Hello. I have been playing music for about 6 years. I've started with a guitar. Tried to play some written music, some riffs, melodies by ear. That was enough for me. Sometimes it sounded great, sometimes I couldn't play a piece without some errors, no matter how hard I tried. Actually, it was fun.
After 3 years of playing I've realized that I cannot really play music by ear. I used to think I could, but it was more of error and trial process. It was very hard for me to accept that. I've started studying music theory. There are many of good books but all they seemed to be useless for me! They contain very useful concepts and nice audio examples, but I simply could not connect those wonderful concepts with what I hear. I couldn't hear anything like a "minor triad", "dorian mode" in my favourite music. It was very frustrating. I thought that some ear training software could help, but there was no noticeable improvement. A year ago I've started to play a diatonic harmonica. Custom, fully-chromatic tuning (diminished). I've decided to become a good musician and all the frustration came to life again. But this time things changed and I've decided to go from the very basics. I took "Ready, aim, improvise" book recently and read the first chapter. Concepts were familiar. The first chapter includes many exercises but the main goal is to know and play 12 major keys and all the modes (ascending and descending). I've never thought it was so important.
It helps a lot! Just playing scales, modes and singing note names in my head (singing notes is my personal addition as I thought it could make sense). It is not exactly a beginner's book, though. Playing scales and modes one by one is hard. I can't play those scales fast without mistakes, can't progress through the book at my current skill level, but I can see great improvement from day to day. Sometimes I think like "Let's play something cool today" and then I choose a tonic, imagine key signature and just play it. I've never experienced something like this before. So inspiring!
Am I doing everything right? Maybe there are other some useful books or exercises which also could help me a lot?
What should I do next ?
Submitted October 26, 2018 at 02:28PM by NikTS https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/9rmsi1/best_books_and_exercises_for_selftaught_musician/?utm_source=ifttt