Question about performing with other musicians.

[gore234]

In the process of creating a piece of music with other musicians,  a pianist/keyboardist such as myself only knows how to play the piano and can not read what another musician is doing such as a guitar player.  I cant read the guitar fret board so I Have about 3 options of ways to play along with a guitar player:

I either need to be able to play by ear

I either need to know how to play the guitar or whatever other instrument my band mate is playing.

Or I communicate ideas by talking about music theory with the other musicians.  Such as finding the Key and knowing each note.

The option that I rely on is the 3rd option because for one thing, I have never played by ear and I don't think its logical to try to hear all the 16th notes and try to pick them out exactly.  I don't play the guitar.

So as I like to use the 3rd option, I also like to write things down on paper or on music notation software.  It turns out that most people that I play along with don't know much music theory and don't want to write down anything. 

As I force my way on them because it's my only method to learn their ideas, I feel they get bored and we lose the enthusiasm that we use to have. 

If I can't play by ear and learning the guitar takes to long, how do I better the situation that I'm in.  How do I get my fellow musicians to see where I'm coming from.  Do I need to take the role of leader if my fellow musicians are less skilled in music theory?  Do I need people that are supportive of my style of working?

Is playing by ear a HUGE need?  am I over looking this ability?  Or are my band mates actually lazy for not doing things by paper/music notation software?

Do I have options that I don't know about?  I would greatly appreciate feedback and advice on this subject.

[avanchnzel]

Outside the classical world, playing by ear and improvisation are almost a survival skill. My brother has a diploma in music and is a guitarist, and thanks to his diploma he knows what I'm talking about when I prattle on about theory. The thing is, he never actually needs to use it. Often the music is really simple (if it were in strophic form, for instance) with simple chord progressions and a manageable key. It's really easy to follow along on a piano if you know the usual tricks.

But basically, you need to play by ear. Don't go on about the theory; it's a dead end if they can't explain what they're doing in your terms. What you can start off with is by listening to them play and writing some form of rough notation for you to refer to, like key and Roman numeral chords. You can find out where you are on the keyboard by asking, and if they don't know what notes are, guess away on the piano until you hit the same note. Embellish your chords rhythmically as fit (notate rhythms if you want), and add other little things. If you need to keep track of someone's melody I find that writing it in cipher notation is a very fast and convenient way.

Being able to play by ear has nothing but benefits for you. Supplementing listening to recordings to learning new music will tremendously reduce the time you take to learn a piece. The industry favours flexible musicians who can learn music at the drop of a hat or even without sheet music altogether.

One more thing about the guitar. If you do need to know what notes they are playing and can't tell that by ear (via perfect pitch or hocus pocus), read the fretboard. Guitars usually have six strings and at standard tuning are E A D G B E from lowest to highest. If you're watching someone play guitar that will be from top string to bottom. One fret is a semitone up, and if you really get to know the instrument you won't have to count the frets.

And you don't have to listen to ALL the 16th notes, clearly not all of them are important. Based on the tone colour alone you can identify the tonality (pentatonic major/minor, modal etc) and note that down. To figure out the chords ignore aux notes, passing (beware the accented passing), suspensions, appoggiaturas, and so on.

[gore234]

The music genre my group is playing is progressive metal and there is the saying that metal is classical music with electricity.

I see your points that playing by ear and improvisation are important and I've seen many jazz players perform in front of crowds who were able to solo on the spot and they knew the chord progression of the pieces.

Also 99 percent of music uses the Major/minor scales and simple chord progressions such as the 1/4/5 chords or 2/5/1. 

For the metal genre, you have several different sub genres that can sound totally different from each other.  The neoclassical shred type of metal and the progressive metal will have more classical music influence where other types of metal can sound like a wall of sound/too heavy for most ears to appreciate or like.

In classical music, we can have a lot more structure than a 16 bar blues jam would have.  In classical music, we also have atonality in some pieces and a lot of symmetrical scales such as the whole tone and half-whole diminished scale.   

For composing a solo piano piece, a virtuoso pianist can create very complicated runs and it wouldn't be something that people would be able to improvise over because it probably already has to many notes or has too many chord changes to allow for experimentation on the spot.   

When Metal tries to incorporate the style of virtuosic classical music into its own, the song writing process has to incorporate the song writing process that classical musicians use.  This is complicated when the musicians have different skill sets and strengths. 

Your advice for me to learn to read the fret board is one solution if I cant play by ear but this solution is also a long process to learn and also isn't 100 percent accurate.  I see myself making a lot of mistakes with this solution.  My hearing is getting better over time but I've never thought it was good enough to use when learning hard pieces.  I can pick out simple things by ear like jingle bells or mary had a little lamb.

You may be right about the theory being a dead end if I cant explain it to them but I feel either they will need to become better musicians or I'll need to find people who understand music theory as good or better than me.  The music making process with other people will always be slow for me if I cant find some better way to do things.

It could be that most successful metal bands utilize music notation programs and know their theory because I don't see how playing by ear works 100 percent of the time.

[avanchnzel]

Successful metal bands often have people like my brother.

But by all that is holy I absolutely love progressive metal (and some variants of death metal) in addition to classical music.

Since this is not conventional music you will not find conventional chord progressions in prog metal, and there are basically very few usual tricks unless you're focusing on the style of a certain band. And the various bands across prog metal vary a lot from Animals as Leaders to Dream Theater. I've never tried playing prog metal on the piano before but the thought of it actually is daunting, so I can only say good luck and advise that a jazz background would help a lot, but it's not my area.

And beware time signatures. On some metal forums they're still arguing about the time signatures on some Animals As Leaders music.

As for playing by ear I'm afraid I have no idea how you can improve your ear for music; I have always had perfect pitch and an easy life (most of the time, until transposition is demanded) identifying keys and chords. I find at least that familiarising myself with recordings of a difficult piece (ie listening to it over and over) helps me learn it faster and better.

Hope this helps.