Harmonic Approximation.

 This is a musical term that describes how quite a few musicians improvise. Don't get me wrong, it certainly has its use. It's sort of like how some people might use their voice. You'll hear Robert with the very long title doing it on his blog HERE. You'll have to sit through a lecture on how to treat your elderly parents to get to the video.

I sometimes use the technique myself, but certainly not all the time. Harmonic approximation is when you're going to play along with a piece of music. You find out the key (say G major) then you fish around with the notes of that key (G A B C D E F# G). You are going to hit a lot of notes that sound good but you will sound a bit bland after a while. 'Same shit, different day'.

This won't necessarily work with tunes with more complex chord progressions or tunes containing modulations. In any situation it'll sound better if you know, or can hear, the chord progression. It is also good to think about phrasing and rhythms. There are also chromatics and five other notes that you can use (Ab A# C# D# F). In the right place, those notes will make you sound more interesting.

Actually, I'm not here to talk about music theory. My intention is to look at the type of post that Peter (The Curmudgeon) writes. Read THIS.

This post is a reaction to something I wrote. The main ideas were also thought up in a comment he left earlier on my post.

This is his G major scale.

The post is already written. Then he sees the potential for a 'post'. He was stuck for ideas up until then - he'd thrashed the idea of working in the garden and fixing windows in his house. 

This idea has saved him! Hey, add a few pictures (in G major), mention Robert to get his attention, and have one last go at Robert in the last sentence.

HARMONIC APPROXIMATION!

"Don't worry about trying to read the music, 
Fiddler Brian, just move around the notes of 
the scale. That's what The Curmudgeon does!"