I can think up of piano songs in my head, but I can''t actually translate those songs into notes. What can I do to fix that? Do I just need to play the piano until I memorize sounds to notes?

How ironic, I was just going to post something like this.

Here's what I was doing earlier. A little tune comes to my mind. I play it with my voice first. ("BUM-BUMMM-BUMMM--BUMMMMM") I can't name notes, so I just take some school paper and write the notes in terms of tone and length. This note is higher than that note, but lower than this one; lines are drawn after each note to show its length. Then I get on my keyboard and play the notes that sound right, according to what I hum and what I write.

Once you know the notes, you can transcribe them to score paper. You'll know the pace of the music, the the lengths of the notes, and how to actually play it. There are even software programs, like Midisoft, that let you do this on the computer. That's all up to you.



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Benjamin Heath
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[edited by - Benjamin Heath on October 18, 2003 6:02:50 PM]

would you prefer for me to sell you something that does it for you so you never develop any aptitude whatsoever?

what is wrong with you civilised people? you likey giant huge worldwide toxic garbage dump? suuuure - don''t bother testing your worn-out memory when you can kill a tree and write it down and then lose the note paper! use a calculator because your poor media addled brain can''t handle anythnig more than single digits.. never mind the fact that people in ''primitive'' cultures can do cubic roots to 25 digits faster than computers.

aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhh yes, please try and be good for something other than spending and earning money.

quote: Original post by xoxos
would you prefer for me to sell you something that does it for you so you never develop any aptitude whatsoever?

what is wrong with you civilised people? you likey giant huge worldwide toxic garbage dump? suuuure - don''t bother testing your worn-out memory when you can kill a tree and write it down and then lose the note paper! use a calculator because your poor media addled brain can''t handle anythnig more than single digits.. never mind the fact that people in ''primitive'' cultures can do cubic roots to 25 digits faster than computers.

aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhh yes, please try and be good for something other than spending and earning money.

Xoxos, go to bed.

Well, you can do what my former trumpet teacher did (and I''m sure many others): listen to a few measures of a recording, then try and play them back. Eventually you''ll train your ear such that you can recognize all the pitches, and it should be easy from there. And more than recognizing notes, you should work to recognize the change between notes, like whether it''s a half step or a whole step. Then you don''t need to know the exact pitch, you just start relative to the first note. It''s called ear training, and it takes a lot of work. A student teacher I had at school said that one job interview he had (must have been a job interview, I forget), the guy sat down at a piano and played a note and asked him what note that was...fun, eh?

quote: Original post by Puffy_Taco
listen to a few measures of a recording, then try and play them back.

That seems like a good exercise. I''ll try that.

I''m taking a course in music theory right now. Should learning scales and chords help me with finding correct notes if I can locate some kind of begining note?

Just knowing theory won't help you any when trying to hear a particular pitch. You'll want to take a course called "Ear Training" for that. The first thing you learn is relative pitch, and then you eventually move on to memorizing individual pitches. Still, it depends on the college and the teacher you have.




My Music((a small portion anyways))


[edited by - ZackParrish on October 19, 2003 10:28:53 PM]

Yes, learning to recognise intervals ("ear training") is very helpful, as you can then just work from the pitch of the first note. Obviously duration is fairly simple rhythm training that most people can actually do quite well even without practice.

When learning to recognise intervals, I find it helps many people to make up a list of songs containing those intervals. eg. The first two notes of "Amazing Grace" are a Perfect Fourth, the main bit of the Starwars theme begins with a Perfect Fifth, the first two notes of Somewhere over the Rainbow (dont think thats its proper name, but cant remember right now)are an Octave, etc. Of course you''ll need some basic music theory training for that to be useful to you of course, but it is a helpful thing to do.

I ought to be shot for what Im about to post, but...

Theres a plugin for Sonar that is set to recognize pitches and turn them into notation. This means that you can hum a tune into a microphone and it will convert the sounds into midi notation. A very scary thing for the traditional composer, but a nice tool for quickly putting songs together.

The downside? I totally forgot the name of the plugin. Youd have to look around Cakewalk''s website (http://www.cakewalk.com)until you find out the listing of the plugins and read through the descriptions until you find what Im talking about. Last I remember, the plugin was selling for about $400 US.

As for a more traditional path, if you know your scales well, it''ll help you locate your tonal centers better, instead of blindly plucking away at keys on the piano. Usually I start a song by selecting the key it will be in, create a melody in that key and then develop more tracks around it, creating counterpoints and texture in the piece. Yet I digress. All composers have their own approach. Developing your own style is the best way to go. Otherwise, you''re prone to hearing people say , "Hey, that reminds me of this song by so-and-so..." or whatever =)

quote: Original post by Benjamin Heath
Xoxos, go to bed.

point well taken

it gets easier, and the good part is that you''ve actually got ideas to translate.