Saxophones Did I learn music the wrong way?

[Tommy Ng]

Hi everyone,

I’m from Malaysia. As a child, I played the clarinet in my school brass band. We used numerical notation (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) for Do Re Mi Fa So La Si. We were always taught to sing the melody before playing it.

For example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was written as 1155665 | 4433221. We would sing it as "Do Do So So La La So...Fa Fa Mi Mi Re Re Do" before picking up our instruments. Even now, when I play the saxophone, I still instinctively sing the scale degrees in my head.

Until recently, I didn't fully grasp the concept of a Minor Scale. I used to think a Minor Scale was simply starting the Major Scale from "A" or "La" (6 7 1 2 3 4 5). I’ve heard some people say this "relative" way of thinking is a bad habit, and I’m starting to agree. Because I am so wired to think in Major Scales, I’m finding it very difficult to learn Blues or Jazz scales. My brain constantly tries to force everything into a Major key.

To those who learned music through traditional theory: do you sing the notes in your head while you play? For those who started like me, how did you overcome this "Major scale" mental block to learn Jazz?

Many thanks!

Tommy

 

[Ghr9204]

I’ve heard some people say this "relative" way of thinking is a bad habit, and I’m starting to agree. Because I am so wired to think in Major Scales, I’m finding it very difficult to learn Blues or Jazz scales. My brain constantly tries to force everything into a Major key. To those who learned music through traditional theory: do you sing the notes in your head while you play? For those who started like me, how did you overcome this "Major scale" mental block to learn Jazz?

Personally I see nothing unusual. You are adding knowledge to that previously learned. Minor scales are related to their corresponding Major scales. They use the same key signature.

The way to overcome is time and practice. There are no shortcuts to learning. As time goes, your brain will sort things out.

I started on clarinet and learning to read music in 1965. Although I am senior, I am still learning. Think of it as a life long journey rather than a short term trip. Over time, you will look back maybe 1 month or 2, you don't see much change. But when you look back a year, 2 years, a decade, you will notice the growth.

I have all the saxes SATB, but my weakest was tenor. I looked back at some recordings I did 10 years ago and now. I have grown, my tenor tone and my improvisation skills have improved. That IMO is how things proceed.

Playing sax IMO is a journey, not a trip. At least that is how it has been for me. I think you are doing fine, just need to give your brain time to adjust, and it will.

 

[Tuppertn]

I was a music major years ago and took two semesters of a class called Aural Harmony. It was all ear training--learning to identify intervals and chords by hearing alone. A lot of it was using solfège.

Ear training is part of everyone's musical development. What you got was a good head start.

 

[skeller047]

I don’t think there is anything wrong with what you learned. The issue is whether you can learn to hear some new things. I was trained classically, which did involve learning both major and minor scales, but when it came to jazz improvisation, especially with modes, I struggled to hear them correctly. I would play, for example, a D Dorian mode, and my ear would tell me C was the root.

Here is what I did to correct this. I played a low D, to fix the sound in my ear. Then I would play the scale. Then I would play the low D again. I tried to focus on keeping the sound of D in my ear as I played the scale. It took about a year before I could play a Dorian or Mixolydian modal pattern and relate it mentally to the correct root.

Today I would do the same thing, but I would play a drone tone of the root on my earphones or speakers as I played the scale. We didn’t have this technology back in the 1960s, so I did what I could.

Learning to improvise and be comfortable with different sounds and concepts will take time. The good news is that it does get easier to learn new things after a while. The bad news (though in reality I think this is good news) is there is always something new to learn. There is no end of discovery. How exciting!!!

 

[Pete Thomas]

Learning by ear and numbers is a great way to start, but I don’t think learning of minor as relative to major is so good. Ie think of the tonic as 6 would be less useful than tonic as 1 and a 3 as m3.

Obviously it’s good to know about relative major/minor eventually but best to start off from 1 as tonic IMO.

 

[Tenor Viol]

Hi everyone,

I’m from Malaysia. As a child, I played the clarinet in my school brass band. We used numerical notation (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) for Do Re Mi Fa So La Si. We were always taught to sing the melody before playing it.

For example, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was written as 1155665 | 4433221. We would sing it as "Do Do So So La La So...Fa Fa Mi Mi Re Re Do" before picking up our instruments. Even now, when I play the saxophone, I still instinctively sing the scale degrees in my head.

Until recently, I didn't fully grasp the concept of a Minor Scale. I used to think a Minor Scale was simply starting the Major Scale from "A" or "La" (6 7 1 2 3 4 5). I’ve heard some people say this "relative" way of thinking is a bad habit, and I’m starting to agree. Because I am so wired to think in Major Scales, I’m finding it very difficult to learn Blues or Jazz scales. My brain constantly tries to force everything into a Major key.

To those who learned music through traditional theory: do you sing the notes in your head while you play? For those who started like me, how did you overcome this "Major scale" mental block to learn Jazz?

Many thanks!

Tommy

Sounds like you were introduced to a version of the Kodàly method which focuses on being able to sing tune using solfa and hand signs. It's a highly regarded system, but specialists in it are not that common in the UK but they do exist.