WRCB is always good, but Monday night, wow-- must've been the bongos. There's something about a hectic work day that makes playing music together all the sweeter.
Last time I teased a bit about the melody being in the scale. A scale is a set of musical notes arranged according to pitch. Monday we played songs in two different keys: C and G. Songs in the key of C use a C scale. Songs in the key of G use a G scale.
C scale: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C (octave)
G scale: G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, G (octave)
The scale is where you will find your melody notes and really, you can start on any C or G and walk up or down your instrument until you hit the octave (except for saws, you can just slice them in half), but for simplicity's sake I mapped out suggested scales for guitar, banjo, and ukulele.
Here is the C scale.
Here is the G scale.
First we tried out our fancy C scale on last week's song, Jamaica Farewell. Here are the song's melody notes. Try practicing the C scale, then the Jamaica Farewell notes in relation to the scale.
(A small aside: people who can bust out the melody notes during a solo break are treated like gods and get all the chocolate and cute people they can fit on each arm. Just so you know. I can't do it, but I gaze at Mount Olympus, sigh wistfully and plot strategy.)
Next, we revisited a song from an earlier session, Clem Snide's Find Love in the key of G. I wrote more about the post here and it includes a sound clip.
Lastly, we ditched melody and scales and went to town on Hank William's I Saw the Light. That was so much fun! I find that I want to practice melodies and scales the more I get into music, and yet at the same time I feel really fortunate that my first music lessons as an adult didn't start with scales or else I would've died of sheer boredom. Starting with the song's chords, then unpacking that song, figuring out how it ticks and adding your own spin to it, that's been the key to keeping my interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment