Question for the gods

I played several instruments as a kid (and still do), so I'd learned a fair bit by osmosis - but I didn't have any formal theory training. Going into college I could read, but not really at sight... I worked on that a fair amount, and still work on it to this day. The thing I remember being least prepared for in college was ear training; I'd tried a bit of vocalizing, but I wasn't very good at it, and none of my teachers had made me sing lines, name intervals by ear, or any of that stuff. I ended up getting really good grades in ear training, but mostly because I worked my butt off... and that was mostly because I was so terrified of it :)

I wasn't confident in my ears until I was in my 30s, I think. You keep improving as you get older, and now that I'm officially old (yep, I've got an AARP card and everything) I know my hearing may not be what it used to be as far as range goes - but my ability to discriminate pitch and hear small differences is better than it's ever been.

Education doesn't end (or start) with school - you can keep learning your whole life. I'm constantly reading new stuff in theory, music history, acoustics, psychoacoustics, compositon, etc... and I'm always listening to new music too. IMO, you can keep improving as long as you keep breathing, or at least as long as you keep an open mind about stuff.

When did you decide you were going to go down that road ? ( music )

I don't remember ever actually deciding. I don't think I ever even framed the question.

I do remember telling my parents I was going to major in music. And I remember they offered to pay for my education.... IF I studied accounting.

So I didn't take a dime from them for college, and I'm not an accountant. Years later I told my mother I sometimes wished they'd been more supportive. She told me that if they had, I wouldn't have had to work so hard at it, and I might not have succeeded.

She might be right.

Who knows, wow that is so cool, passion for music.

So you got to university playing various instruments since you were a child but with no knowledge of music theory except reading ( not sight-reading ) just normal reading, and I guess what you learn playing the instruments, like maybe what notes are in chords stuff like that ?

Sorry I am kind of a curious person, how did you pay for your studies then ? Did you get some kind of scholarship for your playing ?

Why guitar ? Why did you choose guitar, I bet you still play other instruments but guitar is kinda your main instrument right ? ( based on your book which is written for guitarists xD ) Why guitar ?

Hmm, advice for someone who wants to be a music teacher when he grows up ?

You're gonna need a lot of goats... :wink:

It's hard for me to turn back the clock and say exactly what I knew in terms of theory going in. I certainly knew what major scales were and how they were constructed; I knew the more important minor scales, and I probably knew a bit about basic chord construction. Rhythmically I was good - my principle instrument was percussion then. Guitar was a passion, but percussion was my study - although after I aced the first year's theory stuff I was invited back to that class for one session the next year, to talk about how theory applied to fretted instruments.

I didn't get any scholarships. I worked full time (3rd shift) and took on debt. And I ended up taking a break in the middle to pay off that debt before finishing my degree. Didn't go back for a masters until much later. I still toy with the idea of pursuing a DMA or PhD at some point.

I don't know why guitar. In a way it seduced me - it's easy to play a little bit; it's probably impossible to master. I'll sometimes take pieces I can play well and play them in awkward positions... I'm practically a complete beginner again. I get to solve the problems in my own playing, and once in a while get rewarded with a brand new insight.

lol Cant I just sacrifice Scrybe or something....... :twisted:

lol I kid I kid

Hmm there are not alot of goats here, maybe a family member ? :twisted:

ok let us return seriousness to this thread

*seriousness restored*

Wow that is so cool!

Ok I am motivated again, time to work on my reading chops.

Oh another question, how should I be working this book ( A Modern method for guitar ) Im working it super-slow and super concentrated, like Ive only gotten to the second song, and I still play the first one cause I want to be able to play it perfectly before moving on, and I give it like an hour a day, like I do all the excersises then work on the 2 songs. So should I stay here ( 10th page lol ) until I master it completely or should I move on and kinda hope I get better ? O_O

lol Cant I just sacrifice Scrybe or something....... :twisted:

<Scrybe notes this and plans to feed Coolnama misinformation about theory from now on instead of helping...> jk
It's hard for me to turn back the clock and say exactly what I knew in terms of theory going in. I certainly knew what major scales were and how they were constructed; I knew the more important minor scales, and I probably knew a bit about basic chord construction. Rhythmically I was good - my principle instrument was percussion then. Guitar was a passion, but percussion was my study - although after I aced the first year's theory stuff I was invited back to that class for one session the next year, to talk about how theory applied to fretted instruments.

I really wish I'd been wise and gone to study music in America. My formal music study was largely theory, and it was only really towards the end that it started to sink in (well...it was only really until then that we had smaller classes and I actually worked at learning theory), but we were just expected to know about suspensions, relative minors, subdominants, sonata form, etc., etc. It was a large chunk of our course of study. So much so that iib-Vc-I became a common phrase among some of my friends (I wont tell you what it was used as code for...). Sounds like music school in the US would have been great fun. Over here, everything is either classical (which I don't have enough interest in, or didn't back then anyway), heavy jazz (way beyond me at 17), or pop courses (way too easy).

You're gonna need a lot of goats... :wink:

I kid I kid...

:D

*seriousness restored*

Update:

HELL YES I just went back to my room and played Sea To Sea ( second guitar, melody part ) perfectly while reading it without making a mistake!

I did feel a bit lost at one point because I had just finished the last bar of 4 bars ( that are in a row ) and I then had to look down and kinda lost my head for like one beat, but I hit the note just in time, wooohoo.

Reading... is kinda like playing Rockband ( or Guitar Hero ) ok hear me out.

GH is easier lol but its basically the same you hit the notes on the screen on the guitar, sure you have to worry about strings, and frets and whatever on the real guitar but that is second-hand after a while, and there are no colors :( I loved the colors xD.

Hmm but how do I manage to read forward ? Like read what is coming next while Im playing now O_O that seems impossible to do.

And Scrybe, explain, did you study music ? or what, was it like while you were studying something else or mainly music ?

SO many questions O_O

Music school in America :D thats what I want to do, agh but it is very expensive!

The only chance I have is to get a scholarship or maybe work, but I cant work right now, Id need a special permit from the goverment O_O, cause you see I am 14, and I graduate when Im 16 ( I am a Junior atm ) and I cant work until I am 16, I dont think I can even travel to the U.S. alone at 16 O_O, I would be an unacompanied minor, wow.

Hmm but how do I manage to read forward ? Like read what is coming next while Im playing now O_O that seems impossible to do.

And Scrybe, explain, did you study music ? or what, was it like while you were studying something else or mainly music ?

SO many questions O_O

Music school in America :D thats what I want to do, agh but it is very expensive!

The only chance I have is to get a scholarship or maybe work, but I cant work right now, Id need a special permit from the goverment O_O, cause you see I am 14, and I graduate when Im 16 ( I am a Junior atm ) and I cant work until I am 16, I dont think I can even travel to the U.S. alone at 16 O_O, I would be an unacompanied minor, wow.

Reading forward - I'm no great sight reader by a long stretch, but this something I can just kinda do. I think my ability there comes from learning lots of Hendrix and other stuff without being able to sight read - I had to remember all of his tune note-for-note if I wanted to play it. I did that with all tunes, and still do with a lot of stuff. This means that I've porbably developed my musical memory pretty well and once I have a bar down, I can reproduce it with minimal effort. So, I read the bar, log what to do, and move onto the next one while playing the first one. Also, you find that a lot of musical is incredibly logical, so e.g. one bar might consist of the same arpeggios repeated four times. Once you see the arpeggios once, you spot that it just repeats four times in that bar and this gives you time to move to the next bar. Anything you can do to 'make sense' of the music in this helps - so e..g. noting that a melody lines goes up using every degree of the scale, or noting repeated rhythms.

I studied GCSE and A level music in the UK - they're exams you do in school at ages 16 and 18 (although the A level exams at 18 are optional, but needed if you want to go to university). You can choose which subjects to sit for these exams, and there was never any doubt that I was gonna choose music. Because the course has to be suitable for all instrumentalists it tends to cover a lot of theory and listening work - popular stuff is studied (e.g. we spent one course unit doing nothing but Jazz from its inception to 1950) but the emphasis is more on classical music. It was great fun though! You also have to do performances for the exams and submit some compositions. There's no way to study music as a school subject without doing all three aspects of music, and I was really interested in performance and composition, and ended up developing a passion for theory along the way.

Well yeah its like the song I am playing, Ive played it so many times its natural, but I dont wanna look away because I am practicing my reading lol it would be a waste of time to look away, what really gets me right now is Ledger lines down low, the light in my room is weird and sometimes when its a low E or low F or G I cant see!, but I guess Ill get used to it.

and also when there are alot of uh half notes ( I know em in spanish ) I have to count out loud because I have no metronome and I find myself counting the whole song in tune :D its fun, but then when I realize what Im doing I feel stupid xD.

I feel so awesome today my reading has improved dramtically since yesterday, well yesterday I was in a bad mood and couldnt play ( atleast not while reading ) then today I just did it, super easy :D, and then I went and played something I had never played before ( or even looked at ) and after like 5 minutes, I did it :).

So my question is, how much did you know before you started studying in university ? Cause I know of one guy who didnt know anything at all when he decided to study music ( he didnt even play ) and he is now a teacher at a renowned school here, but who cares about him. How much did you guys know ?

* How were your reading skills ( music reading ^^ ) and overall knowledge of everything ?

*

I don't think I knew much theory before I started studying classical guitar seriously, which I started after having learned pop and folk through my teens, mostly from friends. I understood notation but reading it was a case of working out the notes one by one and finding them on the guitar. With classical, theory was part of the package and I found to my surprise that I enjoyed it, which made it easier to learn. I also discovered sight reading at that time because notation is such an important part of classical that you won't get very far without it.
It was one of my most rewarding musical experiences ever when I found that I could start to read and play passages and eventually whole pieces in real time - not yet at an advanced level but that didn't matter. Reading became a pleasure instead of the boring laborious chore working out the notes one by one had been.
I kind of fell into teaching when one of my own teachers recommended me for a position teaching at the local adult education department's evening classes held at a local high school. I figured I must have impressed him greatly until I realised that this school (in South London) had the dubious honour of being the first school in the UK to employ security guards to protect teachers from the kids. Unfortunately the security guards went home when school finished at 4pm before the evening classes started - but the kids would often hang around causing trouble well into the night - oh well, you've got to start somewhere. :D

Awesome so neither of you two had a vast knowledge of music before studying ( well, duh ) but that means I dont have to know that much to get into it and have a head start, but I still wanna learn all I can before I go study and also get my reading up to par.

Well I guess now it is easier to learn because of the internet, and books and people like you people.

And yeah, I also find reading fun :D because now I know the notes and can play real-time, well maybe some basic stuff, but atleast I have the technical ability, I think its good to learn to read after you know how to play, learning to play and read at the same time could be hazardous. And I understand most teachers teach their students how to read, but I bet that is after a while, and its really slowly and comfortably.

Wow lol, did they ever damage any of the instruments ?