Do guitarists listen to music on the radio differently?

Dominic

It's about demystifying things ;
Once you can speak Spanish it doesn't sound so fast and frantic or romantic
Once you've slept with hundreds of women of all shapes and sizes they've got to be exceptionally dirty to put the fun back into it !

Danny1969

It depends on what you do for a living ..... as a guitarist I used to focus on the guitar, then when I played quite a lot of keys and bass I honed in on that. 

When I worked in a recording studio I listened to the length of the verb on the snare drum and compared it to the tempo .... you can go down a rabbit hole with listening. 

To be fair I don't think any of us can listen as a pure punter any more .... that liberty is taken away as soon as you play an instrument 

CountryDave

I had the same conversation with my daughter not long ago.  She has grown up with access to all my music and more recently Spotify etc.  We were in the car listening to the radio and she was humming along, swapping and changing between the melody and a riff that was very low in the mix.  We started talking about music and how we each listen to it.

She said when she listens to songs it's like they are in 3d and she can focus on different parts. I asked her if she could hear the bass, then the keys.  No problem at all.

I think being a musician of any sort allows you to focus on specific instruments, but can make it difficult to listen to a piece as a whole.

I went to a classic concert last year and found myself looking around the orchestra and each part seemed to lift out of the mix a little as the instrument was in my eye line.

stickyfiddle

I've been doing this as long as I can remember, but I've been more aware of it lately. As I'm having drum lessons and slowly getting better at it I'm also picking out drum lines to walk through in my head how each would be physically played.

Fifty9

Yep. I hear the guitars & then backline before vocals

ICBM

Not very much. It depends on the context, but generally if I'm listening to a song on the radio I don't listen to the individual parts. It can be a problem for me when learning covers, because even with songs I love and have heard hundreds of times, I have never worked out the guitar or bass part even in my head, and have to start from scratch.

I'm aware that this isn't typical of guitarists (or bassists), and may explain why I tend not to listen to 'guitarist music' as much as most other guitarists I know - I like a lot of music which doesn't really (or at all) feature guitars. I tend to listen to the overall song arrangement and the lyrics at least as much as the instruments.

Neil

I just listen to any song as a whole. 

I think once you start disassembling pop music you lose the immediacy of it. 

JAYJO

I try not to be too critical but i find myself picking out songs within songs and question the songwriters originality.
"Oh yeah thats just a rip off of such and such".Maybe im just picking up chord progressions which is something i would never have been able to do before i picked up a guitar.
Melodies I treat the same. I find if i process a tune long enough in my head i can usually link it to something else...idk..What i do know is its difficult for me to write a tune without hearing something relative to it., if that makes sense again idk. so i i would say i listen to music differently to how i used to listen to music but dont know if its really any different to anyone else.  

Nunogilberto

Generally, I listen to the song as a whole and just enjoy it, especially if it tends to be one I’ve always liked. I’ll only prick up my ‘musical’ ears if there’s a part of interest - solo, bass line etc.

thegummy

JAYJO said:

I try not to be too critical but i find myself picking out songs within songs and question the songwriters originality.
"Oh yeah thats just a rip off of such and such".Maybe im just picking up chord progressions which is something i would never have been able to do before i picked up a guitar.
Melodies I treat the same. I find if i process a tune long enough in my head i can usually link it to something else...idk..What i do know is its difficult for me to write a tune without hearing something relative to it., if that makes sense again idk. so i i would say i listen to music differently to how i used to listen to music but dont know if its really any different to anyone else.  

Chord progressions aren't rip offs, they're not unique to specific songs.

ICBM

thegummy said:

Chord progressions aren't rip offs, they're not unique to specific songs.

That depends on the chord progression...

thegummy

ICBM said:

thegummy said:

Chord progressions aren't rip offs, they're not unique to specific songs.

That depends on the chord progression...

I think it would need to be a pretty long and complex progression to be only ever used by one song.

Like more so than a normal sounding song.

ICBM

thegummy said:

I think it would need to be a pretty long and complex progression to be only ever used by one song.

Like more so than a normal sounding song.

I think you'd be surprised. Stray Cat Strut is an obvious one I can think of - there are some quite unusual chords in there, and in that order it's almost certainly unique.

Or try this...

D Bb F E   D Bb F C   D Bb F E  (all majors)

Even if that's not unique there's another part -

Am Adim Bb7 A7 Am Bdim Bb7 Adim Bbdim

Not that complicated really, but I'd take a bet there's only one song that uses it - and it doesn't sound that odd. (There's another part I left out which is a conventional descending chord/bassline.)

Basically Noel Gallagher's excuse that there are only 12 notes and so it's not surprising that most of his songs sound like other people's, is bollocks if you know even a little about how the number of possible song constructions increases when you multiply the 12 notes in even fairly simple combinations. There are literally billions.

guitars4you

thegummy said:

ICBM said:

thegummy said:

Chord progressions aren't rip offs, they're not unique to specific songs.

That depends on the chord progression...

I think it would need to be a pretty long and complex progression to be only ever used by one song.

Like more so than a normal sounding song.

Girl From Ipanema and Dream a little Dream both spring to mind - both only need 4-8 bars to be deemed unique  and recognizable to the song 

Lestratcaster

Yes, I hardly ever pay any attention to the vocals/lyrics. More what the rhythm section is doing and then the harmony. Other people who don't play guitar or any musical instrument immediately sing along.

darthed1981

Neil said:

I just listen to any song as a whole. 

I think once you start disassembling pop music you lose the immediacy of it. 

Yes, that's what I was going to say.

skullfunkerry

I don't listen to the radio, but I do tend to focus on guitar parts more than anything else...

ESBlonde

I got worse when I became heavily involved in sound and light production. I went to theatre or concerts and spent 20 minutes figuring the rigging and stage production, then wortked on the arrangements and band production and if I had time I settled into enjoying the rest of the show.

thegummy

ICBM said:

thegummy said:

I think it would need to be a pretty long and complex progression to be only ever used by one song.

Like more so than a normal sounding song.

I think you'd be surprised. Stray Cat Strut is an obvious one I can think of - there are some quite unusual chords in there, and in that order it's almost certainly unique.

Or try this...

D Bb F E   D Bb F C   D Bb F E  (all majors)

Even if that's not unique there's another part -

Am Adim Bb7 A7 Am Bdim Bb7 Adim Bbdim

Not that complicated really, but I'd take a bet there's only one song that uses it - and it doesn't sound that odd. (There's another part I left out which is a conventional descending chord/bassline.)

Basically Noel Gallagher's excuse that there are only 12 notes and so it's not surprising that most of his songs sound like other people's, is bollocks if you know even a little about how the number of possible song constructions increases when you multiply the 12 notes in even fairly simple combinations. There are literally billions.

With the first one there surely must be plenty of songs with that. Maybe not really famous ones but think of the amount of songs there must be in the world.

I'd honestly doubt that if you included every song ever written, regardless how successful, there wouldn't be any unique chord progressions that didn't sound totally bizarre.

Even with the second one you wrote, I bet there are songs with exactly that and plenty more that are maybe only slightly different that essentially sound the same.

Looking at it from the other side, rather than specific examples of obscure ones, just look at the massive amount of great songs that do share exactly the same progression.

I definitely wouldn't bother to try and write a unique chord progression, yet if the melody wasn't unique I'd bin it.

thegummy

guitars4you said:

thegummy said:

ICBM said:

thegummy said:

Chord progressions aren't rip offs, they're not unique to specific songs.

That depends on the chord progression...

I think it would need to be a pretty long and complex progression to be only ever used by one song.

Like more so than a normal sounding song.

Girl From Ipanema and Dream a little Dream both spring to mind - both only need 4-8 bars to be deemed unique  and recognizable to the song 

even just the chords themselves, perhaps played on a pipe organ or acoustic guitar to a different rhythm?

I'm genuinely asking, I'm only loosely familiar with the songs. I'd find it very interesting if that was the case.