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I don’t know how far I’m going to get with this, so I set a low bar. Since I started figuring this out Sept. 1, it might as well be my main challenge. I’d like to do the theme from St. Elsewhere, and Hill Street Blues, and Quantum Leap, but they’re a bit harder, and might already be done on uke. I haven’t looked yet.
Challenge: figure out “Angela” (Taxi Theme) and be able to play it adequately enough so it doesn’t sound completely awful.
Goal- 1) Capture the main essence of the song. 2) Make it recognizable. Bonus 1) figure out one of the solos and see if I can hear the jazz chords well enough to build them. (Enter snort of laughter here. This is unlikely.)
Bonus 2) uses no wild painful and crazy arm movements! 😉Anyway, picture of my rough idea. It looks amazingly pitiful for the amount of work I put into it so far lol. This is pretty much the main parts I got so far, but I need to add a bunch to it yet, if I can. There’s enough here it sounds like taxi at least to me.
Song I’m using to figure it out:
What I got so far is 37 seconds of a 5 min song lmao!
Quick progress , day 4, since I had no idea what I was going to get from trying this. Nothing exciting though for anyone but me really, below. Except maybe the bad pun. That’s totally worth it. 😁 Just keeping a record since this is not rock class supported content and I keep misplacing that notebook.
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Takeaways so far, which surprised me..- I think what I have written down is in the key of Bb right now, maybe… or maybe F, i’m having a tough time on this one with the key.:1)-I moved the melody notes that I figured out into different positions on the fretboard looking for the end chords.
(Oh, soooo much Irony here! You have to know what’s coming.. I needed a Taxi to really start learning the fretboard! Yep, bad, bad, bad. Laughably true too, because I wouldn’t have done any of this otherwise!)2)-Because of #1, I am seeing how to walk notes up the neck to go to a different position purposefully.
I guess I needed to do this, because it all makes a lot more sense to me now, and is kind of fun, so i’m wasting tons of time here playing junk in different places on the neck.
2 1/2)Found out a bit of SoaD, Aerials bass line melody by hunting for the Taxi notes. (Since I found it up the neck first, I found it down by the nut. Fun! Goes with #2, and glad I wrote it down or I would have forgotten it.)
3)I think i’m starting to see results from that warmup thing i’ve been doing. I think 1 and 2 are takeaways, at least partially, because of this.
I think i’m seeing other benefits but I’m still bad at this whole music thing. Getting better though I think. Hard to tell since I hear myself every day. RC lessons making us use the whole neck for chords are a huge factor here too, so kudo’s to Teach. Thanks Teach!👍)
4)Starting to realize what’s causing my tone problems that are driving me up the freaking wall. The guitar solo in this song actually helped me realize part of it is my right arm dropping, some reasons for this are more controllable then others. The second has something to do with my nails and where exactly i’m hitting a string on my nail vs my angle of arm dangle I have over the top which is not normal uke position.
Now I need to control it all somehow which is going to be a long process… I don’t understand why yet that i’m getting opposite results from my nails then everyone else, but now I know what’s causing part of my annoying “warm up” I get stuck in. I suppose the weird phaser effect this makes sometimes, can be turned into a good thing eventually.
**I realized I’m amazing at conning myself into really seriously Believing I’ll work timing “later.” So I AM changing that. I WILL work the warmup exercise with a metronome at the very least. Even the less annoying beater metronome still hasn’t jazzed me up enough to quit doing this to myself!**
I don’t really expect much else will come out of any of this, this month, but I guess I’ll see. I have one legit known chord diagram now for the recorder part, I think at least, but it’s not the 8(? Might be less. Can’t tell what’s going on there yet.) beats of full jazz guitar chord down strums the end needs, so it doesn’t really count. Got my first “Exhibit A” though. lol.
It’s probably pointless to record anything while I’m messing around with it, but i’ll record something before I give up, or the month ends. Whichever comes first.
This came out after I started on that gary moore song. Now im doing taxi and I can’t help feeling like this video perfectly sums up how I feel playing these songs…. especially Ozzy headbanging and James singing over the horn in the mashup LOL!
I was stuck in smooth, / light, / easy, / funky, / disco, AM transistor radio land for a long time as a kid, and I wanted to listen to metal and FM rock but my older sister was wild, and my parents blamed the music, 😄 lol.
Back to playing recorder, keyboards, and feeling the relaxing sounds of (DJ voice) smmmooooth jazzzzzz on a ukulele… 😁
(wrote this before I slept, never posted it lol. I was really tired. Need to look at that vid and see if it’s what I “found” with the melody notes thing a few days ago. I could have just been tired. Need to play through ptmd and see if syncopated junk is a acceptable workaround… Day 7.)
I haven’t slept so I was watching some videos. The last chord in Taxi I was vocalizing as “THREEE” That sounds demented but it sounds like that to me. Anyway, I smacked myself in the head mentally and thought “three.. Sounds like E, sounds like Beeee-flat… Which I thought might be the key… I don’t know what scale yet so I litterally looked up “ukulele jazz chords in Bb” I tried a few. Think that last one is a Bb|sus4.
I’m not cheating and looking at any sheet music for taxi btw. (Pretty obvious, but needed to be said in case anyone plows through this junk im writing. That would defeat the whole testing how much I don’t know thing.)
A guitar vid came up in my recommendation list randomly last night, with a clickbait title. I was like “huh. Why not.”
I think this shape thing might be what I stumbled on with the melody notes. Need to see if I can find the same stuff in the uke shape and see if it does the same thing. If it is, all this theory garbage might actually make more sense. (In a, I have no idea what i’m doing way, but connects the dots in my brain and makes all this stuff maybe usable.)
Again using this thread mainly to keep notes… where im at right now. day 7: Pretty much just melody notes and the last guitar chord. And -something- knocking around with theory.
Thank you Andrew. ✨🎶💖🎶✨ (virtual, wonder twin powers activate, fist bump!)
(Must remember to look up term shaping)
Brian came through for me. This was well timed in a creepy but awesome way. Explains what I was tripping out over weirdly “knowing” the other night too. (Other than lack of sleep.)
Matt’s tidbit in the memorization live lesson of forcing myself to use the stuff I learn is spot on. Missed it live, sorry. 🙁
By preferring a low G, but 96% of songs for uke that exsist are high g, I started super slow learning how to sub that third fret g for months, lol. (I love my bass string. Wish I had a high g playable uke for a lot of stuff, but i’m on team low G solidly enough I should probably make a T-shirt and declare my allegiance.)
Anyway, Was forced to actively use another position for the high g in stranger things to make a fingering less psychotic, learned where the other ones were but didn’t use them for anything yet. In turn it really helped “learn” the fretboard when added to that warm up simple version of the spider exercise thing up the neck.(And everything else) Checked off “learn the fretboard” in the coarse. I didn’t really technically, but i’m about as close as I am going to get till I can start naming the notes without thinking about it first.
Going to start applying the steps in the video and see if it helps things. Maybe can do this and not feel like I’m “letting everyone down” when I fail lol. No one gives a feather if I do or not, but me. And if anyone reads this, to explain: suddenly realized a few days ago taxi= classic new york + september= me suddenly feeling like if I don’t do a great job on this song i’m disrespecting everyone who died today and my dad who designed a system that was installed when the towers were built. Which is completely and utterly ridiculous, but it’s the dark place I went. It’s a hell of a depressing dark place. I realize it’s stupid and I shouldn’t even begin to feel that way since I started learning this because I like, and ‘know’ the song. Bad timing (ha!) on my part to decide on Taxi to be the classic tv theme of the three, that I picked.
Need to learn and get comfortable with a bunch of harmonics techniques to figure out and play St. Elsewhere. (Eventually- not soon, can’t even do taxi)
https://www.guitar.ch/en-us/guitar/chord_finder/chord_finder-chord-formula.html
Interesting and helpful
to(G)pray or not to(Bm)pray.. (Em)(C).. to (G)sway or not to(Bm)sway.. (Em)(C).. (G)Jesus died for(Bm)something or(Em)nothing at (C)all, Fck(G)all you (D)perfect (G)people… (G)sleepy (Bm)eyes (Em)waltzing(C)through, nah’ (G)I’m not (D)talkn bout(G)you
Sorry about this. Friend figured it out, I asked for the chords so I might have a chance playing it with him later, and the texts are appearing in a thing I need to download and who knows where they go. Got to learn it and had nowhere to put it. I really hate android to do anything useful. Good song by chip taylor, but has nothing to do with the thread.
Note to self:
Write interval names into tab so I see the names. Might help me hook names with the sounds faster. – Maybe by just seeing them while im working a challenge, or whatever, will get me to remember the names. Can’t hurt. What i’m doing now isn’t working for me. (And still goes with the relate it to a song idea, but without pinning a name to one specific song which is so not going to happen in my head.)
Can split into whatever is there, and easy to label, or focus on certain ones till I can hook the darn names with the sound.
(Sigh. Memorizing names. The suck part of music, and anything. I don’t even use computer shortcut keys because who can remember that garbage!? Shouldn’t have to in theory but realize I have to. -Yep i’m whining. It’s justified. I’m just about as far as I can get though without naming stuff. Kept putting it off now theres a lot to freaking label)
Got sidetracked by really bad situations going on here haven’t had time to work super hard on taxi. Been using my free time to de-stress, so haven’t done much of anything that adds to stress. Least I’ve been busy with music in general. Counts for something, and the month isn’t over.
Month isn’t over. Changed my mind. Not working the warmup exercise with a metronome. I notice I played the warmup exercise one single time since I typed that, from playing it 2x a day. This is not the answer obviously. So, not working metronome on anything specific. Probably won’t work with a metronome at all the rest of this month. I’d rather not use a metronome then stop playing something that was helping me right now. 😭
Friend left a little bit ago. Actually had a weird but successful sort-of jam with him. He has a baritone and I was playing low G. Found out I can only handle 2 chord songs right now but he was playing something by the Dead, couldn’t figure out what it was, but the refrain for fire on the mountain fit lol! The exciting part was I finally managed some Dead sounding solo-ish stuff. (Was completely garbage but hinted I was going for the Dead at least lol) That’s pretty huge considering I had no idea what I was doing, and was trying to just go with where I thought the note should be. Pretty high off that still.
So not ready for finishing Taxi, don’t know my stuff well enough yet to get those chords, which might be inversions?… and if they are, I am not there yet. Jazz, I swear to god…. I will be at intervals for a while though.
I haven’t recorded anything yet. There’s no rush. Might tonight if I can’t sleep. Might tomorrow. It’s just the basics above probably played a bit different. Still sounds kind of cool though, and that little keyboard lick or whatever is fun to play. I don’t have a few of his keyboard ornament things down. I don’t know how to go about them. Can’t get accurate enough to get the right tones im after for the different spots but still sounds good-ish to me.
So productive September I think, just not so much with my intended song.
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