What you need to know to start?

[dementedchord]

Those are two wonderful insights!

Elsewhere in this forum we have seen mystiques applied to other aspects of recording, e.g. "What is the secret of mastering?".

There is a tendency to endow the poorly understood with arcane and mystical qualities.

This does no-one any favours; it tends to view musical specialists as some form of awesome elite in possession of a unique and magical gift that lesser mortals dare not essay, and forms a justification for capitulation ("I'm no good, I can't possible do what they are doing").

i agree whole heartedly... unfortunately the converse is also true...

a couple of barr chords... Maudio profools light... and a 57... all ya need to be a star... hell if ya join a good BBS ya dont even have to RTFM...

 

[Hakea]

Anyway, SED's right; you can develop your ear. And singing is the best way to do it.

+1 to that. I've even joined a local choir to make sure I do actually sing every week, and keep my motivation and interest up. I'm still getting my foot in the door, but singing is a brilliant help all the way through - learning scales, note names, positions, etc etc - sing 'em all as you go. And if you can't, or won't, sing it severely limits your opportunities as a songwriter and musician. For a start, you're playing two instruments at the same time, always handy....

as to interval recognition... in colleg for those that were having trouble with this... they recommended finding simple melodies that start with that interval and memorize that sound... ie the old startrek theme starts with a min7th...

+ 1

I seem to have lost the link to a site that had a good list, but Google soon found me another one. They have a song list, but of course you still need to check where in the song the target interval is. I expect there's better lists around :

Intervals

The ones that always stick most easily in my head are Twinkle Twinkle (perfect fifth) and Somewhere over the Rainbow (a whole octave in one word!)

Cheers,

Chris