrivance to describe (sometimes poorly) the reality around us, like electricity, moving planets etc. Music theory, similarly, is not music. I played a jazz gig once with a classically trained academic heavy. It was awful. I know exactly what Bonnie Raitt did after I hear it, but damn, I can’t play like that.,,

[Ian Rae]

There is no single theory of music any more than there is of any other branch of science. Music has not one language but a set of them. I use different ones to communicate with the singer, the guitarist, the bass player and the drummer. Especially the drummer.

And different yet again if I'm conducting a brass ensemble.

Getting everyone to learn a common theory would be like herding cats. Instead learn to talk to people in a way they understand.

Or so it seems to me....

[John McClung]

What Ian Rae said...

[K Maul]

Stuart, I have to honestly say I don’t know what point you are trying to make. I don’t read music but I play music. I know some people that can sight read anything and make it work. I can’t do that but I can play things behind a singer that makes him or her turn around and smile at me. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. What I do and know won’t work in every situation, that I realize. The trumpet player I met who could sight read anything and played with Buddy Rich(and didn’t get yelled at) said he tried to learn steel and dobro but “couldn’t make the sound that I love from what is my favorite instrument “. So who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong? I know what a 1,4,5,6,2 etc is but can’t read it off a paper. Sometimes I’d like to - but so far so good.

[Stuart Legg]

The point is that this is a Forum. This is where you can share and debate points of view regarding Steel Guitar and Music.
Here on the Forum it’s your ability to say it not your ability to play it.
Learning the correct names for all the parts of your Steel Guitar and learning the language of music seems a logical endeavor.

[Donny Hinson]

Guilty, as charged.

I've often wondered...how many guitarists or steelers can sight-read (cold) a piece of music, and play it? Maybe one out of a thousand? One out of ten thousand?

[Dave Mudgett]

As Ian stated - there are a lot of theories of music and a lot of ways of expressing ideas about music. I prefer to think about all this as "Principles of Music", which is partly a language and partly a set of customs and conventions. And of course, there are a helluvalotta different languages, customs, and conventions. Again as Ian points out, this is also true in science and related areas. Frankly, in almost any serious area of endeavor.

Here on the Forum it’s your ability to say it not your ability to play it.

This is a forum about steel guitar, not a forum about talking about steel guitar. I believe most of us talk about it because we play steel guitar or want to play steel guitar, and we're way more focused on "doing", not "talking" - i.e., walk the walk, not talk the talk. Talking without walking seems vacuous to me. An interesting intellectual exercise? Perhaps, but for that, I'd rather do science, math, and engineering, which I did as a career for about 45 years, with a couple of breaks in between to play music because my head was about to explode without it - science, math, engineering, and so on are also merciless taskmasters.

I learned quite a bit of "Western Classical Music" principles in my first 14 years, studying piano. I could read music better at age 12 than I can now. I ditched all of that for a while starting in 1967 to play blues and other roots styles on guitar. I'm not saying knowing basic principles of music didn't help some, but it didn't really matter all that much for what I was doing at the time. Most of the masters in the styles I cared about didn't give a tinker's damn about so-called theory. They just did it. Since then I've gone a bunch of different directions. I learn whatever music principles are needed for the job. The language, customs and conventions of blues, rock, R&B, country, folk, jazz, and other popular styles of music are different than classical, and different from each other. Adapt or die.

[Jon Voth]

Hey-I think all of us here know music theory already enough as it pertains to our genre.

I'm probably one of very few here who studied music theory several years in college. The study of chords, notes, and where they move to in western harmonies. Gets pretty challenging when analyzing Debussy and late Wagner. Then downright crazy with Schoenberg on the verge of atonality.

Thankfully our music is pretty simple. I, IV, V chords with a 6th or flat 7th thrown in there. Maybe some tri-tone subs if you're a bit ornery. If you don't use that language and play only by ear that's cool, but hard to convey ideas on a forum. But I think we all do pretty well here.

[Stuart Legg]

We don't tune up the steel guitar log in and take turns playing here on the Forum. We log in and take turns talking with printed word.
Hint:
Without Music Theory knowledge folks may be able to play it but they won’t be able to join in on a discussion of “Night Life” when it’s gone way off out in the weeds of the Tadd Dameron Turnaround.
It would be sad to miss out on all that fun!

[Per Berner]

Well, Irving Berlin couldn't read music and only played the piano in one key – and he succeeded anyway. That said, a bit of theory knowledge is definitely an advantage.

[Stuart Legg]

What Ian Rae said...

Wow! You mean there is more than one book. Well crap that's a deal breaker, no sense reading any of them!

I always assume if you want to learn something you study more than one source with the understanding you will never learn everything about the subject but you will be able to communicate with those who think they know everything.

[Ake Banksell]

Starting to play with a band and revealing that you are reading music will cause you to lose important contact with your fellow musicians. It is better to find the same musical language to communicate, in much the same way as playing licks that suit their music. They shit in how or what you do, as long as it sounds good.

[Edward Dixon]

Stuart,

Only control freaks try to dictate the speech or actions of others. If you are having trouble communicating with others, you might consider that the problem is not with them.

[Bob Carlucci]

Look, music is an art.. It comes from the soul, NOT from a set of theoretical equations.
Its insulting to the many many great musicians in all genres, to infer that they were somehow lacking because they played, felt, and communicated their music without having to explain or express its theoretical aspects.

I have played with truly wonderful musicians all my life, made some great music with them, for probably hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people.

In all that time and in all those places, with all those musicians, never one time did any one of us feel the need to discuss the theory as to why the music was good. We could feel it, hear it, and when holding the instrumentation being used to produce it,we could actually touch it.. For a lot of us, music is a sensory thing more than a theoretical thing.. bob

[K Maul]

I’m wondering what specific incident sparked Stuart to make this somewhat vague complaint which has set us off on the search for the proper helpful response. It seems like all our responses have only further muddied the waters. Many of us desire to be helpful. I guess some just want to vent. Which are you? Can anyone really say something that will decrease rather than increase the frustration?

[Bill McCloskey]

…

[Mike Wilson]

sure would be nice if there were "like" emojis to click on if you like a statement or answer that someone gives. Agree with Rick McNamara. That being said I need someone to tell me how to Program user presets into a tc electronics M one XL.

[Mike Wilson]

sure would be nice if there were "like" emojis to click on if you like a statement or answer that someone gives. Agree with Rick McNamara.

[Peter Harris]

My theory is that music can get you through a WHOLE lot of tough things that life throws at you....if you let it into your heart and back out again.

Sometimes doing that is not easy, but it's ALWAYS worth trying....even if you think you don't need help, it just might be that someone who's listening to you DOES......and they will pick in an instant if the music you make comes from your heart.

I've been making some sort or other of music for 60 of the 73 years I have been serially breathing....and I still don't sight-read or know a whole bunch about music theory (other than my own).. ....perhaps I've just been lucky, but I know I'm happy with that


Oh, and get onto the TC Electronics website, Mike...you can bet someone's figured it out already...