by Alice Jones

Created on: April 25, 2007

What is a natural?

We are all naturally inclined to understand music. From the moment we are alert inside of the womb, we are aware of the natural rhythm of the mother's heartbeat.

To learn how to play the basics of music, the first thing to do is to learn properly how to listen. Firstly we need to separate the sounds.

With rock and pop music this is not too difficult. A bass sound is distinctly different from a drum sound. A rhythm guitar is discernable from a lead guitar or a keyboard.

If classical music is preferable to you then listen to a piece and in your mind separate the strings from the woodwind instruments, the percussion from the brass. All have uniquely distinctive sounds. It is not necessary to understand the individual names of all the instruments. All we have to understand is a word called Timbre. Timbre is the overall sound that a group of instruments is interpreted by the listener.

Then choose. Which instrument or group of instruments (timbre) gives me the most pleasure to listen to? That is the one you should try and learn to play. To understand what you are going to play, just visualise yourself playing that instrument, and listen closely to it every time you listen to a piece of music that includes that type.

Try to be descriptive and explain what you are hearing. Write it down as a curved line as the tune goes up and down, flows and stops. Do not worry about it being perfect; just draw what you think you can hear. When you learn to read music, this will make more sense and become more natural to you.

A lot of instruments use chords. Chords are when more than one note is played at the same time to make a harmonic sound. Usually the note pairings are in groups of threes. It is possible that your favourite instrument mainly is played using singular notes, like a lead guitar for example, or a plucked harp. It is still useful to be aware of chords because playing a chord as a singular succession of notes can be quite beautiful to listen to.

Major and Minor chords are the two most important types of chord. It is not important to know how to play these yet, but being aware of them can be useful later. A major chord will almost always sound "happier" than a minor chord which can sound more subdued. Listen out for the differences when you listen to music. Until you have moved on to the next step do not worry if it is right or wrong, just try and see if you can tell the difference. You may surprise yourself that you do very well!

When you have got an instrument that you can play, just try out these 3 chords:
G C D. These are major chords. Or simply play the notes. The fundamental note of any chord (that is the overall sound that you hear) is always the same as the note it is named after. The harmonics of the chord are made up by other notes, but at the early stages it is not important to understand this. Listen to how the notes go together and experiment with different combinations and timings of these 3 notes. You can write a simple song around those 3 notes. This brings us back to rhythm. Once you can play 3 notes in a good rhythm, you have a begun to lay a solid foundation for the basics of music.

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