Author: musicalitywrld

Christopher: Do you worry about making bad sounds when you play music? What if those bad sounds were actually the gateway to even more incredible good sounds?

That’s just one little nugget shared in this week’s episode of Coaches Corner!

So another great week here at Musicality Now, we’ve had some terrific episodes, and if you haven’t been following along, it accidentally turned into a bit of a singing-themed week.

We kicked off the week with an “Inside The Book” episode, looking at all of the benefits of singing for musicians. Whether or not you want to be a singer, singing brings benefits throughout your musical life, and we dug into that a little bit on Monday’s episode.

Then we had our mini-interview with Michaela Bartoskova, who’s a voice, singing and yoga coach, with this really wonderful holistic perspective on the human voice.

Not just singing, but speaking and really that deep connection with your voice. So her interview gave a little glimpse into her perspective, and then we followed it up with a segment from her masterclass starting to tune into breathing as a gateway into singing.

Really fantastic masterclass. If you are a member, I highly recommend checking that one out. And it’s essentially, it should be obligatory if you’re someone who feels too nervous to even make a sound with your voice in music, that masterclass is a beautiful pathway into it for you.

And then we did an episode on three ways to use singing in your music practice. If you’re wondering why we keep talking about singing, I gave a little kind of illustration of a few ways our members are regularly using singing as part of their music practice, even if they don’t think of themselves as a singer, even if they’re not performing as a singer. They might be a devoted instrumentalist, but these were ways that you can use your voice to accelerate all of your music learning.

And then it just occurred to me, even our Meet The Team episode was a little bit singing-inspired, in that it was with Charm Cajurao, our Operations Assistant who is herself a part time singer! She does weddings and other performances.

And so really, a singing week all round! I don’t think our Coaches Corner today is particularly singing-y, but I’m sure you could listen to it through a lens of singing if you tried.

So today’s episode of Coaches Corner has some real fantastic nuggets for you. Zac shares the power of making bad sounds, something we normally shy away from, but he explains how it was actually really impactful for one of his clients to realize the power in making bad sounds.

Andy gives an amazing tip for handling those days when you just don’t seem to have enough practice time to really do a good practice session.

Camilo, in a similar direction, talks about how you can keep working on your musicality even when you’re away from your instrument. He had clients taking trips, they wouldn’t even be at home, but he had a great tip for them to keep developing their sense of music.

And Andrew flips the script on those “warhorse” pieces, the ones you’ve been dragging around for years trying to master. And while we do a whole lot at Musical U to help you crack them, he actually gives a really interesting mindset shift on them that really opened things up for a couple of his clients.

So all that and more in today’s episode of Coaches Corner. Here we go!

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Christopher: Hey, hey! We’re back with a new round of Coaches Corner, where I get to hang out with our Next Level coaches and ask them to share with you some of the awesome things that have been going on in coaching lately to help you in your musical life.

Today, I’m joined by our Head Coach, Andrew Bishko, and coaches Camilo Suárez, Zac Bailey, and Andy Portas. Welcome, guys!

So let’s kick things off this week with Mr. ZSonic himself, Zac Bailey.

What’s been going on in coaching? What can you share?

Zac: Hey, Christopher. Yeah, coaching has been going awesome.

I had a client come to me with this really amazing insight, and when she told me about this, I was, like, so excited.

I was like “wow, that is cool. I want everyone to hear about this”. So I was really excited to share it today.

And what she has been doing, she’s been working on her singing voice, and she’s been making a lot of progress. And a lot of that progress she found came from recording bad sounds. That’s her words.

She said “oh, the power of recording bad sounds”. I was like “oh, okay, that’s interesting”

She said if she hadn’t recorded the “bad” sounds and listened back, she wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to make the “good” sounds, sounds that feel good and sound good to her and that are satisfying.

And also, when she got to a place where she’s making good and satisfying sounds, she’s recording those, she’s able to go back and listen to those recordings from before and realise how far she’s come and also be a lot more accepting of those sounds.

She appreciated those original sounds that she thought were bad, and she said, “oh, well, these sounds were necessary for me to get to these other better sounds”.

And I think that is so powerful because I’ve heard so many clients and just people on Musical U website and just people in general, they don’t want to record because they think they don’t have something that’s worth recording.

They think they don’t have something that’s good enough to record. I’ve heard people say that “oh, when I get good enough, I’ll record something”. I’ve heard a lot of people say that.

And I think it’s so powerful that this client, she got good by recording the things that maybe wouldn’t have been good enough to record. Those bad, unsatisfying sounds that didn’t feel that good, didn’t sound that good to her. She recorded those anyway, and she learned a lot from them. And then later she said “wow, those were absolutely necessary for my growth”.

And if she hadn’t recorded those, she wouldn’t have progressed as fast or learned as much. So you can learn a lot and progress really fast if you just go ahead and record everything.

Really, it doesn’t have to be about good or bad. Just record everything and you’ll learn a lot and you’ll progress really fast. And I think that’s so cool. I was so excited for her.

Christopher: Yeah, that’s really powerful. I’m reminded of a video Andrew did one time about “making the mistake on purpose” and how much you can learn from those mistakes, even if you’re doing them intentionally or unintentionally.

And, yeah, it’s something I love about the singing training in Living Music. Like, Colors Of Your Voice and Free Your Creative Voice, it really helps you shift out of the traditional view of singing to “I’m making musical sounds with my vocal apparatus” and really getting into that exploring mode.

And it sounds like she’s really adopted that kind of experiment-and-explore, and then learn from the different sounds your voice is capable of making, how you want to shape your singing voice. That’s super cool.

Awesome. How about you, Andy? What’s new in coaching?

Andy: Well, this is, I suppose, as a kind of continuum from what Zach’s just been saying there really.

I’ve had a client who, she’s doing great, she’s doing her Practice Logs every day and making marvelous progress. But she works quite extended hours on a Wednesday, and she was really dissatisfied with the fact that she couldn’t really get any practice in.

So we kind of had a bit of a think about how we can get over this issue.

And she came up with the idea that she did have a little bit of time. So what she would do is video herself performing a few of the songs she’s been learning with the view to watch them the next day and highlight any issues that you got in there, as well as anything that was going great.

So, as Zac was saying there, it really kind of helps you focus on what needs to be done for the coming week. So it’s a wonderful way of kind of highlighting what your next steps are. And it’s been working really well for her.

Christopher: That’s terrific. Yeah. We’ve done various things in the past about, like, how to find more practice time in the day. And obviously, we teach people singing and audiation and different ways you can get that extra practice time.

But I don’t think we’ve talked much about that, just capturing a performance, even if you don’t have the time to sit down and really dig into it and just, like, saving that moment for later reference. That’s a really powerful way to better manage your time.

Andy: Absolutely.

Andrew: Yeah I also really like the idea of having a day where “this is what I do on Wednesdays” and have that be like, a ritual rather than every day being the same kind of a practice day. Being like, Wednesday is my recording day.

And you can do that in other things as well, because a lot of times when we’re practicing, we feel like “oh, I’ve got to be doing this every day or I’m not practicing”. And to have those special days that you look forward to. And I think people don’t realize that even if there’s something that you only do once a week, how much that could really move you forward in your general direction.

Christopher: Yeah. Not to mention those recordings will be a treasure trove, to look back on the week-by-week progress.

Andy: I was going to say she’s having great fun doing it as well.

She really looks forward to kind of Wednesday evenings now as well.

Christopher: Nice! Well, that speaks volumes to coaching, that she’s in that attitude towards performing and recording herself as something to look forward to!

Good. Camilo, how about you? What’s new in coaching?

Camilo: I have a couple of clients that are traveling, and they were worried about interrupting their practice. The question was, what do I do? Should I take a portable piano? Should I carry my double bass with me in the train?

I said “no, that’s not necessary. That’s actually a good thing that you’re going to be away from your instrument, because we can take that as an opportunity to keep working on our inner abilities”.

And I remembered this tip that I got from my bass coach, Danny Ziemann, and he said, you know, when you are away from your instrument, you can take any pitch that you listen that you find in your surroundings. It could be from the train, it could be from the microwave oven, or any sound from a car passing by.

And use that as your tonic note. Then start building melodies, familiar melodies, using that tone. That will keep your ear very much in shape. When you get back home, try to find where the note was and you will be surprised.

Christopher: That’s really cool, I love that.

It reminds me of something I used to do when I first started doing relative pitch ear training.

We had a fridge that hummed a certain pitch, and I just got into the habit of harmonising it with it when I walked into the kitchen. It was really fun. It was satisfying to be able to do that!

And, yeah, you’re right. There’s musical sounds all around us that you can use as a starting point if you have a few exercises up your sleeve to do.

How about you, Andrew? What’s been going on in coaching?

Andrew: Well, one thing I’ve noticed lately is that a lot of us have these big pieces, these big dream pieces or things that we’ve worked on before that we never quite got to where we wanted them to get to.

I know that I have one client that calls them her “warhorses”. You know, these were pieces that she played when she was younger, and she’d gotten really good at them. She couldn’t really remember how to play them again.

She remembered how satisfying it was to play them, but would like to regain that.

And I’ve found that with that kind of a piece, there’s often a lot of baggage. There’s a lot of the emotional stuff that’s been holding us back all along from various things that’s tied in with those pieces.

And as near and dear as those pieces are to our heart, sometimes it’s better to just ditch them and start something new.

And what I’ve found is that the best new thing to start is to start something creative. Especially if all you’ve played all your life is other people’s music, then to go and create something of your own, to create something that’s yours, it’s an amazing, an amazing feeling to do that.

The other thing is that to create music, a lot of times, certain performance of certain pieces, we’re tied up with all kinds of emotions and feelings that we have about our technical abilities. But you don’t need technical abilities to create beautiful music.

You can create beautiful music that’s within your technical abilities. Oftentimes, really what happens is you wind up playing something that if you had to read it, you would, like, find it really technically difficult. But because it’s creating, it’s coming out of you, you just bypass all that garbage, all that baggage, and you’ll be surprised what you can come up with, either through improvisation or composing or songwriting.

And I have some clients now that came in with that idea that are just absolutely excited that they’re writing songs. They’re writing lyrics for these songs.

And not only that, but they are outsourcing some of the technical aspects by collaborating with others. So this gives you an opportunity to collaborate with other people, to write music for other people to play. And I’ve got to tell you, there’s something that is so satisfying when you hear someone else playing your music.

And that’s another part of the power of the Next Level community is that people can get together and you can have these kinds of friends. And you can make a community like this if you’re not Next Level, you know, get together with friends, create something together or write something. Write a piece of music for your friend that, you know, plays the tuba, or write another one for your friend that plays the saxophone, even if you don’t play those instruments. Collaborate, get together.

And it’s so wonderful and so satisfying to really create your own music. And a lot of times, all those, all that baggage that we had about those big pieces that we never seem to quite get a hold on or that we can’t play anymore, just seems to evaporate because we’re actually creating something new.

Christopher: I love it. Fantastic. That was a whirlwind tour of creativity and repertoire and community and collaboration.

As always, this has been a total delight. Thank you all. It’s always fascinating to hear the variety of interesting stuff that’s going on in your coaching sessions each week.

So thank you all. And we’ll see you next time on another Coaches Corner. Cheers!

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Christopher: Today, I’m joined on the show by our Operations Assistant extraordinaire, Ms Charm Cajurao. Say a quick hi, Charm!

Charm: Hi, and it’s great to be here!

Christopher: Charm works tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that everything that’s meant to happen here at Musical U actually happens!

And I’m so excited to have her with us for this interview, to give you a sneak peek into her musical life and all that she does for our members and our team here at Musical U.

So something people may not know is that we have a really firm rule when we hire people here at Musical U. We only hire team members who have a genuine personal connection to our mission and the vision we’re pursuing here at Musical U. And while a lot of companies would hire administrative team members just based on skills and experience, when we went to the agency, we used to hire Charm, who’s with me today, we said to them, hey, listen, we need someone who’s really passionate about music.

And then in the hiring process, we check, is this someone who’s, you know, just a little bit into music, or is this someone who saw our mission and was like “yes, that is so important!”

And I’ll just say that this agency, which normally would fill a spot like this in maybe a week or two, took several weeks to find Charm for us! But it was clear from the outset that she had that personal connection and that she would be a fantastic fit for our team.

So Charm’s been with us almost a year now, I think, and has just become such a vital part of the team. Many of our members, especially our Next Level crew, will have interacted with her by email or in the discussion boards. And so I’m really glad today to have the chance to introduce her here on the show.

Charm, welcome to the show!

Charm: Thank you very much for having me on the show, and it’s great to be here, and it’s great to share my story for this podcast.

Christopher: Awesome, well, as you know, I love to dive in with the – I was about to say strange, it’s not such a strange question – but it’s one that opens up a whole world of answers from various people.

And so let’s kick off with that question. What does musicality mean to you?

Charm: Well, I often hear this in the site as well as in our team. But I think for me, musicality is about connection.

It’s a connection within your soul, allowing you to express yourself through harmony, melody, or even rhythm. And it ultimately creates music that resonates deeply within your soul and musicality.

For me, you can connect with others in a way that it transcends in different cultures, language, or even in time.

And this ability to connect is, I think it’s a great key aspect of our community at Musical U. I don’t know if I said it right, but yeah, that’s a musicality for me.

Christopher: I love that!

Yeah, that connection piece. And I like what you said about it resonating deeply. And it’s definitely true that part of why we’ve been able to build such a thriving community is that fundamentally it’s all about music. And what better thing is there to connect us all from different cultures, from different countries, from different instruments and styles then music itself?

So I love that answer.

Share a little bit about your own backstory. You’re based in the Philippines, you’re a singer and play some guitar. Tell us a bit about your own musical journey.

Charm: Well, growing up, my family has always been musically inclined. My mom was a band singer and my grandmother is a piano teacher and a choir director.

So me being musically inclined came naturally and I joined grade school choirs. I started competing at a very young age and although music courses are very expensive here in my country and I couldn’t afford to formally study music, I joined a university choir at the university that offers conservatory of music. So I experienced tons of trainings, competitions and public performances way back then.

And now I continue to sing at events. I sing at weddings and other gigs as my part-time and for passion. I also record song covers and post them on my social media.

Christopher: And what style of music have you been singing most over the years?

Charm: Most of the time I’m singing pop songs. Sometimes I do jazz, but I’m still learning a bit about jazz because it’s kind of tricky. But yeah, most of it are pop songs and ballad songs.

Christopher: Fantastic. Yeah. And you have a particular love of K-pop, if I’m right. Is that true?

Charm: Yes. I’m really into K-pop and I love their training, I love their system when it comes to singing and performing on stage. So yeah, I am into K-pop.

Christopher: Awesome. And talk a little bit about the work you do here at Musical U. I mentioned you’re our kind of the behind-the-scenes, make-sure-everything-happens lady on our team. But talk a little bit about your role and your responsibilities.

Charm: Yeah, my role at Musical U revolves around operations and administrative assistance.

As you say, I usually work behind the scenes, handling almost every aspect, such as Next Level concierge, some of the member support, and as well as customer service, organizing tasks within the team and such as that. And essentially I am involved almost every area to ensure everything runs smoothly at Musical U, for sure.

Christopher: Yeah, it’s funny. On our team call each week, we ask each team member what they’re going to be working on.

I think it’s fair to say most team members have, like, two or three items. They’re like “I’m going to be doing Next Level coaching and member support in the Summer season”.

And Charm is going through this list of, like, 17 different items that need to get done! And we’re so grateful to you for keeping all of those balls in the air and making sure it all works smoothly.

What would be your favourite thing to do in your work at Musical U?

Charm: Well, what I love doing at Musical U is, first of all of all, helping our Next Level members with their onboarding and offboarding.

But I am always in awe when a member gradually evolves into a musician that once they thought they are not capable of. And even if it’s not as grand as becoming a great artist or whatsoever, but seeing someone like, hey, I now have the confidence to perform in public or something like that. It’s incredibly rewarding for me to see that.

And I am always truly amazed when I witness their progress from the beginning of their application up to their graduation. And I also love in Musical U, our team in Musical U, I always attend the weekly team calls. We often talk about our wins, focused on solutions and creating a positive environment that we extend to our customers as well.

And I also enjoy sharing time. We often do that, sharing time in our team and just listening to one another is always great.

Christopher: Terrific. There were several favourite things there, I wholeheartedly approve!

And you’re right. You’re in a fun position, I guess, because particularly with the Next Level concierge role, you’re helping our new Next Level members get started and you’re learning all about their dreams and aspirations, and then you’re also seeing everyone come out the other side and everything they’ve achieved and arranging their graduation interview and all of that.

So that’s probably the most extreme form of that musical transformation that we see, isn’t it?

Terrific, and I love that you highlighted the small wins, too. You know, it’s not always about becoming a Grammy-award-winning artist. And we’re working on this new Success Path, as you know, with the idea of your Musical Core.

And a big part of that is a new way of recognising those milestones in our community and recognising those small but significant accomplishments that might be, you know, attending your first jam session and playing for one song. That’s a huge leap forward for people!

And, yeah, like yourself, I take great joy when someone posts in the community to share something like that, and we can be, like “Amazing. Their musical life is, like, one notch better in a really tangible way”.

It’s wonderful. Could you share something from your own experience, something a bit unusual or a bit different that you found really helps with that musical transformation?

Charm: Well, I think this is a no-brainer, but for me, it helps to just not let fear be your voice.

I think even the greatest musicians struggle with just the fear of doing it. And oftentimes we left with “what if”s simply because we didn’t take the opportunity to just do it.

And there’s a chance that we can play or express our music, yet we let our fear get in the way. And by doing this, we cannot surprise ourselves with how magically we can might perform or do well.

And even if we try performing and if it doesn’t work out the way that we want, I always put in mind that it’s not a failure, but a learning curve for doing better next time.

And this weird technique has really worked for me in competitions and in public performances. And sometimes I even surprise myself with how well I perform just because I just do it and I didn’t let my fear get in the way.

Christopher: Fantastic. I feel like we might need to organise a team roundtable episode where we just go deep into that topic because it’s such a critical one.

And I hope you wouldn’t mind me saying, but, like, doing a live interview like this, you’re walking your talk!

Like this is not in your comfort zone. And virtual high-five for showing up and doing it and nailing it! Because it’s a perfect example of that, you know, leaning into the fear and not letting it hold you back from what you might be capable of.

Charm, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure to have you on the show and give our members and our audience a little glimpse of who you are and the work you do.

I’ll be back tomorrow for our final episode of the week, our next Coaches Corner episode.

Until then, cheers! And go make some music!

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Want to know how you can use your singing voice as a kind of “universal power tool” to accelerate all your musical development? I’m going to share with you three ways you can easily weave singing into your everyday music practice to let you become more musical faster.

So it appears to be singing week here on Musicality Now! I’ve been trying hard not to theme all the episodes each week because it will end up tripping me up in future if we set that precedent. But just the way it’s happened, this seems to be singing week.

So with “Inside The Book” last week we covered what if you think you can’t sing? And the myths and misconceptions around being tone deaf or not having a naturally good voice.

Then in this week’s “Inside The Book”, we looked at all the benefits of singing for musicians, whether or not you ever want to step up on stage or sing in front of anyone as a singer.

And then in Michaela’s two episodes, the two with Michaela Bartoskova, this week, her mini-interview and then the masterclass extract yesterday, both talked about that deep connection to your singing voice, how personal it is and how powerful it can be.

And with all of that being said, you might be left wondering, what does that actually look like in practice? If I want to use my singing voice to become more musical and to help me with everything I do in music, what does that mean?

And one part of it is definitely “musicality training”. So if you’re intentionally using your voice, for example, to do ear training exercises, we’ve all kinds of ways at Musical U to incorporate singing into that process of developing your ear, developing your instinct.

But what’s interesting is that as you start singing more and more, you realize there are all kinds of places to weave it into all of your music practice.

You know, we talk about singing as a tool here at Musical U, but it’s really more of like a universal powertool. You can just use it everywhere, and it almost always will do you good.

So today I want to share three specific ways just to spark your imagination and give you a sense of what it can look like to be a musician who is consistently using singing to accelerate their progress.

So number one is related to just learning to play things.

Your average musician is immersed in sheet music or tab or notation or chord charts. If you’re an ear first musician, fantastic, you can still make use of this. But the bottom line is, even if you don’t go into all of the musicality side of things, things like playing by ear, improvising, writing music, all that good stuff. Even then, singing can be really powerful for you.

And I was really struck by something Anne Mileski shared. We did a panel masterclass a little while back, and each of the team members shared a big tip for musicality and musical development in general. And Anne shared this story of when she was working on, I think, her graduation piece at conservatoire, and she played the trumpet, and she was having trouble with this tricky passage that was this flurry of notes, and she couldn’t get her fingers and her embouchure to do what they were meant to do.

And eventually her teacher suggested she sing through the passage. And Anne explained how she realised she really had trouble singing it! And what that revealed was actually, in a sense, her brain didn’t know how it was meant to go.

And this is a really powerful insight: the idea that we focus so much on trying to get our fingers to do what they’re meant to do, but they can only do that if we have a clear mental representation of the music we’re trying to create.

Otherwise, it’s just kind of robotic muscle memory button-mashing, right?

And, you know, I’m also reminded of something Andrew’s been saying more and more recently from his Next Level coaching experience, that often what appears to be a technique problem turns out to be a musicality problem.

And so the crux of it here is that your singing voice lets you validate whether or not you’ve got that mental representation right, quite aside from “are my fingers dexterous enough and quick enough to do what they’re meant to be doing?”

So you may know we have a whole range of superlearning techniques which are designed, in part, to help you break past sticking points and master tricky sections of music. But funnily enough, as complex and counterintuitive and weird and sophisticated as all of that gets, one of the simplest and most powerful is simply singing.

So the idea here is very simple. Next time you’re stumbling on something on your instrument, take a moment and check, can you actually sing what it is you’re trying to play?

Once you can sing it, you know you at least have that mental representation right. And that makes it much easier for your body to figure out how to make it happen on your instrument.

It’s come up in a few episodes recently, that body wisdom and how much your subconscious mind is doing in the process of learning. And this is a really great way to make sure you’ve got part of the puzzle in place before trying to do the rest of it.

So if you’re having trouble getting your fingers to do what they’re meant to do on the instrument, make sure you can sing the passage first. Then go back to your instrument, and you’re going to find it a whole lot easier.

Idea number two: playing by ear.

Singing is one of the simplest ways to improve your play by ear skills. And again, depending on the type of musician you are, this will be more or less important to you, but it will benefit you regardless.

So whether or not you want to reach the highest heights of playing super-sophisticated music, first-time-correct by ear or not, spending a bit of time developing your ear through playing by ear will help you even if you want to play stuff as written.

And the idea here is very simple. The most versatile and easiest and flexible exercise is a simple echo-back game. So the idea is you sing something, and then you play it on your instrument. You play something on your instrument, and then you sing it back.

And it sounds simple, too simple to be useful, but it is enormously powerful, especially if you’re using the solfa system, something we really endorse and recommend and focus on here at Musical U, where you’re singing the corresponding syllable names for the scale degrees you’re singing. So do re mi, not just la, la, la.

I do this with my kids almost every day, and it is remarkable how easy they’re finding it now to pick out tunes on piano because they’ve had that echo-back practice.

The key here really is just to start simple. So pick a key, pick a home note, and then start with just do re mi.

So you’re gonna something using just do re mi, a short phrase, like one measure of four beats. So you might sing [hums] “do re re do”, and then you go to your instrument, you know, the home note, so you know your starting note, and you just try and play back what you just sang. Then play something on your instrument using those first three notes of the scale, and see, can you sing it back?

And it is something that we really have to help people past their self-consciousness about. And, you know, a big part of what we do in Foundations is a lot of returning to basics and using very childlike exercises to develop that musical instinct.

And so if it sounds too simple to be useful, just trust me! Particularly if you’ve never done playing by ear stuff before, the kind of zero-to-one transition of “I can’t play by ear” to “Oh, okay. If it’s just a few notes, and I know they’re the first few notes of the scale, actually, I can do that”.

And this is a really neat side way in, because it’s all you, and you know what you’re singing, you know which notes you’re choosing, and that obviously is a little bit… It’s not cheating, but it’s like a shortcut to knowing what notes to play on the instrument. But it is still going to have that powerful effect of joining up your voice and your ears and your fingers.

And the more you do it, and the more natural it becomes to you to do this simple echo-back, the easier it is for you to tackle more and more complex stuff.

So from do re and mi, you can start expanding to the pentatonic scale or longer phrases or swifter rhythms, whatever it may be.

And just to underscore again, the psychological effect of proving to yourself that you can do it is enormous.

So a little side tip here, a kind of power-up for this exercise: if you go back to our previous “Inside The Book” episode on how to play expressively, how to play with expression, I give you a framework there for exploring all of the different possibilities available to you, even with a single note.

And that is a really great thing to introduce here. So don’t just kind of robotically sing a few notes. Think about everything you can do with your voice to shape those notes, to emphasise them, to change the timbre of them, and then try and replicate it on your instrument.

And learning to mimic how insanely versatile the singing voice is on your instrument is going to unlock a whole new world of expression for you. So that’s kind of a little side tip there. If you’re doing that kind of fun echo-back practice for playing by ear, use it to also amp up your expressive playing, because arguably, there’s no instrument more expressive than the human singing voice can be.

Idea number three, using it for creativity.

And again, don’t switch off your brain if you don’t think of yourself as someone who does creative stuff in music!

We’re real believers here at Musical U that “creativity is the vehicle, not the destination”. So again, whether or not you want to improvise amazing solos out of nowhere, or you want to write songs, or whatever it may be, incorporating creativity into your music learning has a profound effect on everything you do in music.

So this was mentioned in this week’s “Inside The Book” episode when we were looking at that chapter on singing and the benefits. I talked a little bit there about the impact on creativity.

And what’s most important to realise here is that anytime we start creating by going directly to our instrument, we’re actually bringing with us a lot of implicit limitations.

So it might be what scales are you comfortable with on the instrument? It might be how fast can your fingers move? It might be the timbre of your instrument and the kind of sound possibilities you’re used to coming up with there.

When you start with your voice, none of those constraints are really at play. Yes, it has its own limitations in terms of your singing range and a few other things.

But again, the versatility of the human voice, coupled with the fact that you can sing notes without really knowing what they are yet, you know, you can just kind of instinctively make up a little tune means that your creative world is so much greater when you start by singing.

So the idea here is just spend a little bit of your practice time coming up with a melody just by singing it or humming it. If you’re not comfortable singing, just hum a little ditty to yourself and then see, can you recreate it on your instrument?

That’s part of that play-by-ear stuff. But it’s also about unlocking your creativity on the instrument by first starting with the singing voice. And you will find you have creative ideas that you never would have come up with if you’d gone straight to your instrument and tried to create something.

And again, the freedom of your voice will lead to greater freedom on the instrument in future.

So, to recap, three little ideas for incorporating singing into everything you do in music practice:

Number one is to sing it before you play it.

This is a really great modification of that, actually. Not just sing it when you’re getting stuck, but anything you’re going to play, try starting by singing it too. That may be a bit of a leap depending on the music and your comfort level with singing, but really anything you’re playing on your instrument, I would say you should aim to be able to sing it, too, or it will benefit you if you can also sing it.

So anything you’re playing, make sure you can sing it. That’s going to firm up that mental representation and make sure that any stumbling you then do with your fingers or on the instrument is not coming from a fuzzy understanding of how the music’s meant to sound.

Number two is this little echo-back play by ear exercise.

Start really simple. Just, you know, a four-beat phrase using just the first few notes of the scale. Sing something, play it. Play something, sing it. Go back and forth.

It’s a lot of fun! If you haven’t tried it before, you’ll be surprised how fun it is.

And again, coming back to that chapter on playing with expression and that 4D Active Listening framework, looking at all the different dimensions of a note and all of the different possibilities, even if you’re just using the first three notes of the scale, there’s a huge range of possibilities available for you.

And the more you do that kind of echo-back, the more you’re building that instinctive connection between what you hear, what you create with your voice, and express with your voice, and what you play on your instrument. And that goes all around in circles in the best possible way.

And number three, singing for creativity.

This idea that anytime you want to create something or you want to play around with creating your own music, if you go straight to the instrument, you’re lumbered by all of these constraints you may not even realise are there.

Start by just humming, singing, creating in that free-form world that your singing voice gives you, and then translate it onto your instrument and you’ll be amazed how much more that opens up your creativity.

What’s interesting is that we found the more you get used to using your singing voice in your music practice, the more it starts to feel weird when you don’t!

So if right now, when you sit down to practice your instrument, your mouth is shut the entire time, when you start incorporating even a few of these ideas and even a little bit of it into each session, you’ll start to feel that connection to your voice as the most direct way to bring music out from inside you. And it really does begin to feel weird to sit down and play without singing something first or singing back and forth or, you know, humming as you play.

It really becomes a part of how you create music, how you make music.

Again, all of our most successful members at Musical U are using singing throughout all of their practice, everything they’re doing.

So I hope those three ideas will inspire you to explore using your singing voice during music practice.

If you’re a member of Musical U, Michaela’s full masterclass is there for you. That’s a really natural, gentle way into singing. If singing is new to you.

There’s also, inside the Living Music program, every season we start out with two weeks in parallel with the main stuff. We have a singing training for two weeks and it’s different every Season.

So in Spring we have Start Singing with Claire Wheeler, where she gets you up and running and singing in tune. In Summer, we have creative singing with Davin Youngs, Free Your Creative Voice.

Then in Autumn, our Season on playing by ear, Fini Bearman does Colors Of Your Voice, exploring all of the different timbre possibilities available to you in your singing voice.

And then we have two really fascinating ones in Winter, tying in with the circle of fifths.

If you’re not a member, I’ll put links to Free Your Creative Voice and Colors Of Your Voice in the shownotes if you’re interested in more on that. They’re both really unique and fun ways into getting comfortable with your singing voice and really expanding what you’re able to do with it.

And that’s it for this one!

I’ll be back tomorrow with Meet The Team, we’ll be featuring our Operations Assistant Charm, which I’m really excited about. And then on Saturday with our next episode of Coaches Corner.

Until then, cheers! And go make some music! Ideally with a bit of singing involved. Cheers!

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