Why You Should Study/Research Your Favorite Music's Antecedents (with a Caveat)

  There are many recent issues in the public mind that concern, effectively, "what is copying?".

 A.i. visual art has revealed curious biases towards ownership of style.  In the visual domain, the premise of an a.i. system stealing a *style* is a concept, whereas in music it's around the premise that a.i. systems are copying, verbatim, copyrighted music.

 I won't get into that.  Instead, how you train YOUR dataset is on you.  Meaning, GIGO - garbage in garbage out.  

 If you never look at how your favorite artists were influenced to create a style that they have, your dataset will NOT have the prerequisite information required for YOU to do anything akin to what they did.  

 Which is to say, understand antecedents.  

 Led Zeppelin gets burdened endlessly about how they've "ripped off" classic examples of blues songs.  The problem being, for most of the songs if you take out the lyrics the average person would probably never be able to equate the "questionable" song with an example of it's origin.  Different tempos, beats, chords, melodies.  

 But, that isn't to say there isn't a connection.  Understanding how they got to *there* from over *there* is important.  That comparison is what allows you to do the same.  Because there is an intellectual difference between being *influenced*, and *copying* - 

 ...but you can't argue it, or understand the difference, without having studied it.  

 You don't have to go more than 2 generations back.  Meaning, if you're into a metal/rock band, chances are they liked some aspect of Led Zeppelin's catalog.  You figure that out - that would be one generation back, then from there you figure out what the generation was that influenced that.  

 In that process, you see the lineage of creativity.  There isn't a perfectly unique creation from nothing, that doesn't exist.  You study the antecedents, and see how the antecedents depended upon other antecedents, and get *influenced by the processes that made those connections happen*.

 

The Dimension of Singing with Guitar: 2 Students with 3 Octaves?

  Maybe.... 3-5 in 50 students I get end up singing.

 This is usually the result of someone revealing that yes, they sing in the car or shower, and maybe they could sing and play guitar as well?

 Occasionally it's prompted by me asking a student if they've ever thought about singing, if they've come to the crossroads marked "starting to write music".

 I usually proceed after checking the student's vocal range.  That is to say not the traditional operatic registers, but where their pseudo tessitura is, where they seem to have note(s) that are musically useful.  

 Most people are limited to an octave or so, plus some notes in their falsetto range.  A second octave is usually available with practice.  Mixing through that octave, and into falsetto/head tone above that is usually fraught with empty "limbo" gaps.  

 This past week, I've curiously had two students that effectively can sing vowels from almost down to F# on the low E string, all the way past E 3 octaves higher without breaking, mixed into falsetto past E5.  E2-E5+, not necessarily great sounding, but pure tones.  

 One student seems to favor what I suppose is a counter-tenor range - he can squeak out ridiculously high notes out to maybe A5 while still being able to go down to maybe G2, the other a bari-tenor that can make notes below E2 while still going past E5.  Both sail through octaves mixed with smooth transitions.  Both should be able to get across singing that suits what they like to play on guitar.  

 It will be interesting to see what they do with what they have....

A Switch to the Inane

  I'm afraid that I can no longer post what was previously "conceptual" posts here.

 I've seen that I've been data mined.  I need to pivot to doing video.

 Instead I'll be posting a more droll recap of the lesson week, as I do elsewhere.  If by some chance someone comes across this - look at my past posts for more .... intellectually nutritious writing.  Sorry.

 This past week in guitar lessons:

 How shall I do this, differently than elsewhere?  I'll pick a concept t that stands out.

 There is a Blues Trope Song I've been showing students for decades, as an introduction to blues phrasing/technique.  I've presently got 2 students doing this song, that both started it at almost the same time.

 It's interesting to see what is similar in both students, and what is different.  

 Almost immediately, from the outset there is a divergence in what causes a problem.  With one, it's phrasing caused by trying to play the hardest part too fast.  With the other, it's phrasing caused by initiating the part *before* the hardest part that was hurting his phrasing.

 A simple study in chaos math.  Initial conditions in both means that, 3 weeks on, they're now both working on completely different aspects.  Both were approximately of a similar skill level, but again it's always curious how different people can be.  

 Which again points to a blurb for guitar lessons: watching a video isn't going to help.  There are too many mechanical things involved, timing and phrasing aspects, that can be missed or corrupted if left unchecked.  Each student had about 5 things going on for each lesson that addressed habits that would become a hindrance later, if they had kept doing them.  Alternately, they were things that would have prevented them from progressing into the song/concept at all.  These kind of things unsupervised, probably accounts for so many people buying a guitar, only to put it down after a few months....