Melodies, Transposing, And National Anthem Disasters
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- čas přidán 23. 07. 2024
- Changing keys in the middle of The Star Spangled Banner by accident = BAD. Knowing how to play melodies by ear and transpose them on the spot = GOOD, DESIRABLE, and all around SWEEEEET.
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Aimee Nolte - Zábava
I am a jazz and popular music piano teacher myself. I love the natural and open way you bring your stuff across. Your students must be very fond of you. You are doing a fantastic job and I find your vids very inspiring, thank you very much.
Lol, 15-20% is VERY generous...
Thanks so much for all that down home sincere advice. You’re a gem!
Hello Aimee!
I really like your videos.
Big hug from Brazil!
It's a lot of fun following these videos, thanks!
Yoooo it's Matt! Smash and music nerds unite
lol hey Nathan! Soon I'll showcase a music app I'm making - it's good to know there's at least one smashing musician out there. ;)
Ah, I finally found the missing chord to my ongoing orig jazz-ballad! I watched 5-6 of your videos today and the "point and sing" video hit home somehow. I took up my mini keyboard while inspired and figured it out. Now I can finish up that song and upload it later. It's a bang-channel you have. Now I'm gonna watch this video. Many stars for your channel.
I do music, web design, photography and image manipulations and even some pretty good kitchen stunts most of the time and one thing I've noticed is that peolpe who don't engage actively in stuff you take in with your senses just lack the tools to process a lot of stimuli you take for granted that you'd presume everybody just has to notice because if you were deprived of the ability to experience this all of a sudden you'd be completely miserable, right? :D
It just flies right over their head and they should be able to notice the sonic boom ... but noooooooooo haha! I'm just happy my own senses are in pretty good shape after many decades on Planet Earth! :D
And I love the channel!
Golly gosh a really helpful explanation thanks.
I think for a community ball game modulating the melody is a quick and kind of nice change.
But it still was a great lesson.
Your videos are so informative, Aimee. Thanks for sharing. By the way, you know your way around a piano pretty good. LOL.
So grateful! We love what you are doing. So glad you have the paypal link; worked like a charm. Reciprocity being the second pillar of ethics. My wife and I had fun with The Star Spangled Banner" She has perfect pitch and I balance the act. That f# used to kill me singing to her in the car.
Okay, so I searched and found the July 4 Weaverville Rodeo. You ROCK! Yes, a low key but a very reverent and respectful performance of the National Anthem despite the cheering and "bombs." :) Thank you for for foregoing the ubiquitous pentatonic melismas everyone seems to be so fond of these days. AND a great bio. Class of '95, who knew.
+mdmellis ❤️🙌🏼🙏🏼
well said! need to play things in all keys.
Now I'm kidna tempted to write a reharm of this anthem with constand key changes.
Well at least you got me improvising on Row the boat :) First thing I tried was playing it as a cannon (Alla octava of course, keeping it simple) but isn't it interesting that the arpeggiated Cmajor going down really yearns for an FMaj7 on the e? Or is it F9 in the previous part before resolving to Am?Maybe that's what makes the charm of this little melody. You should do a Jazz harmonization of row the boat that would be fantastic.
Obviously that singer did not watch your "You Can TOTALLY Sing Up High" video ;)
+Michael LaFlamme lol
I lived in Vegas for about 20 years. Some of the show type bands I worked and even impersonator shows would get a new singer and a song I had been playing 6 nights a week all of sudden had to be transposed. At first it made me very nervous but as a result now it's not a problem at all. It seems that a lot of challenges I overcame was due to the pressure of gigging every night with different people. I believe it forced me to learn things I wouldn't have forced myself to faster.
I have never heard anyone cover this aspect of piano accompaniment playing and singing I was always curious why folks get stuck on such high pitch notes, and not able to come back down, some do this when singing a capella as well. Actually most people never notice if a wrong note is played in music usually only the musically trained people will spot it and not always them either. As sometimes an incorrect note can actually sound great even if in wrong key, personally speaking of course.
I learned a valuable lesson about interval
she did a super brilliant fix imho :-)
Thx for all !
Do you have perfect pitch ?
So much struggling with the anthem that I tend to cringe when someone tries to sing it. Either the lyrics escape them or those dreaded high notes are not reachable. I would say, as a casual listener, that I would rather have her step it down mid-way to something she can do than go down in complete flames trying to hit a Mariah Carey note. I just want the singer to get through it without a major incident.
"Ever hear Men At Work?" Kevin Bacon "I'm looking for work. Well where do they work?" Chris Penn from Footloose
Has anyone ever done a good job of adding more notes to the Star Spangled Banner?..........do you generally like it when singers add a lot of notes to the SSB?
Aimee you are crazy good to randomly pull out "Who Can It Be" by Men At Work and nail the notes and melody. A little bit flat...paleeese!😀
ha, yes i remember doing so many gigs and on the odd occasion someone makes a right howler that's so obvious....and no one in the audience notices and you tend to think " why am i doing this"
I think if I had been there, I would have been looking around when she did the impromptu key change, to see how many others noticed something musically inconsistent had just happened. Maybe they would have been looking around too, or cringing.
Is all about music education which is something that many people ignore. I have my National Anthem in the key of Bb and I like the way it sounds
I tried the star sprangled banner on guitar and I got all the way through to part two. I'm not American so I rarely hear this far into the song but I kind of know it when I hear it played properly. Funny thing is that the first half of the second part I jammed up because it turned into "when I need you" made famous by Leo Sawyer long time ago. NOT a favorite btw! Then the second half of part two sound like "We wish you a merry christmas" haha ... or is it the other way around? Anyways, I nailed the F# but there was a minor internal war in my brain before I dared to hit the note and a relief when I was right in avoiding the F! :D
Great video! Are you using a new camera?
Your videos are great. And your musical knowledge and playing are great. So I though t I would tell you this.
I once head Eric Clapton play Tears in Heaven on TV for some special event. I know he played the same music (key) as I play the song on guitar. His tuning , chords and fingering were all the same as I have seen hm play on other occasions The song is too high for me but on this night I instantly realized that for some reason Clapton sang it in a lower key or harmony. Not every note was changed but some were, thus changing the melody. I believe an E note on an E chord was changed to a lower B.
There are quite alot of songs where it´s done this way... it doesn´t always have to be the exact same note, just one that fits/ harmonizes :)
you can hear that in many live sessions of many musicians... there are often slight changes here and there but they are still "right"...i don´t know if "complementary notes" would be the right term, but i´ll just call them that :D
Westlife - stand up on the key change!
"she had a fix" lol
+thatwasprettyneat 😂😂
Is that a stain or is it the mic? :) SUBBED :)
+The Spectator ITS A STAIN!!! Ahhhhhh. lol thanks for the sub!
Hey Aimee (or whomever else wants to respond), I'm wondering about something, just for the sake of argument. And bear in mind that I'm not nearly as advanced as you all (yet!)
If "anthem girl" (or anyone, for that matter) did want to start "too high", and yet also avoid going out of range at the "and the rockets red glare" part, what would be so wrong about having an accompanist play a lovely key modulation at that point, to make the singer's "awkward" transition sound acceptable and perhaps even... marvelous? I just tried it with this very video and it worked beautifully. At the 1:36 mark, when you start demonstrating how the girl changed to another key, I started playing some strings chords on my cheap-o keyboard to accompany you (you start out in G Major). I wanted to see if I could modulate tastefully to the new key and make your "weird" change sound good. And it worked. Since you were changing to Ab Major, I simply played a big, lovely Eb7 chord when you sang the last syllable of what would be the word "...stream-ING", which then set up the Ab Major perfectly. Your formerly "awkward", random-key "...and the rockets red glare" now sounds fabulous!
Same thing at 15:50, when you go from C Major to D Major. Just pop an A7 in there before the new key (and change the "-ING" of "stream-ING" from a C note to maybe a C-sharp note [during the A7], or else just hit the E note again), and voilà, you're all primed for the new D Major key, and again it continues beautifully.
Forgive me if you've already thought of this and have long rejected it as form of "cheating", with regard to the anthem. I just thought, if anyone would be amenable to the idea of utilizing clever modulation in such a situation, to accommodate the preferences of a singer, seems like it would be jazz enthusiasts. 😊
Of course of course. Could be done.
Awesome! Thanks, Aimee! I mean, sure, it's always great to hear someone nail the anthem, straight. But if a person has a nice voice but a narrow range, then, as long as the accompanist modulates in a pleasing and interesting way, I'd actually rather hear a version like that than to hear the person struggle in a single key just because "them's the rules". 😊 Cheers.
👍🏽Aimee
No discussion of "National Anthem Disasters" would be complete without reference to Olympic track & field champ Carl Lewis. Research it at your own risk. 😂
omnipop that was a disaster
row row row your boat in locrian
Are you sure she changed keys? It sounded to me like she just lowered it an octave.
It didn't sound too bad, lol.
What's wrong with a key change, sometime it sets and changes the tone and mood of a song
no it doesn't, in fact it would ruin the mood of a song
+jp old interesting idea. I would really like to see someone who could pull off a tastefully done key change in the national anthem.
But like you said in the video, if there is a background instrument playing along with the singing, it will sound weird.
Aimee Nolte Music Thankfully, many of us are musically illiterate enough that we're just super impressed that a teenager is willing to subject herself to the scrutiny of the musically pure. On cue, we clap happily at the end in support of her and her family. But, that doesn't mean we're not sympathetic to the pain it may have caused others...then again...
The kids a survivor...She got through the song! Not easy to do.
right or wrong...haha.
why is there both an F flat and a regular F in the same Melody?
+Richard L F natural and F sharp. That's how we refer to them, Richard. Melodies are no respecters of color on the piano! :) there are some good reasons for it but too much to text. Start by making sure you understand major scales. All of them. It may become clear to you by doing that. 😍
That poor child soloist learned that not everyone has Mariah Carey's vocal range. (An earlier post was spot on referring to Carl Lewis' version. It was as if someone 'goosed the soprano'...)
seems like creativity to me .. :)
+Elan Frenkel yes! Let's call it that! :)
Elan Frenkel modulation
But in all seriousness something Bill Evans said was that a sensitive non-musician is the best judge of music because they are not so entrenched in the technical details. So in this case, musicians are probably all freaking out about the change of key, but in the actual sound world free of 'rules' , most of the audience carried on not knowing about the concept of a 'key'.
Great video. I think the anthem girl was inexperienced and desperate and did the only thing possible, she switched key in the middle of the song and sang the melody relative to the new key. She probably ain't gonna get the gig again. It was the best instant clever way to cope the unfolding disaster. An octave down would have been quite bad cause the audience would realise that. I think more in terms of the melodic scale when I find melodies and if it isn't in the scale, then it's a semi-tone down or up.
+rawstarmusic you probably nailed it
9:24 Pun
oh just say it, Amy. It was an earsore, wasn't it.
Men At Work, yessss!
5% at best would know the difference
What do the USA and Canada Anthems have that the British Anthem doesn't? (the melody, not the words)................no answer?..............give up yet?
Isnt the G-flat in the star strangled banner an indication that it does'nt stick to C-major?
So are you not already changing keys when you sing it anyway? In that case did she forget to change back or change to the wrong note rather than change unintentionally.
+David Bean If it's being performed in C Major, I don't view that brief G-flat note (during the equally brief D Major chord) as "changing" from the key of C Major. It's just a lovely passing note / passing chord (C Major's "II" chord, after all), leading to C Major's "V" chord (G Major). In other words, the key center always feels like C, to me anyway. Hopefully more qualified people than I - like Aimee and others - will chime in though. 😊
Aimee, as you know much better than I, this is but one example/way that this revered song gets butchered by amateurs and professionals alike. Changing keys, re-writing the melody, trying to make it a rhythm and blues song, a love song, etc. Why can't people just sing it straight.? Singers can still make it their own without trying to make it something other than what it is. For example, Whitney Houston''s rendition at the Super Bowl years ago - excellent in my opinion - her own, but true to the spirit of the song. You are a jazz musician, but I bet my piano you don't try to change the Star Spangled Banner into a jazz standard when you perform it. I doubt you scat sing it. You can tell this is a pet peeve. Sorry for going on.
...or if it's at a NASCAR race, changing it into a country western tune. :)
Ain't it the truth? It's really not that hard to sing correctly if we do what Aimee says and put it in the right key to start with. And I'm no singer.
15 to 20 percent? Maybe 50 years ago. A pile of Americans have no idea Jazz was and is the only music to be invented in the United States. Americans overall are highly ignorant when it comes to musical knowledge past the level of soundbite.
Should be sung in the original key it was written in. The trick is to find the right person to perform it - someone with a wide enough range. Right?
From 'outside' America - you are being kind to credit 20% of your country folk with being aware... But fear not beautiful lady the rest of the 'Western World' is right there with America. Dumbed down with diet & TV - You however, are looking and noticing...Peace
+Darryl Hetherington 😂😔
Word. 😂
she was 16ish... give her a break... love your uploads ;)
I'm probably going to get flamed by American patriots, but The Star Spangled Banner is a really bad choice for a national anthem for exactly this reason. An anthem, almost by definition should be a song that anyone can sing along with.
I'm pretty sure the melody is a Brittish drinking song.