I was chatting to my friend about this - I can't pick out different harmonies in music, I seem to merge it all together and only hear the overall 'tune'. I assumed everyone did but my friend says he can pick out the separate harmonies and how they work together and he can't imagine how it sounds to merge them together to only one thing.
To me, some frequencies I pick up better than others, so if there are harmonies like a choir, with people singing together, one harmony will over-ride the other to my ear and then just sounds stupidly out of tune.
So where does music - as in a pure note or a coherent assembly of notes working together, then become noise or a mess of stuff that doesn't sound right - or is that down to personal taste in music? Ad astra per aspera
The order goes:
rhythm rough outline - this is the 'It's a nice noise' level of listening being able to pick out lines being able to hear all of the lines at once distinctly and/or hear the chords as chords if they're not playing individual lines (depending on what's in the music) being able to understand the complete structure built by the different lines
People with the last skill are incredibly rare, because they have a combination of listening, memory and intuition which doesn't happen often. Mozart notoriously was supposed to be able to do this, writing out an entire piece from memory - probably not by remembering all of the notes, but by remembering enough detail and knowing enough about music to know how the elements would be put together.
Most people seem to live in the first two areas. They can maybe pick out a line if asked to, or maybe not. Trained musicians should be able to, but people without training probably wouldn't.
There are also two different kinds of pitch hearing - perfect pitch, and relative pitch. They don't work in anything like the same way. People with perfect pitch can tell you the name of a note and the key a tune is by listening to it. People with relative pitch can name the interval between two or more notes, but not what key they're in.
You can't follow lines without some relative pitch ability. But... listening is easier than labelling and you can still experience a line as music without necessarily being able to write out the notes on paper. Learning to do that takes training and effort.
I put some time into developing my listening, and I found that when I practiced naming intervals my pitch discrimination improved. I could hear more detail and also hear when things were out of tune. (Not always a good thing.)
I have a faint ghost of perfect pitch, but it's very undeveloped.
I don't have much of a memory for structure at all.
I can't sing for toffee without a line to follow, but I can improvise easily around a structure I've learned or know already. (A lot of music uses the same few simple structures, so once you've learned them you don't need to be able to pick them apart from scratch.)
So it's not either/or. I'd expect your friend probably put some time into training his ears or had lessons. If you did the same you'd likely move in that direction, even though you won't be hearing the same things in the same ways.
My thinking is: the ear can pick up certain frequencies, and music is a way of organising them.
So bass frequencies: what are they like?
I wanted to show the bass guitar, electric and the double bass as acoustic, but there are lots of bass tones.
I can't pick out different harmonies in music
Most people (judging by sales) don't listen to music. They listen to either the lyrics or the melodies.
The pulse behind can go pump pump pump pump, that's fine. Listening to music involves concentration and luck--luck such that you have the correctly open ears to appreciate (for good or ill) what, acoustically, is happening.
So I'm asking: can you hear the bass? Can you hear what its doing? In particular, the Sonny Rollins piece. Can you hear that Sonny is playing the sax melody, and that behind him and with him are the bass and the drums? If you can hear that, it's just words, concentrate on the music (if you like it!) But that's an honest question: can you hear that the sax is doing one thing and the bass is doing something else, and that they are complementing each other by making sounds that you find sonorous? Honest question! By sonorous I mean "soothing to the ear" such that the sounds bring you peace and calm--and other emotions--that the sounds create emotions, and the more you can individuate and the more you understand, the wider your range.
Heh!
Hope that makes some sense! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Victor Wooten is awesome, how does he do that?! Bass and drums together work well for me, both with lots of space and with more rock to it.
When the third sound comes in I find it harder because the higher frequencies on sax and guitar drown out the bass for me. If I concentrate really hard I can pick out the bass and drums for a few seconds at a time - easier when the clip moves to show those instruments.
If I were in a club I would switch my hearing aid off and just feel the bass and drums and cut out the sound of the music/tune/lyrics whatever. I guess when I just listen (I don't get to feel the bass through my body when it is just pumping into my ear through the loop but otherwise I can't really 'hear' anything) the higher frequencies are the ones I can hear better compared to the lower ones. I don't hear it all equally to be able to distinguish the different sounds. Easier to hear the bass through the sax cos there are more spaces perhaps. Sonorous for sure yeah!
But wow, thanks. What an ear opener! Ad astra per aspera
If you like bass and drums then dub reggae from the seventies should be enjoyable. Ceebs knows more about that than me. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Maybe you can try to increase bass volume on your computer, see if it makes the bass line easier to follow. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I can't see a base volume setting on here, certainly not for use watching you tube. I can manipulate that with MP3s though and it does help. Ad astra per aspera
Jaco Pastorius?
Okay, now I am out again for the rest of the week.
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
Whamola - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Whamola is a unique bass instrument used in Funk-Jazz styles of music. A direct descendant of the washtub bass, an American folk instrument popular with skiffle and jug bands, and its European alternative the tea chest bass, the Whamola consists of a double-bass style neck with a pulley-and-lever system and a single string, all mounted onto a square metal tube on a stand. It is played by hitting the string with a drum stick and either fretting the string with the other hand or altering the string's tension using the pully-and-lever system to change the pitch.
The Whamola is a unique bass instrument used in Funk-Jazz styles of music.
A direct descendant of the washtub bass, an American folk instrument popular with skiffle and jug bands, and its European alternative the tea chest bass, the Whamola consists of a double-bass style neck with a pulley-and-lever system and a single string, all mounted onto a square metal tube on a stand. It is played by hitting the string with a drum stick and either fretting the string with the other hand or altering the string's tension using the pully-and-lever system to change the pitch.
Oh! Excellent move to the sax! Take it out there!
(A slight freak out when I thought that I had started from the beginning again--)
What a bass solo!
"I will do what Simon says. Of course I'll do what Simon says."
Excellent! Perfect! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
WATCH FIRST BEFORE READING
Plus how could I let an article on bass playiing go without this track. A song about cats, Tom Waits, and some sparkling bass playing. (It would have been easy to put up a handfull of tracks by this band to illustrate but the short solo was one of those pieces that was jawdropping on first hearing that I cornered the man with the stereo and had him play it several times.) Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
I feel I must offer something back.
Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
No video, but listen to the sound. Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
I couldn't think of a video--I had a look, but...I turn to the connoiseurs in all fields, of course!
And yeah, I wanted to tune people's ears to the bass and you came through right through!
(Public Image!)
I really missed this when I was in my teens. I got it later, first through a hot summer (in the eighties, I'm sure. Eighty six? Eighty seven?) And I always thought, "Wonderful music for a sunny desert isle." I have all this cold to deal with! Give me Bach! But a lot of it is culture...all the communication...hey! Augustus Pablo!
I'm hoping that....I'm thinking that there's a possibility of synthesis, where the good will out, and the electrons will move where they prefer, and music will be part of the strangeness, a medium, and lose the sound of....industrialised conformity--without losing all the benefits....ceebs, thanks! Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Being late, I'll violate the one video per comment rule, and offer up three.
The first is, what else, all-chello band Apocalyptica from Finland -- picking out "the" bass here is not always easy, but listen how one repeatedly separates out clearly:
One is not enough (here featuring Finnish 'Love Metal' band (and maybe emo godfather) HIM vs. the younger clones The Rasmus):
Next, Midnight Oil. I think Diesel And Dust and Beds Are Burning are two of three albums of theirs that stand out. I thought of them because of In Wales's question; because for me the songs on these two albums are special in that I hear two distinct melodies overlaid. Below, Bedlam Bridge:
*Traitor*, n. A benighted individual who perceives an illusory distinction between serving his nation and abetting the criminals who govern it.
As you mention cellos (in case anyone doesn't know, it's...like a small double bass!--therefore slightly higher tones)...
In Wales, if you catch this, an example of classical music that doesn't dwell in the high registers.
No harmonies here, just one long melodic line. Lots of movement from the deepest to the highest tones and back again with endless variations.
Next week, The Human Voice. LEP suggested Wednesdays for this experiment. Is everyone (who's interested!) okay with that? I'm just wondering if everyone has the time to watch (my aim is that the diaries will be mostly about watching video examples, with small amounts of text to explain what the videos will--hopefully--demonstrate)--the diaries will therefore be half an hour or so long (!)
Would Saturdays be better?
Or could the diary be bumped up for the weekend? (Assuming there's a front pager or two who think that's a good idea?)
Any suggestions? Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
http://www.baroquemusic.org/bqxjsbach.html Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
12 votes - 92 %