Better understanding of perfect pitch and chords

[Daniel V]

Hello,

Recently I've realized that while making music, my biggest problem is creating melodies.

I was wondering if some of the forum users have found tutorials or good reads about relative & perfect pitch. Same for chords.

I know its mostly practice practice practice but still, some more info won't hurt. It would be really helpful to me.

Thanks

[mr]

Hello,

Recently I've realized that while making music, my biggest problem is creating melodies.

I was wondering if some of the forum users have found tutorials or good reads about relative & perfect pitch. Same for chords.

I know its mostly practice practice practice but still, some more info won't hurt. It would be really helpful to me.

Thanks

Four years ago I started with
Complete Idiot's Guide to Music composition.
After... you can decide by yourself.

[tapper mike]

We had a long drawn out battle over perfect pitch. Perfect pitch cannot be learned. Either you have it or you don't. Relative pitch can be learned but it's constant practice to maintain it.

This is what Perfect pitch means.
Someone plays a sound. You by listening to a singular note can determine it's absolute value. Not only what note it is but also how far away from 440 it is.
It also means you can sing a note on demand to a specific interval without any outside assistance. So if I say sing (not play) C#2 from just intonation and tuned to 436. You without having any outside reference would be able to produce the note.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch

Even if you had it. Perfect pitch would not make you a better musician.
Musicians develop relative pitch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_pitch

Melody has many attributes. The knowledge of static harmony (chords) will not make your harmony interesting. Although homogeny or chords in context does serve important functions to music.
Melody is as much about note selection as it is about rhythmic modes. If you have little to no sense of rhythm beyond the functional subdivisions of time your melody will seem lifeless. Rhythm is a combination of groups of patterns and accents.



Now there are some avant-garde who reject the value of harmony (chords) as being window dressing (chords don't matter to them). This may have been very true in the 16th century where everything was counterpoint. However popular western music dating back to 1890 utilizes the chord progression. Chord progressions are still the most popular way of writing music today. Be it hip hop, rock, jazz, blues, country, funk, r@b on and on and on.

There are several schools of thought on chord progressions (for those who choose to write using a progression. The most popular is to score the progression first and then to graft the melody on top. One subsection of this methodology school is that so long as the melody is in key and the chords are in key then all is fine. Another school dictates that the melody supports the harmony at all times (contemporary modal) So for example you play a C dominant 7 chord you support it with a C dominant 7 lick and if you move to an F dominant 7 chord you play an F dominant 7 lick Even though there is no "classic" diatonic scale where both a C7 (dominant) and a F7 (dominant) exist.

There is still another school where priority over the melody supersedes the value of the harmony. This is where you "fit" the chord to support the melody even if it doesn't "fit" the key signature. Notice how he harmonizes the major scale using notes not contained in the major scale.

[jancivil]

Hello,

Recently I've realized that while making music, my biggest problem is creating melodies.

I was wondering if some of the forum users have found tutorials or good reads about relative & perfect pitch. Same for chords.

I know its mostly practice practice practice but still
_more info_

about every post here that is a person that can't do melody asks for reading about it like that's going to do something. I don't believe it does, by itself.

You must experience melody from the vantage point of an instrument or voice, melodies made by people before you that had some mastery of melody. That_is_essential. The reading isn't likely to have much meaning outside of particular experience.

As mike said, perfect pitch is not more nor less than identifying discrete pitches at once. That, per se, is no guarantee of any other attributes in music.

However a sense of relative pitch is what a musician should be after. Learn melodies, classics, and identify what happens intervallically. what a distance between the notes does, what effect does it have on you.

Look at it this way, do you expect you will have learned a language without speaking it, only reading?

[jancivil]

I think separating chords from melody as if a methodology relies on a false duality.

I don't have any evidence great songs where created by isolating a chord progression and 'grafting' onto it. I'm skeptical about that as a practice. It may be that a chord progression is invented in such a way that melodic movement (for starters bass function is inherent) is implicit, but [in the cases where 'chord progression' is de rigeur] I don't know about isolating the two.

IE., the chord progressions found as typical are typical since they were found to support melody well.

[skipscada]

[quote="Danny V"
Recently I've realized that while making music, my biggest problem is creating melodies.

I was wondering if some of the forum users have found tutorials or good reads about relative & perfect pitch. Same for chords.
[/quote]

In other words:

Problem: failure to create melodies
Solution: knowledge about relative & perfect pitch

No offense, but I fail to see the logic here. It's like saying "I can't write poetry, can someone please suggest a good book on grammar." There is a connection, but ultimately it's irrelevant.

[Jace-BeOS]

What if all the music theory talk doesn't work for your brain? I have dyscalculia. It keeps me a million miles from music theory. Extremely frustrating. Yet I do "feel" music. Otherwise I'd not be on this site. So, if perfect pitch isn't helpful, and theory is, how do you train theory when you have a neurological deficit?

[jancivil]

well you have perfect pitch or you don't. the chances are not good you'll become entrained to acquire it.

relative pitch is where it's at, relation with the last note, the environment you're communicating with, etc.

[jancivil]

Problem: failure to create melodies
Solution: knowledge about relative & perfect pitch

reading about/gathering information on it won't necessarily provide *knowledge* [of eg., relative pitch]. Information by itself isn't knowledge. You must get in there and do the thing.

We don't know if we failed, in reading. Obtaining the skills ["relative pitch"] involves constant failure along the journey. It appears people would prefer not to, and ask after some reading, but reading is never a substitute for doing.

[jancivil]

the best jazz player in my home town as a kid did not read music at all. I don't think his idea of theory was like most people's. but he heard it all, he internalized it all. I can about guarantee that's about relative pitch, and the deep internalization acquired by doing... & likely out of a home with musical activity, by osmosis.

[skipscada]

Problem: failure to create melodies
Solution: knowledge about relative & perfect pitch

reading about/gathering information on it won't necessarily provide *knowledge*

Thank you for your enlightning comment, but I'm not sure I understand why you quote me. It should be obvious that I'm not making that statement. I'm only resuming what the OP seems to be saying to point out the curiousness of his logic.

[jancivil]

implicit in the conversation was the notion that reading/information would mean knowledge, per se.

seemed to beat typing, 'reply w quote'. it isn't directed at any person.

[jancivil]

Now there are some avant-garde who reject the value of harmony (chords) as being window dressing (chords don't matter to them). This may have been very true in the 16th century where everything was counterpoint.

I have not heard about anyone 'rejecting the value of harmony'. That seems kind of ad culum.

Harmony is more than 'chords'. Harmony vs counterpoint as if mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy. Harmony happens with counterpoint. It's just not restricted to blocking it out, it's fluid.
It's still taught in the 21st century fyi.

In fact there are two streams of study, 16th and 18th c. counterpoint, the latter largely based in study of JS Bach, working in the 18th century (whose harmony was based in counterpoint, the bass and the melody as a framework and the other parts figured from that, 'figured bass'; eventually thought of as positions of/inversions to chords).

[jancivil]

if you're making a doo-wop tune (or the chorus of Happiness is a Warm Gun), these ice cream changes are essential.

there are people who do other things, there are people interested in melody qua itself.

[skipscada]

implicit in the conversation was the notion that reading/information would mean knowledge, per se.

seemed to beat typing, 'reply w quote'. it isn't directed at any person.

Ok. I suggest you don't to include a person's name if your comment isn't directed at that person. You made it look like I was saying something that I wasn't saying. Not that it matters much.