Hello there mandolin and music community. I have a question about playing by ear and trying to recreate music you hear. I have been playing Mandolin/guitar for a few years now and have a pretty good working knowledge of how to play and the number system and scales and building chords and all that basic music theory stuff, not great at it, but i can figure it out when I practice and write things out. So at this point in my learning im trying to make a real effort to start playing with others and learning songs by ear. These two things are always discussed as being the next definitive step in music studies to really breakthrough that wall.
Anyway, i say all that to say this, I have a podcast with a friend where I use music from freesound.org and I was thinking, i’m a musician of sorts, I can make my own music, right? So I attached the intro/outro music for the podcast in this post and provided a link with a time stamp to just here the tune.
Its a simple 30 second piano tune. i am using this as sort of an experiment to try and see how to learn something by ear and experiment with it, like figuring out they key, and chords, and crate with it. And hopefully have the satisfaction of creating my own music for something! since all things are new-ish to me, i am trying to get ideas of how others started this journey of ear training and using it in a way similar to what im trying to do here.
so i will walk you through what i did, please tell me what you would do different or how you think of this process for yourself.
I listened to the song over and over and simply tried to find the sounds on the fretboard of my mandolin, and i have to be honest, its sort of daunting, and I found it difficult. Is it always hard like this? I will play a note and say to myself, is that right? it just sounds off. So after plucking around i came to this: 3, 5, 7, 10th fret on the E string (not that order), and the end part maybe jumps to fifth fret on the A string and maybe the 7th (or open E)? so i took those notes and made the chords for those notes, and it sounded close I guess, but not exact. so where do i go from there?, do i just experiment with all variations of those chords, until one hits? meaning take the G for instance and play G sharp/flat/add9/diminished/ maj7/g9(and all those other funny things that have G, haha) until one matches perfectly? And do I say to myself that since im using G, A, B, D, that im using the key of G, and use that scale to experiment with creating some runs and fun variations of the same tune?
I have so much fun playing and have learned a variety of songs from beginner to advance on the website here, so i know I have the ability, but when it comes to creating, I just feel lost. so if you have any helpful advice using this example, that would be great, if you could identify the notes in the song that would be cool too. and extra credit, if you want to record me a little jaunt, i’ll slap it on the show for fun and give you full honors, haha, if you want. But the end goal is being able to create an intro and outro with mandolin and guitar on my own.
thanks for all your help.
p.s. i also want to add that this is not an advertisement for the podcast and if you have any questions about it i prefer them not to be asked on here since this is a “paid for” member forum and i have not paid for or asked permission to advertise here (and i wouldn’t). It is simply an example i am using to illustrate my music question. And i’m not paid in any way for the podcast. (not sure if this is necessary but i wanted to cover it)
James
Play the podcast at timestamp 49:50 to hear the music. or just push play on the audio file if it will work.