Needs more MELODY! (viewer critiques)

this is shib saran hello he's an amazing guitarist and today we're going to be critiquing viewer submissions in a little segment we like to call how to get good at music oh that's good man thanks bluegrass [Music] oh [Music] bluegrass is one of these genres that i wish i played more because it's just it sounds it's it seems so much fun it's like very much in the same vocabulary like jazz and fun because like accents on two and four so a big critique for the bass here is that it sounds like you're like doing the slap thing on two and four which comes very naturally when you're playing which uh sounds a little uneven like sometimes you're doing the slap thing on two and four and then sometimes you're not sometimes you're missing that slap click and then sometimes the slap click is like too loud in comparison to the rest of the band yeah i think that would um definitely change the groove and like make the groove feel more definitely alive yeah yeah for me the slapping on guitar at least it's kind of like a comfort thing where if i play a chord it helps me just set up the next chord almost but if i want to make it part of the arrangement part of the song then i have to be more intentional about where i'm placing that slap or percussive hit especially in this situation where there are no drums and the rest of the band is very much reliant on you the bass player to be not only the harmonic foundation but in this case also the rhythmic foundation like bass players in bluegrass bands have such an important role to play because you are pure the bottom of everything and as such every little detail of your performance really matters like really matters so i think paying a little bit more close attention to where you're putting that slap accent on two and four will make this like really shine [Music] yeah that definitely sounds like some guys are wow that add four chord yes so spicy yeah so this this might be another example of like imitating the surface level sound of jazz chords but the logic like the inner logic isn't quite there and you know what i just thought of this it might be because people aren't improvising solos over these kinds of chord progressions and like when you improvise a solo and when you like have to make a melody work then you really are paying attention to the internal like harmonic logic of chord progressions next time you write a song like this you could try writing a melody that goes over it and then i think your ear will naturally fix or change alter any chords that need altering to fit in a melodic way it can just be a couple like couple notes today the ad 4 was a little strange like writing a melody on top of these chords is a good suggestion i like the i like the imitation sungazers stuff which is like arpeggiators and jazz chords it's really interesting to see people imitate some of the like synth effects and like how we put together arrangements sometimes we think of chords and melodies as two separate things there's a lot of overlapping between melody chords and even if there is an obvious melody our ears are still hearing some kind of melody when we just hear in chords yeah and so i would try to find out what the melody is in your mind when you're playing these chords and then really try to lean into that you don't have to write a melody but maybe it's worth just thinking about it more melodically than just purely harmonically i was talking to lao noah who is this amazing songwriter and composer and she was saying that there's this tendency to be afraid of melodies like especially among instrumentalists of not leaning into melodies and we are almost scared of writing a beautiful melody and i you know i thought about that like yeah i don't spend much time writing melodies and i think that's uh we're lacking in that honestly you know one of the things i love about shibs music not to plug ship too much is that he has incredibly catchy melodies but also like there's always this this nice little twist on them like a rhythmic twist or a harmonic twist that like really make them sing and come alive and part of it comes from how you voice chords on the guitar yeah and you're really conscious of how melodies work with the chord progression and how the chord progression implies melodies yeah and a lot of times i just sing a melody over my guitar part than writing you know even even if i'm i'm not a singer but like i'll try to just sing something just so it feels human and vocal and and melodic that way trying to get towards that like what is the melodic core of this song the melody is is so important because it ties the whole thing together yeah also the bass line the bass line is really the most important part and wish me luck for my audition on 17th of february hey well good luck best of luck [Music] first of all [Music] yeah it's all down picking wow that's interesting [Music] yeah that was awesome killing killing killing this is the technical technical term yeah i mean i think we're making a lot of those comments about the all the down picks which is yeah that's cool it's interesting it's not typical typically you would do down lots of downs and ups but having all down picks really has a vibe i mean i think about like west montgomery yeah yeah the thing about guitar technique is like i'm always torn on it because there isn't like a right way to do anything really if if all the down picking is is comfortable then just keep doing that but it could be cool if you haven't explored alternate picking maybe include that especially because if you can downpick so fast yeah without picking you be like a horse of nature just going back and forth yeah just imagine how much fast you can play twice as fast exactly the backing track here unfortunately is not really doing you any favors uh in terms of time feel the time feels a little wonky at least compared to like the original cassiopeia some of the lines that you're playing the time feel feels a little waffley because of that also some of the lines are you're just kind of going up and down scales you might want to try and arpeggiate a little bit more and play some more intervallic lines i believe is the thing where you're skipping around the scale so it's not just going up and down you're playing with good tone and good intention here clean clean yeah sweet all right [Music] okay [Music] sick all right bruno uh like the tapping riff the tapping was like really in time actually which was which is hard to do especially like getting the left-handed groove i did feel though the chords like the anticipation of like the one to end those were like kind of ahead of the beat a little bit which is which is really common that happens to me a lot when i'm recording is like i seem to be ahead because i think it's the nature of guitar like chords especially also in like the rhythm guitar part there is a lot of a headed ahead of ness that's the technical term by the way that you didn't learn that one at berkeley you know i know a lot of people will say you shouldn't quantize guitar parts or shouldn't quantize your parts and i agree with them but i think if you use it as a tool for teaching yourself how the guitar part is supposed to sound and really hear what it sounds like when you are placing those like downstrokes like a lot further behind and with the drums that will help i know it's cheating to do that but at the same time if you're lining up the guitar part it will i think help tighten up for your own ear thanks man i appreciate it you're already pretty good at music so i don't know why you're asking our help but you should be asking us anything [Music] all right so i can't help but go like this [Music] but it doesn't seem like he's [Applause] [Music] okay i love that uh i love the the groove that you got going on but i feel like you could move more to the music it's just goofy like movement music movement music yeah that makes a technical term lots of technical terms you know music comes from your body and the more that your body is engaged in the music and in the instruments the more expression you can really bring out of your musical performance if i'm doing the joe dark neck thing like the music comes out just more musical i think so for me i think you could definitely move more you're very very stiff when you're performing right now and i think you can play around with like some of the note lengths of that little melody party those parts could be like short long or long short or short short or something you know uh you can kind of vary them up so they sound different depending on the chord you're on for me as a bass player would of course the more important instrument so as a bass player i'm very conscious of how i'm trying to talk about bass right now no one cares should we love you but your instrument sucks so yeah as a bass player i'm always aware of how a melody instrument is articulating because if they're playing the ends of phrases short i want to make sure that i am lined up with them and also how that articulation works with the drums and like if it's on certain beats like you might want short beats on the two and the four to really accent the backbeat because there's this perceptual thing where shortness implies accent sometimes what you can do here is you can use your movements to inform what kind of articulation you want to do yeah like it can feel goofy it's more of a boo it actually translates into the music in a pretty like profound way when you're when you're moving a lot especially something as rocking as this boob it's a guitar [Music] better [Music] okay very pentatonic kind of melody [Music] [Music] yeah like your tone the chord progression sounds great i love that this is something that i've struggled with a lot with my guitar playing is trying to get out of shapes once you get comfortable in them so it is good to get comfortable with a shape and really find your way around it but then once you get comfortable with it it's good to kind of switch it up and maybe like explore either the same shape up the neck or down the neck or just introduce new notes into the pentatonic shape like the natural 6 or the flat 6 or the flat five just to kind of give it like another flavor it's really it's repetitive which is nice the same motif is happening two or three times it repeats a few times and so what you could try to do maybe the third repetition or the fourth repetition is kind of add maybe a couple more notes and that'll help you learn how to get out of that shape if you feel stuck in it so one other thing is that when you bend to a note or like when you do the bends within the minor pentatonic make sure you're bending to a note that you hear it doesn't have to be a note on the keyboard it can be an in-between note like a neutral third or like a blue fifth or one of these spicy micro tonal notes or whatever but just make sure that you really hear it because it sounded like you weren't intentionally bending to a sound it just sounded like you were bending up and then x amount of pitch different i don't know it didn't feel very intentional so so pay very close attention to when people are bending they're bending to specific sounds and that you can really hear it also in the instrument i feel like when you've reached that note it's like it sings yeah like it like makes it as well something i practice is i play a note and then i'll go down a whole step and try to bend up to that note so i have it in my ear like i play like the fifth fret on the b string and i'll hear it and then go to the third fret and bend up to what would have been the fifth fret it kind of helps you put the bend in context so maybe you could try doing that great job great job yeah fantastic [Music] joyful memories [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] christmastime [Music] dig the arrangement you know great time feel love beautiful voice yeah i love the voice like the harmony is yeah that reharm was interesting could because we know the song really well like it's hard to re-harm a really popular song with complicated harmony as it is you know this is a matter of taste i think um so if you really truly believe that this is the harmony for you guys ignore our ignore our critique yeah but i think we're reacting to that because we're so used to how christmas time this year is like supposed to work because the chords themselves also have to have some relation to like the song at large i think so there's like a way harmony like this kind of functions like this i mean in the original song and capturing that motion of the harmony is is still kind of important um which is why it's a little like surprising some of the modulation was like caught us off guard yeah which can be a good thing yeah it can be a good thing yeah but whether or not we believe it yeah is like whether or not that was the most truthful thing so for me reharmonization is taking a look taking another look at a piece of music like shining a different light on one of its facets a great example of this is cat powers version of new york new york she does a version that's like a stripped-down funk almost deharmonization of the original where it's like kind of just a blues vamp rather than uh you know a jazz standard like sinatra and through that she's telling a very different story and i think that's the important thing whenever you decide to do a reharmonization think all right what is the new story that i'm telling here and why does it need this different harmonic approach i know i've had that problem when i've tried to re-harm songs sometimes my arrangements of things sound forced when i really just want to add my own chords in it yeah sometimes it might not need new chords so for example like [Music] like that has a very specific sound and feeling like maybe this is a dark christmas time like you know that kind of thing that would be a reason for the reharmonization is that you're trying to tell a story of like a scary christmas time or a sad christmas time but great submission like we're kind of nitpicking and we're reacting from i feel like more of a subjective standpoint yeah it gets like you're already good at music you don't need to know you don't change yes you don't need us turn it off just don't like the x on the side click out of this youtube no please don't click on this youtube video we need the watch time unsubscribe from adam no the vox our condom band rehearsal we're not metal at all like what they're definitely going to sample it and just like put that in voxel condom [Music] god this is gonna [Music] so much [Music] okay [Music] nice [Music] yes yes [Music] that's awesome [Music] so yeah i mean this is this is cool this is awesome uh just good vibes i love when people are just like hanging out and playing yeah the riff is really cool but this is something that i've been actually working on myself a lot these days so the riff has a lot of these pull-offs and i think hammer ons but a lot of pull-offs and like pulling off notes sometimes guitar players forget to kind of like make the left-hand groove as well along with the right hand so the right hand's like a picking almost like a drum set or something you know but the left hand we kind of ignore making the pulling off and the hammering on fit in the pocket too yeah i'm hearing some of that like timing ebb and flow so what could be worth just working on is trying to make a pull-off sound really in time and making your left hand groove along with your right hand as well that's something i've been personally working on for the past couple of weeks is is that because i've been noticing my own hammer-ons and pull-offs that's where my timing starts to kind of get a little loose and so i've been trying to tighten that up honestly i think i should start doing that for myself too yeah one thing also is that it sounds like yeah the guitar is rushing a little bit which as we said guitar players have terrible terrible time what are you doing i'm kidding you know what you're 100 right about that base supremacy i think one of the reasons why that might be in this room is you're playing with an electric set and there's something there's something about the time field being in a small room with an electric set versus an acoustic set about how air moves differently air moves like just very differently when you have the acoustic drums like so you can feel it and you hear it like almost spatially you're hearing sound around the drum kick and when electric set comes through like speakers the way that time works i don't know it's just different it's it's it's just different because you're also hearing the drummer hit the rubber pad in the room but you're not feeling the impact you're doing the best that you can in this rehearsal situation but you're working in a very different musical environment very different like rhythmic environment and so you should adjust accordingly you should always be playing for the situation that you're in and in this situation you're always going to want to try and like lay back just a little bit because you're playing with an electric kid good stuff love it love the band yeah all these great submissions thank you thank you everybody for submitting this is so much fun cool [Music] oh i haven't had oh nice okay groups [Music] [Music] okay cool [Music] it's kind of static though oh yeah there are some good chords in here [Music] okay cool nice very cool one a lot yeah that was nice i mean it's cool to see more people exploring fives and quintuplets yeah and trying to make it sound like it's not a math problem exactly especially when it sounds like this it just it just grooves which is awesome it's a chill vibe yeah i like it it's you're not super locked to counting one two three four five one two three four five yeah you've explored a little bit more of you know the syncopations and how five works i think you could stand to write a melody on top of this yeah i think this is another melody one i think we just i just we're melody boys yeah yeah especially because the chord the harmony is so pretty and it works really well in this situation that would be nice to hear like a floaty long melody you know you don't have to really hit the five subdivision like really strictly with the melee that's one of the nice things about five and honestly one of the things that i like sometimes in five grooves is the fact that you can be floaty and a little bit less locked with the subdivision because if you're too precious with the subdivision sometimes it can feel like that math problem yeah exactly but i could hear any number of different nice long melodies on top of that that's great [Music] all right [Music] yeah nice and this era of music really does have a sound doesn't it [Music] movies [Music] yeah yeah it really does [Music] there's lots of different fields [Music] second sight is the name of the band uh wow killing you'd hear like we're just listing a bunch of different influences but you guys definitely have a vibe i guess my main critiques are recording like recording sounds like the drums feel a little too roomy and how they were recorded because i associate a very tight dry sound yeah with this kind of style yeah you don't have to do that but i was just like just a note i think for mixing because the vocals are very dry too but having like a really tight drum sound i think would take this to the next level for sure i know this is i mean this might not be like in your control but just for future reference you guys were doing a very good job of setting up the different sections there's very different time feels which is cool yeah but the more you can exaggerate musical elements yeah like the better it's it's just communicates more to the audience and whatever you think might be too much it's never enough never too much never too fast actually on that luther van drost bye bye i'd love to hear like like a toggling wah guitar vibe it's hard because i know the guitar player is also singing something to create like a little bit more like a subdivided motion aside from just the hi-hat yeah you know like a little brighter that would definitely help and also sell the difference between the two different sections because when the subdivisions are changing not as much besides the drums are changing yeah but cool i mean you clearly like have been influenced by a lot of the same musicians that we've been influenced by so which is exciting to like see um but great job love the music thank you so much shubh thank you adam is this the point where we make out yes please uh go check out shub's music he's an amazing guitarist and composer he also has a podcast stage with shub saron go check out shub's music and his podcast it's a great podcast highly recommend it he talks a lot about being a guitarist being a composer discussions about identity good stuff man thanks everybody so much for watching and until next time [Music]

Channel: Adam Neely

Views: 250,748

Keywords: adam, neely, jazz, fusion, bass, guitar, lesson, theory, music

Id: wgiJg43FaU0

Length: 26min 39sec (1599 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022