beginning musician is praying for help and a mentor

Dear Cherie, Welcome.
Adding my prayers that the right teacher will be sent to you.

Love,
Sue

Dear Cherie, Welcome to Givnology.
Sending prayers for the right mentor to find the way to you. Wishing you to have much success with your musical career.

Love
Vicky

A hearty WELCOME Cherie!

Joining your prayer that you find the musical edumacator you seek. Amen.

I think that there are plenty who will be glad to help you. When you go to a performance that you like, just ask someone who you think is talented-and honest if you can take private lessons from them.

I found that my favorite technique to get lessons. People that don't even usually teach, when approached correctly will help - and I have some greeeat lessons from the folks I asked that I can still review.

Of course the best teacher is your own ear. Learn to "transcribe" what you hear, on piano or guitar or something, and then just analyse the music you like, start playing it! There are amazing resources on-line, and bulletin boards and school posting areas are also great ways to find a good qualified teacher.

Personally I am gravitating to accoustic music, there is so much more MUSIC in it usually!

May the angels bring you just what you seek.

Love and light being, Teo

Thank you Teo, for the great advice and prayers, and thanks to Sue and Vicky also for your kind words and prayers. I am taking small steps right now to start this thing off, and I know that my dream is already taking form in my life. I put complete trust and faith in God, and I know that with God's help that I can do this and be successful at it. I appreciate you guys for listening and caring enough to pray with me for my dream. You guys are great....

Dear Cherie,

Welcome to Givnology. Wishing you much success in finding the right mentor.

Love, Inda

Teo is the midi master here. Of course all the technology in the world still works with the same musical scales of long musical traditions, and many of the timbres of electronic sounds are borrowed from classical musical instruments. There are more than a hundred and a quarter midi sounds and all can be modulated to created unique signals.

There is a good bit of mathematics and understanding wave forms to grasp the concepts of how an audio signal works. No investment in equipment can give that to you just by surrounding oneself with keyboards and various hardware interfaces.

There are so many ways to achieve results in this new world, and a lot of musicians find that the newer devices will lose some of the qualities they have enjoyed in older "sound toys."

Teo has managed to keep his freeboards working longer than the built in obscelescence that was intended by the manufacturer. Midi is midi still, and it comes down to stylistic considerations and finding musical forms of expression that suit you. Some grasp of signal processing and sequencing is required, and a lot of grasping it is best done hands on playing with all your parameters.

Knowing a few tunes helps. Having a song in your heart is even better.

Understanding the mechanics of music - what is a chord - that the minor triad is made up of the root note the minor third and the fifth - the major triad is the root note the major third and the fifth is important and basic.

How the keys and their scales relate to the chords that appear in those keys is important. Understanding that you can have accidentals which are notes that aren't in the key you're in but you play them anyway is another important thing to take notice of.

The redundancies of sharps and flats: how the same note (a black key) can be either a sharp or a flat depending what key you're in helps, too. To know how the modes are generated from eight note scales on the white notes starting not just on C but all the other notes and knowing the names of the modes from how they sound is what makes a complete musician. (I can't claim to have all that down yet). You will recognize the sound of a mode when you hear it.

The fact that there are twelve tones in the chromatic scale is another perspective that helps for understanding the relationship of half steps and whole steps and how an eight tone scale omits certain "accidentals."

Once you know all this, you still know nothing (grasshopper). Hee hee.

All that stuff applies to classical music, rhythm and blues, soulsa, salsa and any other form you might pick, be it a waltz or a cakewalk. Whether one is doing a minimalist arrangement like a guy on a gutbucket, whistling Georgia Brown with a bass line, or a rack of so many patches and busses that it takes seven DSP chips to process the signal - it's all pretty cool.

What makes it weird is all the stuff about money and stardom, and the remarkable number of greats who have gone down in small plane crashes from Buddy Holly's group that included the Big Bopper and Eddie Valens, to Otis Redding and John Denver.

Electronic Musicians seem to do better. Maybe its because they're more likely to fly simulators.

Music is a divine gift. Some argue that the music of J.S. Bach is about as close to God as you'll get. Nobody argues that Beethoven is not another - or that his deafness rather than being a curse may have brought his music closer to a pure vision of sound and fury especially in the D minor Violin Concerto. In the evolution of western music - in the time of witch burnings and scourges, the augmented fourth (or diminished fifth) interval was regarded as the "Devil's tone."

It's the opening interval in "Maria." In the right context, "say it loud and it's music playing, say it soft and it's almost like praying."

Modern music like the piece that John Adams who lives here in Berkeley just wrote for the 911 disaster - "The Transmigration of Souls" combines technology and choral music. It was nominated for a grammy. Maybe it will win for the best Classical piece on Sunday. It is a bit spooky - naming the names of the missing. It is a bit etherial, and I'm certain the "devil's" chord shimmers in the score in a number of places.

It is a transcendental piece of music and worth hearing.

I may be going a bit far a field with my comments, but do spend some time in the music department here, Cherie, because some fairly basic concepts are well encapsulated in Teo's Body Music that pertain to diatonic scales (eight notes starting at the root and ending at the octave) and relate the musical tones to the seven chakras - and the ROY G BIV (red orange yellow green blue indigo and violet) of the rainbow.

It's all within and around us - the resonances that make the palette of musical expression - and also coincide with the visual realm and dance.

If there is one thing that Teo reminds me of whenever I listen to something new that he has shared, is that it's not just a spiritual thing in some dry academic sense, but it's also fun - and can make you want to dance and sing and add your own little voice to it.

I share your sense of wandering into a little oasis. I hope you come away from developing your workstation without getting eaten by your tools - if you get into building a collection of instruments working them into your computer and all the other basics.

My engineering expert suggested to me that you don't buy the stuff, you subscribe to it.

Undoubtedly your prayers - and you can add my own hope that you'll get what you're after - will be attainable. The trick is to work the medium and not to have the medium work you. All the equipment in the world can only realize what's in your own heart and mind. A lot of that depends on life experience and tapping into the aural tradition.

Welcome to Teo's Givnology forum. . .

Where positive ideas turn into creative juice!

Did I say "Eddie" Valens?

Duh. I meant Richie Valens.
I think I had him confused with my friend Eddie Salas who's living God willing.

Wow thanks very much, that is great advice! I took choir in high school and had piano lessons for awhile when I was younger, and I have unfortunately forgot some of it due to lack of pratice. I thought It would be a good idea to take up piano lessons again so I can refresh the basics in my mind. I went today and bought a book on digital audio recording, and it seems pretty good at explaining about all the hardware and software. I'll read up on it, and keep practicing on my software!! Thank you guys so much--- you are all wonderful!!!! Love and peace, Cherie