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Jaden Kim teaches musicians how to map melodies to scale-degree numbers (1-7) so you can play songs like Happy Birthday directly from your head on guitar. Most musicians skip this step and struggle to improvise or compose.
Jaden Kim teaches musicians how to map melodies to scale-degree numbers (1-7) so you can play songs like Happy Birthday directly from your head on guitar. Most musicians skip this step and struggle to improvise or compose.
Hello, everybody. Good to see you. Today, I want to talk about this simple skill that 99% of musicians cannot do. And that skill is this. Or maybe. How about this? Or maybe this? Basically, the ability to play nursery rhymes and simple songs inside your head, directly onto the fretboard of your guitar, without making mistakes. I did actually add an extra note in Happy Birthday, so I'm not perfect either. But the bottom line is that most people, if you were to ask them to try to play a song from their childhood, they would fumble around and try to find the right notes. And so you might be asking, like, why is this so difficult? And also, why am I able to do this? Because it's actually not such an easy skill if you don't have the right framework of thinking about it. Let's take a song like the. The Happy Birthday song, right? It all starts with what this channel is about, which is being able to understand and improvise and compose music using numbers. So anytime that I'm thinking about one of these songs in my head, for example, happy Birthday, it's going happy birthday to you Already in my mind, I have an association with these numbers, and I'm aware that Happy Birthday starts on, but I just. I know that that is note 5, 6, 7, 1.
That feels like home.
And just to let you guys know, these songs are not things that I've, like, practiced super extensively and planned out for this video. The idea is that anything that you can hear, you can play, as long as you can go slow enough. So starting to hear the first note of the song is kind of a whole video in and of itself. But the reason that you're not able to do this is because you. You're not thinking in terms of the tonal octave. You're not thinking. You're not seeing the whole picture at once. You're just saying, okay, this is kind of my starting note. And maybe it's here or here. Birth. Okay? When I'm thinking about it, I have a map in my head, so I.
Know that I'm going, five, five, six, five. And I hit next note, duh. I know that that's 1, 7, 5, 5, 6, 5, duh. 2, 1, 5, 5, da. That's the same octave, duh, 5, 5, 5, da, da, 5, 3, 1, 5, 3, 1, 7, 6.
And the next one is. I know that that's. That's no, 4, 4, 6, 4, 4.
3, duh, 1, 2, 1.
So when you're able to start thinking about music in these frameworks with whatever melody note that you're on. It belongs somewhere on this map of seven notes. Once you're able to start getting that down, any song that you've ever heard in your whole life suddenly becomes your. Your library of sounds to choose from. What's another one that I have? It's if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. And the great thing is that I can start on any note. I don't even have to be hearing the right key in my head because I just know that if. If you're happy, that starts on five to one. So I'm not even going to play in the same key that I just sang it in. I'm just going to play here. Five. Five.
Two, three, two, three, four, four, four, four. Duh. Six, four, four, three, three, three, three, two. One. Two, three, two, two, two, one. Seven.
Duh. Five, six, seven, one. Cool. So learn your numbers. Let me know if you guys have any other questions and feel free to join us over on school where we are. I'm showing people how to do this every day and answering any questions you might have. Take care of.
