Playing an Ocarina from a chord sheet

[Deb]

Please Help.

Having only ever played wind instruments I am chord challenged (though I understand the basics and can play chords on a piano).

I want to learn to play my ocarina from a chord sheet -- just how to jam with a group of musicians using only the guitar chords to guide me.  I would love advice on how to do this.  Or sites that help or curriculum that I could purchase to gain this skill

[ubizmo]

Hello Deb,

You want to improvise, or to work out the melody from a chord sheet?  For improvisation, I personally find that it's better to think in terms of scales, rather than chords, but the guitar chords will tell you which scales to use, and how to use them.  So, for example if I'm playing a song that's in the key of C major, then of course I can improvise in the C major scale safely.  When there's a chord change to F major, as there generally is, I improvise in the F major scale, which is almost the same, except now the B becomes Bb, and a B natural will sound off.  Then when it goes to G7, as it often does, the Bb goes back to B natural, and the notes are the same as the C major scale, because the F# in the G scale is flatted to F natural for the dominant 7th.  As you play with scales, you get a feel for which notes in the scale give you which kind of feel.  For example, playing a 2nd, or 9th, note is a D in a C major scale.  Although it's not in a C major chord, it adds an element of tension that resolves either back down to the root or up to the 3rd.  For most popular songs, the scale changes involve just one or two notes being flatted or sharped, but some get a little trickier.

Ubizmo

[Deb]

Thanks that definitely helps!

[Spatolo]

Time to work on that. Well what I would like to do is not really improvising, rather, I'm going to find out a decent melody based on a certain chord progression.
I would beg for an hint to start with, that is, the key of the tune, which I don't know.

(eh).


The chord progression is: A minor, F, G, E.  In which key those chords would fit nicely?

The instrument on which I listened to that is mostly capable of playing in C and G. Since there's a "F" chord, I would tend to discard the G, so "C" would be the answer. But it's just a lame opinion. Could it be right, Ubizmaster?

Thanks!

[Namu]

If you're getting into jazzy chords, it gets a little more involved as to which scales (or modes) work with which chords...hey, that's an idea! Jazz ocarina!

Anyway, you might want to investigate pentatonic scales (five notes, as the name suggests).

Ever heard kids playing in an Orff ensemble in school? Xylophones, sometimes recorders etc...

The way they do it is using pentatonic scales...because THERE ARE NO WRONG NOTES!

The easiest example of what a pentatonic scale sounds like is to play just the black keys on the piano. If you think of each note in a scale as a number, you'll leave out scale degrees 4 and 7 (those are the "clashy" notes).


In C major, it looks like this:

1   2   3  4   5   6   7    8

C   D   E  F   G   A   B   C

Happy jamming!