Picking out Arpeggio notes

[Koriantor]

So, I've been trying to recreate/deconstruct/study/etc. various different songs that I like. Whenever I'm trying to figure out what notes are being played, for the most part I'm able to figure them out... until I hit Arpeggios. I crash and burn when I'm trying to figure out fast notes or Arpeggios. Are there any tricks I can use or exercises I can practice to pick them out? What do you guys do to pick them out (or did to get good at it)?

And one other thing, although I can usually figure out long background chords (as in pads), I'd appreciate knowing a bit more about them too.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Play it once, find the first note. Rewind, play it, find the second note.

That's what I do. But it's *painful*.

[Rozovian]

If you know the key, you also know some notes that won't be in the arpeggios... unless it's jazz or jazz-y, where almost anything goes.

Learning to recognize some intervals will also help, and you'll work a lot faster already if you can tell if the arpeggio stretches over an octave or stays within one. When you're testing notes, if you can't find a sound that's close enough to the original, use an instrument with a clear sound, like a piano, as your ears will more easily pick up the pitch from the overtones.

[Koriantor]

So basically try and go by the key and crazy ammounts of replaying the arpeggio. Alright, thank ya!

[Omni-Psyence]

Yeah, establishing your key or mode will be very crucial. That's done usually by recognizing the tonic, root note, or whatever you want to call it. More often than not this is the note that your phrases will resolve to, and is usually used most often.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Best strategy usually is to figure out key, then what chord the apreggio is. Then you just arpeggiate the chord....there can be other little passing tones and what not in there, but if you for sure know what chord you're supposed to arpeggiate it shouldn't be too hard.

[ectogemia]

if you can't find a sound that's close enough to the original, use an instrument with a clear sound, like a piano, as your ears will more easily pick up the pitch from the overtones.

That's a hell of an idea that had never occurred to me. Smart thinkin'.

But yeaaaah, probably figure out the rhythm, then start plugging away. Having a good set of ears helps, and if you don't really have that skill yet, practice by transcribing or improvising. While doing either, THINK, don't just plunk at keys. You'll start to narrow the range of intervals you can distinguish from one another, you'll recognize harmonies, blah blah. If it's any consolation, a year ago I sucked at transcribing, but now, after a lot of improv and transcription, it's no biggie unless it's particularly crazy jazziness. You will get better. Just keep at it.

[SenPi]

dunno why this hasnt been suggested, but if its really fast, just throw it in a daw and slow it the fuck down?

Edit: While making sure to keep the integrity of the pitch that is.

[SnappleMan]

Tricks like slowing it down and looping it till you pick out every note will only get you so far, and they're time consuming and lame. The absolute BEST thing you can do for yourself in terms of music is constantly practice and improve your relative pitch. It's extremely simple to find the root note of an arpeggio, and if you have good relative pitch you just instinctively know the rest of the notes.

But it's much easier to use a stupid little shortcut and learn nothing in the process.

[ectogemia]

The absolute BEST thing you can do for yourself in terms of music is constantly practice and improve your relative pitch.

<3 <3

listen to the man.

[SnappleMan]

Also, while we're on the topic of silly tricks to help you learn and hear things, here are a few things I do:

For high pitched fast stuff, pitch shift it down an octave. It'll slow it down to half speed making it easier to hear, and the high pitched notes get transposed down so they're in an easier to hear register.

For low pitched stuff, pitch shift it up an octave (make sure you use time correction so your pitch shifting doesn't double the speed of the material). This works wonders for learning bass parts, it just brings them out so wonderfully. If the material is slow then you should not use time correction because it adds artifacts that muddy up the sound.

Phase inverting: If the song you're trying to learn is really full and busy, re-import it into your daw as a split stereo file (meaning the file gets split into two mono files). Pan them left and right, and reverse the phase of one of them, it'll start to sound just a little odd. Now, start to pan them closer together, the more you pan them both together, the more and more of the stuff going on in the middle will vanish. If you pan them both dead center (or one completely over the other), all you will hear will be whatever frequencies are not shared between the stereo field. This usually makes kick drums, snare drums, basses and vocals disappear.

EQ slotting: Insert an EQ band that's extremely narrow (as narrow of a Q as you can make it), grab it with your mouse (or get your hand on the GAIN and FREQUENCY pots if using hardware EQ) and drag it up to increase the gain to max and then move the frequency back and forth to sweep for the stuff you want to get rid of. Once you find where the instrument you want to mute is loudest, draw the gain down and some of that instrument will be turned down.

If you're using EQ along with phase reversing you gotta be careful to apply the EQ completely equally to both channels (I'll make a preset of the EQ setting and apply it to both tracks, or send them both to an AUX bus and EQ the bus). If you don't do that, the phase trick will not work because the frequencies will not be equal between the left and right channels.