music maybe?
So lately I've been listening to a plethora of L'arc en Ciel songs and somehow picking out the melodies on guitar.
Mainly dedicated to my friends who have been asking me lately how I am achieving this feat I will tell you right now that you will not be impressed. Another note to the wise this isn't a step-by-step guide written in stone on how to do covers, it's just what I have found to be helpful.
For starters I need to tell people I have not been playing music for a year or 2 but something closer to 12 years. A majority of what I do comes from my own experiences, however I am not against trying out new techniques or even trying to advise people about instruments that are in the string family.
For the most part I listen to a song repeatedly until I think I can sing the melody on my own, this is critical in my own process because internalizing a song will make things much easier.
Next is the fun part for me, I just sit down and sing/hum/barf out individual parts that I feel would make a fairly complete cover taking into account the melody and rhythm.If you are a piano player well you have your work cut out for you, but violinists, like myself, and guitars and such have the beauty of editing the song to our liking.
After figuring out the parts comes the most tedious part of the process and that is figuring out the key to put the song in. If you are blessed and have the talent of perfect pitch then great. I have to strain my ears and listen really hard to get the pitch but I swear it comes easier each time you do this! Actually after a while, if you do enough, you can develop relative pitch, which in turn can develop into perfect pitch from practice, but I digress.
Writing out the song is purely optional in my opinion, I like to do it to keep a paper record, but it comes along with the job of assigning note values and all that good rhythm practice. I found for most people it's easier to just imitate what they hear and then play right after, in essence that is what a cover is.
Not very exciting right? possibly,
But undoubtedly it's even more fun when you have a friend to work on stuff like this.
Mainly dedicated to my friends who have been asking me lately how I am achieving this feat I will tell you right now that you will not be impressed. Another note to the wise this isn't a step-by-step guide written in stone on how to do covers, it's just what I have found to be helpful.
For starters I need to tell people I have not been playing music for a year or 2 but something closer to 12 years. A majority of what I do comes from my own experiences, however I am not against trying out new techniques or even trying to advise people about instruments that are in the string family.
For the most part I listen to a song repeatedly until I think I can sing the melody on my own, this is critical in my own process because internalizing a song will make things much easier.
Next is the fun part for me, I just sit down and sing/hum/barf out individual parts that I feel would make a fairly complete cover taking into account the melody and rhythm.If you are a piano player well you have your work cut out for you, but violinists, like myself, and guitars and such have the beauty of editing the song to our liking.
After figuring out the parts comes the most tedious part of the process and that is figuring out the key to put the song in. If you are blessed and have the talent of perfect pitch then great. I have to strain my ears and listen really hard to get the pitch but I swear it comes easier each time you do this! Actually after a while, if you do enough, you can develop relative pitch, which in turn can develop into perfect pitch from practice, but I digress.
Writing out the song is purely optional in my opinion, I like to do it to keep a paper record, but it comes along with the job of assigning note values and all that good rhythm practice. I found for most people it's easier to just imitate what they hear and then play right after, in essence that is what a cover is.
Not very exciting right? possibly,
But undoubtedly it's even more fun when you have a friend to work on stuff like this.