To help with the note you hum compared to the note you pick, try reverse engineering.
I’m sure you will be familar Julie Anrews and do re me fa so la ti do. You should also have learnt the C Major.
Try playing the scale and humming each note or even go full Julie and sing the solfege scale note by note.
Pick C sing Do then hum tbe note.
Pick D sing Re then hum the note etc
Get used to how the hummed note sounds against the picked note. Practice until you can hum the scale, then try again finding melodies.
I’ve tried this but it’s really difficult with humming as I hear what’s in my head and not the noise coming out (if you understand what I mean) due to my plastic ears. Tried the singing option but that’s not much better as by ‘do’ sounds more like a croak!
A bit like transcribing I may just have to admit that I’m not going to get this, but thanks (both) for your help.
The melody is what makes the song. Have you ever noticed there are 1000’s of songs with the same chords but they all sound different?
What makes them different is the melody. This is what Justin wants you to learn to hear. Without the melody every song would sound the same.
Hi, I just tried this using Happy Birthday as the tune. Was slow but super rewarding to end up with a tabbed version…I feel I have got the idea of what Justin is asking so ready to start on his suggested tunes now! Up to this point, they were a bit daunting. The basic start helped keep my enthusiasm for doing this - hope it helps a bit…
You bend a string to play a note higher than the one you fret. That could be a half tone, whole tone, a tone and a half or even two tones.
With vibrato you are oscillating the string by usually smaller degrees to keep the note singing out. And there are many different ways to do that. The most common is a similar motion to a bend but you are pulling the string down and let it return to the original pitch and repeat that action for as long as you want the vibrato to ring out. The speed at which you do this can also vary.
The note does not have to be bent to play vibrato but you can add it at the top of a bend as well.
It seems to works like a miracle for me - I realizes that I can repeat the melody on the guitar and I can sing it as well now. And as an side effect, I am learning the notes on the fretboard.
The plan is to improve the basic skills and then learn how to transcribe whole songs as shown by Justin.
Anybody doing something similar? What is your experience?
a bit similar to orf, i’ve been following along with the practical theory course, which has some “play what you hear” lessons that tie in with this, along with the ear training thing. i took one look at this lesson and thought:
yikes!
do i know how to write a tab? no. i need to revise/learn that
i need to go back and do the ear training theory course again
This short is a very useful resource to help with playing a melody and a melodic solo, it’s useful because it helps a great deal with dexterity and helps develop speed. It’s what’s helped me to be able to play some of the stuff that I have learned recently! https://youtu.be/6EyoRwDBSBk?si=Qm95zznzjZZFCmzt
If all melodies always started on the root note of the underlying chord, it would very quickly become very boring and predictable. A similar reason applies to lead guitar solos - starting phrases and licks on the root note will always work but soon become monotonous.
I’ve been focusing on playing melodies for a few weeks now and I’m now beginning to see how melodies align with the shapes that define the keys in each position.
Don Macleans Song Vincent is a great example. The lyrics ‘starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and grey etc….’ form a repetitive pattern that can be easily reproduced in different positions.
In the key of G the verse can be played in a range of positions using the caged system to locate the appropriate pattern.
I guess it highlights how the singer is using the notes within the key to stay in tune, which makes sense to me.
I like the old slow tunes as they suit my current skill level. The Platters “Only You”, The Great Pretender “, and Patsy Cline “Crazy” are great material for melodies, some slides, bends hammer on pull offs can give a great “feel” to the melody. I may try recording something to see how it sounds.
Happy melodying
Dave
This lesson was so cool. I’m in the midst of recovering some of my younger day skills and have been working on my cross picking. This lesson has been an epiphany. The melody defines the song in bluegrass, or americana, even where the chord progressions and timing are the same or similar for many different songs. When playing along with a tune, as rhythm or even improvising a bit, it is the melody the defines the sonic space; it determines where certain notes ‘are’ and, just as importantly, where those notes ‘aren’t’. This one lesson has made this old dog learn a totally new trick and has pushed me to be a better cross picker than I was 50 years ago.
The thing that’s so nice about Justin is that he seems to know exactly when to break with the syllabus and throw in a lesson designed to make you ‘think’.
God bless you Justin Sandercoe and all who sail in you. John
Really struggling with this, ‘Let It Be’ I was sort of nearly there but was a bit all over the place.What I wrote down I kept revising and was not sure off. Hallelujah I found a bit easier, but did not get all the notes .
This is tricky stuff and for most people this won’t be ready in a few weeks…at the moment I have Folk Hammer-ons & Flick-offs
this will be in my top bar to revisit after a few years for an hour or so … this entire module is mentioned in the lesson “let it Be” and I was just working on it (let it be) this morning… since the lesson here is at the end of Module 3 is almost time for you , maybe take a look here?
I hope this helps a little ,because it will not be easy Have fun,