As a person who performs a lot of music on various instruments, playing in "closed" positions where you don't know the note you're playing is a just-fine strategy.
There are reasons why folks know the names of notes in some positions better than others.
When I was playing a lot of bass for folks in low rent with bands that were playing standard music and never rehearsing, I generally only paid attention to the low string and worked my parts out (often on the fly) around the relative pitches.
If you're trying to keep up with the bass part on a song you've never heard before while performing it on stage, it's much more relevant (and far easier/faster) to know the position of the minor 3 note of the scale than it is to know what note is the minor 3.
Over the decades I play a lot more piano, and that changes. I play a lot of blues and jazz but am quite poor at reading typical rep for the instrument. While I started out mostly playing using chord fingerings (and inversions), the more I play the more specific I can get on my understanding of actual notes. Because I've been playing a lot of clarinet (which forces me to transpose a whole lot, including reading a part and transposing on the fly), the names of specific notes has gotten a whole lot more important, but also easier with practice.
On the pedal steel (which I have only been playing for a decade on and am still coming to terms with), while I can pull all that knowledge I am still usually playing based on a notes position- I know what string/lever combo is going to get the 6 note in a given scale rather than thinking "I need to play an A to get this C chord to be a C6, and that's this position on the neck with the BC pedals down or that position with the LKR lever pushed.
All that is to say, it's okay to not know the names of notes if you understand their function related to the melody.
scarecrowbob
I could never really bridge the gap between spoken language and execution on a guitar. I approach improvising and playing by intervals and shapes. For me I need to have direct access to the guitar that doesn't pass through language, as if the guitar was my mouth and I'd execute a chord or a melody as if it were a word or a sentence, without thinking about syntax.
This makes it hard to compose and study music, since I take a long time to transpose and navigate the harmonic field, but it's a tradeoff that I need to do, my brain doesn't work otherwise.
gchamonlive
I don't think it's realistic to draw conclusions between your skill at this game and the skill at finding a real note on a real guitar. I've been playing guitar for 35 years now and note finding is almost subconscious and relies on muscle memory. This is an inverted image from what you'd see anyway. I think all you can determine from this is that some people are good at a video game versions of the memory game.
If you practice this thinking it's going to translate to guitar, your wasting time that would be better spent playing guitar.
polarbearballs
This is fun. I have always said that a portion of my brain is dedicated to the fretboard. If I'm talking about intervals without an instrument in front of me I am always imagining the fretboard to find, say, a minor 6th from C#. I know the shapes of octaves across different strings very well, so even in the red zones I can find the notes pretty quickly. I cannot say the same for many of my bandmates, as talented as they are.
Would you please add a non Google sign up?
j5r5myk
The funny thing is that as a lap steel player, the middle to upper middle of the neck (5 through to 9) is where you live, because it interacts most usefully with the open strings in most tunings. Same is true of bottleneck slide to some extent.
dofm
As a left-handed guitar player, that was really hard. I couldn't get any of them in time.
unzadunza
I managed all of them, but it was hard to see exactly what the allowed region was.
JohnKemeny
A bunch of bass players are laughing...
jk. I'm not that great either.
exabrial
I've been struggling to memorize the entire guitar fretboard for several decades, and I blame the Germans! :-)
Context:
* in USA & Canada, notes are a-b-c-d-e-f-g
* Where I'm born though, due to Germanic tradition and influence, b is called h. b-flat is b.
* Given that most teachers start you with C major, it was taught as c-d-e-f-g-a-h
* And of course, where I'm born, you're first taught solfago (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-si/ti-do)
So my brain never really learned to think of musical notes as "alphabet". My natural inclination is solfago, and when I use the single letters, my brain interprets them as random string of letters that you have to think about every time (given that for whatever reason "H" is between "A" and "C"), rather than just alphabet. It's like I have two parallel sets of neural pathways: Alphabet - no problem, I can do it forward and backward reflexively, vs Musical Notes - stop all trains, engage upper brain functions, this is the difficult one with no sense or reason.
Grrr, Germans :=D
... that being said, I'll try the app :)
NikolaNovak
I struggle even knowing what the notes are called, but have a rudimentry knowledge of what some chords are, but not why.
All that matters to me is how it sounds, and since I am singing with guitar, improvising as I go , when someone asks what note or chords I am useing , I do struggle for an answer, but it occurs to me , now, to tell them to play whichever ones they like the most, and we will MAKE it work.
comments (10)
There are reasons why folks know the names of notes in some positions better than others.
When I was playing a lot of bass for folks in low rent with bands that were playing standard music and never rehearsing, I generally only paid attention to the low string and worked my parts out (often on the fly) around the relative pitches.
If you're trying to keep up with the bass part on a song you've never heard before while performing it on stage, it's much more relevant (and far easier/faster) to know the position of the minor 3 note of the scale than it is to know what note is the minor 3.
Over the decades I play a lot more piano, and that changes. I play a lot of blues and jazz but am quite poor at reading typical rep for the instrument. While I started out mostly playing using chord fingerings (and inversions), the more I play the more specific I can get on my understanding of actual notes. Because I've been playing a lot of clarinet (which forces me to transpose a whole lot, including reading a part and transposing on the fly), the names of specific notes has gotten a whole lot more important, but also easier with practice.
On the pedal steel (which I have only been playing for a decade on and am still coming to terms with), while I can pull all that knowledge I am still usually playing based on a notes position- I know what string/lever combo is going to get the 6 note in a given scale rather than thinking "I need to play an A to get this C chord to be a C6, and that's this position on the neck with the BC pedals down or that position with the LKR lever pushed.
All that is to say, it's okay to not know the names of notes if you understand their function related to the melody.
scarecrowbob
This makes it hard to compose and study music, since I take a long time to transpose and navigate the harmonic field, but it's a tradeoff that I need to do, my brain doesn't work otherwise.
gchamonlive
If you practice this thinking it's going to translate to guitar, your wasting time that would be better spent playing guitar.
polarbearballs
Would you please add a non Google sign up?
j5r5myk
dofm
unzadunza
JohnKemeny
jk. I'm not that great either.
exabrial
Context:
* in USA & Canada, notes are a-b-c-d-e-f-g
* Where I'm born though, due to Germanic tradition and influence, b is called h. b-flat is b.
* Given that most teachers start you with C major, it was taught as c-d-e-f-g-a-h
* And of course, where I'm born, you're first taught solfago (do-re-mi-fa-so-la-si/ti-do)
So my brain never really learned to think of musical notes as "alphabet". My natural inclination is solfago, and when I use the single letters, my brain interprets them as random string of letters that you have to think about every time (given that for whatever reason "H" is between "A" and "C"), rather than just alphabet. It's like I have two parallel sets of neural pathways: Alphabet - no problem, I can do it forward and backward reflexively, vs Musical Notes - stop all trains, engage upper brain functions, this is the difficult one with no sense or reason.
Grrr, Germans :=D
... that being said, I'll try the app :)
NikolaNovak
metalman