Typing on a keyboard vs playing on a guitar?

Harmony & Theory
#1

Why is it so easy to type exactly what I want on the keyboard, I don’t explicitly know where each key is, but after a few weeks using it my fingers/finger (I’m a singer finger pecker) know exactly where to go, It’s sub conscious.

Is it because I knew the theory before learning the layout?

The guitar is essentially the same, various information to create a sentence, why is it so much harder to talk on the guitar vs a keyboard?

Would learning the theory of music before an instrument make is as easy as typing?

#2

There is only one of each key on a PC keyboard.

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#3

So if we had just one of each note, say a 7 note perscale fretboad, would we learn as fast?

Is keeping yourself to 7 note or otherwise limited scale going to produce results like our affnity for a keyboard?

#4

I think the reason why so many of us guitarists play mostly random stuff is because of the excess of options to play the same note in the same octave.

In contrast, I have never seen a keyboard of brass player being unaware of what they’re playing. I’m sure there should be a trumpet player out there playing a lot of symmetric stuff but I guess they naturally tend to play with more focus on harmonic content.

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#5

What you guy think about baby Babbling?

#6

Your tounge is the pick and your left hand the mouth. Or vice versa.

#7

That would perhaps highlight a massive out of order classic way of teaching?

You have to teach on one string. Up down.

Learn the up down on a single string. Thats it. That is everything you need.
The jumps on a single string is relitive to the keyboard.

#8

If you spend time jumping around on a single string, you will get a feel for musical jumps and musical communication

#9

What you’re describing - a single linear string with one of each note all along it - is effectively… a piano keyboard.

And it turns out that it’s much easier to play the piano at a decent level than it is to play a guitar.

One of the big differences between the guitar and a keyboard (both typing and musical) is that on the keyboard there is a clear sign of what each key is, in addition to there being only one of each. It allows the brain to learn what’s where to the point of being able to do it automatically without having to think. It’s much harder to do that on guitar.

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#10

Secretarial typing is not looking at the keyboard and having each key assigned to one specific finger, plus rules like no more than one key per hand (for SHIFT). So it’s not so easy to type well. And then, it becomes a race, where there are lots of typing speed tests.

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#11

https://youtube.com/shorts/UnPDFTnYJIE

#12

Thats right, learn the single string up n down and you’ll learn the shifts across the strings.

#13

i think this might not be what you intended to link…

#14

That is what I ment to link, close your eyes, bunch of fun nonsense.

Quite hard to capture, random noise. thats live.

Its called vr chat, you can find rooms just like this. It does sound like this but you can have a convo.

#15

You have way more practice spelling words than translating musical phrases from mind’s ear to fingerboard.

Also, for each letter, there is a fixed conceptual mapping of “letter in your mind” to position on the keyboard. For any word you recall how to spell, the sequence of letters is easy hold in your mind, so converting it to key presses is a fairly concrete task where you are identifying the next letter in the sequence and finding the position on the keyboard for that letter.

For musical ideas, most of us, even if we’ve memorized the note names on the fingerboard, can’t readily map an absolute pitch in our mind’s ear to a position on the fingerboard. For licks we know, we can probably relate the sound of the lick in our mind’s ear to the position-independent fingerboard shape of the lick, but I’d guess most people can’t hear a known lick in their mind’s ear and play it in the matching key on the first try.

If a person was improvising in their mind by “note name” rather than by “sound in their mind’s ear”, maybe it would be easier to translate to the fingerboard, but it’s not clear to me how a person would comprehend music that way on the fly. Translating a sound in your mind to humming is relatively straightforward (within your available humming range), but I find it difficult to believe anyone would be able to think a musical idea in terms of note names and translate it to humming as quickly.

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#16

As others have said, the reason piano is more intuitive is because pitches only exist in one spot on the keyboard.

Thus, when you need to hit a specific note, there’s no thought required on interpretation of that note on the sheet music. It exists in that spot only.

But on a guitar, the same note can exist in multiple places of the fretboard. Thus, interpretation of the music is a necessity on the guitar. Not just what to play, but how you play them is ever present on guitar.

Thus, sometimes shifting the same lick around actually can make certain ideas harder to play, or easier to play.

Plus, learning theory of music without learning music is kind of a fruitless endeavor, as there’s no theory of music without the music to begin with.

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#17

That is what I meant to link, it’s from vrchat, loads of voices talking random stuff, kind of like trying to get a grip of music. Trying to isolate meaning out of nonsense.

#18

Do you guys not think there is something in how we learn text and vocal words that can be translated onto guitar?

we have different octaves in our voice, same thing as many note octaves on guitar.

#19

Other than immersion and copying what we hear, not really.

EDIT: to expand on this, I think there are some things that are common among both, but I don’t know whether specifically doing a pedagogy based on that makes sense.

Words - both spoken and typed - are just things the brain has “chunked”. After a certain point, typing a word isn’t about the individual keystrokes as it is about those keystrokes in just one sequence that the brain can do automatically. So emphasizing using chunks for playing, composing, and ear-training could help.

But that’s not something that you can really do without doing the foundation work of learning the notes and everything.

#20

Even reading your reply, I can feel chunks of words I’ve learnt, like as, you, read, this, their, are, chucks, of, words, you, know, from, childhood, you, know, buy, default. or to an extent that u cn fil in th bln ks.