For example: we had some guests over while my dad was playing guitar, one of the guests just picked up a spare guitar and started playing with him.
Or [that one video of the two sax players.](https://youtu.be/1_9IMZcbKHQ)
They hadn’t spoke before and they just started making music with each other.
I’m sorry I’m not very good at describing it but how can a musician just start a duet without talking. It seems like magic.
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Number one – there are nuanced “rules” in various genres of music that provide a framework for improvisation. What the layman calls “jamming” without any seeming structure is instead musicians following a definite (if fluid) structure. Jazz, blues, and rock music (which are all VERY closely related) have a variety of implicit structures.
Second, trained musicians can hear a sequence of musical notes (a scale) and almost instantly recognize the chord behind it, and as a melody unfolds through several bars of music, the entire chord progression becomes obvious to the trained ear. Musicians in “jam session” mode establish a pattern of a dozen or two measures of chords following a fixed pattern, and once the musicians involved understand the pattern it becomes pretty easy to play a complementary part that sounds like it was specifically written for it.
It’s not magic. But it is usually years of study and practice, studying chords and scales and harmony theory, and practice in making music on one’s chosen instrument(s).
Music is arranged into certain patterns or ‘Keys’ If the musician knows what key you are playing in then they just have to play in the same key and the music is harmonious. Musicians with a good ear can even find the key by just listening to the song. There are only 12 keys. On guitar each of the keys arrange neatly into scales think of it like visual pattern this pattern can be moved up and down the neck of the guitar in the exact same shape thus producing all of music after memorizing a few patterns. This patterned based nature of music is why there are prodigies in music because once you have memorized these patterns there is no more knowledge really to learn, you can use those patterns to figure out all the more complex things like chords etc. I can teach you how to play guitar in about 20 minutes getting your fingers to actually make the shapes and move in time takes about 3 years to learn 10 years to master.
In simple terms, I like to think of music as having 2 parts; Rhythm and melody.
Rhythm is the easiest half. Somebody who knows NOTHING about music can still follow a rhythm and figure out a beat. It’s like dancing. You might not understand music, but a lot of people can still move to the beat! With that being said, as long as one person starts the song and sticks with their rhythm, the second person can easily jump into that.
Melody is the harder half, but not as complicated as one might think. There are many “keys” of music to play in. This is essentially a collection of notes that sound good together! Without going into complexities of harmonies and everything else, USUALLY you have to stick to the same key for an entire song or else it sounds like something is wrong. SO, as long as both musicians know the key, they basically just have to make sure to only play the notes in that key, then nothing can really go wrong. It can sound even BETTER if they understand the more complex aspects of music theory, BUT it will sound good with just sticking to these two halves.
The hardest part is probably picking up on what key the musician is playing. This requires a keen and practiced ear, understanding of the instrument and hand positions, or simply communicating it to the other person before hand.
if you know how the building blocks of music works, there’s a language to it, and those trained in music theory can speak in “phrases” and tie them together on the fly.
You can’t just rote play to do this, you have to get into the nuts and bolts and really understand intuitively how sound is put together and becomes music, master the nuances and patterns until you grasp the underlying “language.”
Once you do though, it’s really easy to anticipate where a song is going to go well enough to respond to it.
I’m just good enough at this to know that I’m bad at it, but also that it can be done.
Some people in this thread are talking about knowing the same music, or playing in the same key. These can help and deffo make a better player, but there is another way.
I dont know how to play in key, I only know a few chords and I certainly couldnt use this knowledge to play anything complex with anyone. I have a good few friends who are exactly the same.
What me and my friends do instead is literally play around and do what sounds good.
This is two of them just making stuff up on the spot, no planning, no idea about key or chord:
[https://soundcloud.com/theunfinishedcoslaw/neil-n-keith-wee-jam-230908](https://soundcloud.com/theunfinishedcoslaw/neil-n-keith-wee-jam-230908)
Its not the best thing in the world but it just happens naturally.
Lots of flowery language but no explanation:
Music is usually played in a certain key, that dictates a certain set of notes and chords that work together. (and to some extend gives certain notes special roles or functions) – Especially in most popular music, there are lots of patterns that are common. Chord progressions for instanced are standardized and shared throughout songs.
I–V–vi–IV is a super common chord progression (that can be played in any given key) that you can easily play together across instruments.
Given a key and a chord, there is a set of notes you can effectively play randomly and it’ll sound good. Combine this with common progressions between chords, you can play random notes and it’ll sound “good”.
ELi5: You know how some things taste good on pizza and some things don’t? Music is like that too. After you’ve had pepperoni pizza a lot of times, you know what it’s going to taste like before you take a bite. You can probably even imagine what it tastes like without taking a bite. And you know putting apple sauce on pizza is probably going to taste bad.
If you have a pizza party and say “we’re having pepperoni pizza” your friends that have had it before will know what it is without taking a bite, just like you.
Music is like that too. After you’ve listened to and played music a lot of times, you know what music sounds good together and what doesn’t, just like pizza and apple sauce. When you get together with your friends to make music sometimes it’s like the pizza party. If you say, “we’re making up a new song that sounds like baby shark” they’ll already know what to play because they know what baby shark sounds like.
ELi not 5: Music theory is the study of what notes work well together according to our brains. What note patterns, what beat and tempo patterns, how to transition from one pattern to another without it sounding like a train wreck. Patterns and transitions might even be completely different in different parts of the world (but that’s a whole nother fascinating discussion about language and our brains).
Most musicians pick up on those patterns intuitively without formal training. They find the patterns and learn what to expect since most music within genres follow the same patterns.
Without rehearsal, experienced musicians can often come together and improvise within genres because they know where the music is most likely going to go. There’s also an aspect of non verbal communication involved to indicate things like slowing down, stopping, hanging on a hook, repeating a section, etc…
You figure out what key someone is playing in and start goin’. It’s not terribly difficult.
It awed me too when I learned to play instruments a while back, that in order to play along with anyone, really you mostly need to abide by 2 things:
• The rhythm. This one is the easiest and most intuitive to understand; if you play out of rhythm, you will just sound like a mess.
• The key and scale. You may be familiar with the key which is the height of a sound (A, B, C, …, G); well they each have a number of scales (major scale, minor scale) that describe sets of keys that sound harmonious together. For instance, the major scale of C is made of C, E, and G. If you play on another key or scale than your friend, that too will sound like a mess.
How to find out? Well, when I play with someone playing an instrument I don’t play (for instance a cello), I’m unable to look at their fingers and recognize the notes they’re playing, therefore I can’t deduct the key and scale; so I would typically ask them “what key and scale should I play”, and they tell me, so that’s enough for me to play along.
However, your friend was a guitar player himself, so he probably looked at what chords the other guitar player was playing, and deduced the key and scale without needing to ask.
How did he recognize the notes being played? How did he deduct the key and scale? How did he know what would sound good with it? Years of learning and practice. Music is fairly technical and there’s a fair amount that there is no choice but to learn by heart. All the while training your body at operating those instruments with decreasing effort, thereby eventually having tons of fun jamming with friends and strangers on a whim. 😉
As a musician, the easiest way I can explain it is like tossing a ball. It’s easy to just a toss a ball to yourself (just like it’s easy to pick up your instrument and play) but when someone else joins in there is an immediate level of companionship and (nonverbal) communication involved.
The song will have a definite key (a key just dictates which notes are played and which notes do not get played to make a good sound) and tempo (basically the speed of the music playing). With those two things set, any experiences musician has everything they need to just play along with somebody.
And more specifically what they’re playing, assuming there’s two musicians, one would most likely be playing rhythm and would would be playing lead. Imagine the rhythm as just playing chords, a constant to exist as the foundation. And the lead is the main melody (like lead vocals or a guitar solo).
Hope that helped at all 🙂
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