What Is Music???

And I'm going to do a screen sharing thing here in a minute, just so that you'll see what I'm talking about. I can bring it up on my end and then show, instead of seeing me, you'll see what's on my computer screen. I have four string major scale, four string, yeah, I'm sorry, four string, excuse me, that's what I meant. Okay, yep, I got it right here. All right, now I'm going to go away for just a second and something else should pop up on your screen, so let me know when it comes up. Okay, it's up. Okay, now this chart is like looking at your bass, you see, can you see my little arrow moving? Yes. Okay, this string here is the E string, this is the G string, right? So, yep, so you've got the layout of how it is. All right, so these are the open strings here, these numbers here are the left hand, excuse me, the fret numbers. Right, so like this note right here is your open E, open A, open D, open G, right. Now these circled notes, well, the first thing about scales is we have to define a couple things first. The first thing is, what is music? That's a good question. I mean, if you're going to play it, y'all know what it is, right? Yeah, I don't, I mean, I don't even know how to answer that. Well, it's an unusual question, it's an unusual answer, but once you think about it, it's like, oh yeah, it's a language. Music is communication based on emotion the player feels, plays, or listener hears, feels. It's communicating feelings through the use of sounds. It's a language based on emotion, communicating feelings through the use of sounds, and that's why everybody likes the same stuff, because everybody's got the same feelings. Everybody knows what happy is, everybody knows what sad is, so when you play a happy song, or songs that make you feel this way, you don't have to have the lyrics to do that, the music will do that. Now it makes it more powerful with the lyrics, but that's why songs are written certain ways, along with lyrics. But anyway, it's important to think about music as a language and relate it to what you already know and have mastered with spoken language, because conceptually it's the same thing. There are two main differences: first is that the bass is taking the place of the vocal cords and producing the sounds for the language, and then there's no intellect involved in the actual communication process, it's just communicating feelings. All right, now the notes are the alphabet and or vocabulary for the language of music. Notes are organized into scales for a lot the same reason that letters are organized into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. It's a way to organize the stuff to use it to communicate, it's a cataloging process for your vocabulary. So you want to basically look at scales as an organizational process for your notes. Because the basic game in music, technically speaking, is to match the right scale to the right chord. In other words, there's always going to be a chord that's being played, the notes you're going to use to outline that chord sound are going to come from the scale that goes with that chord, and why and how they match up we'll talk about later, but basically they just match up. So if you have this, let's say, major chord, I know that the notes of this scale will sound good with it. So most people, when they think of working on scales, think they're going to be doing something like this, that's what everybody thinks of when they think of scales, because that's a scale in its basic form. But I've never heard anybody get on stage and do that, ever. Yeah, good point. So spending a lot of time on that is not going to help you play, I mean, it's good for a hand exercise and listening to the scale in its basic form, but outside that, that's it. This is what you'll be able to do with the mixer, you'll be able to organize and stuff so it's real clear, but anyway, this is a major chord sound. So if I'm going to play over this, it doesn't sound like I'm playing a scale, does it? No, but I'm just using these notes, but I know where they all are, to the point where I'm not thinking about what I just played any more than I'm thinking about each word as I'm saying it to you now. In the same way that if you're talking to somebody, and then somebody stops you mid sentence and says, how do you spell that word you just said, then you stop and think, oh well, then you tell them. But that's the last thing you were thinking about when you're actually talking to them. So when I'm playing, right, I'm not thinking about anything, I'm just hearing him playing, but if you stop me, well, what is that, well, that's two of the A major scale, I can tell you what it is, but I don't think about it while I'm playing. So it's just the way the language works, you know, when you're thinking about grammar or spelling or anything like that, you know it, but you're not thinking about that when you're just talking. Sure. That's the way music works, and that's what all the scales and harmony and theory stuff is. Harmony and theory and scales, all that stuff, is like going to English class and studying adjectives and pronouns, I mean, that's what it is. Yeah, it's like zero fun, right, but it helps give you more control over the spoken language, it helps you communicate more efficiently, that's why people do it. So learning this harmony and theory stuff is basically an attempt to explain what we're hearing. Gotcha. And I emphasize the word attempt, because, as with all technical descriptions of language, they're not always accurate, they're not always even right, because you have to look at how something functions as opposed to what it really is, because how it functions can change depending on how you're feeling and how you're using something. That's why they call it theory and not truth. Yeah, good point, I never thought of that. All right, so the idea here is, we're basically going to learn about vocabulary for the language of music, so that's what this journey into scales is going to do. But it's a tedious process, there's a lot of just zero fun stuff to do, but it'll work for you and give you power and control over communicating. All right.