I met a guitarist today to prep for a “pick up group” for some rock/metal stuff, STP, Alice, originals. I wanted to go over some “strings chat” to avoid some drama if there was an issue playing with everyone else.
This is becoming like, the Nth time I’ve communicated with a guitarist that they do not speak in notes.
“I play it like this” chord, chord, chord
“Ok so D C then G”
“Yeah sure”
I made a joke to the guy to feel him out a bit because he seemed smart,
I said “Yeah the guitarist I play with a lot doesn’t understand you can play a bar on top of a capo”
He replies “Well, yeah, when you put a capo on the strings change and the notes change.”
Our eyes met, tension aroused, he said “Well I admit I don’t play with a capo often”
I was trying very hard to avoid confrontation and said "Yeah, I am a little confused now too, anyhow, "
I wonder if its because we play bass that we think more about what the actual roots are or just having a more rounded music education?
The guy could play circles around me and sing like a boss, but I couldn’t believe he said that.
Yeah, you are out of control with your scientific language.
“Ba ba ba ba, Buh buh buh buh, Buh buh buh buh, Ba ba ba ba until Da Da Da da”
Hahaha, music is really an art I hate to belittle people, but I find it amazing how far people get without caring about the most basic understanding of notes/fretboard/chords.
I’ve played guitar casually most of my life and I didn’t know squat about actual chord structure till I started bass. Or triads or arpeggios or Nashville numbers…and on and on.
Totally depends on what kind of music education you’ve had, if any.
Well, my Keyboard player was a child prodigy playing Latin Jazz in a band when he was 12 or so. He can identify the chord progression within the first few bars of most songs.
Our regular gig is a monthly private event and our audience are mostly musicians. I’m pretty sure my guy is the most naturally gifted one in the room. After the gig some people would come over and shoot the sh!t and talk about notes he played. His usual response was well I don’t know what notes I played, I just played it.
Of course, he knew and remembered, that dude is a savant he could probably put everyone’s notations on the sheet because he remembered it all. I asked him once why he acted like a stupid dude, he said, I played the notes that’s available on these (simple) progression if you can’t identify it it would take all night to explain, ouch!
Thank god he never said that to me, I’d break my foot kicking his ass,
The first time I saw Dominic Miller play guitar, I thought who’s this guy where’s the gracefulness but damn he’s so awesome.
I taught myself how to play guitar from a chords book and learning songs. I also played sax in school band as a kid before that. Neither of those experiences exposed me to music theory in any formal way.
Still, I learned song structure by being exposed to the sheer frequency of how certain chords followed each other in the tunes I learned.
Being a kid at the time, I suppose this process was similar to how children learn to speak — essentially by hearing how lines of language translate into desired communication.
After years of learning to play lots of songs by ear did I get exposed to music theory, and everything clicked: not only could I hear it but I also learned how it was constructed.
Learning how a tune is made is at least as important as learning how it’s played.
A good reason why teaching based on Nashville Numbering should be part of all lessons. It’s not something I knew until I began to play with some older more experienced players. Luckily one of them took the time to take me through it and explain why it worked as well as it did and it made complete sense to me.
From that point on it was part of my vocabulary in every band thereafter and I’m the one who often ended up explaining it to someone else. When I give lessons I always include it early on so a student also has it in their musical vocabulary. They may never use it playing alone but in a group or at a jam or open mic it’s pretty common for players to communicate with each other using it.
Lots of people don’t speak notes.
And, in a country where ignorance is celebrated, lots of people love and identify with the fact that they don’t speak notes.
I’m of two minds.
On the one hand, it’s nice to be able to use music jargon to talk through things and clarify with music language.
On the other hand, music is sounds, and if someone gets the sounds part, I’d rather play with them then someone who knows all the right words and can explain to me what the right note to play is on a [insertweirdjazzchordhere] chord, but doesn’t have the ears or musicianship to hear what’s happening.
Ideally, you get both.
But it’s real rare. I’ve learned to tread lightly with my jargon, as some people see it as open hostility, others just get defensive, some react like a student who didn’t bring their homework.
In music, I’ll take sounds over words, so as long as there’s something there, great.
Ears with no jargon/theory/notes = no problem.
Jargon/theory/notes with no ears = insufferable.
So yeah, good luck out there, and when it gets weird, just go to sounds.
That’s worked well for me.
Not having an ear for music or at least a rudimentary understanding of theory will slow anyone’s progress down some. The “ear thing” make be especially hard to overcome which is why players need to work on it as much as they do.
IMHO and IME Nashville Numbering is just a shorthand way to express a chord progression that’s universal and can be moved around to whatever key the group is playing in. But it can also be helpful in terms of expressing the notes to be played based on their interval in the scale.
It may seem a bit like a foreign language to begin with but once it’s completely understood it often produces that “ah ha” moment when it all makes perfect sense.
So I am not defending the guy here but I will say that one thing some guitarists DO do is change the tuning with a capo by detuning strings and then capoing off at the open chord they want. For example Mike Ness plays Eb standard tuning with a capo at the second fret (now F, and the open string chord being Fm Pentatonic). So technically the notes are different, but it ain’t because of the capo.
(And of course any unfretted string is effectively fretted with a capo, so the chords do change, but that’s obvious).
I can “speak notes” if needed, but frankly I’m more used to play in a more visual way. Like, I put my finger on the 4th fret and it creates the note I want. When I learn a song, I learn the positions more than the notes.
I only “speak notes” during jam sessions, when I’m with musicians that I don’t know and we have to find a chord progression really fast and all be aware of what we’ll play. In this case it’s mandatory to use a universal musical language.
Exactly what I do with acoustic guitars : Eb Standard + a capo that I move depending on the song.
yup. Note that this works with bass too of course; downtune a whole step, capo at the second fret, and you have converted a long scale bass to roughly short scale, with the capo now being the same open notes as the original full scale, now shifting the whole thing up two frets.
