I talked to a friend a little last night about stuff, and he was trying to learn to play the Final Fantasy IV Boss theme (Culex from SMRPG). Tonight I had a friend over talking about guitar stuff too.
I mentioned I had an eleven year old Casio keyboard (CTK-480) but it looks BRAND new cause it's gotten less than <10 hours of play. Got it quite some time ago as a gift and never took any lessons... just played with it here and there but never anything that remotely sounded like music.
I mentioned I could never play the thing, and I can't understand sheet music and all that jazz and could never get into it. He started playing a few songs and I tried to get him to play some game music. He played the openings to some random stuff by just kinda hitting notes til he found the right tune. I thought it was amazing and tried to play the tunes he was playing. While I can't keep up with the correct speed (I'm a little too slow), I know the tunes. I only played as far as he did though.
Then he played the Song of Time from Zelda: OOT. At the very end though, he got it wrong. I asked him to play it again. And again. Then I tried to play the last four notes... I found the right one. He was doing E-Flat > C-Sharp F-Sharp C-Sharp... and instead of F-Sharp he should've used just an F. We popped in the game to check, and sure enough that was it.
He made some comment about "playing by ear" and that the difference between an F and an F-Sharp wasn't much. I said I just know the tune. He tried to get me to do what he was doing, and "guess" the notes to various games. I tried Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Mega Man, the Culex theme.. and I actually DID it. It didn't take long to figure out after screwing with it. If I could just find the first few notes, I could figure it out pretty easily. Granted, I didn't play whole songs, little bits of each maybe 15-30 seconds long... but I was still shocked. I managed to get the first 15 seconds or so of Culex's theme figured out in about two minutes. This whole music ordeal happened in the course of about an hour or so.
Why did he say "play by ear?" I mean, it's not like I can hear a tone and immediately say "oh well that's a G and that's a B and this is an F" or anything. Is it good? Does it mean nothing? I don't know much about music. Does this mean I have musical talent of some sort? I mean, I know it's not like tomorrow I'll be performing a concert or anything, I guess I'm just asking is this stuff that usually takes practice or time, or something that comes natural to a lot of people (mainly those who suck at music).
I wouldn't have thought much about it if it was just me playing with it... but this guy plays guitar and has for years and a few other instruments once in a while for fun, and I called him on a wrong note by doing something involving my ears... and I have no idea what that means or if it even means anything.
So the question:
Does this mean I have musical talent of some sort?
I mentioned I had an eleven year old Casio keyboard (CTK-480) but it looks BRAND new cause it's gotten less than <10 hours of play. Got it quite some time ago as a gift and never took any lessons... just played with it here and there but never anything that remotely sounded like music.
I mentioned I could never play the thing, and I can't understand sheet music and all that jazz and could never get into it. He started playing a few songs and I tried to get him to play some game music. He played the openings to some random stuff by just kinda hitting notes til he found the right tune. I thought it was amazing and tried to play the tunes he was playing. While I can't keep up with the correct speed (I'm a little too slow), I know the tunes. I only played as far as he did though.
Then he played the Song of Time from Zelda: OOT. At the very end though, he got it wrong. I asked him to play it again. And again. Then I tried to play the last four notes... I found the right one. He was doing E-Flat > C-Sharp F-Sharp C-Sharp... and instead of F-Sharp he should've used just an F. We popped in the game to check, and sure enough that was it.
He made some comment about "playing by ear" and that the difference between an F and an F-Sharp wasn't much. I said I just know the tune. He tried to get me to do what he was doing, and "guess" the notes to various games. I tried Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Mega Man, the Culex theme.. and I actually DID it. It didn't take long to figure out after screwing with it. If I could just find the first few notes, I could figure it out pretty easily. Granted, I didn't play whole songs, little bits of each maybe 15-30 seconds long... but I was still shocked. I managed to get the first 15 seconds or so of Culex's theme figured out in about two minutes. This whole music ordeal happened in the course of about an hour or so.
Why did he say "play by ear?" I mean, it's not like I can hear a tone and immediately say "oh well that's a G and that's a B and this is an F" or anything. Is it good? Does it mean nothing? I don't know much about music. Does this mean I have musical talent of some sort? I mean, I know it's not like tomorrow I'll be performing a concert or anything, I guess I'm just asking is this stuff that usually takes practice or time, or something that comes natural to a lot of people (mainly those who suck at music).
I wouldn't have thought much about it if it was just me playing with it... but this guy plays guitar and has for years and a few other instruments once in a while for fun, and I called him on a wrong note by doing something involving my ears... and I have no idea what that means or if it even means anything.
So the question:
Does this mean I have musical talent of some sort?
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