Author: musicalitywrld

In this episode we share exactly what “musicality” means to our Musical U members – and what it could mean for you.

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Links and Resources

• Musicality Now – Welcome to the Musicality Podcast!
• Musicality Now – Unlocking Your Musicality: Part One
• Musicality Now – Unlocking Your Musicality: Part Two
• Musicality Now – A Mindset for Musicality, with Natalie Weber
• Musicality Now – Discover Your Own Musical Creativity, with Forrest Kinney
• Musicality Now – The Musicality of Sitting on a Rock, with Andrew Bishko
• Musicality Now – About You Being Musical Inside Already
• Musicality Now – The Musicality of the Beatles
• Musicality Now – More Mindful, More Musical, with Susanne Olbrich

Transcript

We have reached Episode 200! Of what was “The Musicality Podcast” and is now simply “Musicality Now”. And what was an audio-only podcast, is now available in full video too.

And after roughly 100 interviews and 100 other episodes I wanted to use this milestone moment to do two things.
Firstly, to thank you all for watching and listening, whether it’s been to one episode or all two hundred or somewhere in between.

And a special thank you to everyone who’s taken a moment to rate and review the show on iTunes (which you can do at musicalitynow.com/review ) or to share this show with a musical friend or family member. We’re on a mission to spread the word about what’s truly possible through musicality training, so every time you review or share this show you help us to reach and inspire more musicians just like you.

The second thing I wanted to do was to revisit what we started the show with back in Episode 1. I thought it was important from the outset to explain in a nutshell what we mean by the word “musicality” – and now, two hundred episodes later, it seems due time to revisit that question.

Now you might think that after interviewing a hundred of the world’s leading experts I’m here to share everything I’ve learned from them – and actually, we do have a project underway to do just that, you’ll be hearing more about that in future episodes soon.

But actually what prompted me to revisit it wasn’t those experts – but our members here at Musical U.

Recently we did a huge member survey, 40-plus questions all about our members, their musical lives, their training, and getting their input on some big exciting things we have coming up for the future.

And we had an amazing response. The consultant who was helping us conduct the survey was actually shocked by just how many in our community took the time to respond and the great depth and detail they were willing to share in their answers. And I was really touched and honoured too.

There is a ton of learning in there for us but one of the most striking things was actually their responses to question number one. In which we asked them:

What does “musicality” mean to you?

And I’ll be honest. I was expecting to roughly hear back the same things we say about it ourselves here at Musical U. In that first episode I said:

Musicality is a set of “inner skills” which let you freely and confidently express yourself in music.

And we have a whole set of skills that we think are part of musicality. We’ll be covering these all in more detail in future episodes, but to give you a taste, we’re talking about things like:

Playing by ear
Singing in tune
Jamming with other musicians
Having good rhythm
Writing music
Writing notation
Improvising a solo
Talking intelligently about music
Understanding Music Theory
Clapping in time
Knowing your instrument inside and out
Tuning your instrument by ear
Reading notation
Sight-reading music
Playing from a lead sheet
Performing live
and Playing multiple instruments

And we actually have an article on our site entitled “What Is Musicality?” that runs through those 17 skills and explains how each is learnable.

But here’s the thing. I’m a scientist/engineer type of guy by background, very analytical and literal most of the time. So my go-to explanation of musicality often goes directly to these concrete skills.

Yet really, in essence, musicality is, frankly, a lot more magical than that. Although those component skills are part of it, the overall concept is much more versatile and meaningful, much more about the expressive, emotional side of music-making than a list of skills really captures.

Fortunately, as so often happens at Musical U, my own ideas pale in comparison to what we achieve with the input of our members! And their answers in the survey really did a better job of capturing what musicality is AND why it matters.

So I wanted to share a few of those with you today.

The survey was anonymous, so I won’t name names –  but I know we have many members in the audience here so thank you to you if I’m using your example here.

We had over 100 replies so I won’t include them all! But I’ve tried to pick a representative sample that captures all the fascinating things that were shared…

Keep in mind these come from musicians with a wide range of backgrounds, as befits the Musical U member community. People who are new to Musical U through to those who’ve been with us for years, complete beginners in music as an adult through to professional musicians and music teachers. People playing all instruments and all styles of music.

I’ve invited the Musical U team – Andrew, Stewart, Adam, Anastasia, Zac and Ruth – to help me share these.

Here we go.

—–

Musicality is all of the pieces one needs to be a musician. It is hearing, processing, creating and performing music. It is our ability to take in music on a more refined level and to turn that inner understanding into making music. It can be broken down into many aspects that rely on the ear, mind, emotions and skills we develop.

Understanding the language of music, its grammar, punctuation, its clarity and most of all its delivery.

That “thing” that makes music, human, creative, emotional and unique. It’s what attracts a listener to some kinds of music more than other forms of music. It’s the way the performer makes a piece of music uniquely his/her own. It’s more than technical and mechanical ability but something over and above physical capacity to make music.

Musicality means playing freely in a way that expresses what you are feeling at the moment.  Your mind and fingers already know what notes to play and how to physically play them.
You are not thinking about specific chords or notes or scales or timing or fingering or theory.  You just enjoy the sounds you are making.
You do not have to be a musical expert to play musically.  The music you play does not have to be very advanced. The song can be one you have practiced and learned, or a tune you make up as you go along. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just good enough to feel good when you are playing.
What matters is that you have fun playing.  If you don’t enjoy the playing, you’ll stop.

Musicality means being able to express your thoughts/feelings through music.

I believe that musicality means understanding music from a listening point of view and not necessarily from a theoretical point of view. Listening for certain details reinforces the theory, provides more meaning and the occasional “aha” moment. It is helping me to become a more rounded musician.

It’s an ability to play, understand, reproduce and create music.

Musicality is being in the flow of the music instead of struggling with the notes which are written down or how to get them from my instrument

It means communing with the sound.  Hearing, feeling, understanding and expressing sound in a way that transcends the technical mechanics of making music.

Hearing and appreciating the music I hear, being able to feel the shape and mood of a piece to interpret it with feeling

Musicality for me is like a language, a way of understanding and expressing and communicating music. I think it’s important from the moment we exist in the womb. It is an intrinsic part of my being.

It means feeling the music as you play it and conveying that to the audience. The instrument becomes an extension of yourself. It is communication of an emotion, idea or concept through song. It’s the expression of your soul.

To me, it means an innate ability to play or sing music with an understanding of how notes and chords work together, and to present music in a pleasing way.

To me musicality means the ability to add expressive feeling to your playing; not being a robot but playing off the cuff, adding a bit of yourself into the piece being played. It is really important as it distinguishes the quality of the musician.

Musicality is the power to understand what you hear in your head and be able to transfer it to your instrument.

Until I discovered Musical U, I thought musicality refers to talent. I now know that musicality can be learned at least in part and that with the right practice and guidance, even I can be more musical.

Musicality means the essence of music, tone, rhythm, beat, the structure of sounds we make into a pleasing pattern for our ears. It is valuing and appreciating the art of sound. I enjoy musicality and the ability to make music. It involves science and creativity. I like putting those two things together. I believe musicality is important because it is a communication tool that is universal, relatable, learnable and teachable. It is a uniting factor for all of us. And everybody can do it.

Musicality means understanding all aspects of music: the listening, the playing, the appreciating

Musicality is the developing ability to interpret the sounds, symbols, rhythms, emotions etc of a piece of music. Plus it is the ability to create and develop a piece of music through composition or improvisation. It is an understanding of what is happening in a piece of music, of what works and why.

When I think Musicality, I think it is something that feels hard to pin down exactly…it’s an essence that goes beyond playing correct notes, rhythms, dynamics and yet involves all those technical aspects as well.  I was often told that I played ‘musically’ even though I was weak with ear and many technical aspects. I think it has something to do with ability to express music emotionally.

Musicality to me means the learnt ability to understand the inner workings of music for both appreciation and creation and performance. I think it is important to have this understanding in order to expand the possibilities of music making and appreciation.

It’s an inner sensitivity to music. More than academic knowledge, musicality becomes part of you.

The rich blend of playing, listening to, appreciating, interpreting and sharing music. Engaging with it as a whole language in all its diverse forms of reading, writing and speaking; unlimited by idiomatic variations and improvisations.

It is an appreciation of music and an ability to produce sounds worth appreciating.

Taking sounds and arranging them in patterns, phrases or brushes of color using rhythm, dynamics, tone, articulation, form, tempo and meter to express the thoughts and emotions you experience in daily life and marvelous moments. Or hearing music composed or performed by others that moves your thoughts and emotions and enhances the quality of your existence.

Musicality to me means being a natural musician. Having innate rhythm, a good ear and singing in tune both with accompaniment and without. Having good aural skills and being able to play an instrument/sing both on your own and with others to an enjoyable standard. Being able to have fun with music and be creative with it. Being an essential part of you just as breathing is.

A deep and wide love of music leading to a feeling for and understanding of with an easy ability to create music

Being able to understand the elements of music in a fun, creative, efficient and rewarding way, so that I am able to express myself and my ideas through music without struggling and without getting stuck at sterile explanations.

Feeling musical; able to listen to different types of music with attention and understand things like form, structure and content; not being afraid to embrace music theory being curious at how it works and hangs together, especially across styles; being interested in listening to and enjoying music; wanting to play an instrument and / or sing – and improve at it. Wanting to build on basic knowledge (e.g. what learned at school). Empowerment as musical knowledge improves, even if you’re never going to be a virtuoso, it’s the fun of fitting the different pieces of the jigsaw together!

Musicality means I am using my ears more than my eyes to play music on my instrument. It means a musician can listen actively to pieces of music, play it by ear on his/her instrument, jam with other musicians, and create his/her own music.

A natural way of hearing, experiencing, and producing music with understanding and enjoyment.

Musicality allows me to interact with the world through musical ears, fingers and heart. If I didn’t have musicality, I would be pretty good as a music reproduction robot. Since I have musicality, I can use that perspective to change cicada chirps into a Latin rhythm, Or feel musical tension, or have a desire to put my own spin on something.

It means the idea of being able to feel the music – be that pitch, harmony or rhythm – and play with it, interrogate it, converse with it, or add your own thoughts to it.

Ability to flow with the music, feel the music like a fish feels the water and a bird feels the air.

Musicality is about understanding what you are hearing or wanting to play and maybe feeling empowered to create what you want

—

I loved reading these responses and found them inspiring, I hope you did too. Such poetry there, and such vivid appreciation for all that musicality can unlock for you in the world of music.

This is what we’re striving for here at Musical U and with the show Musicality Now. To empower you in this wide variety of ways in your musical life. Through training in the concrete skills, but not for the sake of them – rather, it’s for the sake of this greater, deeper, ineffable thing called “musicality”.

Thank you again to all our members who took part in the survey, and especially those whose answers I shared here.

You may have noticed the timing of this show varying a bit over the summer but rest assured, we’re not going anywhere! We have some incredible interviews already in the can for the episodes ahead, including:

• the world’s top expert on using games to learn improvisation
• a former child prodigy whose story reveals some interesting subtlety to the so-called “talent myth”
• and a man who flips performance psychology and how we approach music practice and performance entirely on its head.

We’ll be continuing to do all we can to help you tap into your inner musicality and reach your true musical potential – but we need your help!

We believe that the biggest barrier to most people becoming more musical isn’t their natural abilities or the specifics of learning skills. It’s the awareness and belief that becoming more musical is, in fact, possible for them.

If you enjoy this show and find it useful then you probably know others who could benefit from it too, so if you would, please help us get this message out to more people.

You can do that by subscribing, rating and reviewing the show on iTunes, subscribing or commenting on YouTube, or simply sharing your favourite episodes with friends by email, on social media, or however you like to share things. Visit musicalitynow.com for easy links for each of those. That would mean the world to me and help us reach and help more musicians just like you.

Thanks in advance for taking a moment to do that – now, and any time an episode resonates with you. And together, we can help more people to discover the wonderful, life-changing meaning of musicality.

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The post What Is Musicality? (Revisited) appeared first on Musical U.

In this special rewind episode of Musicality Now the Musical U team discusses Ease and Joy in Music Learning.

Watch the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Musicality Now – Ease and Joy in Music Learning
• Musicality Now – Tell Your Own Story, with David Wallimann
• Musicality Now – Practice, Performance, and Powerful Levers, with Josh Wright
• Musicality Now – Folk, Frameworks, and Fun, with David Row
• Musicality Now – Creativity, Composing, and Confidence, with Sabrina Peña Young
• Musicality Now – Note2Self: “I Love This!”, with Lisa McCormick
• Musicality Now – 100% Emotion, with Michele McLaughlin
• Musicality Now – Rewind: Singing
• Musicality Now – Rewind: A Mindset for Music Theory
• Musicality Now – Rewind: Practicing

Transcript

Adam: Hi. I’m Adam Liette, operations manager for Musical U, and welcome back to another Rewind episode of Musicality Now. If this is your first Rewind episode, let me just take a minute to walk you through what we’ll be doing here. Musicality Now is typically hosted by Musical U director, Christopher Sutton, but every now and then, he lets me hijack the episode so we can look back on previous interviews. I gather the Musical U team together on a call, and we recall our favorite moments from the podcast, all under a theme.

Adam: You can find past Rewind episodes on music theory, singing and practicing at Musicalitynow.com. Today, we’re talking about finding ease and joy in your music learning. This really came from talking with our members and a series that Christopher did on Facebook Live a couple of months ago. What we’ve noticed is that the students that were able to get the most out of the training also said that they loved the experience and that musicality training helped make things easier and more fun, which is almost the exact opposite way that I remember doing ear training during my studies at the conservatory.

Adam: I can remember laboring for hours, trying to hear the subtle differences between intervals, recognizing chord progressions, or analyzing music. Practice always felt like the most pressure because you felt like there were people standing right outside your door, critiquing every little thing that you were playing. It could be miserable. It reminded me of the movie Whiplash, where Miles Teller locked himself in a room and played drums until his hands literally bled. It’s one of those romantic stories that we often hear about, very similar to Alex Van Halen going out on a Friday night and leaving Eddie sitting on his bed practicing. Alex would return after a night of partying and Eddie would still be in the same position.

Adam: Let’s be honest. That’s not something that most of us truly desire. It’s not that we don’t want to be good musicians, but these folklore tales are incredibly difficult to try to measure up to, especially if you’re anything like most of us and you have to balance your music practice between work, family, school events with your kids and community. When you start to think about, it can sound like a cop out. I don’t have time to practice like these other musicians, so I may as well have fun.

Adam: But as you’ll hear in this episode, some of the foremost experts in learning music have adopted this very attitude. Finding ways to make learning more fun. That’s exactly the route to get better results. It’s not just fun for the sake of it. This is actually a more effective approach to your music learning. As you’ll hear from some very accomplished musicians in this episode, we aren’t alone in this thought.

Adam: I’ve talked for long enough. Let’s stop here and I’ll introduce the rest of the Musical U team. Andrew?

Andrew: Hey. I’m Andrew Bishko, known as Weehauktaw on the site. I am the product manager for Musical U, which means I am in there writing, creating and fixing our products as needed.

Stewart: Hi, I am Stewart Hilton, and you would know me as GTRSTU777. I am the community conductor for the site. Most of you have probably talked with me inside the site. Also, I play guitar for a few different tribute bands on the road, along with having another band on the side from that. That pretty much says it all, except for my love of my life, my wife.

Zac: Hi, I’m Zac. I’m a community assistant at Musical U. I help out Stew, just making sure everyone has a good time and everyone is learning and progressing with their music and just having fun. ZSonic on the site. It’s great to be here.

Adam: It’s always great to be with you guys. I feel like we spend so much time talking about the business and making things better for our members, but when we actually get together and just talk about music, it’s always magical and I always walk away thinking, oh my gosh, I have so many great ideas to take back to the practice room and really woodshed, so I’m really looking forward to this conversation as well.

Adam: Without further ado, let’s dive into some of our clips and get this conversation rolling. I know Stew picked a special episode that he wants to start with. Before I let Stew talk about it, let’s just play it real quick.

David Wallimann: Trying to find why is this thing that I’m facing a frustrating thing, or why am I stuck or, I think this applies to not just music but anything in life. You have a problem, you’re facing something difficult, just asking yourself all the questions that you can. Those could be what led me here or how do I get out of this, or is this really a bad situation? Maybe there’s something good in there.

David Wallimann: Musically that looked like an example is… there was this song, I can’t remember the title, but I kept hearing it on the radio, a very popular song. It’s probably a French song too. I’m born and raised in France. I loved that song and I didn’t understand why, so that triggered one of those mini quests as the big adventure of understanding music is.

David Wallimann: I asked myself, “Why do I love this song?” It’s not particularly the style I’m into. I kept asking questions. Is it a rhythm thing? Is it an interval that I’m hearing? What is it? That led me down a path. I think it was a scale, I can’t remember, maybe it was the first time I heard the Lydian scale or the Lydian mode, and that’s what I mean by being an investigator in your life as a musician.

Stewart: What I enjoyed hearing him talk about are dealing with those difficult things in the music. Also, looking at it as an adventure. He called it a quest, and being an investigator of the music. What I have done, I guess these last many years, actually last three years, which is weird. You go through your life when you’re younger, you’re like, “Oh, I’d love to do this,” and then you’re going through your 20s, doesn’t really happen, it goes for a while and all of a sudden you hit a certain age where, this is getting awesome, boom. Oh wait, I’m doing it now.

Stewart: I have played with a tribute artists, and it has caused me to really have to buckle down, not just with my playing, but also my listening. It’s been quite the adventure over three years, because I feel like I am constantly learning something new, or developing something new, and it’s just helping my playing, it’s helping my listening skills. Sometimes, it isn’t even really holding the guitar in my hands, but it’s listening to the music and it’s this whole process, kind of like what he’s talking about.

Stewart: When I first started playing some of this music, I listened to it and it was a quick thing. The guy was like, “Learn these tunes, be ready in a week.” I’m just buckling down, making sure I get the right chords, get this done, can I get through this? Of course, after the first show, there’s a few train wrecks in my brain and I’m like, “Okay, why is that not working? What is going on there? How do I fix this?”

Stewart: That begins the journey of how do I make myself better? I didn’t get fired, so it must not have been terrible-terrible, so how do I step it up for the next one? That’s been going on for three years, and even now I’ll listen to music, because a lot of times what I do, I have how the music goes and I have different things I have, but even as I’ll sit and listen to the music and the set list over and over and all of a sudden, boom. Oh wait, that’s interesting. I should probably figure that out, because that’s kind of cool. It may not be anything that he wants, but in my ear I’m going, that’s kind of neat what’s going on there. Then I sit down and work it out.

Stewart: Sometimes it even goes to with what we do on the site is asking other people. There have been times I’ve talked with Mr. Weehauktaw and said, “Andrew, I don’t know what is going on in this piece. I’m doing this solo. There’s times I feel right, and there’s other times I feel like somebody should have a giant hook and grab me off the stage.” He’s been really good, and we’ve shot ideas back and forth, but it’s been just that good neighbor, so to speak, in helping each other out and it’s been great. It’s been a great exploration.

Stewart: There’s the solos in songs that if I would have to do, especially when we’re doing Elton, he does these elaborate long songs, that at one point he would change Elton John costumes, so he’d stick the guitar player out there to play these way too long solos that are three to four to five minutes long. Then there’s other times, especially playing artists that are piano focused, there’s a lot of interesting chords that are going on. It’s not sometimes just a one, four, five, or your four chords, they add all these little things going on, and you can hear it in the guitar.

Stewart: Davey Johnstone, who plays for Elton, he’ll do certain things that will … it’s a chord, but he does inversions, or he plays it up the neck and it’s really opened up a lot of things, even in my own playing.

Stewart: With Davey Johnstone, like I mentioned, he does a lot of different things using the chords, but he’s not just playing your normal first place chord of a C-chord or bar chords. He’s doing inversions or he’s playing different forms of the chords around the neck, and how he plays the chord is different. That’s really, as much as it made me explore how I’m playing it, it’s opened up new things for myself where I’m playing, and other projects, where if I’m at church and we’re doing a song, all of a sudden I’ll switch it up and play it differently, and it adds this whole new world to my playing.

Stewart: I’m going to steal something that Mr. Bishko does, and it relates to Rascal Flatts. We were doing a Rascal Flatts show, and there’s a song, when I first learned it, it was just … there’s two chords. There’s more, but there’s two chords that stand out, so it’s a song called, I Melt. I don’t know if people know that, but if you want to look it up, the chorus goes…

Stewart: Just straight chords. Well, I was listening to the song and I thought, wait, there’s something a little more going on there with the C and the A. What he’s doing, it’s kind of a normal chord, but he’s just adding a little color to it, so it’s…

Stewart: It’s something simple, but man when I’m playing it on the… I don’t play acoustic, I play electric there, but boy, does it really open up that song and gives it a little bit of personality. That’s one of those, when you’re doing it, when you’re investigating, you hit what’s going on, and you’re like, “Wow! That is really cool! I want to do that too!”

Stewart: Another thing is, when I do country, I’ve had to learn chicken pickin’, which has been a neat learning experience, and there’s a couple other songs that I have still… in the future I want to work on that I can do a little bit, but there’s so much other in it that it’s going to be fun. There’s always something to explore and something to learn. That is quite the ease and joy.

Zac: I really love that whole idea of exploring. That’s such a great thing to do, because when you’re exploring, you’re just seeing what you can find. You’re seeing what you can learn and you’re not really worrying about doing something the right or wrong way. I really like on that clip, what he said about exploring and listening and trying to figure out why he loved that song, even though it wasn’t in his normal style.

Zac: That’s a transformation that happened for me since being on Musical U, is just listening to all kinds of music and figuring out things about them that I like. I can listen to pretty much any genre, any style and really just listen to it and ask myself, hey, what about this do I like? There’s always something. Even if it’s not the overall sound I like, there’s always a rhythm idea in there, maybe a melodic idea in there, or a harmonic idea like Stew was talking about with just changing those basic chords just a little bit and just exploring and being open to new ideas, I think, is very, very joyful. It takes a lot of the stress away if you approach it with that exploratory mindset and just try to see what you can figure out and see what you like, then run with that. It’s been really amazing just listening to music and exploring it with a little bit more of an intent, but also more open mindedness about what it is I like.

Adam: I can remember being at the conservatory, and I made friends with the librarian so I wouldn’t have to look up the CD in the book or in the old Dewey Decimal System, the card catalog. Gosh, we’re dating ourselves, but I would go back into the record room and just pick out a random CD, and at the end of a long day of practicing, just putting on something random was, oh my gosh.

Adam: I’ve learned from Andrew now, listen with a question in mind. When you’re listening to music, have that in mind. What are you listening for? What exactly do you want to hear? Now it’s so much easier, because we have Spotify. We have Pandora and all these great tools where you can just explore new music at a whim and just see that they’re always trying a new channel.

Adam: Michelle McLaughlin, who has been on this show came up. It was like, “Oh, Michelle, I love her music.” It was that discovery. It’s this never ending fun of being a musician and constantly exploring.

Andrew: It really all comes down to mindset, because first of all, what would you rather be? A laborer, or an explorer? What sounds like more fun? What sounds easier? It doesn’t mean you’re not doing the same work, but your whole attitude has shifted, and what is going to come out of that? What’s going to come out of exploration? Discovery. What comes out of labor? It’s work. It’s a product. Labor’s good. Products are good, but discovery. It’s not just discovery.

Andrew: I think a lot of what we’re talking about is taking things that are situations that we’re all familiar with. We come up against something in music or in life, as he was saying, and we come up against something and it’s like, “Oh my gosh. How am I going to get through this?” We’re butting our heads against it. Instead of butting our heads against it, let’s explore it. Let’s go explore. Let’s see it. Oh wow, I found the way through. I found the way past there.

Andrew: It reminds me, here’s a big confessional story. It reminds me of one time when I was touring with a Reggae band and I was really in not a good emotional state. I was in conflict with my band mates and I was in this room, and I couldn’t open the door. I was absolutely certain that they had locked me in that door, in that room. I was pounding on the door, and I was pounding on the door, I was like, “Let me out! How could you guys do this? How could you lock me in this room? Let me out of here!” Screaming and yelling.

Andrew: At one point, I had my hand on the doorknob and I’m jiggling it. I was trying to push the door when I had to pull it, so pulling doors is much more easy and joyful. I like to think that I’ve gotten a little more control over my emotions since then, but it was a really revelation. It was like, “Okay.” And that’s what we do a lot of times. We make things harder with our attitudes.

Stewart: Okay, along with that adventure of life, I would say I’ve learned this over mine, which, when I was a kid, my mom and dad loved to get me different records of different guitar players such as George Benson and country guys. I remember when they gave them to me, I’d be like, “I don’t want to listen to this. I’m listening to KISS. I’m listening to Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. I don’t want to listen to this other stuff.”

Stewart: But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to really investigate all of those, and it’s helped me in my own playing, but when you check out some of those other styles and how to do them, it becomes part of your playing. It becomes this meld of all these different influences and styles.

Andrew: That was fascinating Stew. I think we could go on and on about that whole philosophy of exploration. We have more, we have such a rich resource in our podcasts, of wisdom, it’s just amazing. I was listening to a podcast by David Row, who is a music educator, and he was talking about, that sometimes it does not seem that it’s easy or joyful, but what that builds and listening to that… well, let’s listen to the clip and then I’ll comment on it some more.

David Row: I think for anything, there is going to be a level of, this is not fun, for a while. If you’re a runner, running is not fun at first. You have to build up that muscle and you have to get used to a process. My nephew is learning to try new foods, and at first, you don’t like them. They say it takes seven or eight times trying a food to decide whether or not you like it and to acclimate to it.

David Row: I think with all things there’s a level of this is not fun for a while. There might be fun things about it, but if you abandon the difficult parts, that’s too bad. I feel like that difficulty helps you gain a lot and learn a lot.

Andrew: When I listened to this, I was like, this seems to go against what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about ease and joy, and he’s saying, oh, there’s this part that’s the, this is not fun part of it. The key is, in this case, when we come up against these things, the this is not fun part, is to ask why am I doing this? Why am I 59 years old, I’m sitting in a room with an accordion, trying to play a polyrhythmic, or Pongo rhythm with my left hand and right hand together, playing this certain kind of mariachi style.

Andrew: Nobody does this, because everyone else has a bass player with them. Why am I doing this? It’s hard and I’m working on it and I’m working on it, but the key is, I’m doing it because… and I’m going to now quote Lisa McCormick, who is one of our earlier podcast eps, because I love it. She has this thing called, Note To Self. Because I love it. I love this stuff. I love music. So what if it’s hard, I love it.

Andrew: That brings so much more joy to the situation, and it’s interesting, because I was listening to her podcast too, for this, and I was thinking about when I came to that. I’ll go and I’ll slave away and I’ll be like, “Uh, uh, uh,” on something, and I’m doing that knocking my head against the door thing, and I keep on doing it and doing it. First I ask, “Why am I doing this at all? Why am I bothering?” It’s really, it’s because I love it. I really love it, and I think of it that way.

Andrew: You know what’s really funny about that is when I change that mindset, “Gosh, I love this,” I start going down what Stew was saying about that investigative mindset. What’s really going on here? What’s hard about this? What is difficulty anyway? What is it? My mind opens up, because if I’m thinking about I’m loving it, I’m going to start enjoying this. I’m going to start having more fun with it and being more open to the solution to the problem.

Andrew: I know another thing that really has inspired me over these past couple of years is we did a masterclass with Mark Goff who will also come in another podcast, and what if I practice this a little bit differently? What if instead of sitting down, I stand up? What if instead of facing that wall, I look out the window? What if I close my eyes? What if I open them? What if I try a different fingering that really doesn’t make sense at all? What if I try doing these different things? What if I try playing… one of my favorite things to do with my students, what if I play it wrong on purpose? I’m going to play the wrong note on purpose and it’s like, “Wow, I played the wrong note on purpose, now I know why I’m playing that. I figured that out. I’m getting into that.” And it’s more fun. It’s an investigation. It’s an exploration. Then I start learning from the difficulty and it becomes a challenge. It becomes fun.

Andrew: I remember when I used to, in my 20s, I traveled a lot. I backpacked and all kinds of stuff, just going where the wind blew me. Whenever I would come to a fork in the road, I didn’t know, should I go this way or should I go that way? I always decided I was always going to walk uphill. It always felt good to walk uphill. It always felt good to have that mountain underneath me, to have that land pushing me up, to walk uphill. I would always come to a place where I could see an overview. A hillside where I could look over something or I’d be at the top of a city or I’d be at the top of tower or something where I could look over everything and have this overview. I was always like, “Go uphill. Go uphill.”

Andrew: It’s the same thing with music. It’s fun to go uphill. The rewards are really great. On the other hand, now that I’m older, I like going downhill too. That could be fun too. It’s not… sometimes I found that a lot of times we try and challenge ourselves. We want to learn something that’s difficult, but we miss a lot because we’re always like, “Oh, I’ve got to get that. I’ve got to rock it like that.”

Andrew: I did a gig recently. My wife and I were hired to play a jazz gig. I’m not a really technical jazz player. I played jazz all my life, but I never really committed to the really macho, making every single bebop change disciplined. I admired it, but for some reason, it never really just grabbed me as something that I loved enough to really want to do that. I admire people that do.

Andrew: However, when I play, I play very musically. I really use my ears and it sounds nice, and people really enjoy it. I’ve always associated jazz, because there’s a part of jazz that’s really about the competitiveness, about making the changes and playing something that’s really impressive, but there’s also a part, it’s music. It’s musical. It’s beautiful.

Andrew: Anyway, I really let go of that whole thing when my wife and I played this. We just had fun together. We had a blast. We had so much fun playing off each other and playing together and the audience was great. They really got into it. We just had a really good time and we made beautiful music and it was great. I don’t know if it was this mind blowing thing. I know what I did well. I know what I might’ve liked to improve, but I had a great time and made music and the audience really felt that.

Andrew: Sometimes you learn a lot about doing something that’s a little easier and a little more fun, just playing music where you can put more attention on your expression. More attention on your ear where you’re really connecting with the music. More attention on playing from your heart. I’m playing something simple, and playing something beautifully and making it meaningful, so that’s another aspect of ease and joy I wanted to bring up, is that sometimes it’s just fun to play something easy and focus on the other dimensions of music and really make it sing, really make it beautiful and from the heart.

Zac: Wow, that was incredible, Andrew. You said so many amazing things in there. That was awesome. One of the things that you mentioned specifically, the Lisa McCormick Note to Yourself thing about, I love this. I love that, because that is something that transformed my life and brought a lot more joy and ease is just that mental model. It’s a mantra. When stuff starts falling apart, you just say, “Hey, I love this!” And then it’s fun. It’s like, “Oh yeah, this was fun. Just have fun.”

Zac: I would extend that, as well, to saying, “I love myself,” because when you are investing time and practicing music and playing music, it’s an act of self love, so you’re loving yourself. I think of my cats. I’ve got cats. Sometimes they puke on things and they shred up your couch and they do other things that’s annoying things that cats do, but every time I see them I’m like, “Oh, they’re so cute and I just want to pet them and love them,” and I feed them every day and I put up with all the annoying cat things they do because I love them.

Zac: I try to treat myself the same way. Love myself like I would love something else that has all these imperfections because anytime you see a fault, you see an imperfection, something like that, that’s just an indicator of where you need to put your love. I love all that and I think that even if you don’t have some grandiose vision, some big picture vision, you want to win a Grammy Award, you want to perform in front of millions of people, just having that one, “I love this,” or “I love myself,” both really, just the love to it is a really great why, and that really has helped me, certainly, have way more fun in my practice.

Zac: I rarely get frustrated anymore. I rarely get to the point where I’m like, “Forget this!” And then run out of the room and don’t practice for a couple days. That doesn’t happen anymore because I just say, “Hey, I love myself. I love this thing. It doesn’t matter if I mess up the furniture a little bit. It’s all good. I love myself. I’m good now.”

Stewart: I love what you said about loving yourself, and also with Andrew’s clip, they discussed the difficulty, but through difficulty comes good stuff. We were talking about the joy and ease. Once again, I’ll take it back to this guy I played for. We have a lot of preparation, but there’s no preparation as a full band. Everything is done by ourselves until we’re on stage, and then you either make it or break it, so there’s a lot of at-home woodshedding.

Stewart: That can be the difficult part, because you’re trying to figure out, if I’m doing this, is it going to all work? I really hope I’m good on the stage. That’s the difficult moment, but the thing that is great is when you get it, when you get a technique or a part of what ear training is and you nail it, and we see members do this all the time. They get excited at the end. They’re like, “Yes! I got this! I never thought I could.” Or when we have a member who’s been told in their life, “Boy, you’re tone deaf.” Because of what they have heard us talk about and as we help them improve, you see them get all excited in their posts about, “Oh, I never thought I could do this. I’m doing it.” That makes all of us on the team just excited when we see that type of thing.

Stewart: Even with this band, the drummer and I, we were doing one of the shows for the first time and we were both a little nervous about it, because we hadn’t really done it much, but I think the first time it was a little rough, but we made it through. This other show we did, we hit it. We got done and we looked at each other and we were fist pumping, “Yeah man! That was great!” That’s to ease and joy. It’s a good moment.

Adam: I think for me, it always comes down to if I know something is difficult at first, it’s probably the right thing to do, and that’s a really hard thing to accept in any aspect of your life, any aspect, but part of the way you get there is to always have the end in mind. Yes, I’m working really hard, yes, it’s not fun at the moment, but the more I stay at it, the easier it’s going to be.

Adam: When you have that end in mind, that makes everything better, because all this stuff does not start easy. It just doesn’t. That’s an unfortunate pill to swallow at times, but finding it, knowing the purpose, I think, is what will really get you there. I want to now introduce… I know that Zac wants to talk about this next clip from Sabrina Pena Young. Sabrina has been just part of Musical U for years. She’s been writing articles with us, she’s been with us on the site, helping us to create stuff, and she has this own incredible background and career that she’s built for herself, and so I’m really excited to hear this clip. Let’s listen to the clip first and then we’ll talk about it.

Sabrina Peña Young: I think one of the easiest ways to balance things is to have kids, because all of a sudden you’re sitting there going, “I really want to write an opera, but I have to change diapers.” All of a sudden, there’s this reality.

Sabrina Peña Young: In college, I had some health problems and some family issues going on that really slowed me down in terms of what I could do performance-wise. It really made me have to drop everything that I loved for a while, while I tried to deal with just the basics of getting myself back on track as a person and as a human being.

Sabrina Peña Young: I think I kept doing music throughout it all. Music will always be what I go to during any stage of my life. I think that I’m still a perfectionist. I’m a recovering perfectionist, but I’m also more forgiving of myself. I also realize that it doesn’t have to be the best of the best of the best. I don’t have to sit here and compare myself to these imaginary people that I never meet that I think are better than me. I really just need to do it as best as I can right now, and just enjoy the process. Life is so short. There’s just no reason to stress about it.

Zac: Oh yeah, I love that clip so much. There’s a lot of stuff in there that is really key to joy and ease. One is about balance. You have to balance your musical life with your other life, your family and your friends. I always thought I needed to practice eight hours a day or I wasn’t going to be good, but you have to make time for your family and friends. That is joyful. You’ve got to create that balance in your life. When you spend some time with your family, spend some time on music, it makes both of them better.

Zac: Another thing she talks about, which is the thing that really transformed my life. When I first heard this episode and I heard her say, just two words in there. There’s two words in there that really changed my life, just opened my mind up, and it was “recovering perfectionist”. Because I thought, wait, you can recover from that? What? Perfectionism is like an ailment? It’s a weakness that you can improve on?

Zac: I never thought of that. I’ve always been a perfectionist. It has held me back in so many ways. In school, I wouldn’t turn in projects if I didn’t think I was going to get a A plus. They were unfinished. I didn’t want to turn them in. A lot of my friends have put out a ton of tracks in the amount of time it’s taken me to make one track because either, A, I’m too hard on myself, I don’t finish things, or B, it takes me a year to finish one thing. Perfectionism has hold me back in so many ways. Now I’m a self-proclaimed recovering perfectionist, because there’s just so much there, it’s hard for me to even find the words to say. It’s just so powerful.

Zac: Perfectionism, it really does hold you back. Part of being a human is being imperfect. Actually, when I see people perform, and they have imperfections in their performance, I can connect with them more. Being a perfectionist closes you off to other people, in a way. It blocks your flow in that way. You’re not going to have fun and ease with the flow of your life. You have to have a flow of your life. That goes back to the creating balance. The more balance you can create, the more flow you can have in your life.

Zac: If you’re trying to be a perfectionist on any one of these points, trying to be a perfectionist with your music and spend all your time on music, or you’re trying to be the 100%, got to provide for my family all the time, and I’m going to sacrifice all these other things in my life that I enjoy doing, it’s all too much of one and not enough of the other. You have to not be a perfectionist in order to create balance.

Zac: Recovering perfectionist. You can recover from it, you don’t have compare yourself to other people. You can just have fun just getting a little bit better every day, and it doesn’t have to be perfect, and now I’m at this point where I feel all right with putting out ideas. I did a video game music composer’s challenge where I just put out a musical idea every day. I never would have done that if I didn’t think I don’t have to be a perfectionist. It was just those two words, recovering perfectionist that just flipped a switch in my mind where I was like, “Hey, I don’t have to be this way! I can just have fun and enjoy the process of making music.”

Zac: Now, that’s my whole focus is just enjoy what I’m doing right now. There are times when you want to be a perfectionist. That’s something else I’ve learned. Perfectionism is a valuable tool, but it’s a very large and impractical tool to carry with you around all the time. It is a great tool to have in your arsenal when you need to pull it out and get some serious work done and have some really high quality output. You don’t need to do that all of the time.

Zac: I’m actually thankful that I spent a good portion of my life becoming such a detail-oriented person, such a perfectionist, trying to be meticulous about all the little details, because now that’s a tool that I can pull out when I need to, and I’m aware of it. It’s really opened me up to a lot of joy and just having fun, transformed my life, so much more ease in just making music. It’s incredible. I love Sabrina for that. I’m so grateful that she shared those thoughts with us.

Stewart: Yeah, that’s good about the perfectionism. I grew up playing in the metal scene in the ’80s and ’90s. During that time, the perfectionist electric shred guys were huge back then. How many arpeggios can you get out within about two seconds? Different things like that, the technical aspect and all that, and I just couldn’t do that. My hands weren’t that fast.

Stewart: A buddy of mine said… and it was great, he was like, “Stew, I know you get down on yourself and all that, but I like when you play. You do prog stuff, but you’re this blues player trying to play prog and I kind of enjoy it. Just be you.”

Stewart: That always stuck with me like, “Oh yeah!” It’s still been a journey of trying to get better at accepting who I am like you were talking in the other part about loving who you are, but that has helped. It’s odd, on the flip side of that, I’ve just gone through a situation with a former band member, and all we were trying to do is get him to come in to play, and part of the discussion was, “Look, we’re not trying to be the greatest band. We’re not trying to be the best. All we’re trying to do is bring our craft up to a level where we’re all really pleased with how we sound.” It became an issue. He just didn’t want to be there. We’re getting someone who does like that type of concept, but it’s nice not knowing you have to be the greatest of all things, and also loving what you’re doing and doing the best you can as who you are.

Andrew: A lot of times, the path of ease and joy and loving oneself is really going to lead us much more to where we want to go. A lot of times we put this idea in mind of what we want to be, and while that can inspire us, you were talking about wanting to be this metal guy or whatever, that can inspire us in a lot of ways. But, a lot of times, we’re focusing so much attention on being someone else and doing something that we admire, but that’s not really where we’re going from inside.

Andrew: There is a place, I know that we have a member, Scott Kuehn, who has been talking about his practice routine, and you can see he’s really found a rhythm with it. What I mean by that is he’ll get inspired with something and work on it for a while, and that will lead to something else, and that’ll lead to something else, and that’ll lead to something else, where it’s become a very joyful process with him, where he’s not asking himself the question all the time. “Is this the right thing to do? Is this the right thing? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right?” He’s really following his inspiration.

Andrew: There’s so many times in my life where I’ve just boxed myself. I’ll say, “This is who I am. This is what I do and that’s it.” Where I realized that I put myself in a box and it wasn’t easy and joyful anymore. On the other hand, there’s been times where it was something that I really didn’t want to do and focused a lot of attention on, and I focused a lot of attention on playing Klezmer music, which is a Jewish folk music from Eastern Europe. Developing this and developing technique on my instruments, since there wasn’t anyone else playing it on the flute to the depth that I wanted to play at that time, I learned so much about my instrument and about myself, and I wasn’t focusing on my instrument.

Andrew: I was focusing on the music and producing these sounds, but I learned so much about my instrument, I learned so much about phrasing, so much about melody, things that no one else was teaching me, and I put myself in that channel for 15 years, that was my creative thing, and when I came out of it and I started playing jazz again, and I started playing classical music, it was a whole new world. I knew all kinds of stuff from having challenged myself in that way, and built that, I knew all kinds of stuff that I didn’t know before and was playing a completely different kind of music in a completely different genre and it was really about musicality and expressiveness and about use of tempo and articulation and all the things that we don’t spend a lot of time on. We’re trying to play as many notes as fast as possible, or we’re trying to work out something technical.

Andrew: I built all this stuff in a very disciplined way, and now I was able to spread it out into everything I did and everything I do, because it’s with me until this very day.

Adam: There’s a really common principle that’s taught. It’s the 80/20 principle, where you get 80% of your results from 20% of your work. I’ve been working with a coach lately who said, “No, that’s way too much of your work. It’s the 5% principle. If you can devote all your efforts into the 5%, that’s where you’re going to see all your results.”

Adam: Talking about perfectionism, I wake up every day and I keep a journal, and I find the 5%. I know we talk about practice journals. We talk about how we’re keeping track of what we’re doing musically. Find those 5% tasks, those exercises. You’re going to be amazed at what you do when you just focus in on that little bit and the results that brings. It’s incredible when you can get that kind of focus and it just makes everything easier. It makes your practice routines go smoother and absolutely everything else.

Zac: Definitely, definitely. I can attest to that personally, because for the past few weeks or so, I’ve been doing what I call a daily bare minimum, which is where I find out what’s the most bang for my buck exercise I can do. Right now it’s sight singing. I do it at the super basic level, but I make sure I just get in that five minutes of sight singing every day and that bare minimum, that’s what I call the bare minimum principle.

Zac: You said fail safe, no matter what else happens today, I’m going to do this thing, even if it’s one minute. I’ve done it with one minute exercises before, and the results compound over time, and it really is super powerful, that 5%. I love that. I love that.

Adam: Cool, thanks for sharing that, Zac. I love hearing different strategies people are using, like those one minute exercises. You hear about them and it’s like, “How do I do that in my own practice?” That’s really useful, thank you. We have one more clip to share with you, and this is from a guy named Josh Wright. Josh was on the show a while ago, an incredible pianist and a gifted teacher as well. He has an awesome YouTube page. Let’s hear what Josh has to say.

Josh Wright: he said, “When I perform, I feel this current working up inside of me that I have to share with the audience. I have to share this experience and this journey with them.” I actually watched that interview. I had that interview bookmarked to watch, but I watched it two hours before my Rachmaninoff Third Concerto performance, and I feel like it was one of my more successful performances I’ve ever given.

Josh Wright: It was because I was so concerned about sharing. I was thinking of everything that he said during that performance, and it was no longer about me. It was no longer about my own insecurities. Getting rid of your self in your performances is one of the most crucial things to success. Stop thinking about yourself. Stop thinking about what you struggle with, and instead think about sharing with that audience and enjoy the experience yourself and enjoy the music. You’re playing this wonderful music. Why are you thinking of yourself when you have this amazing music that you’re going to play?

Josh Wright: That’s harsh advice. I’m not saying you’re a selfish terrible person if you’re thinking of your own insecurities. It’s a natural human inclination, but if you can quiet your mind, get rid of negative self talk, stop thinking of yourself and start thinking of the music and sharing this beautiful experience, performing becomes a joy. It’s no longer scary, it’s no longer nerve wracking, it’s actually just fun at that point. It’s anxious anticipation.

Adam: This one hit home on a couple different factors. I’ve always had this eclectic music experience where I was playing multiple different styles, multiple different instruments all at the same time. When I was learning classical and studying very heavily, classical music, I was making a living playing hard rock. I was never nervous playing hard rock. It was always about the experience. It was always about the show.

Adam: People would see me before a show and I’d be pacing backstage and be like, “Oh, Adam’s nervous again.” I was never nervous. It was pure adrenaline. I was ready to go, and the moment those lights came on, the guitar was in my hand, the drums hit the first snare drum, I was on and I was going to be on for the entire 45 minute show, because that’s what I did. I was so involved in the experience and trying to take all of my energy and push it through my guitar to the crowd and they were giving it back to me.

Adam: However, the next day I’d go to the conservatory and I would clam up when playing classical. It was because I was so concerned with what everyone else thought of me when I was playing classical. I was trying to impress them rather than try to be in the moment, and try to move them with my interpretation of the music. This continued for years and I couldn’t find a way out of it, but we always talk about those a-ha moments, those moments in your life that change everything. For me, it was playing Taps at my first military funeral, because for the first time ever, on the trumpet I was able to remove myself from the equation and focus only on the sound coming out of the bell my horn.

Adam: As I look back, that’s when everything changed for me on the instrument and with that genre, because suddenly I could see it. Suddenly I could feel it, and I knew what that performance felt like in here. That made it easier to replicate in the future. If performance anxiety is something you have trouble with, most musicians do at some point, you just have to find that moment, find that why and really, like Josh said, focus on the experience. Focus on giving out all this energy to the crowd, and they’re going to give it back to you. I promise.

Stewart: I have a cure. I’m not really sure if it’s one that everybody wants to do, but it has helped me get rid of some of that worrying about other people. That is to go play outside during some sort of major weather catastrophe. I have found, I’ve done a few shows where, one, there was a tornado warning and we were on a metal trailer. We were watching lightening in the sky, but it was funny, the drummer, when we got to our first break, he was like, “Dude, you are killing it.”

Stewart: I realized, I know why. My mind is not even really thinking… I’m just playing, the music is just natural, because really my brain is not thinking about, oh gosh, I’ve got to get this perfect, because I’m thinking, am I going to get struck by lightening? I’m not worried about it. We even had that again last week. We were playing outside and we were watching clouds roll in and I’m doing the solo and I’m just having fun with it, because I’m not worried. The only thing I’m worried about is self preservation.

Stewart: Once again, I don’t recommend that we all go outside and play in the middle of a major thunderstorm with lightening or tornadoes, but yeah, it’s definitely when you can get through that and just enjoy what you’re doing in the moment. It’s a great thing. I am going to get better and better without the natural disasters going on.

Zac: Yeah, I’ve definitely played in a disaster. It wasn’t a natural disaster, but it definitely ended up being one of those a-ha moments, and definitely a transformation in my life. It was my first DJ gig that was a real gig. It wasn’t a house party or just someone’s backyard party. It was in a club. There was other DJs playing. There was a lot of people there, they were charging money for tickets. It was a real gig and it was my first real DJ gig. I was playing, and everything that could possibly go wrong was going wrong.

Zac: The equipment was messing up. I felt like I was messing up all my mixes. I felt like I was doing terribly. It was the worst. It was so bad. I actually ended up crouching down underneath the DJ table and crying. I was crying under the table in the middle of my DJ set. Once I got that out, I was like, “Okay, okay, okay, okay. Shake it off. Let’s just have some fun. Let’s just go back.”

Zac: When I came out from under the table, everyone was still dancing. They were all dancing, because the song was still playing. There was a song playing but I was freaking out and crying. I came back, and everyone was still dancing. At that moment, I was like, “You just got to have fun.” When performing, everything is probably going to go wrong. That’s just how performing works. Just expect everything to go wrong and just have fun.

Zac: After that, I have always just had fun with my DJ sets. When I’m having fun, the crowd is having fun. As long as people are dancing, I don’t need to try to impress them with some technical skills. It doesn’t matter what kind of gear I’m using. All this other stuff doesn’t matter. As long as I focus on having fun and making sure the people are dancing, making it about the people dancing and having fun, and that’s helped my life ever since then, being more easy, more joyful especially.

Andrew: I really want to thank you for bringing that clip up, Adam. That was really good. That whole concept, it’s about the music. You see people making fun of, “It’s about the music, man!” It really is. It really is about that, and that’s what we love. That’s what we’re doing it for. We played a gig on Monday, so a couple days ago, and if you guys haven’t figured out by now, I’m in a Mariachi band. We did it in a restaurant, and a lot of times when we’re playing gigs, we have the sound system. More often than not, we have the sound system.

Andrew: But we said, “No, we’ll just go around to the tables and forget about the sound system.” We had to play quiet while the vocalist was singing. We had to stage ourselves where the vocalist is right up to the tables and we’re back a ways to get the balance right for the people who were listening. We went around and we sang and played for specific people. We would go around to the tables. It wasn’t like, a lot of times you play a show and you’re up there and you’re playing for everybody, and here you’re playing for everybody, but you’re also really pinpointing certain people and making that connection.

Andrew: We were singing the Mexican birthday song. It’s called Las Mananitas. It is the most beautiful lyrics. There’s one line in there that, I just love this line. It says, since the day that you were born, that’s the day that all the flowers were born. Can you imagine being on the receiving end of that? Someone is saying, “When you were born, all the flowers were born.” Here we’re up, we’re three feet away from this person and we’re singing this. We’re looking at her and she’s looking at us and making that connection. It’s not about am I playing the right chord? It’s not about am I playing the right notes and stuff like that.

Andrew: You are expressing to somebody about their beauty and their light that they’re shining, and you’re sharing that light with them, and your light with them, and it’s like your guys says, get out of the way. Let that stuff happen, because that’s it. That’s what it’s all about.

Adam: Wow. Thank you all for this incredible conversation. That was wonderful and so many good points were brought up. I say this all the time and so forgive me for being redundant. I said it already in this episode, but getting this chance to talk with you all, it’s one of my favorite things that we do here, and I look forward to our next time together, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed getting to hear clips from past interviews, and how the Musical U team has been able to take away all these learning points, what it’s done for our musical lives. If you’re interested in hearing the rest of the interviews, just go to the show notes at musicalitynow.com, or YouTube for links to all the episodes we referenced. Really, these little short clips were just the beginning.

Adam: I just want to close with something that happened to me last week. It always seems to happen when we’re getting ready to prepare a Rewind episode, or perhaps I’m just more in tune with it, but a member asked, how do we keep practice interesting? I was immediately intrigued and eager to answer. I’ve talked about how, in the last couple weeks, I’ve been helping at our community elementary school with the incoming fifth grade band. They’re playing their instruments for the first time, and my son happens to be one of them.

Adam: He’s in the first couple weeks of learning the trumpet in primary school. He looked to me for help, and all these kids were together. The most incredible thing happened. I got hyper focused on the basic mechanics of playing the trumpet, both on the horn and what was going on in my ear. We were focusing in on a simple melody and we started with Hot Cross Buns. We started with the solfege, not the notes. They haven’t read the notes yet, they’re just doing the solfege.

Adam: I was helping the kids focus in on making the sounds, articulating the note, the breath that they were taking and the way they were projecting their air. Later we’d move on to rhythm. Very basic stuff, but later, I went back to my own practice room and I noticed that I’d been immersing myself in the basics all week and the more difficult things that I typically do in a practice session were becoming easier. It was almost like I was putting a new mindset on my approach to music learning because I was focused on these little things.

Adam: That was what I shared in the discussion, but I need to share some of these other things that our members share, because they are incredible. David W., he talks about what he calls lollipops, which are those fun musical moments. He said, “Maybe I’m still in the initial euphoria, because at this time last year, the only musical thing that I did was listening, but simply making music is a big reward. That said, I do have some exercises that are more, you know it’s good for you, and other more fun ones that can be pulled out as lollipops to lighten things up if need arises.” I love the way he’s mixing up the hard work with the fun work. It’s incredible.

Adam: Jenny wrote, “I think I just don’t call it practicing. I just play around with my instruments. Listening to them, comparing sounds, testing this theory, et. cetera. In those terms, I have no need for motivation because they’re all super fun to do.”

Adam: Finally, Charlie wrote, “I have a couple things that make practice really enjoyable. The first is having a trumpet that I just love to play. It’s a pleasure each time I pick it up, so I always look forward to playing. The second is that I set practice up as a reward for myself. After a day of work, it is my reward to get to practice. My getaway time.”

Adam: As Sabrina said, “Life is too short. I think we all think of music as something that enhances our life, and finding joy in music is the reason that we all came here in the first place, so why wouldn’t we find ways to make it more enjoyable as well?”

Adam: That’s it for this Rewind episode. Big thanks to the rest of the team again for sitting down with me. I look forward to our next time together. If you like what you heard from this episode, we’d love to hear from you. Just drop us a line at hello@musicalitypodcast.com and let us know. Until next time, I’m Adam Liette for Musical U.

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The post Rewind: Ease and Joy appeared first on Musical U.

Composing and song writing are often the end goals which inspire people to join our membership here at Musical U and so we’re very conscious of the things which tend to hold people back from really pursuing or succeeding with writing their own music, and we’re always eager to talk with those who specialise in teaching these skills.

Like music theory, composing is often taught in a dry, abstract rule-based way which sucks all the musicality out of it. On his site, School of Composition, Matthew tackles both topics in a way that helps nurture creativity – rather than stifle it.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Two simple insights which helped Matthew stop comparing himself to others in an unconstructive way
• The music theory topic which was a big “aha” moment for him and helped stop his own compositions from meandering aimlessly
• How singing, playing an instrument, playing more than one instrument, and mastering notation software can all contribute in different ways to becoming a better composer

We also talk about the big thing which holds us back from sharing our own musical creations – and Matthew recommends one effective way to fix that.

We often encourage people to try composing or song writing even if they don’t expect to pursue it in a serious way – because just like improvising, composing can be a terrific vehicle for applying your inner musicality and exploring what you’re capable of in music.

Whether you’re currently excited by the word “composing” or not, you’ll enjoy this conversation with Matthew – because there are a ton of valuable ideas and insights here for any musician.

Watch the episode:

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Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• School Of Composition
• School Of Composition – How to Get Better at Music Composition (15 Do’s and 5 Don’ts)
• School Of Composition – Cadences in Music: Beyond the Harmonic Formulas
• Musicality Now – About Singing as a Tool
• Musicality Now – The Instrument Inside You, with Ben Parry
• Musicality Now – About Playing Like Singing
• Musicality Now – Find and Make Peace with Your Voice, with Nikki Loney
• Musicality Now – Learning to Sing in Tune, with George Bevan
• Musicality Now – How to Sing Smarter, with Meghan Nixon
• Musicality Now – Singing that Sounds Good – and Beyond, with Davin Youngs
• Musicality Now – All Things Vocal, with Judy Rodman
• Musicality Now – Rewind: Singing
• Musicality Now – Intimidating – or Inspiring? You Choose

Transcript

Christopher: Welcome to the show Matthew. Thank you for joining us today.

Matthew: Thank you for having me.

Christopher: I know a little bit about your backstory from the schoolofcomposition.com website, but I don’t know a great deal, and I’d love to understand a bit more. What’s your own background in terms of becoming a composer and starting to teach these things online? What was your own music education like?

Matthew: Well, when I was very young, maybe 12 years old, probably younger even, 10, I just fell in love with music through several forces. One of them was one of my best friends playing the guitar, and I just wanted to imitate. That’s really all. We were obsessed with rock music back then. We were obsessed with the electric guitar, but for some reason someone suggested I start with the classical guitar. I just stuck with it. I fell in love with it and I just stuck with it all those years.

Matthew: Of course, as a new musician I was curious in to what goes in to creating, not just playing it, not just playing some chords but actually writing a piece that makes sense from the beginning to the end. That’s where it really all, the spark, the curiosity really all came from. Then it was pushed by listening to Beethoven, discovering Beethoven’s music at maybe 14 years old. I just was obsessed with understanding how it all works. Why is it making me feel these things?

Matthew: All the symphonies, I remember listening to Symphony Number 7, the second movement the first time and just for some reason I had tears in my eyes. It was just such an emotional experience. From a very young age I just wanted to understand what it’s all about. When I came to the age of choosing a subject at school, I didn’t consider music, because no one thought that’s a career, a career path, especially where I’m from.

Matthew: After struggling a couple of years, I just realized that I had to go with music. That’s where I started with doing the proper education, music theory, some composition, a lot of classical guitar lessons. That’s where I started to do the examinations, and getting the diplomas and eventually going to university, getting some really great teachers which I’m really lucky to have had. That’s really where I got my education.

Christopher: I see. Interesting. I feel like some parts of your story are typical and some parts not so much. I can definitely relate to wanting to play rock and electric guitar and getting pushed on to classical guitar. I think for me it was wanting to play saxophone and cool Jazz, and getting put on to clarinet in a classical orchestra, which did eventually lead to sax. Other parts, you said there that you were interested from early on in how to make a piece that made sense from beginning to end. Which to my mind I don’t think that I would have appreciated that in my teenage years.

Christopher: If I had thought about composition or creating my own music, I would have only been thinking, I think, about that very small scale, like can I make a melody or can I play a solo. It sounds like you were aware from the beginning maybe because of the classical interest that there was a lot more to composition and a lot more in terms of form and structure to be considered.

Matthew: That’s interesting. I never considered that it was something out of the ordinary, but I always appreciated how, especially in symphonies, and I was very familiar mostly with Beethoven’s, how it just made sense from beginning to end, how it’s one dramatic line. I might have not been able to put it in that way, but somehow I just understood that it’s amazing how he takes you on that journey and never loses you.

Matthew: That dramatic line from even in the long term, even on the long range was always a big curiosity for me.

Christopher: You said that you tried studying something else but it was clear after a year or two that it had to be music. Talk a little bit more about that. What were you noticing or what were you feeling that made you make that change in course? I think probably a lot of our listeners can relate to that yearning to commit themselves more fully to music, but often the circumstances of life seem to make it impossible or very challenging. What did that look like for you?

Matthew: That word yearning that you used, that’s the right word. Because I would find myself as a teenager come home, just really either procrastinating on my actual work to listen to music, to read about music, to do music, or just really doing it quickly. Just get it over with, and do what I’m supposed to do, do the music. This is how my life was for those two, three years, I think, that I just had to get everything out of the way to do the music, even though I had the responsibilities as a student to do those other topics.

Matthew: Just as a practical example, I was lucky that my grandparents who have recently passed away, but at the time they lived next to the school I was at. I took my guitar there, I left it there and every chance I got, or sometimes I skipped a lesson or two, but I went to my grandparents, and I just wanted to play. I wanted to practice. I wanted to be with music. It was really a huge obsession at that time. No matter what I was doing with my day, it was always at the back of my mind.

Christopher: Got you. I’m sure we’ll talk more about this later on, but you’ve described pursuing both guitar and composition in those university years. How did the two go together for you? Were you seeing guitar as the vehicle for the thing you really wanted to do which was composition, or did you expect you’d focus on guitar and the composition was just a side interest? How were the two balanced or interrelated?

Matthew: I always thought of the guitar as a way for being literally in touch with the music. I guess composition was always my main focus, even when I was focusing on the guitar because I had to at times. Composition was always my main focus, my main aim.

Christopher: Was there any kind of intimidation at play? I ask because you mentioned getting into classical music fairly early on. I think it’s fair to say that generally classical music appeals less to the younger generations and more to the older generations who develop an appreciation for it. It sounds like that came in to play fairly early on for you. I think whatever age you’re at and whatever your relationship with the classical oeuvre may be, you often find, I think, that people are overwhelmed or intimidated or just baffled by the grand complexity that composing music of that kind can be.

Christopher: Was that something that you felt? Was it always easy for you to consider yourself a composer? How did that go for you?

Matthew: At first in my complete naivete I just was immersed in it. I didn’t really care. When I actually started to improve, I found myself comparing myself to other composers, whether that’s other students in my class, my own teachers or even the great composers. Found myself comparing my work. I think that’s a really dangerous path to go on, because it will never be a fair contest for obvious reasons.

Matthew: If we’re comparing a beginner’s work with a masterpiece from the 19th century, 18th century, it’s just never going to be a fair comparison. We’re all walking our own paths. I think that’s something I emphasize to my students. Because it’s a dangerous path to go on. It can be very negative and very harmful to creativity.

Christopher: For you in practice, what did that challenge look like, and what did you do about it? Assuming it’s no longer a big challenge for you.

Matthew: Well, just to remember and to realize that all great composers started from nothing. Now, whether they started at four like Mozart and Mendelssohn and Chopin, whether they started at 14 or 24, they all started from scratch. I mean if you think about it, at some point Mozart’s father, I mean Amadeus’ father had to sit the young Mozart down and tell him where the middle C was on his keyboard. We all have to start from scratch.

Matthew: That realization to bring the humanity back in to the great masters. That was an important realization for me.

Christopher: I see. Was that something that your university teachers helped you to see? Was it something you came to realize yourself? I think culturally we all inherit this idea that a composer such as Mozart actually didn’t need to be shown middle C. He just sat down one day and composed a symphony. We have that cultural myth. It sounds like you found your way to a more sensible and realistic worldview on that. Where did that come from?

Matthew: I think I realized first when my companions at school were comparing each other’s works. I thought, well, you play the clarinet, you play the saxophone, yours is geared towards that. You’re playing the piano, you’re more classically inclined. Why would you compare and compete? That thought just stuck with me through all this time.

Matthew: If you compare, and I did this back then, if you compare the first works and the last works by anyone, any known composer, you can see a huge difference, that they continued to grow. That’s what we should aim for, I think, this continuous growth. Not comparing my level to someone’s level, or this work to that work. No. Let’s just keep learning. Let’s keep improving. Let’s enjoy the process, and let’s hone our skills, just like the greats before us did.

Christopher: One thing I love about how you approach things at School of Composition is the way you relate composing to music theory. Something you said there, I think, is an interesting point, which is maybe due to the complexity of orchestral works, but maybe it applies equally to songwriting. I think when you’re outside that world and you haven’t studied how to compose or how to write songs, you can kind of look, as you said, at someone’s later works and their early works and be like, “Well, the later ones are better,” but it can be very hard to explain why or to put your finger on anything specific. I think that makes it hard for people to understand how their progression from not so good to great could happen.

Christopher: Maybe you could illustrate or give a bit more detail of what you might notice if you looked at, say, an early composition by one of your students and something they might achieve a few years later. Are there specific things you’d be able to point to and say this one is better, or more sophisticated, or more masterful because X, Y, and Z?

Matthew: I would say it’s the effectiveness of it. How well does it meet its intentions? Of course, that assumes that there are intentions beforehand. That’s a very important point as well. Before a student begins a work, I would say why are you writing this? What are you trying to achieve? It could be you want to create some variations on a theme that you love or a theme that you created yourself. It could be exploring a specific style. Whatever it is, there should be intention.

Matthew: As to what I would look for between early works and later works, I think it’s the way it develops. The later works, the more sophisticated works develop in a more intrinsic way. Nothing feels forced. Early works tend to have this maybe they’re more forced melody after another that are not quite related sometimes, whereas more mature works would just sound more natural. It’s really difficult to put one description to it. I think that’s the best way I can explain it, it’s the effectiveness of it.

Christopher: I see. One of the blog posts on your site that really jumped out at me was, I think, geared towards helping people on that journey from just getting started with composition to having a more masterful ability to create effective works as you say, which was your 15 do’s and 5 don’ts for getting better at music composition.

Christopher: I don’t think we can cram all of them into this conversation, because there’s a lot of meaty ideas there. There were some that I thought maybe we could discuss just because I think it gives a really helpful insight into the practicality of learning to compose and learning to be better, so that it doesn’t just seem like this nebulous thing for people, where they have to do it, and do it, and do it, and hopefully one day they might get better.

Christopher: I think the first one on your list, in fact, was to listen. I think probably depending on how much exposure you’ve had to composition as a topic to study, that might be surprising to people. Why would you begin your list of do’s with listening rather than composing?

Matthew: Listening is really our first experience with music. It’s extremely important. Of course, there are 14 more below it so it’s not enough. It is definitely the start, because without listening there is no music. It is a listening art. What I emphasize there in that blog post also is that we should listen to different styles, different musicians, different eras, whatever it is, just listen, listen, listen.

Matthew: There is something to learn from each and every one of those, especially the ones you don’t like, I think. Because if you start to be more critical, what don’t I like about this? Is it the timbre? Maybe it’s not a musical grammar I’m used to. Maybe it’s just inexperience. What is it? That can be a very effective way of learning as well, what you like, what you don’t like, why, and how you can combine these into your own music.

Christopher: Tell me, how thoughtful does that listening need to be? I think some of what you just said sounds like just expose yourself to a lot of kinds of music and hear a lot of different kinds of music. Some of what you said sounds more like quite consciously and intentionally trying to absorb specific observations from the music you hear. How should people be thinking about that activity of listening if it’s for the purpose of improving as a composer?

Matthew: I would say simply just immerse yourself in the music, and if any thoughts come about it just let them come, let them go. It’s quite tricky. I understand what you mean. It’s quite tricky to walk the line between appreciating it for what it is and judging it. I would say don’t judge it too early. Also, listen with a critical ear. It’s a tricky line to walk. Immerse yourself and have a critical ear.

Christopher: Perhaps it comes back a little bit to what you were saying before about intention being the most important starting point for a composition, that if you listen with the intention of, “I am a composer. I am listening because it will help me be a better composer,” maybe that’s enough.

Matthew: Sometimes I listen and I just think, “Let’s see what stands out.” Could be anything. Could be a pop song. Could be a symphony. It could be just an old woman singing in the street. Let’s see what stands out. I remember some time ago listening. I was at the supermarket doing just very ordinary everyday things. On the radio there was a pop song. I can’t quite remember. I believe it was Jennifer Lopez, but I don’t know the name.

Matthew: I remember thinking and telling my friend what a beautiful long melody she is singing. It’s not typical of pop music nowadays. They tend to have shorter phrases and go along quicker. This one kind of keeps your attention a bit longer, just long enough to notice. I thought that was really interesting that up to that point I had never thought that pop music tends to have shorter phrases, at least recently.

Matthew: That’s the kind of thing that critical listening can teach you, can show you. Things you weren’t aware of before just come to the forefront.

Christopher: Maybe if you could just define that phrase for people, what is critical listening as opposed to listening in general?

Matthew: Well, listening in general is simply enjoying the sound, like bathing in the sound. Whereas critical listening would be to observe how it moves along, how the story moves along, how they are related, how it is one dramatic climb.

Christopher: Got you. We’ve talked on this show a fair bit about active listening in the past, and not [inaudible] those two are synonymous. I think what can trip people up is they don’t necessarily feel equipped to ask the right questions, or they don’t feel like they’re sensitive enough to notice the right things. That maybe touches on the next point I wanted to pick up on in that blog post, which was learn music theory as a way to become a better composer.

Christopher: Now, this can be a bit controversial. Again, on this show we’ve talked a few times about this idea that some people resist music theory because they feel like it will tie them to a certain way of doing things, and it will reduce their creativity, and it will hold back their inspiration. That seems to not be your viewpoint. Maybe you could talk about why learning music theory is essential to become a better composer.

Matthew: Yes. My view is that with music theory you are learning how music works and why it works the way it does. It doesn’t tell you what to write. At most, it tells us what has been written so far. It will not dictate what you must write. I think this misunderstanding comes from four-part harmony where we have specific rules to achieve a specific style. That’s where it stops. It’s with that style. We are learning how four-part harmony worked for Bach and Handel and so on, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s how it should work for you.

Matthew: When you are learning how to manipulate notes, that’s what you take from it. You will learn how to manipulate notes. You can manipulate them in any way you want. That’s just one very specific exercise for a very specific intention, once again. Music theory just teaches you how music works. It’s not telling you how you should write your music.

Christopher: Absolutely. One thing I particularly like about your music theory eBook that you have available on the School of Composition website is it’s quite practical. You start from the very beginning and you cover an enormous amount of ground. You end the chapters with practical exercises for people to actually try some of this stuff. I love that in your 15 do’s and 5 don’ts post one of the ways you gave people to put this into practice and make it a bit more practical was to sing and train your ears as well as studying that theory. Why is that important?

Matthew: I can speak for myself and later what I saw in my students. Back at university, we had the choir that was compulsory. At first many students resist that, because, “I’m not a singer. I’ve never sung. Why would I join a choir?” First of all, there is something very special about making music in a large group. Other than that, just creating the music from your body, your voice, literally from inside of you, there is just so much to learn and so much to feel.

Matthew: I think one of the biggest advantages of singing is that it forces you to think the note first before you play it, before you sing it, sorry. That makes the whole difference. It’s a very subtle difference, but when we play the piano we don’t need to think up what a B flat sounds like, because we will find out as soon as we press it.

Matthew: If I’m playing a G major chord on the guitar, I don’t need to remember what it sounds like because I will find out as soon as I play it, as soon as I strum it. You cannot take that shortcut when singing. You have to think it first and that makes a whole lot of difference. Because first you think it, then a split second later the body is preparing to produce it, and then you actually produce it. There’s a whole lot going on in singing that is very beneficial to all kinds of musicians.

Christopher: What impact would you see that having on an aspiring composer? If we imagine you have a student who’s covered the basics of music theory. They’re up and running with composing but they never sing and they haven’t really trained their ears. If you introduce that into their weekly regime, as it were, what would you expect to see happen to their composition?

Matthew: I think that with ear training it’s really easier to get inspired for some reason. It makes you more in touch with music, just like playing an instrument does, but as we’ve just said there’s more to singing. Being so close to the music, so close that it comes from inside of you, makes it easier to get inspired and makes it easier to think music, makes it easier to create the music. Over time all skills, all musical skills tend to improve after a few months of ear training.

Christopher: Terrific. One thing I really noticed in your writing is how you talk about instruments as a tool or a vehicle to be of use in composing, and also the kind of digital software we have access to these days to put notes on a page. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that. If we take that person who’s done the ear training and they’re getting the inspiration, and they’re starting to have those ideas in their head, how would you guide someone to understand when and how to use their instrument, when and how to use software, how much those things matter, and what the advantages are of making use of them?

Matthew: Well, the software is obviously important nowadays, as that’s how we create the music, if you want to create sheet music, if you want to share an MP3 online, if you want to upload your music. The software is definitely very important. As for the instruments, once again, that’s one way of being in touch with music, one way of exploring different ideas and trying different things. What I warn students about is not to compose fully on an instrument, because then we are limited to our technical abilities.

Matthew: Unless you’re playing all of Liszt’s sonatas and all of Chopin’s preludes brilliantly, it’s limiting. Use it as an aid, but not as guidance all throughout. Don’t compose only what you can play.

Christopher: I thought it was really interesting earlier when you said that your contemporaries at university, you could see in their composition that they were a clarinet player or they were a piano player and how that influenced what they were capable of composing. Is that why one of your other do’s is to play a couple of instruments?

Matthew: Yeah. Instruments open up the possibilities, because a piano allows a certain kind of music, but wind instruments allow another. For example, you cannot ever have a crescendo on a long note on the piano, neither can you on the guitar. You have to repeat it. You have to strum it again, you have to pluck it again. On a clarinet, you can start really low and just expand. That’s one really simple example of how different instruments show us different possibilities.

Matthew: Once again, it’s important to use instruments to be in touch with the music. You don’t need to become a master at every kind. Just an idea would suffice.

Christopher: Very good. You mentioned something in passing there, which was one advantage of the software is it lets you create an MP3 and share it online. I know there are people listening or watching who immediately tensed up at the idea of sharing something they made. I know that because I can relate to it. That’s definitely where I come from naturally. I’d love to talk about one of your other do’s which is to join a community. I know that part of that is about getting feedback. How do you help your students be okay with that idea of sharing their composition and getting critical feedback from someone other than you, their trusted instructor?

Matthew: That’s tough. You just have to realize that, take the positive criticism. There sometimes will be nasty comments, but I don’t think they should matter that much. I remember I’ve had them myself. It’s kind of difficult, but you need to be vulnerable to be an artist. That’s a big deal for musicians. You need to share your work, otherwise you’re just creating it for yourself. It’s okay if you want to be a bedroom composer forever, but even then you should have a few trusted friends, a few trusted tutors with whom you can share. Because with sharing you initiate that cycle of feedback, improvement, feedback, improvement, and that’s how we grow. That is also critical to the development of a composer.

Christopher: I’m glad you pointed that out, because I think it’s easy for people to hear the advice of “put your stuff out there and get feedback,” and “music is made to be shared,” and that kind of thing. It’s easy to just dismiss that and be like, “But I don’t want to, so I’m not going to.” As you say, actually you’re doing yourself a disservice, because that external feedback is a critical part of how we improve.

Christopher: We see that in Musical U with our musicality training. Even however good we make the training modules, if someone does them in isolation and refuses to ask questions or look at other people’s advice or experiences, they’re dramatically limiting the amount of progress they can make. Because there’s such power in that community.

Matthew: Definitely. We can learn a lot from each other’s experiences. If it’s a private community, maybe you can start with that, so that you know it’s more trusted in a way, because it’s private. Start with that. It’s very important to get at least a small circle where you can get feedback.

Christopher: I think that’s a really valuable distinction to make, the private community, because the nasty comments you alluded to they’re everywhere online. I remember a couple of years ago I was recording a video about our free trial at Musical U that we had at the time. I was explaining how we, even though it was a free trial, we require payment details. The reason is if we just let everyone in for free with no barrier there, our community would go to hell in a hand basket.

Christopher: At the moment, and still at Musical U we have this really friendly, supportive, nurturing community with none of that trash talk and tear down attitude. We want to protect that. It sounds like you have that same recommendation for your students, to recognize that a private community can provide a much more supportive and constructive environment for an aspiring composer.

Matthew: Yeah. It can be, let’s say, safer. Safer to a composer’s growing ego. Also, just don’t take your music too seriously. Just share it. Just put it out there and just see what happens. It’s not the end of the world if some people don’t like it.

Matthew: People to this day are arguing who’s better on YouTube. They’re arguing who’s better, Mozart or Beethoven. What chance do we stand? If they’re criticizing even those guys, I mean. Just let them argue.

Christopher: Do you have any advice, any specific tips for someone who’s hearing this and being like, “Oh, okay, I can kind of see how a private community would be helpful for me.” How can they find that kind of environment online, or I presume online? How can they find that kind of peer group or community in general?

Matthew: Well, I guess for musicians Facebook is a big one. See if you can find or create one yourself even. We have one for the school of composition. It’s a private group. Anyone is welcome to join. I monitor that closely. I don’t allow any sort of negativity. We allow critique. We allow critique but not if it’s too nasty. If the intention is to tear down, we very closely monitor that.

Christopher: I think that’s great advice, and Facebook groups, that’s the critical thing really, isn’t it, that somebody is paying attention and taking responsibility for keeping it a friendly and supportive environment. I said before, like with us it was about having that distinction between signing up and entering payment details. That was our barrier, because that allows us then to monitor things closely and to have a sense of our community.

Christopher: You equally can have a free Facebook group where as long as somebody is taking that role and maintaining that spirit, it can still be equally supportive.

Matthew: Yeah. We don’t let it grow too big. We have those questions that Facebook allows us to ask people before they join. We’re not that strict but we do monitor who’s in and who goes out.

Christopher: We talked there about some of the do’s in general for becoming a better composer. I know there are people listening who are itching for some kind of more nitty gritty practical stuff that could help them. Were there any concepts or topics that for you made a really big difference to how you went about composing or how effective your compositions were?

Matthew: One big aha moment was the topic of cadences. Now, for the beginners amongst us, cadences you can simply define them as the punctuation of music. It’s where all the musical elements of harmony and melody and instrumentation come. They all come together and produce some sort of ending. Now, the ending can be final, just a complete conclusion, or it can be an ending that just passes by.

Christopher: Why was that important to you? Can you point to maybe how your composition would have been before really understanding this idea of cadences and after?

Matthew: Yes. Before I grasped the idea of cadences, music just went through without any sort of direction, moved along without any sort of direction. With cadences, there’s always the phrase, the section always has a destination to go to. Whether that ending is conclusive or just temporary, it has a place in the big picture as well. That’s how cadences are important on the short range, on the short term, but also on the longer range, for the bigger picture for the bigger piece.

Christopher: You mentioned there how they can be compared to punctuation. I love in one of your articles you literally do, you talk about the comma versus the full stop. Could you explain that a little bit? What’s the analogy there?

Matthew: Depending on which cadences we’re using, some of them have this sense of a strong ending which would be similar to the full stop in a way. Then there are those that have weaker endings. Although they are endings, they are temporary, so we are expecting the music to move on, to give us something else. That’s just like a sentence, a phrase that has a comma, and we are expecting it to give us something more. We’re expecting it to continue.

Matthew: I don’t want to go too deep into comparing music to language too much, because some people read into that too much. Superficially, yes, we can compare the strong cadences and the weaker cadences to commas and full stops.

Christopher: For anyone who’s itching for the full details, we’ll have a link in the show notes to that full blog post about cadences that I mentioned, where Matt goes into a lot of detail on the different types and has audio examples so you can hear it in action. It’s very cool.

Matthew: Yes, the examples help a lot. It’s hard to just explain it without listening. That will be of great help.

Christopher: Tell us a bit more about what you have at School of Composition. Where did that site come from and how has it been developing?

Matthew: Well, I always loved talking about these concepts. Writing is even better, because I can stop and think about how I want to explain something, I want to express something. I just gravitated naturally towards that medium. It’s been growing for past year. There’s a lot of content coming, which I’m excited about. The feedback has been wonderful. We have a Facebook group that also has been really, really useful to me and to the students to see what works, what doesn’t work, what people want more of.

Matthew: I know people have been asking for more composition challenges which I’ve had to pause for a while, because they were really taking a lot of time. I had to focus on other things for a while, but hope to bring those back soon. There’s a lot coming. It’s a very exciting time.

Christopher: Talk a little bit more about the composition challenges. How does that work?

Matthew: What we were doing was just issuing a challenge every month. It’s very simple, like perhaps write a music on a given theme, could have been six notes. Write a piece that ends in this way, and I give the exact two bars that it should end in. These sorts of ways of limiting the possibilities, but they’re open enough to challenge you, so gives you a start, but it’s not overwhelming because you do have some guidelines.

Christopher: Fantastic. For someone who is maybe at the beginning of this journey, perhaps they’re even inspired by this interview to explore composing for themselves, what can they find on the website, before they get to that level of taking a challenge, that might help them along their way?

Matthew: There are the articles for beginners for music theory. If you want to go deeper and step-by-step, there are two books that you can buy. Paperbacks are available as well on Amazon. You can find absolute beginners material just as much as intermediate and advanced. There is something for everyone.

Christopher: We’ve talked a little bit about the importance of having an instructor to guide you and give feedback and help you realize all the different things that could help you become a better composer. Am I right in thinking you offer private instruction in that area too?

Matthew: Yes. If anyone is interested, they can contact me through the website itself. We can set up a program of a few weeks to a few months, specific to their needs, specific to their goals.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, I know from experience with our members at Musical U, we provide a lot of the musicality training that can be a basis for composing, but composing and songwriting aren’t, at least at the moment, things we cover specifically. I know we have lots of members who would leap at that opportunity who have just been waiting for someone to guide them along that journey.

Christopher: If anyone’s listening or watching who has been itching either to get in to composition or to learn a bit more about the nuts and bolts, or, indeed, to get personal help with it, I definitely highly recommend schoolofcomposition.com. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. I think there have been a lot of really interesting insights and ideas here to help someone whatever stage they might be at in their composing journey. Do you have any parting advice for someone who’s interested in composing?

Matthew: I think if I had to give you one piece of advice, it would be this, to learn how to compose you just need to compose. As silly that might sound, there is a lot to it in the sense that you can watch all the videos you can find, you can read all the books, but just jot down something. Actually, that’s one of the tips in that list that you mentioned, the 15 do’s and 5 don’t. Just write something, whatever it is.

Matthew: If you’re starting from scratch, go write a melody. If you’re confident in writing melodies, just harmonize it. If you do that, just always move to the next step, but wherever you’re at, start there.

Christopher: Fantastic. Thank you again, Matt.

Matthew: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

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The post How Composers Improve, with Matthew Ellul (School of Composition) appeared first on Musical U.

In our last three Resource Packs, our Resident Pros have offered their unique insights on playing by ear on their instruments of expertise – covering first melodies and basslines, then the chords that provide context to the music and help hold a song together.

For Part 4 in the Play By Ear series, our Resident Pros tackle the topic of chord progressions, sharing their knowledge on recognizing, playing, and writing your own progressions – each with instrument-specific insights and exercises, as well as MP3 practice tracks to help you connect the concepts to actual sounds.

As for you singers, our resident pro has something special for you to add to your toolkit – a skill that will let you match pitch and learn to sing any song – regardless of vocal range – by learning to recognize and sing octaves.

Singing

Each human voice occupies a unique vocal range, allowing for voices to blend together to create beautiful polyphonic textures.

However, in order to sing with others, or sing a song by a vocalist with a different range than you, you’ll need to match pitch in a different octave – and differences in vocal ranges can make this a tricky exercise.

This month, Clare Wheeler teaches the concept of singing in octaves – a tool that will help you sing any song you wish in a register that is comfortable and natural for you:

Including:

• How to recognize octaves and sing the interval
• Matching pitch between two voices in different octaves
• How to sing along with something in a different octave
• MP3 tracks to sing along to in different octaves

Bass

Basslines are commonly the root notes of the chord progressions they support, and are therefore the perfect starting point for recognizing chord progressions themselves.

In this instrument pack, Steve Lawson connects the bassline of a song to its harmony, exploring the concept of hearing progressions in basslines, and how you can use your audiation skills to aid this process:

Including:

• How to recognize pairs of chords within a key
• Understanding chord voicings with the help of voice leading
• Chord shapes that enable you to hear progressions on other instruments
• Scores and tabs to help you visualize chords, progressions, and voicings
• MP3 practice tracks for hearing chord voicings and recognize pairs of chords in a key

This Instrument Pack is geared towards helping you use the root notes and basslines of progressions to hear them in any context – a must-have for the versatile musician.

Guitar

We can often predict the next chord in a progression – our ears intuitively just know what should come next. However, sometimes you hear a chord in a song that just… throws you off.

Thankfully, there are numerous ways you can figure out the mystery chord. In this month’s instrument pack, Dylan Welsh shares his intuitive, ear-based approach:

Including:

• A description of various chord qualities you’ll come across besides major and minor
• How to use the bassline to hear the root of a chord
• How to use emotional qualifiers to determine the quality of a chord
• MP3 tracks with modified chord progressions so you can hear the differences in chord quality

By listening for the moods or emotional qualifiers of chords, you can easily and intuitively determine what kind of chord you’re hearing – and contextualize it in the progression you hear it in.

Piano

You can think of a chord progression as a mini-story, with each chord telling a different part.

In this month’s Piano Instrument Pack, resident pro Ruth Power explores how chords in sequence create a narrative, how rearranging the order of the chords changes the mood of a progression, and the rule of thumb for deciphering a chord progression – and as our other resident pros have pointed out, the trick lies in the bassline:

Including:

• The most common chord progression and how to build it
• Functions of different chords in a progression
• Altering a chord progression’s mood by adding just one chord
• A handy chord symbol overview to help you recognize notation
• Exercises for chord matching, chord progression recognition, and hearing bass notes
• Video tutorials to illustrate concepts

Coming up next month…

Next month, we’ll continue our play-by-ear journey with a focus on an under-explored aspect of playing an instrument: getting in rhythm. As for you singers, our next Instrument Pack will focus on transposition, a skill which will enable you to sing a piece of music in a key that is optimally suited to your voice.

The post 4-Chord Progressions and Singing in Octaves: Resource Pack Preview appeared first on Musical U.