Oldscruggsfan
Well-known member
Topping my laundry list of musical perplexity is song intros. Coming from a bluegrass background, I have little or no context as to chord melody intros. Bluegrass generally just jumps right in. My only frames of reference are (A) Gospel, (B) Southern Rock, and (C) That oooh, oooh, oooh thing that Brudda Iz did so well. Let me set the stage to better explain my perspective:
When attending church services as a youth, I recall the upright pianist ALWAYS kicking things off by playing the final 1-2 bars of whatever song the congregation had been instructed to turn to in the hymnal. Having never been any nearer a piano than whatever pew I was in at the time, my young brain presumed that such a practice had been established solely to give even the most musically-disinclined congregant the chance to get a feel for the correct key. My old brain has since clung to that notion like a hair in a biscuit. Meanwhile, Southern Rock intro riffs are distinctive and clear and they're not necessarily those final 2 bars.
Regardless of musical genre, is there either an accepted practice or a theory-based method of knowing what the chord melody for any given tune's intro should be, or does it simply boil down to finding the sheet music and playing precisely what the composer wrote?
When attending church services as a youth, I recall the upright pianist ALWAYS kicking things off by playing the final 1-2 bars of whatever song the congregation had been instructed to turn to in the hymnal. Having never been any nearer a piano than whatever pew I was in at the time, my young brain presumed that such a practice had been established solely to give even the most musically-disinclined congregant the chance to get a feel for the correct key. My old brain has since clung to that notion like a hair in a biscuit. Meanwhile, Southern Rock intro riffs are distinctive and clear and they're not necessarily those final 2 bars.
Regardless of musical genre, is there either an accepted practice or a theory-based method of knowing what the chord melody for any given tune's intro should be, or does it simply boil down to finding the sheet music and playing precisely what the composer wrote?