Author: musicalitywrld

Christopher: Hello and happy Saturday to you! It’s been another jam-packed week here on the Musicality Now show. Hello to everyone tuning in live, and if you’re watching the replay, you’re very welcome too.

If you missed anything this week we had some really fun episodes. We kicked off with a look back at Beatles Month, inspired somewhat by this new painting in my office. And if you haven’t heard those episodes, they’re some of my favorites from the back catalogue of the podcast, all about the musicality of the Beatles.

We also had a mini interview with Tero Potila, where he shared insights on his own creative process and where that came from over the years, and then a clip from his masterclass, where he shared something really powerful. If you’ve ever hesitated to collaborate with other people in music, I highly recommend checking out what he shared, because it’s one of those things that can just permanently shift things for you in your musical life.

Then I did an episode sharing some tips for one of our central exercises here at Musical U, something we recommend every single member does and returns to regularly, how to find your north star in music. And then we had our next meet the team interview with Camilo Suárez yesterday, which was a lot of fun. I enjoyed chatting with him and actually learning a little bit more that I hadn’t known about his backstory. So if you’ve seen him around the site, we had a comment on YouTube saying “Oh, I’ve seen Camilo pop up here and there, great to learn more about him”, do check out that Meet The Team interview that went out yesterday.

A bit later today we have our masterclass for all members with Molly Gebrian, so I’m super excited for that. She is one of the luminaries of bringing the science of accelerated learning into the world of music. So she’s going to be sharing insights from the world of neuroscience to help you learn more, faster and more easily in music.

Now on to today’s episode!

So today we’re wrapping up the week with another episode of Coach’s Corner, and as always, it’s packed with goodies for you. This time we have:

– Andy sharing the benefits of figuring out melodies and chords using solfa.

– Zac talks about the surprising impact that tapping into a spirit of “ease and joy” can have in your music learning. That’s actually one of our internal core principles on the team, to do things with a sense of ease and joy. And he really saw that have a big impact with one of his clients.

– Camilo talks about how basslines can actually help you memorize more easily by understanding the structure of music more deeply.

– And then Andrew talks about the power of language and doodle tugging for your musical development.

All that and more in this round of Coaches Corner!

———

Hey, we’re back with another round of Coaches Corner where I get to hang out with our Next Level coaches to get their insights and breakthrough ideas from recent coaching, things that can help you in your musical life, as well as providing a little peek into all the great stuff that’s going on every week inside Next Level.

Today I’m joined by our head coach, Andrew Bishko, as well as coaches Camilo Suárez, Andy Portas and Zac Bailey. Welcome, guys!

So, Andy, I’ll pick on you first this week. Tell us something interesting or useful from your coaching.

Andy: It’s been recently has been a wonderful time for clients learning how to transcribe using solfa.

We’ve had quite a few who’ve been going through the process of choosing a song, figuring out the melody using solfa by ear, not using their instruments, but also figuring out the chord progressions as well. And what they’ve kind of gone on to do is then perform the song. But by kind of taking the view through solfa and kind of repeated listens to kind of figure it out, it kind of allows them to get like a, I suppose I’d describe it as a kind of 360 view of the song.

So as soon as they take that to their instrument and their voices, it kind of flows out with minimum effort, really. So that’s been absolutely wonderful to see. And like I say, there’s been quite a few clients been doing that to great effect. It’s been great.

Christopher: Fantastic. And if anyone isn’t familiar with solfa, can you explain a little bit why that’s so useful when you’re transcribing or trying to play something by ear?

Andy: Yeah. It’s a means of knowing the pictures of a non-specific key.

So you can sing up from do up to do and it gives you the degrees of the scale. But the idea is if you can kind of locate the home sound, so if you can locate do, you can then relate every other note you hear in that song back to do and therefore kind of label that. This could be labeling it from one to one to seven, or it could be used in do re mi fa so la ti do.

So it’ll work in both ways, but it’s a powerful, powerful method. It really is.

Christopher: Fantastic. And Zac, share something interesting or useful or fascinating from your recent coaching! What’s been going on?

Zac: Yeah, recently… Man, one of my clients in particular has really tapped into the spirit of ease and joy. And I have been really surprised, even myself, and impressed with how much success that is created for her.

On one of our calls, I asked her, what do you love the most? What makes you the most happy? When you’re doing music, when you’re musicing, expending your music time, what makes you the most happy?

And she said, when a song is easy for me to play and I can just play it and it feels good and it just flows out of me and it’s just so much fun.

And so I said, well, how do you have any songs in your repertoire that are like that? And she said, yeah, I’ve got a few songs like that. And I said, well, when’s the last time you played one of those songs? And she said, oh, wow, I don’t think I’ve played any of those songs in a while.

And so I made her the assignment. I was like, this is your homework. You know, you got to play a song that you love that’s easy and joyful every day, and that’s your first thing you do.

You pay yourself with that first. You tap into that feeling of ease and joy so that you can experience that.

And since she’s been doing that every day, she has been getting so much more done in less time, but also finding more time for to do more and also having more energy and more focus.

So it’s like this compound effect of having more energy, having more time, finding more time. The time that you spend is more focused and you enjoy it more. So since she’s been starting her day with an easy, joyful song that’s fun and filling that energy, it fills her up with energy, and then she gets a lot more done with her other practice as well.

So I’ve just been like, “wow!” Every time she sends a practice log, there’s wins that just keeps flowing.

It’s amazing. So that it’s like a fountain of ease and joy, you start swimming in it, you start tapping in it, maybe throw in some wishes, and then before you know it, you just ease and joy everywhere, and it’s amazing.

Christopher: That’s fantastic, I love that. Like an ease and joy catalyst. By playing a song, you find ease and it flows well.

I’m reminded of David Reed’s answer to “what is musicality?” Where he talked about often, what lets us feel musical and feel like we have good musicality is actually playing something quite a bit below our ability level so that you don’t have to worry about the technicalities or feel constrained by them. And I thought that was a really good insight, and it gels well with what you said there, where you really get into the spirit of the music when you know it’s something you can play well.

I’m also reminded, somewhat random, but I’m reminded of a podcast I heard one time where a guy was talking about gym exercise.

So he was a personal trainer in the gym, and he talked about how his clients were determined to do bicep curls because they wanted really big biceps, and he was trying to get them away from that and doing, like, compound lifts and more kind of serious work in the gym.

But he realized that actually, the way to do it was to let them do their bicep curls at the end of the session, so they’d spend their energy and their effort on the more serious compound lifts, using the whole body. But then at the end of the session, he’d be like “now do some curls” and they’d really enjoy just using the last of their energy on the thing that they were motivated by.

So I wonder whether you could put it at the end of your session, too, as your reward for doing your work, or you could sandwich it. I know you’re a fan of the sandwich Zac!

Zac: An ease and joy sandwich. That’s a good one.

I’m all about paying yourself first and putting your love first. So I think it’s actually, in my opinion, more beneficial to do it first than last.

Because if you spend all your energy working out is different than playing music, but you spend all your energy and you’re feeling exhausted, you might not get to that thing that gave you ease and joy, then you didn’t do anything that caused you joy that day. So I think to me, it’s top priority to do something that’s easy and joyful every day. That’s number one, because that’s what you really want with music.

I don’t know. I think I would like to be able to do push-ups and pull-ups with ease and joy! But generally, they’re kind of hard.

But with music, we want it to be easy and joyful. That’s what we want. That’s why we practice. We don’t want to practice to be up on stage struggling through songs.

We practice so that we could be on stage having fun and connecting to the music, and so that, in and of itself, is what we want to practice. And the skill, the skill of prioritizing ease and joy and the skill of being connected to the music, that’s where musicality comes from. And I was actually inspired by David Reed’s answer to “what is musicality?” That’s what really made me kind of double down and look for more ways to leverage those easy and joyful activities. So that is really powerful. I love it.

Christopher: Love it. I will let him know that’s been paying dividends in our coaching! He’ll be glad.

Camilo, how about you? Can you share something great that’s been going on in coaching lately?

Camilo: Yes. So this week we had a common theme on how to memorize music more effectively. And this week in particular, we concentrated on the role of basslines on memorizing music.

I was amazed by seeing the results on how, by starting to memorize a song, by concentrating on the bassline, the clients were able to build a more robust mental image or general image of the pieces that we were playing. And this applies to music from Beethoven to jazz standards.

I know that it’s not the first choice, when you first learn a piece, to start with the bassline, that’s usually something that you do later – or actually never do! But this time the clients found that later, by singing both the bassline and then the melody, they really got a hold of the full piece. So that also leads to better chances of building a better improvisation.

Christopher: That’s really cool. Yeah. I’ve noticed the singing teacher, piano teacher who does music lessons with my kids recently, has been doing what she’d call “root melody” work, where she’s just doing the tonic and the dominant, one and the five.

Having one of them sing that while the other sings the regular melody of the song. And like you say, it just gives you a different insight onto how the harmonic flow of the song happens and how it all fits together. That’s really great that your clients have been finding it useful for memorizing.

Are any of them thinking about buying a bass as a result?

Camilo: Hopefully! This advice calls from a bass player, so take that into account.

Christopher: We’re a little bit biased!

Awesome, thanks, Camillo. And how about you, Andrew? What’s new in coaching?

Andrew: I wanted to make a comment on that, actually. One of my clients was putting together a family band.

She had her grandchildren and nephews and nieces and everything coming in for Christmas time, and they did a concert in their garage for the neighborhood. And that was one of the her grandson, who was just a newbie on the saxophone. She gave him the root and the fifth to play and improvise, and he had an absolute blast. And it sounded great, too.

He had such a good time because he could play along with the band, even though he only knew one song. He could play on all the songs.

So let’s hear it for the root and the fifth!

Alright, so now for my contribution: the power of language.

So we are all virtuosos at speaking. We have been doing it from a very young age, and we have been practicing it since almost we were born. We started making sounds with our mouths, and we have been doing it all our lives, and we developed this great amount of virtuosity with language and with speaking. And language and speaking have all the properties of music.

They have rhythm, they have pitch, and your speaking does, and these can be leveraged. So that was a big basis for our essence of songwriting course, leveraging language to come up with rhythmical ideas, especially, that are much more complex than perhaps we are nuanced than we would if we just tried to write music. So that’s been a big thing.

Many of my clients, in terms of really finding a way to feel the music, especially when you’re doing a genre that’s maybe not a part of your own native musical culture. So I have one client who grew up in Poland and Germany, and she loves jazz, but when she played jazz, she wasn’t really feeling it, and she wanted the feel. She’s trying to get her groove and her feel going – and singing and using language has been really helpful.

So if you’re going to play jazz, and I’m not just talking about language, like, you know, words that we speak, but also just doing something that guest coach Ronald Carter called “Doodletonguing”. So if you’re going to do jazz, you know, where you scat sing, or you use those kinds of syllables and you get into the feel and groove of the music.

I have another client who’s studying Klezmer music, which is music from eastern Europe, and you know, this is very much outside her native culture, and she lives in western Canada. But to get into the music, we’ve been using different sort of syllables and languages, like where you get using these kind of syllables and these kind of sounds to get the feel and the groove of the music. And that’s been a lot of fun lately for feel and groove. Alright.

Christopher: Terrific, thanks, Andrew.

That’s super cool. I think you and I have had endless conversations about music and language and how sometimes it’s a really helpful analogy and sometimes it’s really not. But that’s a beautiful example of how those linguistic skills can be a great touch point for you in adapting to an idiom or a style of music.

Very cool. Well, I know you guys have your coaches meeting coming up very shortly, so I won’t keep you. But thank you so much for hanging out with me again, and I’ll see you next time for Coaches Corner!

Thanks, everyone.

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | YouTube | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Christopher: Welcome back to the show! Today, I’m joined for another Meet The Team interview by Camilo Suárez, a member of our Education Team who’s also a Next Level coach. And we’re going to dive into a bit of his musical backstory and his role at Musical U. Welcome to the show, Camilo!

Camilo: Hi, Christopher. Thank you for having me, I’m happy to be here.

Christopher: I was thinking before we started today, I was remembering, I think it was when we celebrated your one year Musical U-iversary, Hannah was sharing this anecdote that came to mind today.

She was saying how when we hired our next batch of Next Level coaches, we had this big stack of applications, all these people applying to be a Next Level coach. And we were going through them, and she had done her pass, and I had done my pass, and then we got together to try and kind of narrow it down from this big batch to a shortlist, and she was like “okay, so, Christopher, how do you want to do this?” And I was like “I want Camilo Suárez.”

And she was bringing this up on your one year Musical U-iversary to make the point that it proved to be a very smart decision! I think something in your application just made me know you were the man for the job, and you’ve proven to be such a great part of the Musical U team.

So I’m super excited to dive in today and share with people a bit of your own backstory and what you’re up to on the Musical U team and all the contributions you make. Before we do that though, you know I like to open with my favourite question, which is: what does “musicality” mean to you?

Camilo: Well, I love that question because it makes me come up with different answers. But in general, I think that musicality is an experience.

It’s the experience of creating meaning through sound and the experience of interacting with others through sound. I like to think about it as an experience, because it’s something that is available for anyone, anyone that decides to unleash their musicality. And my job is to help people do that, to touch their inner musicality and to help them have that type of communication.

Christopher: Awesome. Well, I’m going to take a tangent here, in fact, and put you on the spot and ask the question that may be on some listeners’ or watchers’ minds, which is “what if I don’t feel like I have that musicality experience like that? That sounds great, but I don’t feel very musical”.

Camilo: Yeah, well, that really resonates with me because that was a situation that I experienced myself in terms of doubting my abilities, doubting that, well, do I have the talent? Because that was the word that was always around. Are you talented or not?

Tapping into your musicality is something available that happens as you take some decisions and come into an environment where you can do things like start to use your voice, start to relate to your favorite music, the music that you feel passionate about in a different way.

So a lot of mindset work sometimes is necessary to realize that, and sometimes by doing a little bit of just creative projects, small projects. I love this idea of working on “musical gestures”, unfinished pieces, things that somehow give you the realization that you are able to create that sound, to have an authentic musical experience, something that sounds meaningful, that feels meaningful to you.

Christopher: I love it. Awesome. And you kind of teed up the next question, which is to dive into your musical backstory a bit.

You mentioned there that you could relate to someone who didn’t feel talented. Tell us about your early years in music. How did you come to be the musician and music educator you are today?

Camilo: Yeah, well, like many people, I started to take lessons when I was a kid.

I come from a family that loved music. None of them were musicians in the sense of being able to play an instrument or being professional musicians, but they all loved music. My parents, my father had a great album collection that I was listening to all the time, my grandfather as well. So I started with that. Then I got violin lessons, and that didn’t go too well. Let’s just leave it like that!

I didn’t feel that it was something in which my imagination was engaged in that. So after the violin lessons, I quit for a little bit and I took guitar and I started to fall in love with it. Jazz, with blues, with ragtime.

Later I moved to the States. In the States, I started to work with salsa bands, with Latin jazz bands while I was going to college. And that just taught me a lot, working with people that were very passionate about it, very willing to show you, to help you learn in a different way.

Because my experience with school, with lessons had not been that great in terms of finding the type of relationship with music that I have now. Later, I just start wondering how come. How come this is not happening to me? How come I feel sometimes that I’m tone deaf, that I can’t understand music in the way that I understand language, in the way that I express through language? So later I decided to go back to school, to graduate school, and actually sit down and read about this and read about how the brain works. It was also inspired by this podcast, the Musicality Podcast. When I started to hear about people thinking about it, I went, I read all of that. Well, not all of that, but many of those books and articles.

And that gave me a sense of, well, maybe this is changing. Our idea of how musical learning happens is changing, and I’m gonna take some decisions, change some things in the way that I practice, the way I relate to music, and the way that I teach music to others as well.

Christopher: Awesome. Yeah. And I was definitely, you know, kind of touched and honored, I think, when I interviewed you for the team to hear that Musical U had played a part in your musical development like that, that you had been listening to the podcast and felt a bit inspired, and you took that to not only your own music making, but also your work at the university, right?

Camilo: Yeah, yeah, completely.

Because, I mean, some of those ideas are ideas that I had an intuition that, you know, maybe musical learning would work in a different way, but I didn’t have evidence of that. So listening to these scholars and guests and musicians talking about this allowed me also to take that experience and bring it to my classroom. I work with first year students, with pre college students, and also with music teachers now.

And just reflecting about this, how has been your experience learning? What can we change about that and how we can make those experiences in the classroom much more meaningful?

Christopher: And your degree was, you mentioned moving to the states. That was the University of Washington, was it? Right. And then your masters, just to confuse me, your master’s was at the University of Columbia (with a U) in the states? Got it. Yeah. So you were pivoting to music and music education at the University of Columbia, and then you moved back to Colombia, Colombia, to teach there at the university in Bogotá, is that right?

Camilo: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And now I’m mainly focusing on teacher training programs of kind of taking this idea and working with amazing teachers around the country, people that teach in completely different contexts, from university professors to community schools to native american communities where they have music education as well.

And so that dialogue and bringing all of this knowledge has been just a transforming and deeply, deeply meaningful experience for me.

Christopher: Yeah, I think it’s so exciting, the work you’re doing there to really impact music education at that level and bring this spirit of musicality being the focus to that. Talk a little bit more about your own music making these days or over the last few years, what you play, what you enjoy. Give us a little glimpse into that part of your life.

Camilo: Yes, so I’m a bass player. I fell in love with the bass.

That was not my first choice, and I think not very often the bass is the first choice for someone. I was a guitar player before I decided to start a salsa band when I was in college, and the bass player didn’t show the first day. So I said, well, you know, I can take the bass, and fell in love with it.

And I’m still playing that. Play the upright most of the time. I played baby bass, the Ampeg bass, which is quite common in Latin music.

So I’ve been the leader of my own band, and when I came back to Colombia as well, I like to do a lot of arranging, transcription, playing the music that I love. We have a little bit of, we have a recording project on the works, which is going to be in my first full recording project. So I’m excited about that, collaborating with colleagues from people that I’ve known throughout the years.

So, excited about that.

Christopher: That’s awesome. I can’t wait to hear some of that.

And you applied to be a Next Level coach, but we don’t just take anyone off the street and let them coach our Next Level clients, of course! We really are looking for people who have the kind of deep educational background and passion that you do, and then we need to get you up to speed with how we do Next Level coaching and make sure that you’re really kind of ready to hit the ground running. So talk a little bit about your early work at Musical U and how your role has developed.

Camilo: Well, I started on Musical U doing support, helping people going through Living Music, knowing the program, encouraging them to keep going, to discover, to tap into their musicality. So that’s what I did in the first months, and it was just a fantastic experience to see and to identify myself also with people, discovering, feeling excited, saying, I can sing in a different way. I can create my own lines.

And later that started to transform in other challenges, like writing some modules for our site and working with our Head Educator, Andrew Bishko, who became a mentor in terms of explaining how to put things together, how to help people in a way that was effective, that was engaging, that was encouraging.

And later I moved on to become Next Level coach, which has been probably the greatest and the most challenging professional experience that I have had so far.

Christopher: Well, I definitely want to ask a bit more about that!

It’s interesting you mentioned about the module writing, because I think Andrew made reference to this in his Meet The Team interview a couple of weeks back. In that I don’t know that people realize how much more there is to creating effective online education, to just having good information. Like any, any teacher in the real world might be good at teaching, but to translate that into a format that anyone can show up, click on the module and actually have the material land with them and work for them and have it be a smooth journey, it is kind of this whole other skill set, right?

And it’s definitely taken us somewhere between five and 15 years, I would say, to figure out how to do it well. So it’s interesting to hear that was a learning curve for you, too.

Camilo: Oh, it is. And I still learn a lot. I mean, in the past, like everyone, I bought books on music theory and then I would have a paragraph with the information, but I didn’t know how, how to apply that. I didn’t really know what that meant in terms of music, in terms of my relationship with music.

So what I find here, it’s a team that has a lot of experience in this and this back and forth. When Andrew says, let’s work on this, and then I do a draft, I send it to him, he sends me comments, let’s do this way. Why don’t you consider this other thing? And then we end up with these experiences that we see that members of the community enjoy and that they add to their own musical journey.

Christopher: Awesome. Yeah. And you said being a Next Level coach has been maybe the greatest and most challenging experience.

Talk a little bit about what it’s like to be a Next Level coach, how that’s been for you. Because you’re maybe not quite a year in? I think you’ve been with us about 18 months now.

Camilo: Yeah.

Christopher: So probably coming up towards a year of coaching. Is that true?

Camilo: Yes, almost.

Christopher: So how’s it been?

Camilo: It’s been a great experience because in coaching, we get to change our mindset from being a teacher to doing this other activity, this more integral, holistic activity, and learner-centered activity, which is coaching.

So this way, I get to work with people that have different interests, different backgrounds, that come from different experiences in music. And our challenge is to respond to the questions that they have to help them work towards the musical goals.

And that starts from helping articulate in a better way what their musical goals are.

So I have people that come from the classical world, from the jazz world. Some people want to learn the pop music. So all of these traditions help you and invite you to open your ears as a coach, to listen to different musical traditions, to understand what people really want to get out of music, which is generally to have this authentic, direct relationship with music.

So we have performers, we have arrangers, we have people that are interested in improvisation and on a weekly basis, having that conversation, hearing about that, finding new resources, also getting recommendations from them, and learning. You can’t believe how much I have learned and how much I have grown as a musician and as an educator by doing this constant learning with them every week.

Christopher: That’s terrific. Yeah. And I sometimes when we’re talking about Next Level coaching, I explain the difference between a coach and a teacher.

And obviously, you’ve been both. You’ve taught at the highest levels at university, but I think you touched on there what to me is the crux of the difference, which is a teacher, even the best teacher in the world, their responsibility is to show up and teach and be good at teaching and giving a lesson.

With coaching, the responsibility is to get results for the student and to do kind of whatever it takes to get them from here to there. And I love how you shared that there, that, you know, the beautiful burden, as it were, of taking on that responsibility and having to react and respond dynamically. You know, we use this approach, Passion-Based Learning, which really encourages the clients to show up with whatever they’re excited about.

And then it’s your responsibility as the coach to channel that in the right direction. And it does just create this kind of never-ending back and forth where you’re helping lead them forwards in a very responsive way that I think is, again, total respect to teachers and the teaching format, but it’s a very different thing to teaching.

Camilo: Right. It is. It is.

And this changing world where education is changing that much, coaching is, I think, is really responding to what is happening now, to what people are looking for and helping us use different tools to get to them. So it’s an exciting, it’s an exciting job to work, to work with people and to help them to concentrate on outcomes, not just teaching.

“This is the material that I have to tell you. And here it is. And let’s see what you can do with that”, as opposed to now saying “well, let’s see how that material, how these experiences are transforming what you are doing, and let’s make sure that you’re coming close to those outcomes that you were looking for”.

So that involves constant self-assessment as a coach and constant communication with the client to make sure we’re moving towards the place that we want to move. We’re discovering new things which can happen as well.

You jump into a program, you thought that you wanted this, but along the way you discovered that maybe you were also interested in arranging or an improvisation. Coming from a classical background, you never thought that you would be able to do that. But in the experience within coaching, you find out. So we are open to explore that along with clients.

Christopher: Yeah. And I’m really glad you touched there on the kind of trend generally in terms of teaching and education. I think you’re very on the, you’re very on the spot with it that teaching as a whole is, I think, evolving in that direction, more towards coaching.

And it’s a particular thing for us, I think, because part of that shift is away from a model that says the teacher is the grand authority. They pass down the wisdom and it’s up to the student to succeed with it. And if the student doesn’t figure it out, they have failed. They’re not good enough, they’re not smart enough, they haven’t tried hard enough.

Really flipping that on its head and be like, well, no, you know, if they’re not learning, then it’s the educational process that is failing and we need to be willing and able to adapt.

And there’s all kinds of interesting things going on, obviously now in the age of AI in terms of adaptive learning and flipped classrooms and how can we, you know, have it be more learner-focused? But coaching kind of shortcuts that entire thing and just says “no, look, two human beings, one of them has a lot of expertise. They’re going to act as the guide in a very hands on way and be with you side by side to get you from here to there”.

Camilo: Yeah, exactly. It helps you deal with all of that, with changing your mindset.

I have students, younger students also at some times come in saying, well, you know, I am too old for this – and they are 16 or 17! Because they come with this idea, you know, if you didn’t start music when you were four years old, you are “too old”.

But I also have students which later in life after retirement, start doing this, and they defy that. They discover that they can improvise, they can’t figure out a tune that they love by. And coaching is allowing us to realize that, to help people do that.

That’s why it’s exciting, and that’s why many music educators are turning their attention to this, because it’s tapping into some questions that we had. Who is entitled to have music education? Only the talented ones? Is this something that can be available to anyone at different stages of their life?

Christopher: Awesome. And you still play a part in the member support team, doing work in the discussion boards, in Living Music and elsewhere, and your main duties are obviously as a Next Level coach.

If you had to pinpoint one thing in your week to week work, that’s your favourite thing to do at Musical U, what would that be?

Camilo: My favorite thing to do is to get up in the morning, I open my Slack, and see the recordings that clients sent.

I get surprised and excited every time that I see someone taking their chances, improvising, sending something, being vulnerable to show something that is your own creation and putting that in your Practice Space and looking for feedback or posting that for the community to share. That just gives me so much energy and motivation as a coach. And as a musician sometimes saying, “oh, I want to collaborate with this, I should record a bass for this part”. I have to let them do their own thing! But that’s the most rewarding thing about this job.

Christopher: That’s lovely. That’s really great.

And I think it’s been exciting to see because we have, over the years, definitely encouraged and started to see more and more of that happening in the general membership community. People being willing to share their improvisation attempts or their new song they’re working on and that kind of thing. And it does happen, but that’s a big community, like tens of thousands of people in there.

I think there’s still quite a lot of intimidation to share there, and that’s one reason we kind of created this separate space for the Next Levelers. And of course, they can go direct to you as their coach and just share it privately. And so it’s been really great to see them doing that and see the flourishing of the collaborations and everything that’s going on there.

Awesome. So I like to wrap up with a strange and unusual question, which is, what’s a strange and unusual technique? Something that people might not have come across before or might be skeptical about, but something you found really works to help people develop their musicality.

Camilo: Well, your inner hearing, in my case, the ability of recalling music that you heard before in your childhood, in your teenage years, because that music, even if you didn’t feel like a musician at that point in terms of being able to figure ear by ear, that music has been ingrained in your body, your mind, in your ears.

Sometimes I go back and I start thinking about that music that I was listening to when I was in high school. Now, I’m not going to confess what music that was, but sometimes I get very surprised that suddenly I realize, oh, my God, it was only these chord changes and now I can play them. I can play them.

So sometimes I just go back to that music and that just gives me a lot of happiness and it’s really rewarding as well.

Christopher: I love that. Yeah.

I think we probably all have some part of our teenage music tastes that we’d be embarrassed to admit to, don’t we? But you’re right.

We sometimes touch on this at Musical U, how your vocabulary and your instinctive understanding of music comes so much from those memories you built up over decades, maybe even before ever touching an instrument.

And I love that recognition of the power of those memories and how much fun it can be to return to them both, to spark the enthusiasm, but also to be a gateway into playing by ear or improvising or figuring stuff out. That’s a really great tip. Thank you.

Well, Camilo, it’s been an absolute pleasure. It’s always a pleasure talking to you, but to have the chance to interview you in this format is fantastic. Thank you for joining us.

Any parting words of wisdom for our listeners and viewers today?

Camilo: Keep going. You are here, you’re listening to this. It’s because you love music and we are here to help, to help you continue with your journey to anywhere that you want to take it.

Christopher: Fantastic. Thank you. Well, you will all have the pleasure of hearing from Camilo again tomorrow in our next Coaches Corner episode.

Until then, cheers!

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | YouTube | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Do you know what your North Star is in music?

If you’ve ever suffered from shiny object syndrome or chasing squirrels and going down YouTube rabbit holes, or you found that your motivation for music goes up and down like a rollercoaster week by week, then I want to share one solution that’s been proven by thousands upon thousands of musicians to fix all of those problems and more in as little as five minutes.

So on an episode earlier this week, I was talking about this new painting in my office. If you’re watching the video version, you can see I’m pointing to this Abbey Road interpretation abstract art.

And it was what inspired me to talk about Beatles Month the other day. And if you didn’t see that episode, I’ll put a link in the shownotes. You can go back and check it out, but there’s actually a story behind this one, too.

If you see this one, and I know a couple of members of the team figured out what it was and why it was there, I’d love to know if you also spotted it and realized why I would hang that particular painting on my wall. And initially when I hung it, I similarly got inspired to talk to you guys about something.

And I was initially going to share a video from inside our Living Music program, which is related to it. But on reflection, I know that so many of you that tune into Musicality Now are real Musical U diehards! You know, a lot of our keenest members, a lot of those who’ve been listening or watching for years upon years, and that video from Living Music is great for explaining the exercise I want to share with you today, but I wanted to go one step further, so I decided to share something else.

And this is a clip from a panel masterclass we did at Musical U a couple of years back, where we actually had each member of the team share their one top tip for improving your musicality. And it was a really cool session.

I loved hearing from everyone in the variety of answers they had. And this is what I shared during that session. I presented this exercise that’s all around your North Star in music and gave eight tips.

And so if you’ve come across this exercise before, if it’s familiar, then the eight tips should still be super useful for you – IF you put it into use. So this is one where you definitely want to listen and then actually go away and do something with it. So here we go into our panel masterclass.

And for context, I had just talked a bit about Musical U, who we are, what we do, our vision and our mission. And then this was the first of the tips that the team shared. Here we go.

————

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to share on the call today, and you’re going to hear a range of tips from everyone on the team. But having set that context for what we do at Musical U and this movement you are now a part of, whether you’ve been with us a few days, a few months, or a few years, I thought about doing something very specific and new and niche and tactical. Because, as we said, there’s a lot of familiar faces and it’s wonderful.

And some of you have heard from me throughout the Living Music program, in podcast episodes, on past masterclasses, all kinds of places. You’ve had emails from me, maybe every day for years, and so it was tempting to do something that I knew you wouldn’t have heard from me before.

But at the end of the day, when I thought about what I could share, that would be most impactful, most helpful for the greatest number of people, there was really only one candidate. And I’m almost tempted to have you guess! I’m going to ask you to guess in the chat what you think I’m going to share as my top tip for your musicality, we could play “Christopher Cliches” bingo.

“Beginner’s mind”, very good guess from Barnaby and Jeannie.

“Practice music every day”. Also, good answers.

“Active listening”. This is great. I’m just going to invite each of you up and you can present my tip for me!

These are all wonderful options.

“Universal potential”, one of our pillar beliefs.

Yep. “Growth mindset”. “Just listen to music”. “You can do it”. Love it.

Good, okay, I’m not feeling too cliche after all!

So I’m going to share something that I believe is possibly the most useful thing you can do for your musical life.

And it’s something we’ve been using since the outset of Musical U in 2015, when we first launched the membership and opened the doors and had people come in and start training with us in the membership site. It’s an exercise we call the Big Picture Vision exercise.

And I’m sure a lot of you, yeah, I can see a lot of you now, nodding in recognition. I would like to think an awful lot of you on the call today have done this exercise. If you’ve been a member or you’ve been in Living Music, this should be familiar to you. But I wanted to share it today for a couple of reasons.

Reason number one is, I think it is the thing which makes everything else easier and without which everything else is much more frustrating and confusing than it needs to be.

And the second reason is that it’s one of these things, like beginner’s mind and some of the other suggestions today that it’s really easy to lose sight of, you’re like,” yeah, I did that. Learned about that. Fine.” You move on.

And actually, the value of it, the power of it, is in keeping it front of mind, day after day, week after week, month after month.

So if this is familiar to you, I just encourage you to listen afresh and ask whether you have been making full use of what this can do for you.

And if it’s new to you, this is something I’d highly encourage you to get onto right away. So our Big Picture Vision exercise here at Musical U is very simple. It’s to answer one question about your musical life.

And the question is: If you were to imagine yourself five years in the future and everything has gone perfectly with your musical life, so you’re going to pretend you’re not a cynical, skeptical adult, as some of us may have ended up, you’re going to suspend all disbelief and you’re going to imagine that there’s been no struggling, no frustration, no failures, no setbacks. It’s just been kind of a dream. Five years, everything’s magically clicked into place.

What would your musical life look like?

And a lot of people who come to us at Musical U, they’ve literally never considered that. They’ve never asked themselves that question, they’ve never dreamed of into the future like that.

But if you start to think about, you know, what instruments would you like to play, what style of music would you like to play, what kind of performing would you like to do or collaborating? What kind of creative things would you like to do? And really flesh out a description of that ideal musical life.

This is going to do a few things for you, and so I’d like to share a little bit about why this is so powerful. And then I’ve got, I think, eight tips that can help you really make the most of this.

So why is this powerful? Well, like I said, some people have never done this before.

And I always come back to this quote from Alice in Wonderland, where Alice is talking to the Cheshire Cat in the Tulgey Wood. And Alice is lost at this point. She’s trying to find her way to the Red Queen’s palace and trying to find her way home, really.

And she says to the Cheshire Cat, I wonder if you could tell me which way to go? And the Cheshire Cat says “where are you trying to get to?” And Alice says “well, I really don’t mind…” And the Cheshire cat says “well, then it really doesn’t matter which way you go”.

And a lot of musicians are like that! They’re wandering and they keep trying to find their way, but they haven’t really figured out their destination.

And so it’s constantly frustrating and confusing which direction they should be going. What courses to do, what teacher to learn with, should they try another instrument? Should they just focus on this? Should they practice this way? And without that destination in mind, without a Big Picture Vision as your kind of North Star, you’re kind of doomed to wander endlessly like that. So having that North Star is incredibly powerful.

The second reason is it’s amazing for motivation. So what I found, like, I’ve had the real honour of talking in recent weeks with some people who applied for the Next Level coaching program, some of whom I see on the call today. And something that kept coming up was that our motivation, our passion for music can wax and wane, right? Like, with all the best intentions, sometimes you wake up and you’re just not up for practicing, or sometimes a couple of weeks passed and you’ve kind of fallen off the wagon.

But the one thing which never really wavers is your Big Picture Vision, because that literally encapsulates what it is you’re most passionate about. And so having that touchstone, you can keep coming back to where if you’re not motivated to practice, if you read through your Big Picture Vision and you remind yourself, oh, yeah, this is why I care. This is why I’m doing it. This is what’s possible for me and where I want to get to.

It’s an incredible way to just kickstart your motivation again and again. Because whatever might be going on this day, this week, this month, that Big Picture Vision can continually re-spark that passion for you.

And the third really powerful thing about it is that we live in the age of YouTube and shiny object syndrome, and it’s so easy to let what is a really good thing, our passion, become scatterbrained enthusiasm in every direction. And I’m as guilty of it as anyone, to be clear! But those shiny objects can prevent us from actually making real progress.

And so I love the Big Picture Vision for providing a kind of filter for that, where you can ask yourself, like, is this actually aligned with where I want to go? Am I chasing down a rabbit hole just because I’m kind of addicted to the YouTube roulette? Or is this feeding me something that will lead me down the path I want to be going? So once you’re clear on that North Star it becomes a lot easier to stay focused and rule out things that are going to be a distraction or pure entertainment without actually moving you forwards.

So that is why I feel this is so powerful and why we’ve seen it be so powerful over the years at Musical U.

And we’ve learned a lot about what makes it work well and what makes it not work so well. So I did want to share some tips, and if you’ve done this before, I hope these tips will be really useful for you to kind of power up your Big Picture Vision and help you get even more from it in the future.

The first tip is that written is best.

So hopefully, as I’ve been talking, I can see some of you jotting down notes, in fact. But hopefully, as I’ve been talking, you’ve at least been thinking – Skip, nice, “whole clipperboard full!” Amazing.

Hopefully you’ve been starting to get some ideas and start that little bit of your mind dreaming into the future. But really take even just five minutes, sit down with your computer or a pen and paper and write down as much as you can.

I’m a big fan of kind of stream of consciousness writing. Just like, don’t have the inner editor going, just write and write and write and sort it out later. And that can be amazing for capturing it because when it’s in your head, it’s always fuzzy, you go around in circles. As soon as you start writing it down, A. it makes it clearer and B. it makes it more real and you start to actually see that thing as being possible for you. So written tends to be best.

The second tip is a fairly recent learning for me where I’ve been working with some people on their Big Picture Visions.

And you may or may not, may or may not know this about me, but I’m a computer science by background guy. I’m very analytical, very left brain, I guess, and my default is to be very factual. And what I found is that with the Big Picture Vision, people fall into two categories.

One is that analytical category, and you’re all about the facts and the specifics and the details. And the other category are the more kind of, you know, stereotypically creative or artistic or emotion driven right brain people. And you tend to default to talking a lot about how it’s going to feel and how amazing it’s going to be and how fulfilling it’s going to be without any of the specifics.

And I can see some head nods and head shaking. You all identify with one of those, I’m sure!

Whichever group you are, try and do a little bit of the other one.

So I’ve seen it be super powerful, if you are analytical, just spend a little bit of time thinking about how it’s going to feel to accomplish those things. Or if you’re all about the emotions, try and pinpoint a few of the details and it just really magnifies the power of that Big Picture Vision for you if you can make it a bit of both.

The third tip is make it a living document.

This isn’t something that’s “one and done”. Like I said at the beginning, it’s something to keep coming back to and keep front of mind in the members site. It’s why we try and put it right there in front of you, inside the Living Music seasons, for example. Because not only do you want to keep reminding yourself of it, I would encourage you to feel free to edit it as often as you want.

So it probably will stay mostly the same because it’s meant to capture your true yearning, that true destination. But at the same time, we’re constantly learning, it is a journey, things are going to change, priorities are going to shift, and you’re going to make progress towards it.

So it’s perfectly okay to update it and revise it and think things through again. So do let it be a living document.

The fourth is rolled into that one: keep it front of mind.

I know a lot of you have printed it out and you have it in your music practice area, which is fantastic. But wherever you can put it that you’ll spot it and be reminded of it, and then you kind of get that inadvertent motivation boost and that prompt to revisit it and re-evaluate.

That’s a really powerful way to make the most of it.

Tip number five of eight: Shoot for the moon.

This is something where it is about dreaming and defining the ideal future. A lot of us tend to be cautious and timid when doing goal-setting, but I love that quote that if you shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars, right?

So set your ambitions high. It’ll drive you forwards more effectively, it’ll motivate you more effectively, and it’ll help make sure that wherever you do get to exceeds your expectations that you would otherwise have.

Number six: please don’t be afraid to share it.

I know if you’re a long-standing member of the community, you know that Musical U is a safe space for doing that. No one will ever tear you down or criticize or discourage you.

It’s a very friendly and supportive community. You can feel very comfortable sharing even that very ambitious Big Picture Vision, and you’ll get nothing but encouragement and support. And even if you just share it with friends and family, that can be great for accountability and again, for making it real for you.

Number seven, I hesitated over whether to share this one, but: I would advise you to be ruthless, if you can.

And it comes back to that shiny object syndrome. Like, once you’re clear on that North Star, really trust it and be ruthless about what does not fit it.

A lot of us are coming with a lot of baggage as to what we “should” do in music and how music learning is “meant” to go and what practice “should” look like. You can use your Big Picture Vision again as a filter and just be very ruthless. “Nope, that’s not for me.” “I’m not interested in that because it’s not about where I’m trying to get to”. That is perfectly okay.

And again, it’s really empowering to have that concrete definition. “This is what matters to me. All that other stuff can wait, or I can ignore it, and that’s perfectly fine”.

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t throw in the last tip, which is to encourage you to please ask for help.

Hopefully you know, we’re very friendly and personal here on the musical U team. Our team is here, and if you want help figuring out your Big Picture Vision, or you want help figuring out how to pursue it, or if something fits with it, our team will know, we understand it, we’re happy to help with it. And Musical U is very much a place where you can reach out to other members of the community, or indeed the team, and we’ll be more than happy to help you figure out how to make the most of your Big Picture Vision.

So that’s my tips for you. I hope that for those of you who are familiar with the exercise, that refreshed it for you and added some spice to it.

And I hope that if it’s new to you, you will take very seriously my encouragement to go away after this call, take five minutes and jot down your first draft of your Big Picture Vision, because it just might be the most important thing you can do.

———

So there you have it – the Cheshire Cat inspired Big Picture Vision exercise! As well as a range of tips to amp up its effectiveness.

And I was so impressed a couple of weeks ago, I did the live training yourmusicalcore.com, that live training, and I was so impressed because a lot of the people on that call were our devotees, and I knew for a fact they had done that exercise before. But as part of that training, we went through it together and every single one of them had heads down writing afresh. And it just really validated the power of writing it, returning to it, and constantly keeping it front of mind because they’ve seen the power of it, they’ve seen the impact it can have, and they really value what it can do for them.

I did want to throw in one other thing because I mentioned at the start I was going to share a video from our Living Music program where I present this exercise. And there was one thing I said in that one that I didn’t say in this, which is to clarify: this is not goal setting.

So there’s a big difference between a vision and a goal.

And one thing that sometimes trips people up with the Big Picture Vision is they see it as goal setting, and that immediately makes them tense up and get anxious and worry about the how. “How will I do this?” So you really need to see it as a vision. This is just describing illustrating the future you wish to get to. And then all of the goal setting and planning can follow on from that. But when you’re working on your Big Picture Vision, just really stay in that space of imagining and suspending all disbelief and dreaming into what could be possible for you.

I’ll be back tomorrow with our next Meet The Team interview. I’m excited to have Next Level coach Camilo Suarez joining me for that tomorrow.

And then on Saturday we’ll have our next Coaches Corner episode. Saturday is also our monthly masterclass for members, super exciting, this time with Dr. Molly Gebrian on the topic of “what musicians can learn about practicing from current brain research”.

So I can’t wait for that one. And I look forward to seeing many of you with me there on Saturday. Til next time, cheers!

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | YouTube | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!