GuitarBizarre

rarrrr i am srsbiz rar rar!

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someonecompletelyrandom

I regret the way I've learned music. I went straight from basics to recording and just kept working with myself to get the recordings sounding decent. It sounds like an OK way to learn but I wish I had been able to practice live with other players, something I have a bit of a struggle with now.

kouki

Ya I figured,theres just so much shi* out there.A lot of songs use the same chord progression too,just different rythm.Plus that one song says it too(forgot the name) but it goes something like this "its all been done, whooo uuuu uuuuu its all been done,its all been doooone beforeeee"LMAO *turns off stupid switch*

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It jiggles when he wiggles-Fez

someonecompletelyrandom

That's rediculously narrow-minded. Theres a bit more to music than pop chord progressions and pretentious modern classical quote unquote avant-garde music, which I'm sure is about as far into "weird" music as the morons who wrote those books have delved.

mr dave

yes and no. even the weird stuff tends to draw from traditional resources in its initial stages. from my perspective it seems that the majority of 'weird' musicians have an idea of where the mainstream flows and where the tributary of weird stuff they like branches off. they're able to recognize the level of deviation between those two elements then tend to apply a similar amount of deviation to their own style from within the established tributary they chose to admire.

as for the recyclability of pop music...

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i am the universe

someonecompletelyrandom

Using just the basic fundimentals of music this theory is disproven.

There are eight commonly accepted note durations

whole note
half note
quarter note
eighth note
sixteenth note
thirty-second note
sixty-fourth note
hundred twenty-eighth note

Using the familular scale we are all used to, there is available to be combined with these particular lengths:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G

If we were to make just a four note song using the above accessories...without taking into account time signatures, odd notes, dissonant elements, repetition etc..

there are literally endless combinations. It's bollocks to say there is no "new" music being written! It's like saying all books aren't really new, they are just made up of letters from other books.

mr dave

you're right from the technical standpoint, but using your book example again, it can be argued that the same basic stories are being told with different characters (man vs. nature / man vs. machine / man vs. self / etc.)

the same applies to pretty much all song based music. the notes and styles might be different but the underlying formulas remain.

you could try breaking free from that and playing improv on purpose for records but Ornette Coleman already beat us all to that one 55 years ago.

while there's certainly more people who chose to listen to the 'weird' stuff on purpose now rather than to be content to simply hear it within some other form of media, it doesn't change the fact that it's pretty much all been done before in one way or another.

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i am the universe

Daktari

Hi there,

I have just been browsing through this section and on a similar subject to the Pachalbel Rant as posted above. The guy has obviously researched and found examples of songs using the same chord sequence as in Pachalbel's canon. If we transpose that up to the key of Gmaj it would be:

G, D, Em, Bm, C, G, Am, D...... and so on and on..... That's what a canon is. A building variation on the same set of chords repeated over and over. And as he demonstrated, there are loads of modern songs that follow that same progression.

For relative beginners who are looking to learn new songs, here are a few more:

G, Em, C, D...... This simple sequence was very, very popular in 1950's and early 60's songs. Might not be the exact same key but the relative chord changes were used many hundreds of times and are still popular today. Two examples: Dream by the Everley Brothers and more recently, One Love by U2.

Right now the most popular sequence of chords is:

G, D, Em, C. Play around with that sequence and it seems like half the stuff on the radio features that very progression. As heard in No Woman, No Cry by the great Bob Marley, Halo by Beyonce and hundreds of others from Taylor Swift to Greenday. It's all just variations on a theme.

As a beginner, if you learn the three above mentioned chord sequences, maybe in a few different keys and you will have a huge collection of songs to go at. With a little time you will be able to recognise all the songs that use them.

All the best, Gordon.

jennysimsmusic

I'm self taught in guitar (or self teaching) - (singing i suppose too)
I got lessons in piano for a good while, but it didnt interest me as much, i felt it tedious
I find the best option for what I wanted to achieve on guitar was to pick up knowledge and 'skills' from friends and family. Ive never wanted to be a superduper guitar player though, so my methods may not work for everyone haha

I know my brother is learning from himself/family(me and father)/random friends, he picks it all up so fast its astonishing, so it can be done productively

ElephantSack

I'm self taught for the most part. My pops showed me the basics of playing bass (a few songs, a scale or two) when I was a kid, and then I pretty much just took it from there. Guitar came pretty naturally after that, just from watching my brother's hands when we would play together. And I've always had a thing for drums. I don't know. One day I just decided to play the drums, and I played the drums. Weird, now that I think about it.

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OF THE SUN