Same problem as with slide guitar. I’ve been learning a lot of slide blues lately, and muting is my biggest headache. A big part of it is positioning of the slide to exclude some of the strings and then muting with the following fingers. Coincidentally, the latest tune I’ve been working on is Sleepwalk (in open E).
I feel ya, Chefguy
I hate to use a phrase that has fallen out of favor but I must say “bolding mine” here. I have been saying exactly that. Fixed nomenclature sounds like what you need when you are tuning up, or tuning a piano, but after that…? I solve that problem with a tuner or a fork. The diff between fixed and movable is like the invention of the wheel. What use is a description of music that isn’t capable of describing it’s relationships? Why use a system that has been made obsolete by technology?
What names are you talking about? The solfege is 7 notes in one scale. There have to be hundreds of scales. Different scales will prevail at different times in one piece. How are you going to describe the other scales in your system, according to your naming custom?
Why is it I’m picturing this trombone solo? (I’m not disparaging your playing by any stretch but I do think this is pretty funny…) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy02xfGmdUg
** Crotalus [B/] would you be kind enough to send me a copy as well?
Interestingly enough, piano tuners are well aware of the nuances of piano strings and actually tune pianos so they will sound best in the keys they’re most likely to be played in. Funny thing about pianos, but they’re actually closer to a fixed do system.
As in ‘Feelin’ Better Blues’?
Solfege goes beyond 7 note names. It has syllables for all 12 notes of the chromatic scale (and multiple ones, too, depending if you’re sharpening or flattening).
But as I understand so far one can’t describe key changes with it.
I’m not sure why anyone would stay with a non flexible system, when you can work with the whole thing. I can’t even see why anyone in Europe wouldn’t just adapt to the transposing power of this mentally without even thinking about it, esp if they are guitar players.
drad dog, I think you might be a tad confused about this. The “do re mi…” system in Spanish is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to the “[A B] C D E…” system in English. Anything that can be expressed in one, can be expressed in the other.
If you’re in the key of re menor (D minor), and you want to transpose the song up a second (i.e., one whole step), you describe it as now being in *mi menor *(E minor). Easy.
(You also used the phrase “key changes,” which might mean something other than transposing – i.e., when a song actually changes key in the middle, e.g. the old rock ballad coda trick – Led Zeppelin’s “All My Love,” etc. – but my explanation fits just as well for that.)
At first, I thought drad dog was nuts – life without fixed names for notes is just crazy talk! Should we just call it “Bach’s Whatever-minor Mass”?
But then, like Eonwe, I realized (s)he had an interesting point. It’s rather analogous to the question of whether fixed coordinates matter anymore – being in some territory on the Earth’s surface – when we can all just live in virtual communities through online connections.
BUT…our bodies ARE only in one place on the Earth’s surface at a time. And, like it or not, each note you hear really DOES have a specific frequency. Each person’s voice (and most acoustic instruments) really DOES have an absolute range. It really IS easier to tell someone you just met and want to jam with, “Start with an E major 7th chord!,” and they can play along with you right off the bat.
(Then again, clarinets (for example) are tuned such that their absolute pitch values are different than those for trumpets (etc.) – this is utter madness, I think, but it might support drad dog’s notion that there’s already some cracks in the system.)
I’m not entirely sure I’m understanding you. Yes, whatever system you use, whether fixed chords or Roman numeral/Nashville notation/whatever function harmony notation, you need to know the starting pitch. It’s not like you sit down and say “Hey, let’s play iv-ii-V-I/rhythm changes/12-bar blues” and everyone knows where to start. You add “in C” or “in E flat” or “in G”. It’s just a convenient way of remembering the chord progression in a key agnostic manner. I mean, in the bands I played, when we were performing original stuff, I just memorized the actual chords and the actual notes, since it was not likely we were ever going to transpose for any reason. Certain songs were just fixed in certain keys. The singer wasn’t going to decide on a whim that all of a sudden, he can’t sing in E flat and needed to go down to D flat. But for stuff like jazz standards, I found it useful, because depending on who you play with, it can be in any key.
So what’s the difference? If it’s only the only the nomenclature then it’s not a musical consideration really.
This is an issue I’ve had for a long time. For this to be the case, using a capo would change the character of a song. But it doesn’t seem to, to my ears. I don’t need to adjust to this very much.
Music is listeners, and they don’t ID frequencies. They ID changes, harmonies, motivic relationships, cliches, melodies, and other spatial relationships. But not frequencies.
With your band all you need to do is say “It’s in E,” then you move on to the music, which is the spatial relationships and not the key it’s in. That’s the reason they can play with you. And the reason you did that check of the key at the start is so that your band is all in tune with each other, not the universe.
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If I had a nckel for every time that was said…
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I don’t know a lot of horn stuff. Can I ask what you mean by “tuned to absolute pitch value” as applied to a horn?
I’m going to try and look up some other tempered instruments or recreations, from before equal temperament. I can’t imagine that after a while humans wouldn’t come to find ET meaningful and not see any flaws.
I still can’t wrap my head around saying that all keys aren’t equal. They don’t have any functional or sonic difference to me. I don’t know why that has to be a compromise of something even though I understand it is.
Maybe there is celestial music possible outside of equal temperament with real science and modern instruments. But would we prefer it guitar or modern piano music?
You are neglecting the fact that different instruments and vocalists have very noticeable differences in timbre across their musical range. Transposing a piece down a fifth means the brass sounds different, the altos are in singing in the chest rather than head register, and you lose the sopranos entirely.
I mean really… that’s the whole point of transposition, isn’t it? If pitch doesn’t matter at all, let’s just score everything in E and make life simple.
To me, this use of solfege seems intrinsically unintuitive. What I like about movable do re mi is that the relationship between the notes of the scales remain the same regardless of what key the song is in. As far as absolute pitches go, we’ve already got the letter names for that. Ah well, whatever works I suppose. You see it your way, and I see it mine (but we both see it slippin’ away).
I find it a lot easier and less likely to be misplayed, if I say: “ok guys, this section, guitars go back and forth between D major and E major, and the bass is just gonna pedal B,” than “ok, guitars go back and forth between flat 7 and the tonic, and bass play the fifth.”
Not the greatest example, but it’s always useful to be able to just say “play this exact thing,” particularly if you want someone to play something different than the song form, or different than what other players are doing at the same time.
Sounds like transposition is to suit human needs and limitations. That’s ok with me. Crude musicians have access to all ranges to compose though.
Here is the crux: is the implication of science here that the tone called C and chords around it are more “right” when played on a guitar, because that’s the way the compromise was cut when it got laid down? All the ratios are simpler and they sound truer there with A at 440?
In prog I’d be calling out chords for sure. My songs, I 'd have to do interpretive dance, In Nashville they go their whole lives with numbers.