It's quite astonishing how little most singers know about music ...

TheBigDipper

Danny1969 said:

<snip>
I always think no one expects everybody in the band to be some kind of musical professor but to not bother to learn anything at all theory wise is kind of making life difficult for the sake of it ... like some weird badge of honour. 

This ^^^

In the past few months I've come into contact with two people (one singer, one guitarist) who don't understand basic time signatures and the idea of a bar of music. They couldn't even come in on the first beat of a bar. In a 4/4 piece, we'd count 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 and they'd start on the 4, not the next 1. 

And as for the drummer I played with in one band who insisted that 6/8 and 3/4 were the same thing because they lasted for the same length of time...  

fretmeister

Me: Hey Singer! I have an idea. Why don’t we try that again but this time do the first and last verse in G, the 2 verse in C#, the chorus in Fminor and the bridge in B flat.

Singer: How will I remember all that?

Me: Just do what you did last time!

DefaultM

The original post describes 98% of guitarists.

VimFuego

I kinda get what people are saying about music theory etc, and I think they are very valid points. In order to communicate with other musicians, especially ones who play different instruments, you need to speak the same language.
The caveat to that is that the single most important skill a musician can have is their ears (a skill I lack in bucket loads, not something I am proud of). One of my all time fave musicians is a chap called Andy Cutting. He's a completely self taught and un schooled melodeon (button accordion) player, who is one of the most in demand session musicians on the folk circuit. He can't read, by his own admission, a single note, but he has an exceptional ear and can quickly pick up stuff, then improvise and improve it.

HAL9000

I remember seeing a band advertising for musicians and a singer - says it all really doesn’t it?

Danny1969

VimFuego said:

I kinda get what people are saying about music theory etc, and I think they are very valid points. In order to communicate with other musicians, especially ones who play different instruments, you need to speak the same language.
The caveat to that is that the single most important skill a musician can have is their ears (a skill I lack in bucket loads, not something I am proud of). One of my all time fave musicians is a chap called Andy Cutting. He's a completely self taught and un schooled melodeon (button accordion) player, who is one of the most in demand session musicians on the folk circuit. He can't read, by his own admission, a single note, but he has an exceptional ear and can quickly pick up stuff, then improvise and improve it.

Being able to read music isn't that important in my experience. Mainly because you can't move around on stage with the various spots and flashes going on and be able to read a sheet of paper. A great ear is a wonderful thing but the it kind of says it in the description  ... you need to "hear it" before you can play it right. a bit of fiddling around and within seconds it's there. A bit if theory applied to that great ear will generally remove the need to hear it and that 2 seconds. Im my experience anyway. 

Hattigol

CaseOfAce said:

.
It's not just amateurs - check out the This Is It / Michael Jackson doc on netflix right now - and see MJ mimicking musical sounds and beats and how it "needs to sound like on the record" to his musical director keyboardist when working out a song!

You probably couldn't have picked a worse example.

In Bob Geldof's autobiography, he talks about when he went to the States for the recording of We Are The World. They gave Jacko the sheet music and asked him to give it a run-through on the vocals. Never seen it before - nailed it first take.

Producer then says could you do a harmony on the fifth? Sure no problem. Done Then a harmony on the third? Again, nailed.

If that's not knowing much about music, I hate to think what level most of us are at...

thecolourbox

Presumably MJ was just talking in a language the people he was instructing would understand.

PolarityMan

Danny1969 said:

To be honest a lot of musicians in bands have very little idea what's really going on. With guitarist generally being the worse. They can play the song because they have learnt it either by ear or tab but they don't understand what's happening interval wise so in a lot of cases can't instantly transpose the piece or harmonise without working it out first. 

You're right but in some styles it doesn't matter. Its like you can be as hot as you like on intervals but you're not going to be able to transpose a lot of stuff on the fly because of the importance of the open strings in making it actually physically possible to play. 

There's also the people who just cowboy chord a song then transpose it that way and basically lose the entire essence of the guitar part. I've seen this done with stuiff like nothing else matter for example. 

In my opinion there's a lot of rock music that can only be transposed acceptably by re-tuning (or with pedals I guess these days). 

CaseOfAce

Hattigol said:

CaseOfAce said:

.
It's not just amateurs - check out the This Is It / Michael Jackson doc on netflix right now - and see MJ mimicking musical sounds and beats and how it "needs to sound like on the record" to his musical director keyboardist when working out a song!

You probably couldn't have picked a worse example.

In Bob Geldof's autobiography, he talks about when he went to the States for the recording of We Are The World. They gave Jacko the sheet music and asked him to give it a run-through on the vocals. Never seen it before - nailed it first take.

Producer then says could you do a harmony on the fifth? Sure no problem. Done Then a harmony on the third? Again, nailed.

If that's not knowing much about music, I hate to think what level most of us are at...

Interesting but my take would be "could Jacko vocalise the top line melody of a piece of sheet music at first glance?" Possibly.
Perhaps he had piano lessons as a kid, learnt to read music?
Or perhaps someone sang him the basic part and he took it and made it his own?

As for harmonies - I'd say someone like that who'd been in studios since a young age with the Jackson Five   and then later with Quincy Jones doing a 100 takes of Billie Jean etc.. yeah - Quincy says do a  fifth harmony - Jacko would have got know the sound of particular harmonies well... and could reproduce 'em on tap.

So ... my take is that Jacko was one of those people with a "great ear" for music - much like McCartney..

Hattigol

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing?

Either way, I was just saying that Jacko has no place in a thread about singers who don't have a scooby-doo about music.

the_jaffa

Hattigol said:

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing?

Either way, I was just saying that Jacko has no place in a thread about singers who don't have a scooby-dooby-dooby-dooby-doo-dah-day about music.

FTFY

Blueingreen

To put an opposing slant on this I've been looking at some videos by Christiaan van Hemert, gypsy jazz violinist, guitarist and musical educator.  Particularly a couple on ear-training, although I think what he says can be extended to theory as well. 

He's actually quite negative about ear-training.  He's not saying a trained ear is a bad thing, but he's saying it trains you to do things that are not core to what you need (in this particular case to play jazz guitar in a band).  And that your time would be better spent learning things you do need to know (like a jazz vocabulary, for example).  And I'm pretty sure he'd make the same argument about theory: that depending on your goals learning it is just not an efficient use of your time.  I'm sure he'd say that most singers are perfectly right not to spend time learning theory.

What I found most interesting, because it cut across all the conventional wisdom on the subject, is that he says when he's playing - obviously at a high level - he frequently comes across people who are great players but don't have what are generally considered to be the signs of a good ear.  They can't play back a melody they haven't heard before without hunting and pecking and getting it wrong.  They can't hear a minor 7 flat 5 chord and know that's what it is.  But they can go on stage with high level musicians, hold their own, and improvise great guitar lines.

This is not an excuse for his own failings.  He'd accept that as a professional music educator he does need to know theory, unlike people who just want to play.  And he has perfect pitch.

I've always accepted the conventional wisdom that to play jazz at a high level you need ears like an elephant.  One thought is that "gypsy jazz", which is his main interest, is a special case, not as sophisticated as modern and later jazz.  But it would still be as, or more, harmonically sophisticated as the vast majority of rock/pop for example.

I'm not suggesting that I swallow this whole.  I still on balance think that a trained ear must help, and that knowledge of theory must help.  I believe that being able to read music helps, mainly for reasons that I think tend to get overlooked when the subject is debated.  But it's an interesting contrarian view from a guy who's obviously an outstanding musician and thinker about music education.

CaseOfAce

Hattigol said:

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing?

Either way, I was just saying that Jacko has no place in a thread about singers who don't have a scooby-doo about music.

OK - perhaps I should have been clearer in the thread title then - non-instrument playing singers who know nothing about music THEORY.

In which case let's take Michael Jackson - I've never seen a pic of him with a guitar in his hand or at a piano.
If someone does please post it and you can disregard the rest of this post.

Billie Jean - he's listed as the sole songwriter. If we take that at face value then how did he write it?
I'm guessing he came up with the vocal melody in his head - got in a room with a piano / synth guy / Quincy Jones - who harmonised it whilst he scat sang the parts - and then proceeded to flesh out the song.
Did Jacko have a scoobies about the key /  chords...probably not?
Does he prove my observation. Yep. 

slacker

Anecdotal stories are just the experience of an individual. Going backwards including current ones

Me
Singer writes songs with a melody, we provide the chords
Singer plays guitar
Multiple singers were hopeless
Singer played guitar bass and drums
Singer played keys bass and guitar
Singer played keys
Singer couldn't sing
Singer didn't play an instrument and would listen to other people
As above
As above

In most cases the singer was either a musician or would take advice. It's down to people, some are ok and some are not. Some people want to be in a band and have no talent so they sing in the loosest sense of the word. 

equalsql

I did some recordings many years ago with a girl singer who had a beautiful voice, very rich with a wonderful vibrato. However she only was able to sing a few scale patterns. In one of the songs that I'd written there was a point where the melody went up through four notes chromatically Ab -> B and for some reason she just could not hear or understand the intervals. She could sing Ab to Bb to B but just not the four notes. When I tried here on any chromatic scale she struggled.
It was the strangest thing (?)

ROOG

vasselmeyer said:

"she has no idea what she's doing but it sounds great."

Its wonderful isn't it?
I guess its reasonably intuitive because thats how music came about.

Danny1969

CaseOfAce said:

Hattigol said:

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or disagreeing?

Either way, I was just saying that Jacko has no place in a thread about singers who don't have a scooby-doo about music.

OK - perhaps I should have been clearer in the thread title then - non-instrument playing singers who know nothing about music THEORY.

In which case let's take Michael Jackson - I've never seen a pic of him with a guitar in his hand or at a piano.
If someone does please post it and you can disregard the rest of this post.

Billie Jean - he's listed as the sole songwriter. If we take that at face value then how did he write it?
I'm guessing he came up with the vocal melody in his head - got in a room with a piano / synth guy / Quincy Jones - who harmonised it whilst he scat sang the parts - and then proceeded to flesh out the song.
Did Jacko have a scoobies about the key /  chords...probably not?
Does he prove my observation. Yep. 

Jackson can play keyboards just fine, there's loads of footage with him playing keys .... he also knows about keys and has requested key changes from session musos in pre production

Not a fan of him myself for many reasons but he can play

stickyfiddle

For the most part MJ would compose almost everything vocally then leave it to the producers to transfer that to instrument and a full arrangement. That extended to baselines, synth parts, drums, all sorts. 

https://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/the-incredible-way-michael-jackson-wrote-music-16799

TeleMaster

Lol yea. Our singer is great but every lead is an 'auxillary'. I don't know what that means.