Author: musicalitywrld

Look no further than these 10 songwriting mini-challenges. Each one focuses on one or two specific skills necessary for any serious songwriting musician. As musicians, we need to challenge ourselves to achieve the next level of musicianship, and this includes sharpening our writing skills.

These fun musical exercises are guaranteed to help you:

• Think outside the box
• Develop skills like writing melodies and lyrics
• Help you come up with new material
• Build your musicality

Make your songwriting challenge extra fun by having a friend, your band, or your online music community join in to share and collaborate!

Many of these challenges are adapted from Composer Boot Camp 101: 50 Exercises for Educators, Students, and Music Professionals, a useful practical guide to songwriting and composition for any level of musical skill.

Song Challenge #1: Superhero Song Challenge

From Superman to Wonder Woman to Daredevil and the Flash, every superhero has his or her own specific abilities, weaknesses, and overall look. Not only that, but many of the superheroes have their own distinct theme song thanks to a plethora of hit films and TV series associated with the character.

In this exercise, you will write a short song based on a random superhero. The song can have lyrics or be purely instrumental. This is a great way to challenge your creativity and really see how you can take any subject and make a fun song out of it.

Here’s how:

1. Write the names of eight superheroes on notecards.
2. Put the notecards in a box.
3. Randomly select one card.
4. List three main characteristics of this superhero (for example, strong, slow, fast, green, genius).
5. Using your instrument or voice, create a short one-minute song based on this character in a day.

For this challenge, you can write a fun pop tune, an epic filmscore, a guitar solo, or whatever else you can imagine:

A Superhero Sample

Inspired by the Flash, I decided to write a very simple bass line that is reminiscent of some of the more popular superhero film scores popular in the theaters. Knowing the story behind the Flash, a teen struck by a particle accelerator leading to abnormally fast running speeds and healing (as well as the ability to jump into parallel universes), I wanted to create a song that had a musical motif that pushes forward like the Flash running to save the city.

After writing the initial bassline, I added in some extra software patches to add a touch of sci-fi and an “epic” feel to the tune. Being a song challenge, this is a rough mix, but it gives you an idea about the possibilities.

Justice League Super Mini-Challenge

For extra fun, have each of your friends select a different superhero and meet again the next day (or week, if that works better). Jam out on your new superhero tunes and chat about the merits of each song.

Song Challenge #2: Let Art Inspire You

For this mini-song challenge, you will let art inspire you. Just like classical composer Modest Mussorgsky wrote “Pictures at an Exhibition” after seeing the art of Viktor Harmann, you will allow what you see with your eyes influence your work.

You can use any type of visual art to inspire you, whether it is a mixed media piece at a gallery, a painting at the local museum, manga art, or even a confusing collage of cute cats from the internet. The point is to truly allow what you see create new inspiration for you.

Here’s how:

1. Select a piece of art.
2. Truly study the work of art for 30 minutes or more.
3. Write down feelings, thoughts, and memories that you come to you as you look at the artwork.
4. Develop a melody that matches the artwork.
5. Jot down the melody.
6. Develop the melody into a short one-minute song, with or without lyrics.

You’ll find yourself pleasantly surprised with the music you come up with! Mussorgsky wrote “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks” from this sketch of theater costumes:

Song Challenge #3: Melody in 3 Ways

For this challenge, take a short melody from one of your favorite bands or songs (or come up with your own), and rewrite it in a number of styles. For example, you might pull out the hook from Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface” and rewrite it as a love ballad, a country song, or a heavy metal tune. Or maybe you can write it as a polka… the “Pokerface Polka”:

Whatever direction you go with the melody, be sure that you:

• Are true to the melody
• Are true to the musical style
• Have fun creating a new tune using a familiar melody!

For example, you can use a familiar melody like the opening motif to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony:

This is a very familiar musical motif that has been used countless times in a variety of styles, including disco. Using this as an idea, you might mix down something like this:

Song Challenge #4: Superspeed Melodies

For this song challenge, you will need a timer and sheet music or music software program like Finale or Logic. If you don’t know how to notate music, just record your voice using a smartphone or other recording device.

Here’s how to write your superspeed melodies:

1. Set the timer for 15 minutes.
2. Create as many unique melodies and motifs as you can until the timer buzzes.

The melodies can be as short as three notes or as long as you want, but the key is to try to come up with something different and original in a very short amount of time. After you are done with your superspeed melodies, play through them, circling ones that you might want to keep for later use!

Here are examples of simple melodies that you might come up with in this exercise:

Pro-Tip: Watch out for accidentally “borrowing” from famous tunes in this exercise. This is something that every songwriter has to watch out for when writing a new song. It might be interesting to note how many of your notes might just belong to someone else!

So after you finish your mad dash at melody-making, listen for any familiarity between the tunes you developed and ones that you have heard on the radio, on TV, or even from your kid sister’s punk band!

Song Challenge #5: Random Lyrics

Most of these songs can be adapted to instrumental music or vocal music. But for this exercise, you will challenge your lyrical skills.

Here’s how:

1. Go to the local library or bookstore.
2. Enter the nonfiction aisle and spin around three times.
3. With your eyes closed, select a book and open it to a random page.
4. The first paragraph is your inspiration for your song.
5. Write a short song based on the selection, trying to stay as close as possible to the original text.

In this example, the composer had to write a classical ensemble piece based on a passage from an antique physics book about the atomic bomb.

Song Challenge #6: Postcard Song

For this mini song challenge, you are going to write lyrics based on a postcard. If you don’t have a collection of postcards to use, you can print several online or use a site that has a random image generator. The image does not have to be a location. It could be something fun, serious, sci-fi, romantic, horrific, an animal, etc. The point is that it is an image that you might not see on a regular basis.

Then:

1. Select an image (either a postcard or an online image from a random image generator).
2. Write down a few different ideas, feelings, thoughts, and words that come to mind when looking at the image.
3. Write down a short stanza for a song based on the image.
4. If you feel really inspired, write out the lyrics for an entire song.
5. Share your lyrics with the world via social media, an open mic night at a coffee house, or with your bandmates.

The lyrics below were inspired by this interesting random image of a smiling shaving cream face:

“Ode to a Shaving Cream Face”

(With a Jazz Swing)

My smiling shaving cream face
Soft and gushy, full of grace
A little bizarre and out of place
But still, what can I say?
You bring sunshine to a room
Wash away all that gloom
With your smuggy funny muggy
Oh, I how love you, Honey
So keep on smiling
Don’t get down
Cuz when you are around
You are my smiling shaving cream face!

Song Challenge #7: Film Music Challenge

So far, the mini song challenges that we have done have focused on skills like writing melodies and lyrics. This next mini-challenge develops your harmonic skills. To complete this mini songwriting challenge, it will be helpful to have an instrument like a piano or guitar for chord progressions. You will select five short film clips and quickly improvise your own original score using chords.

Here’s a helpful guide for the genres that certain chords and scales are best suited to:

• Minor chords: sadness, mystery, suspense, horror
• Major chords: comedy, happiness, happy endings, children’s movies
• Jazz chords: Film Noir, mystery, historical films, romantic
• Whole tone scale: outer space, science fiction, weird, suspense

This is just a short list of harmonic ideas. There are literally thousands of harmonic and melodic ideas that you can use for this mini song challenge!

For example, this short piano sample is based entirely on C minor. You can hear how “scary” and full of suspense it sounds:

Here’s how to compose your own original movie score:

1. Select five short one-minute film clips from different film genres such as comedy, mystery, or sci-fi.
2. Mute the volume.
3. Underneath the scene, improvise different harmonies that fit with the clip.
4. Try to have the harmonic choices match the scene.
5. Record your improvisation and sync to the film clip.
6. Share with your friends!

If you don’t have access to a guitar or a piano, you can always use your voice, percussion, or even virtual instruments on your smartphone for this mini-challenge. The key is not the instruments used, but the way that you can develop musical ideas to fit a film.

The piano example below was created as a song challenge for this short horror clip. Taking the musical ideas based on C Minor, I then fully orchestrated the short tune with a full string orchestra patch, pizzicato strings, and a bell synth. Because this is just a challenge, this is a rough mix, but you can hear how you can take a simple piano idea above and develop it into a full cinematic track:

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to create an entire instrumental track. You can just create a fun pop tune or other type of soundtrack for this example.

Song Challenge #8: Musical Food Challenge

Many favorite song challenges like the 50/90 Song Challenge, where you write fifty new songs in ninety days, have a specific time limit and challenges based on topics. For this fun mini-challenge, you are going to write a song each day based on what you eat for lunch for seven days straight. It might sound a little zany, but it will force you to really come up with some original ideas (and maybe some original lunches).

Get a little inspiration for this musical food challenge from song challenge guru Jonathan Mann, who has written a song a day for years, leading to worldwide infamy for his quirky and fun songs:

He even managed to sneak in a full recipe into a song, ensuring that you’ll never forget how to cook this wholesome breakfast:

Song Challenge #9: 10 Songs About a Girl (or Guy)

We all love the love song, right? Okay, well, maybe not, but even if you don’t have a favorite guy or gal to write about, you might have a pet, best friend, or even grandmother that you care about a lot and want to immortalize forever through song. Ten songs, that is.

While this challenge works best with lyrics, you can opt for instrumentals if that is more your forte (pun intended):

1. Choose a person (or pet) that you cherish.
2. Every three days for a month, write a song dedicated to this person, for a grand total of 10 original tunes.
3. Record the songs, and if possible, share your undying musical devotion with them (and let us know how it goes!).

Song Challenge #10: Happy/Sad/Crazy/Mad

This is a pretty easy mini-challenge based on emotions. You will need to write each of these emotions on a different notecard:

• Happy
• Sad
• Crazy
• Mad
• Afraid
• In love
• Excited
• Lethargic
• Hopeful
• Disgusted
• Surprised
• Lonely
• Meditative

These are a good bunch to start with, but you might find that once you start writing you will end up with dozens of more emotions for this mini-challenge.

For this challenge, you need to write seven songs in seven days based on emotions. You can opt to use only one emotion for the tune or choose two cards to really challenge yourself. For example, you could end up with a tune that has a “lonely” lyrics but has a very “excited!!!!!” chorus.

Here’s how:

1. Randomly select one or two cards (for example, happy and surprised).
2. Think about what words come to mind when you think about these emotions.
3. Write out a title first.
4. Write a short tune based on the card(s).

BONUS: Death Metal Mini-Challenge

For this fun challenge, you will write a song based on a death metal title.

1. Go to the Death Metal Title generator.
2. Click the “another album!” button.
3. Select one of the song titles to create a new tune.

Seeing Musical Inspiration Everywhere

So, how did you do on our fun mini songwriting challenges? If you want to challenge yourself further, check out this great article on improvisation and our article on other fun song challenges.

The post Musical U’s 10 Mini Songwriting Challenges appeared first on Musical U.

You don’t need to study music history to know that things have changed. Music may have been with us since the earliest cave-people bashed bones together and danced around a fire grunting, but (for the most part!) it looks and sounds pretty different today. The development of musical styles over thousands of years has produced both elegant simplicity and overwhelming complexity.

This week we took an in-depth look at one of the oldest and most universal scales: the major pentatonic. Our Resident Pros tackled the question of “How can you learn to actually recognise the notes of a scale by ear?” to help you decipher the flurry of notes you hear in a piece of music. We had the chance to interview the designed of some incredible diagrams that help concert-goers make sense of the sometimes-intimidating complexity of classical music. Oh – and just in case it was all feeling a bit too sophisticated we also explored the wonderful world of so-bad-it’s-good-again song lyrics.

Before we dive in, a quick shout out of thanks to the Guitar and Music Institute for inviting Musical U’s Director Christopher Sutton to be a guest on their excellent podcast this week! You can listen in on their conversation and learn more about the great work that GMI do right here.

Pentatonic roots

Did you know that there’s a scale more useful and versatile than the regular major scale – and it’s simpler to learn and use too? The major pentatonic scale was found used in instruments that are tens of thousands of years old and even today it’s remarkably useful across a broad range of musical situations and styles. Learn everything you need to know in Five Notes Will Change Your Life: Pentatonic Scales.

What are the major differences between the pentatonic and full diatonic scales? And how will that translate onto your instrument? For further instruction, and some great tips on moving back and forth between these two scales, Six String Country has this tutorial:

When learning pentatonic scales, the guitar player can greatly benefit by using the CAGED system to move around the fretboard. Wait… the what system? To learn more about the CAGED system and how it can benefit your playing, Guitar Lessons has this helpful video. If you’re not a guitar player, can you find similar patterns on your instrument?

Think the pentatonic scale is only for guitar and piano players? Think again! Bass players will really get into this lesson on using hammer-ons and pull-offs with pentatonic patterns from No Treble.

It seems like every week you hear about a new scale that a musician needs to learn to be proficient on their instrument… With all of these scales, how are you supposed to go about learning yet another one? Julian Bradley at The Musical Ear provides some great tips on how to separate scales into groups to get a better understanding of how they work, which will help you to remember and use them in your playing.

It’s all a matter of degree

In our Instrument Packs this month our Resident Pros for guitar, bass, piano and singing revealed practical ways you can learn to recognise the notes of a scale by ear when you hear them in real music. As always, each instrument has its own quirks and techniques that can be used to help you learn these skills in a fast and useful way. Learn all about Scale Degree Recognition in our Resource Pack Preview.

Guilty pleasures

“Baby, Baby”…
“Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!”…
“Pop art pistol chasin’”…
“Oppa Gangnam Style!”

Writing great lyrics is an art. Writing terrible lyrics is… all too common! When lyrics get worse and worse sometimes they come out the other side and are somehow kind of good! Or at least, they seem to work. Discover The Wonderful Phenomenon of Terrible Lyrics!

As songwriters, what is the best way to make sure that they lyrics you write do actually fit with the overall theme of your song? Many songwriters write the melodies first, then work to fit in the lyrics around the melodic elements of their song. Here are five tips on how match lyrics to match your vocal melodies from the Hack Music Theory show:

If the lyrical content in many of these songs is so bad, why were they such big hits? How can you really explain the viral nature of a song like “Gangnam Style” by Psy? Simply, there were so many other elements of the song that made it incredibly compelling for the listener, and they couldn’t help but sing or dance along. While there are many “how-to” guides on writing a hit song throughout the internet, this 3-step process from Music Marketing Guy is very easy to implement and a great way to get started. SongTown has a helpful article sharing the 6 keys to writing compelling songs.

Want to know more about the process that hit songwriters go through when they are writing songs? Songwriter Ross Golan talks about songwriting and his new podcast with some of the best in the industry in this interview with BMI: “Nobody Writes A Hit Song By Accident”.

Since we talked about terrible lyrics quite a bit in this article, what about some amazing lyrics that influenced millions of people? Musical U has written before about the phenomenon that is “Hello” by Adele. For a great explanation of these lyrics, check out this podcast episode by the Pop Song Professor: “Hello, Adele! What Are You Sorry For?”

Can you visualise a symphony?

To the outsider, classical music can seem like a difficult genre to break into. There is such tradition and structure and apparent complexity to classical music compared to the latest Bieber hit. For years “programme notes” at concerts have tried to explain what’s happening in the music, to help the audience unlock its riches by ear. Now an innovative designer at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has come up with a way to let you see what you should be listening for. Experience the power of Visualizing the Symphony, with Hannah Chan-Hartley.

These new Listening Guides have been a great way to engage with the audience at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in a new, dynamic way. In fact even seasoned, professional musicians can take a great deal from these guides and enjoy the music at an even deeper level. Where else could listening guides by effectively employed… perhaps by music teachers? Effective Music Teaching has this guide on guiding classroom discussions through their method of active listening.

Music and visual art have always been intertwined and complementary of each other. Great pieces of art have inspired music, and music has inspired great pieces of art. What happens when the two are combined in one stunning display? Read about how Britt Conley and Virginia Bronze combined their efforts in one amazing concert.

With modern computing technology, visualizations of musical masterpieces are easier to create automatically and can greatly add to the listener’s experience. The Music Animation Machine, created by Stephen Malinowski, creates brilliant displays that are sure to captivate your imagination. Here is “Night on Bald Mountain” by Mussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov:

Music can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. That goes for creating music yourself and also how you approach the music you hear or play. Hopefully these new articles, tutorials and interviews inspire you to advance your own musical abilities and find new ways to simplify things which previously seemed complex.

With a nod to our article on great/terrible lyrics we couldn’t leave you today in any other way than with the immortal words of Ms. Rebecca Black: “It’s Friday, Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend.”

The post Pentatonic Simplicity, Terrible Lyrics and Classical… Demystified appeared first on Musical U.

Learning to recognise notes by ear can seem overwhelmingly difficult. There’s one way to make it much simpler though: because most notes come from the scale the music was written with, learning to recognise the notes of the scale by ear lets you quickly narrow things down to the most likely right notes.

Inside Musical U we have modules dedicated to the solfa (a.k.a. solfege) approach to scale degree recognition, as well as intervals and extending the skill to full melodies.

In this month’s Instrument Packs our Resident Pros tackled this subject and made it easy for MU members to apply this powerful skill directly on guitar, piano, bass and singing.

It’s always fascinating to see how each of our Resident Pros tackles the same topic from different angles and this month was no exception!

Guitar

Guitarists are used to thinking in terms of scales – the fretboard patterns for a major scale or a minor pentatonic will be familiar to any intermediate-level player. But can you identify all the notes of those scales by ear? Can you go from hearing a tune to playing the right notes of that fretboard pattern.

In this Resource Pack our Resident Pro for guitar Dylan Welsh reveals a clever chord-based way to develop the framework you need to recognise scale degrees flexibly and reliably by ear.

Including:

• A simple scale sing-along exercise to get you oriented
• How to use the tonic chord to internalise scale degrees
• A powerful concept to help you spot the non-chord notes
• A play-through exercise you can use in every key to really master this
• MP3 Practice Tracks with melodies in three keys to try playing by ear

Piano

To apply scale degree recognition for practical musical purposes you need to get the hang of two things: relating it to your instrument, and actually working out music using scale degrees, note-by-note.

In her Resource Pack this month our piano Resident Pro Sara Campbell tackles both of these, introducing an exercise and variations to help you get the basics of solfa in place, and then valuable tips and tricks for using this to play melodies by ear.

Including:

• A quick rundown about how scale degrees (solfa or numbers) can be helpful when figuring out a melody by ear
• A simple chords exercise that will help you hone your solfa ears
• Two tips that will help you apply your knowledge of solfa to figure out melodies that have tricky leaps or chromatic alterations
• MP3 Practice Tracks for the chord solfa warmup exercises

Singing

Using your voice to train your ears is something we’re often recommending at Musical U, and Sara and Dylan both recommended sing-along exercises for their instrument Resource Packs this month. For Clare Wheeler, our Resident Pro for singing, it starts and ends with the voice.

Clare included an essential starter skill in her tutorial: how to find the key (and hence the scale!) by ear. She introduced several exercises you can use, and then two practical applications: finding the correct starting note by ear, and creatively improvising using scale degrees.

Including:

• Practicing finding the “one” of the scale by ear
• Singing through the scale degrees
• How to sing intervals using your knowledge of scale degrees
• Finding your starting note for a song
• Some handy tips for jumping straight to each scale degree
• MP3 Practice Tracks to work on these exercises with more examples

Coming up next month…

As you may know, a huge number of songs are written with just four chords – or even just three! We’ve asked our Resident Pros to come up with creative ways to get deeply familiar with I-IV-V (“one four five”) chord progressions.

Interested in getting access to these resources and much more, with an Instrument Pack membership? Just choose that option during checkout when you join Musical U, or upgrade your existing membership to get instant access!

The post Scale Degree Recognition: Resource Pack Preview appeared first on Musical U.

However, as with most technical writing, these program notes are often complicated, dry, and difficult to keep up with during the performance.

Hannah Chan-Hartley works with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to create visually engaging program notes that combine text and graphics to aid the experience of a live performance.

We invited Hannah to join us here at Musical U to share her thoughts on everything from engaging listeners with visuals and the importance of good graphic design, to the secret of striking the balance between accessible and informative, and what sets her guides apart from the rest.

Hannah Chan-Hartley, managing editor and musicologist at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra

At the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO), where I perform a dual role as the Managing Editor of the TSO’s program books and as a Musicologist, we still use program notes. They’re important not only for giving some general guidance for what to listen for in the music, but also for providing information about the composer’s background and the historical context that shaped the music’s creation. For our notes, particularly in the description of the music, we try to find a balance of being informative and educational and also accessible and entertaining, so that audiences with different levels of experience with classical music can enjoy them.

But sometimes, people want a bit more guidance as to what they’re listening to, or more importantly, how they should listen to a classical music piece, and this means learning and understanding the terms used to describe a work’s structure. Written descriptions about form and structure tend to be dry and can make it difficult for people to understand what’s going on.

This is one reason I created and developed the “Visual Listening Guides”, which aim to show rather than tell about the structure of a symphonic work, so you can learn how to listen to it. Even so, the program notes still provide important information, and in the TSO’s books, the Visual Listening Guide is a supplement to the written notes, not a replacement.

Listening guides for musical works have existed in various forms since the 19th century.

Nowadays, you’re most likely to encounter a listening guide in a textbook, since they’re helpful for study and for teaching. In my experience as a music student and teaching university-level music appreciation and history courses, I’ve used various kinds of such guides.

In terms of design, these are usually in some form of a chart or table (occasionally a diagram), which outlines the structure of a work or a work’s movement through a list of themes and other major aural highlights of the piece, along with a brief description of what you’d hear. Sometimes these guides will include approximate timings of when you’d hear these highlights, as well as excerpts in musical notation.

While these guides are certainly functional in the context of textbooks and the like, they’re not particularly engaging visually, and the predominant use of text to explain music can still sometimes create a barrier to understanding the musical score. Therefore, those who cannot read musical notation would not find that aspect of the guides useful. So, I began to think about how to communicate the same kind of information but in a more visually dynamic design.

The opportunity to create and develop my idea for the Visual Listening Guides came about in tandem with the redesign of the TSO’s program books, beginning with the 2015/16 season. At the time, we were re-examining the function of the program book and were seeking to make it more integral to the live concert experience while also providing interesting, informative content for our patrons that would encourage them to use it beyond the hall. The guides fit into this goal, so we began to include them for specific concert programs, and anyone in the audience, if they desired, could use them “in real time” with the performance.

To date, I’ve created 16 Visual Listening Guides (eight for the 2015/16 season, and eight more for the 2016/17 season), focusing on well-known symphonic masterworks of classical music. Over the two seasons, they’ve been refined in a few small, but important ways. For example, the graphic notation used in the guides now more accurately reflects the relative pitch levels and the note durations of the actual music notation (an eighth note, for example, is always represented by a dot). There’s also now a more consistent style in the way the visual and text language appears across the guides.

Depending on the musical work, I’ve experimented with some slightly different formats. For example, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique has an accompanying text by the composer that describes what the music is portraying, so I embedded the description within the guide for this work:

For the guide to Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7, a work with a rather unusual form of a single movement, I included a timeline which indicates approximately when you’d hear key themes:

The Visual Listening Guide is intended to help you structure your listening of a symphonic work.

It is essentially a kind of map that shows you when the key musical themes and motifs appear in relation to the entire movement and/or the symphony, since the structure of the movement or symphony is dictated by the presentation, recurrence, and development of themes.

For the design, I had a few specific aims, chief among them being I chose to restrict the content of each movement of a work to a single page (or at the most, a two-page spread) in our program book. I wanted people to be able to grasp the entire form of the movement, at least on one level, at a “glance”. This principle basically shapes how everything else is laid out in the guide.

With the limited space, I have to prioritize the information to be included. Thus, I choose to represent the most salient musical landmarks of the piece in the guide. I select them based on what is most obviously experienced aurally, so that the guide reflects as best as possible the listening experience of the work.

These sonic cues include: the main musical themes or motives of the piece, which are depicted in a graphic notation placed in “pills”; the instruments or groups of instruments that play the themes, as represented by icons; dynamic levels; and main key areas. Text is used sparingly, to label the pills (“Theme 1”, etc.) as well as to clarify what instruments are performing the themes.

I’d like to give a shout-out here to graphic designer Gareth Fowler, who works with me to execute the design of the guides, and who helped develop the graphic notation and created the instrument icons.

Thank you! It was one of my goals. Besides the graphic notation and the icons, I use colour, which I think plays a key role in making the Visual Listening Guides accessible and intuitive. Colour is used judiciously on certain main themes that recur throughout a movement or when applicable, throughout the entire work. On the page, I seek to ensure that the work’s structure is clear, by the arrangement of these themes and their colours. This was used to illustrate Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, 1st movement:

As with repeated listenings to a particular symphony, the Visual Listening Guides contain several levels of detail which I hope reveal themselves as one’s experience with the piece deepens. Somebody with little prior experience may see that Theme 1 (in the Mozart example above) comes back multiple times just by looking at the colours of the guide, and they may choose to focus on that during a performance, while someone with more experience may be interested in following the notation and other finer details in the guide.

The colours in each guide are also specially selected to evoke the general mood of the movement, its themes, and key areas. For example, in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, the guide for the first movement uses very bright colours to convey its bright mood and kinetic energy:

Whereas the more solemn second movement uses darker colours:

Although music-to-colour associations are somewhat subjective, my aim was that their application in the guides would add another dimension of connecting to and experiencing the music.

I should mention that to a certain extent, the Visual Listening Guide is an “analog” response to the growing number of digital apps that orchestras are having created to make the live concert experience more engaging and interactive, and to improve audiences’ understanding of the music.

While I commend these efforts and appreciate that many audiences do get something out of them, I do see some limitations with these apps. For one, they tend to be more-or-less textual program notes. In real-time, they function as a kind of explanatory subtitle format. However, because they try to avoid overly technical language (and this is a good thing), the descriptions of what you’re hearing are either overly simplistic or too prescriptive. The focus can end up being too much about the minute details of the musical content “of the moment” when sometimes, the most interesting aspects are how these details fit or are worked out within the whole narrative or emotional journey of the entire piece.

In my Visual Listening Guides, I aim to show more of the “big picture” of the work. My guides provide a visual “bird’s eye” view so that audiences can see the general idea and how it ties in with smaller details in real time. With text and visuals supplementing each other, the listener does not need to rely solely on subtitles given in real time.

The guides were initially published and distributed solely through the program book that you receive when you attend a concert. As we had hoped, people were taking the program books home, and as we’ve found out from audience responses via email and social media, some were using the guides for listening at home, while others wanted them for teaching. We’ve recently made them available as digital downloads for a small fee, so people can use them for these purposes.

So far, very positively! I see them being used in concerts. It’s been observed that younger generations of concert attendees are especially intrigued and absorbed by the guides, following along and even pointing out how it works to their parents and grandparents. Since we’ve made them available digitally, the guides have been purchased by people around the world.

We’ve also had a lot of positive responses and attention from the global design community, I think due in part to the burgeoning industry and interest in information visualization. The guides recently won a 2016 KANTAR Information is Beautiful Bronze Community Award, determined by public vote. Some people have expressed that they love the guides simply as design objects… and would love to have posters of them!

I’d like to continue to expand the repertory of the guides, and of course, I would love to see other orchestras try them out. I have some ideas about enhancing the original concept to include historical context and explanation as part of the visual design of the guides, and I’m considering experimenting with different ways to visualize other forms and genres. I’m also keen to explore how the guides might work as a digital animation that works with a recorded and/or live performance.

The post Visualizing the Symphony, with Hannah Chan-Hartley appeared first on Musical U.

What if there was one scale to rule them all?

Well, there is one scale that – while it may not rule them all – is by far the most useful.

Hint: it’s not the major scale!

This is a scale that’s been around a long, long, time – maybe even the first scale ever grunted out by proto-humans back in the day. This scale, found in virtually every culture in the world, is the pentatonic, or five-note scale. And despite its ancient origins, the pentatonic scale is as fresh and new and useful today as it has ever been.

This part of the Start Solfa series, will explore the pentatonic scale and its countless uses. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll understand how to build the pentatonic scale in any key, and layer it over chords and other scales.

Solfa and the Pentatonic Scale

In previous parts of the Start Solfa series so far, we’ve covered the basics of finding “do” and applying solfege syllables in a given key, as well as singing and hearing intervals. Now, we will look at the pentatonic scale, and see how this particular set of intervals can help us recognize even more patterns in simple melodies.

Solfa syllables will be your best friend in remembering and being able to recall the distinct intervals used in the pentatonic scale.

What is a Pentatonic Scale?

By definition, a pentatonic scale contains five pitches per octave. A pentatonic scale can be formed in any major or minor key, but for the purposes of this article, we will focus on major pentatonic scales, which contain the five most commonly used pitches in simple songs and folk melodies. To derive the major pentatonic scale from the major scale, simply remove the 4th and 7th degrees, which leaves you with five notes per octave.

A major pentatonic scale consists of a series of intervals starting from do:

• Do-Re
• Do-Mi
• Do-So
• Do-La
• Do-Do

Therefore, the pentatonic scale degrees are 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. If we sing a major pentatonic scale, it will sound like this:

The scale has a very distinct, pleasant sound that works great layered over many chords and other scales. As stated above, it contains the most commonly used pitches in many popular songs. Its lack of half-steps contribute to its distinct sound, as compared to a major or minor scale.

There are are countless songs that use the pentatonic scale exclusively; with a quick Google search, you can find a vast number of tunes using the pentatonic scale. Check out this list of songs at Beth’s Music Notes. And if you need more persuasion that this scale has a special significance, just watch this fun video demonstration of the pentatonic scale by Bobby McFerrin:

So why does the pentatonic scale sound good?

Let’s look into precisely what makes this scale so universally pleasant-sounding and easy to layer over chords and other scales.

In a major scale, the fourth and seventh degrees form a tritone. This interval introduces tension and suspense to the scale.

Now, let’s look at the notes involved in the pentatonic scale; the fourth and seventh degrees are missing! The tritone is therefore absent from the pentatonic scale, and the tension and suspense disappears from the scale:

Here’s another way of looking at it: the major seventh and to some extent the perfect fourth intervals are considered to be dissonant in a major scale. Look at the intervals in a pentatonic scale, and going up from the root note you’ll find a major second, major third, perfect fifth, and major sixth.

Both the perfect fourth and the major seventh are omitted in the pentatonic scale, leaving only consonant intervals!

Pentatonic vs. Major

By comparison, the major scale – the scale that we first learn and which “seems” to be the basis of everything – only became popular in the beginning of the 1600s. Let’s have a look at how the major scale compares to the pentatonic.

Each major scale step can be numbered by degrees:

For the major pentatonic simply remove the fourth and seventh degrees:

One of the best ways we can understand this musical powerhouse is through another old system (although not quite so much – it dates to the Middle Ages) – the solfa syllables (aka solfege):

Omit “fa” and “ti” and you transform the major scale into a pentatonic. Add them back in to a pentatonic and you’re back to the major.

Where does the pentatonic scale come from?

Though it’s commonly used in modern music, the pentatonic scale is a senior citizen in the world of music; musical instruments believed to be 50,000 years old were found to be tuned to the pentatonic scale!

Another reason the pentatonic scale is thought to be an early development in Western music is the ubiquity of it throughout various epochs in music. Early Gregorian chants contained pentatonic melodies, and pentatonic scales in various forms are found in traditional Native American, African, and South Asian music.

Who Uses Pentatonic Scales Now?

The musical concepts of this traditional and folk music formed the basis of genres such as jazz, gospel, and bluegrass, as well as modern folk music. As these styles evolved into modern blues and rock, the pentatonic scale remained as an integral part of those genres.

Today, it’s as ubiquitous as ever, and for good reason; the pentatonic scale offers a fantastic improvisational framework for blues, rock, and beyond! In modern jazz, you’ll often hear amazing pentatonic solos whipped out by pianists, flautists and saxophonists.

The Pentatonic Scale in Modern Rock Music

The popularity of the pentatonic scale in rock and blues is justified, considering how great it sounds with almost everything: dominant seventh chords, minor or major scales, church modes, and more. Soloing with the pentatonic scale over chord progressions is very common in rock, and is an excellent exercise for beginner musicians to start improvising rock solos quickly.

What Can You Do With the Pentatonic Scale?

A quick refresher: the major pentatonic scale contains five notes instead of the usual seven per octave, with the 4th and 7th degrees of the major scale removed.

So, you may ask, if it’s just a “condensed” major scale, why use the pentatonic scale at all?

Turns out, the subtraction of these degrees is exactly what gives the pentatonic its power. Here are just some of the reasons you will want to use it:

1) Versatility in improvisation

You can play the pentatonic scale over a major chord progression – but also a minor chord progression, or a classic 12-bar blues progression. Because its notes are all consonant, it sounds good over nearly everything; try playing the pentatonic scale over a backing track, and you’ll see what we mean!

2) Easy To Play

Memorize certain patterns on your fretboard and keyboard, and you can easily transpose them into any key; see our pentatonic scale tabs below.

3) Play over modes

The church modes are either major or minor. The major modes are Ionian, Lydian, and Mixolydian, and all contain scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. In other words, the major modes all contain a major pentatonic scale, making it a perfect scale choice for writing or improvising in these modes, or playing over a modal backing track.

Singing the Pentatonic Scale

To really internalise the sound of the pentatonic scale you’ll want to practice singing it. Don’t worry if you’re not “a singer”! Start with our guide to how to sing in tune.

The solfa syllables for the pentatonic scale are Do-Re-Mi-So-La-Do. Sing along with the clip below:

Now we will sing up and down the scale, singing Do-Re-Mi-So-La-Do, Do-La-So-Mi-Re-Do.

Now try singing the scale without the audio clip. Can you produce the correct pitches without singing along with someone else? It’s harder than it sounds.

A good method for practice is to record yourself and play it back. A tool like Voice Memo on iPhone or Audacity is helpful for this, see our Audacity article for step-by-step instructions. Sometimes your brain will trick you into thinking you’ve sung something correctly, but recordings never lie. Compare your recording with the audio clip above, and see if you can match it yourself.

Playing the Pentatonic Scale

The beauty of this scale is how easy it is to play it, once you know the general pattern. Because it’s so ubiquitous and useful in blues and rock soloing, let’s explore the pentatonic scale shapes as they appear on the keyboard and the fretboard.

The Pentatonic Scale on Piano

Try this: start on F#, and play a scale on black keys only, ascending. What does it remind you of?

We’re guessing you can hear a distinct Oriental feel in the scale you just played, reminiscent of traditional Asian music.

You have actually just played a major pentatonic scale! The F♯ major pentatonic scale, to be precise. The pentatonic scale is often found in synth lines or keyboard parts in modern music; electronic artist Grimes’ song “Genesis” is played in F♯ major, and in fact uses the ascending F♯ major pentatonic scale as embellishment on the synthesizer, starting at [0:12]:

The pentatonic scale is very commonplace in piano music in general. Seasoned piano players: you may have already realized that you can also play “Amazing Grace” by only using the black keys on the piano, as this song is also built on a pentatonic scale! “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is yet another song you can play with just these five notes. Give it a try!

To play the pentatonic scale in any key simply requires you to memorize and apply the scale degree sequence of pentatonic scales.

Remember: the scale degrees used are 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6; this never changes, regardless of key! If you have a known chord progression, you can use chord mapping to determine which key you can play a pentatonic scale in to effortlessly solo over the progression, regardless of key changes.

The Pentatonic Scale and the CAGED System for Guitar

There are five common patterns for the major pentatonic scale on the fretboard. Known as the CAGED box forms, each pattern is named for one of the five open major chord shapes: C, A, G, E, or D.

Take a look at the five ways to play a major pentatonic scale, and see if you can spot the open chord that each is built around!

These patterns are the key to unlocking the power of the pentatonic scale on your guitar. Once you have the patterns down, you can simply move them up or down the fretboard to transpose the scale into a different key. To practice pentatonic scales most effectively, try mixing up the pattern and key you are playing in!

Hearing Pentatonic Scales

One advantage of pentatonic scales is that there are only five different pitches (or six if you’re counting the octave above the tonic). When trying to recognise the scale in a piece of music, you will find you can identify this scale just on the number of pitches, since other types of scales have more notes. However, it is worth using a tool like this one from Teoria.com, because if you can pick out the pentatonic scales from major scales, you will have a great advantage further down the line. To use the exercise, be sure you tick the box next to “Pentatonic Scales”, along with “Major minor”. If you already know major and minor scales, you can try to identify these as well. Challenge yourself to hear the difference between pentatonic and other types of scales.

You can also try playing the scale on your instrument, to get used to the sound of these five notes. Remember, because you know the solfege, you can play a pentatonic scale in any key where you know the major scale. Just use the Do-Re-Mi-So-La-Do notes!

For example, a pentatonic scale starting on D would be:

Here’s the scale in G:

And F:

Beyond the Major Pentatonic

The major pentatonic is a common and useful scale that is excellent to learn for beginners, as it gets you used to the pattern of notes, and gets you on your feet and playing quickly. Once you’ve nailed down the major, it’s time to explore further…

Minor Pentatonic Scales

If you know major pentatonic scales, it’s very easy to derive minor pentatonic scales.

In the same way that each relative minor scale contains the same notes as its corresponding major scale, the minor pentatonic scale will have the same five notes as its major cousin!

A refresher: the first degree (tonic) of the relative minor scale of any major key is found three semitones down from the tonic of the major scale. For example, the relative minor pentatonic scale of C major will be the A minor scale. If you’re familiar with the Circle of Fifths, you can easily use the tool to find your relative minors.

The minor pentatonic scale is well worth learning after you master the major pentatonic. It’s used in pop, rock, country, metal, and beyond. It’s another perfect beginner scale for soloing with.

If you want to whip out beautiful blues solos, the minor pentatonic is a must-have tool you’ll want in your arsenal, along with the major and minor blues scales. Blues and the minor pentatonic scale go together like bread and butter.

Permutated Pentatonic Scales

Yes, “pentatonic scale” does most often refer to the major and minor pentatonic scales. However, you’re not limited to just those two.

Think about it: the only real “requirement” of a pentatonic scale is the presence of five notes per octave. Therefore, there are thousands of possibilities of permutation!

Once you master the major and minor pentatonic scale, experiment with changing up some of the notes. You can even derive your own pentatonic scales from modes, by including the trademark intervals of that mode!

Pentatonic Scale Cheat Sheet

Five Notes to Rule Them All

With its myriad of uses and its special place in nearly every genre of mainstream modern music, the pentatonic scale’s usefulness cannot be overstated. Learn its patterns on your instrument, and most importantly, practice singing along with solfege syllables to cement the pitch pattern. Producing the scale with the corresponding solfege helps connect the sounds of each scale degree with a syllable, making it more likely that you will instantly recognize the notes of a scale because your brain will process them based on their solfege identity.

The post Five Notes Will Change Your Life: Pentatonic Scales appeared first on Musical U.

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Subway to Venus (Mother’s Milk)” is full of crazy lyrics about the titular “subway to Venus”. I didn’t know that NASA had figured out a way to access planets through tunnels?!

But with a rhythmic beat and energetic vocal performance, “Subway to Venus” is still a fun listen for RHCP fans.

Now, all this begs the question…

Are Lyrics All that Important?

When you have record-breaking artists like Pitbull jamming about taking a pic with a Kodak (people still use Polaroids?), or legends like Prince singing about “squirreled meat”, you begin to wonder, “Do lyrics matter at all?”. Maybe we should all start rhyming “true”, “blue”, and “you” and call it a day? (Thanks, Madonna!)

It all comes down to why we like a song in the first place. Is it the rhythm? The melody? The style of music? Are we just major fangirls or fanboys and love anything and everything that an artist or band puts out, even if it’s a jam about sitting on the toilet?

We all know the songs that have heart wrenching and just plain awesome lyrics. Songs like “Like a Rolling Stone”, “My Heart Will Go On” (even with the Sesame Street-type lyrics “Near / far / wherever you are”), “Man in the Mirror”, and “Imagine” stay with us even decades after they were popularized.

When Silly Lyrics Don’t Matter…

But so do the songs like “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, which has some nonsense about growing apple trees and snow white turtle doves.

Or take the fame of Psy and his “Gangnam Style”, which honestly, no Anglophone even understands! This song blew up the Internet with billions (yes, billions) of YouTube views and made the kooky South Korean singer an international household name.

Another fun and ridiculous hit is Ylvis’s “What does the fox say?”, which has endearing lyrics like:

Ring-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
Gering-ding-ding-ding-dingeringeding!
What the fox say?

Before you think we are going to start chatting about Elmo’s latest hits or jingles from fast food joints, let’s escape from the rabbit hole of terrible (or just nonsensical) lyrics and talk a little bit about why lyrics don’t seem to matter sometimes.

Why We Like a Song (Or, What Makes a Hit?)

If musicians truly knew what made a song a #1 smash hit, we’d be inundated with songs that would not only blow our minds, but also reveal an entire new generation of talented musicians with great voices, impressive songwriting skills, and melodies that will stand the test of time. Not to mention that every indie artist would be as financially successful as Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Drake, or Katy Perry.

But that’s not the case. And while there are mathematical algorithms that can somewhat predict what makes a hit at a given point in history (#Top40ArtificialIntelligence), there isn’t a set-in-stone reason why some lyrics and songs go viral, some just fall flat, and some become famous for being so incredibly terrible.

For example, take Rebecca Black’s anti-hit song “Friday”:

It’s Friday, Friday
Gotta get down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend, weekend
Friday, Friday
Gettin’ down on Friday
Everybody’s lookin’ forward to the weekend

The teen’s tune went viral with over 100 million worldwide hits, precisely because it was so awful. The happy-go-lucky lyrics stick in your head and before you know it, you’re humming the tune at your workplace.

Songs like the anti-hit “Friday” still go viral, making fame or infamy for their hapless songwriters. It’s a combination of catchy lyrics and a hook, a dance beat, simple harmony, or steady tempo that contribute to a song’s hit potential. Delve a little deeper into lyrics with this great article on melodies and lyrics.

Comparing Terrible Lyrics

Let’s compare “Gangnam Style” and Justin Bieber’s “Baby” with a song like Michael Jackson’s “Wanna be Startin’ Somethin’”. There are unique musical and non-musical elements that have made these songs a vital part of music culture, despite lyrics like these from “Wanna be Startin’ Somethin”:

You’re a vegetable, you’re a vegetable
Still they hate you, you’re a vegetable
You’re just a buffet, you’re a vegetable
They eat off of you, you’re a vegetable

No one can doubt Michael Jackson’s incredible talent. He was an entertainer rivaled by few, the true “King of Pop”. Yet, some of his song lyrics make you scratch your head. But ranking high on the danceability charts, the six-minute “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” still remained an eighties fave, although other tunes from the Thriller album rightly top this food-friendly tune. And despite its enigmatic words, “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” has a great mix of different musical styles that work well together.

PSY – Master of Catchy Dance Rhythms

Right off the bat, the catchy dance beat of “Gangnam Style” makes you want to get on your feet and do whatever that weird dance move is that looks like you’re riding a racehorse in the Kentucky Derby.

The addictive beat in “Gangnam Style” negates the fact that the majority of the song is in a foreign language. The song’s lyrics are a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the bourgeois, status-obsessed lifestyle of the Gangnam district in Seoul, South Korea. The playful nature of the song, combined with the odd English lyric like “hey, sexy lady” helped the song get international fame as everyone from Australia to the Americas joined the South Korean music obsession.

Add to this the quirky accompanying video with the nearly 40-year-old PSY dancing bizarre new club moves surrounded by young attractive dancers, and you have a worldwide phenomenon.

PSY’s subsequent hits like “New Face” and “Daddy” follow up with this winning combination, incorporating fun choreography, high quality music videos, and the occasional English lyrics. While these other tunes have not achieved the same fame as “Gangnam Style”, they still manage to be entertaining enough to keep the Asian phenom rolling in dough for centuries to come.

Justin Bieber’s “Baby”

Yes, when discussing terrible lyrics on the ‘net, Bieber’s “Baby” seems to be a crowd favourite to bash. No joke, the lyrics to this repetitive tune have the word “baby” in them over fifty times – that has to be some sort of record!

Besides the angelic-looking Bieber wowing young girls the world over with his sweet love songs, the repetitiveness and simplicity of the lyrics once again make this the type of tune that sticks like bubble gum to your shoe. The chord structure, rhythm, and melody are all very simple and easy to sing. And while this isn’t the most rhythmically exciting song, it worked well on the dance floors of middle school proms the world over.

Music vs. Lyrics

This brings us to the burning question: with an entertainer like PSY, or musicians like OK Go, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and others… does the quality of the music itself matter?

Sit with a group of classically-trained musicians long enough, and a discussion about pop music vs. “real” music will crop up.

Why?

Well, the majority, the vast majority, of hits today are more entertaining than musical. Coupled with the megalith of the music industry machine, which promotes and markets top-billing entertainers with millions of dollars, it is no wonder that artists that have crafted their skills over decades wonder if they should just throw in the towel, or even better, write a song about throwing a towel.

Many hits today have simplistic melodies and harmonies, a very basic common beat, and questionable lyrics all buffered by Hollywood-style high production music videos, controversial entertainers, and cross-platform cross-product advertising (Anyone want to buy some of Beyoncé’s “Midnight Heat” perfume?). A little disconcerting is the prevalence of adult content even in songs meant for children and teens, songs that we don’t discuss here, despite their humorous off-color lyrics.

We are also neck-deep in the age of social media and viral videos, meaning that a song like “What does the fox say?” or “Friday” can go viral regardless of actual musical quality, just because millions, or even billions of fans click and share on YouTube. What this means is that sometimes the wackiest music videos with the nuttiest lyrics can achieve worldwide fame.

It’s actually an interesting age for musicians. On the one hand, the million-dollar music industry closes off its monetary channels to millions of talented indie artists. On the other hand, these indie artists can achieve success just with some great music videos going viral on YouTube.

Adventures in Terrible Lyrics

Now that we’ve seen the cultural impact that bad lyrics can have and just how ridiculous they can get, it’s time to give it a try yourself!

Write-Your-Own

For this fun exercise, you are going to write some of your own terrible lyrics. You can do this with a group of friends, or just pick up a guitar and jam away.

Through social media, ask your friends to text or post 10 random bizarre objects, five random feelings, five extremely uncommon (and hard to rhyme) names, and five hard-to-pronounce foreign places. Then:

1. Write all of these words down on slips of paper and place them in a hat
2. Randomly select three slips of paper to write your first verse
3. Randomly select three slips of paper to write your chorus
4. Randomly select three slips of paper for the next verse
5. Use the words you have picked so far to write the bridge
6. Return to your chorus
7. Record your new song and share on your social media post

If you feel like taking on an even greater challenge, double the number of random words for each verse.

Tweet Lyrics

This is a fun way to share terrible lyric writing with your friends through social media like Twitter or Facebook.

1. Post the following to your page: “As part of the Musical U Terrible Lyric Challenge, I am asking you to add your own terrible lyrics to the lyrics below:”
2. Start the thread with your first terrible lyrics (ex. “Hugging your elbow like Yoda in December”).
3. Privately message friends to add to the lyrics.
4. At the end, add chords and a melody and “sing” your new tune!
5. Share with your friends.

Terrible Lyric Karaoke Party

We’ve chatted about some awful songs from Justin Bieber, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and even Prince. So take the songs we’ve chatted about and add some more songs with terrible lyrics. Get some friends together and enjoy a Terrible Lyric Karaoke Party!

Here are just some of the songs you might want to include:

• Anything by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
• “Baby” – Justin Bieber
• “Wanna be startin’ somethin’” – Michael Jackson
• “Friday” – Rebecca Black
• Anything by Weird Al
• “Swish Swish”- Katy Perry
• “Gangnam Style” – PSY (major bonus points for singing in Korean!)
• “Baby got back” – Sir Mix-a-lot
• “Smells like teen spirit” – Nirvana

So Bad, It’s Brilliant

The reasons for a song’s popularity, in general, go beyond the lyrical content and depend on a song’s melody, rhythm, and of course, the persona of the artist behind the tune. However, having lyrics that stand out, for better or worse, certainly doesn’t hurt; far from making a song a flop, “bad” lyrics can turn an otherwise unremarkable tune into a sensation!

The post The Wonderful Phenomenon of Terrible Lyrics appeared first on Musical U.