Author: musicalitywrld

One might assume that a deaf musician must just be playing from memory or from instructions – which would make it a strong example of the kind of “robotic playing” we often talk about getting away from on this show. But Evelyn actually represents the polar opposite – her deep focus on listening and feeling each and every note makes her a prime example of just the kind of truly intentional, expressive playing that we celebrate and seek to encourage here at Musical U.

Evelyn has given deep and careful thought to the topic of listening – and sound, and music, and how our relationship with each of these can transform our lives and the lives of those around us.

From her TED talk to provocative sound art installations to YouTube teaching videos and of course her professional performing career, Evelyn’s work just sparks of passion, creativity and wisdom – and so to say we were eager to pick her brains about musicality and the listening skills of music would be a huge understatement!

In this conversation we talk about:

• The remarkable way her first percussion teacher introduced her to the instrument and helped her connect intimately and instinctively with all that it could do
• How thinking about your performance as a “sound meal” can be the gateway to providing a more compelling experience for your audience
• Why musicians who get very good at “musical listening” in the specific, concrete, practical ways can actually lose sight of a far more fundamental and important kind of listening.

Like the best musical performances, we think Evelyn’s comments in this interview will hold you rapt as you listen – and then leave you with a lingering sense of wonder and curiosity to bring back into your own musical life.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Evelyn’s website
• Evelyn Glennie: How To Truly Listen – TED Talk
• Evelyn Glennie Interview from Playing from the Heart DVD
• Listening to The Tempest, a tale to cure deafness
• What Makes Us Human?
• Questions Answered: Can Musicality Be Taught?

Transcript

Evelyn: Hi, I’m Evelyn Glennie and my mission is to teach the world to listen. And you’re listening to The Musicality Podcast.

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

Evelyn: Thank you, thank you very much.

Christopher: So, you have perhaps one of the most interesting musical origin stories, as it were, that I’ve come across. And you shared it wonderfully in your TED talk. But if any of out listeners haven’t seen that amazing presentation, could you just tell us a bit about your own musical start, what it looked like for you to learn music?

Evelyn: Well, first of all, I’m a farmer’s daughter. So, I spent my first 16 years on a farm. That really was my orchestra in a way, the sound world of the farm, the sound world of the countryside. And I think when you’re in that type of environment, you very quickly learn about patience. And you’re also trusted with sound. So, you’re connecting with livestock, you’re connecting with machinery. All of that has its own sound world.

And when you’re a young person and you’re given tasks to do on the farm, basically the sounds around you are sounds that you have to pay attention to. Not just through the sounds that they create that by the motion of that sound, so if you’re seeing the wheels of a tractors move, you’re not necessarily picking up the sound first of all. But you’re picking up that movement, and that movement will generate the type of sound. So, whether you need to back away or whether you need to go in a particular direction, or whatever it might be.

That actually had quite a bearing I think, on my whole appreciation of sounds. So, it didn’t really come from learning music first of all, it came from just paying attention to the environment that you’re in. And I think that really has allowed me to, I suppose, think about sound appreciation. First and foremost, before thinking about musicality, or indeed, a sound appreciation of music in itself. So, that’s a question we can all wonder. A bit like, “Well, is noise music or is music noise?” What comes first, really?

I remember we had a piano in the house, and it was more of an ornament than an instrument. And that obviously, the curiosity of a youngster, went on the stool and started, you’re just sort of tapping away and banging away on the keys. But I just loved the frequency range of the piano, the fact that you had very low sounds. And when you’re a child, everything is quite exaggerated. So, the low sounds were really low, the high sounds were really high.

The low sounds were big and fat, the high sounds were all tingly and star-like, and sparkly and that kind of thing. So, it was really again, just creating whatever emotion happened to be inside of yourself. And when I turned eight years old, my parents decided that as I was picking up little advert themes from the television, that was our medium, I suppose, that we had. We didn’t have record players or anything like that at that point. I remember picking up little advert themes, and believe it or not, my parents could actually recognize them after a while.

So, this was all done by ear. And they then decided that perhaps it’s time to get some more formal education and have a piano teacher. And that’s what happened, and I loved it. I actually really enjoyed playing the piano, I went through all of the grades on the piano. I enjoyed the process of just seeing the piano as a companion. It was just something that I wanted to be with. I just felt that it was kind of a companion, a friend, just a way of expressing yourself.

So, there was never this feeling that, “Oh, heavens, you have to plod through exercises in scales and you have to shut yourself in that room.” That wasn’t the kind of environment really, that I was brought up with. So, I suppose again, there was this sort of trust that my parents had, that I will deal with the preparation in my way, in my own time, and in a kind of system or method. Not that those are words that I really like to use, but just in my own way.

But I really liked-

Christopher: I’m sorry to interrupt, could I just ask were your parents musical themselves? Do they have some experience or some insight into what learning music could be like?

Evelyn: Well, my father actually believe it or not, had a very good ear. But he couldn’t read music. And although he played the accordion in a dance band for weddings and things like that, he stopped when myself and my brothers were born. So, we never actually saw him play at all. And my mother on the other hand, did not have a good ear, but she could read music.

Christopher: Okay.

Evelyn: So, she was of the type that had to kind of be pushed in there and made to do things. I was never really made to do anything, and not just simply because I enjoyed doing it in the first place. And I enjoyed the curiosity both of creating sound … I enjoyed the curiosity both feeding emotion through this instrument and kind of almost seeing the instrument as an extension of your own body. And that’s why the kind of friendship thing came, you had this thing that was almost like a secretive thing to you. But that’s what happens when you’re young.

But anyway, I also remember that I was never really very good at theory. And that was the side that I did have to sit down and really work at, that didn’t feel as though it came naturally to me. So, there was this very odd kind of balance going on between practically being absolutely wide open, but the theory, I really struggled with. I really did, and of course I need that to get through the grades on the piano. So, that I didn’t enjoy. And I couldn’t find a kind of soft way to deal with theory. I couldn’t find a way that was enjoyable somehow. It just seemed too … strict, everything had to add up to something.

Whereas when you’re just playing, nothing really has to add up to anything. It adds up to how you’re feelings at the moment. So, even although you’re reading something that’s on the notated page, well, it is just a guide to actually how you’re expressing it at that particular moment. But I remember when I reached the age of 12 and I was having real problems with my ears, and I was looking for something to go alongside piano playing. And I kept piano going as a joint first study when I became a full-time student in London.

So, I put my name on the list to try percussion when I went to secondary school. And lots of people wanted to learn percussion. So, I had to wait my time. But once that time did come, I picked the sticks up and it just literally felt an extension of my limbs. It just felt completely natural. And it’s one of those things, that why does somebody learn the bassoon or the cello, or the organ or sing, or whatever. There’s just something that is very hard to express, whereby it just simply feels like the chemistry is right.

But I remember my teacher in the first lesson. I was all gung-ho, trying as many different things as possible, but he basically said, “Evelyn, please take this drum away and I’ll see you next week.” And of course I was so perplexed of that, and slightly disappointed frankly, because I was really excited about this. So, I walked from up to the farm with this drum. There were no sticks and no stand, just the drum. And I spend a week with this drum, not knowing at all what to do with it. But then bit by bit I sort of struck the drum, I tapped the drum, I scraped the drum, I beat the drum, I tickled the drum.

I did all sorts of things, I turned it upside down, on its side, whatever, whatever, and popped it on different surfaces. And I found that actually, wherever I put this drum, it resonated quite differently. So, if I put it on the grass, on the lawn for example at home, it was quite dead. However, if I popped it on the kitchen table, the wooden table, it really resonated much more. Or if I popped a cushion over it, it would just be a very muffled kind of feeling. And I remember the next week going back to my lesson, and then my teacher asked, “How did you get on?” I said, “Well, I’ve no idea, I don’t know what to do with this thing.”

And he knew I was a farmer’s daughter. He said, “Evelyn, please create the feel of a tractor.” And I thought, “The feel of a tractor? Well, I know what the feel of a tractor is. But there’s a whole orchestra of tractors in my head. So, is this tractor stationary with the engine off? In which case, the feel … is complete stillness. Or is it an old rickety tractor going up a hill? Is it a brand new spanking fancy tractor, whereby the engine is just like a piece of velvet?” Or, “What is this tractor? So, is it in first gear, is it in third gear, what’s going on with this tractor?”

So, I had then then permission to express this tractor through the drum, in any kind of means possible. Using hands, feet, whatever I wanted to use. But it was my tractor, and my expression of the tractor. And that has a huge bearing on, basically, how I progressed from there on in. It could have been a different environment, if my teacher said, “Here are the sticks, please make sure you hold them at this angle. Please make sure your arms are at this degree. Please make sure your feet are this way, apart.” Or whatever it might be, and I would probably strike the drum, look at the teacher, and ask for his permission if that was right or wrong.

That did not happen. From the word go, this drum belonged to me. And therefore, what you express through that drum or any other tool that you have, is your expression. It’s your sound, and that’s what makes the difference. So, you’re not asking for permission, “Is it right or wrong?” You’re saying, “This is my experience.” So, it’s coming from the inside out, rather than outside in. Rather than waiting for the teacher to say, “Da, da, da, da, da,” and you feedback into yourself and try and do it, what my teacher was asking me was, “Look, you explore what’s inside of yourself. And give that to me in a week’s time.”

And that was the difference, it was just this different direction of the giving. And that has allowed me really, to, I suppose, sustain this curiosity 30-odd years later, 40 years later. In everything I do, because I still get excited by picking up a strange object and seeing, “What are the possibilities?” It’s like going back to that first lesson. There’s no rule book here. It’s just simply what is in your system that you want to explore, and get out, and maybe fall flat on your face, and you get up again and you see the other possibilities. That’s what really, it’s about.

Christopher: That’s fantastic, there is so much there that I want to unpack. But I’ll start with a question that’s front of mind for me. Which is, was it just good fortune that you had a teacher who encouraged you in that way and let you lead and experiment? Or did he recognize that curious spirit in you, or why was it that you didn’t just arrive on lesson one and start playing paradiddles or single stroke rolls?

Evelyn: Well, I think it was a bit of everything. I think it was the skill of the teacher and the trust the teacher had in a young person’s mind. It’s still elastic at that age, and it’s really respecting that. And making sure that that is fed as much as possible, and believed in, and respected, and listened to. So, he was quite remarkable in that way. And also, it was the environment that I was brought up in. This is a country environment, so we did not have percussion stores in the nearest city. We did not have music stores, we did not have people coming in and giving workshops and master classes, and all of that sort of thing. We did not have access to percussion repertoire, or indeed percussion exercise books.

We had very, very little material as regards to things directed towards our instruments specifically. But because of that, we had so much more. We had the imagination. So, the imagination had to think outside of the box. Basically, for example, we on a snare drum or on a tambourine, or on a pair of castanets, or on a triangle, or on a bass drum or something, we would play Bach partitas. So, can you imagine the phrasing of a Bach partita? If I go something like, “Dege … dege,” that kind of thing, whatever it might be, it could be anything.

It could be a song, it could be an aria, it could be a jig, it could be whatever. But if you plant that on a non pitched instrument, you’re still thinking about the phrasing. And with that phrasing, you’re not just thinking dynamically. But you’re thinking about sound color as well, you’re thinking about so many different ingredients that go beyond the basic ingredients. So, you think about time and you think about rhythm, and you think about playing the notes that’s there and so on.

But actually, all of these subtleties are more towards speaking through you instrument. So, when we speak, I don’t speak to you like this, do I? Do I not, do I do, whatever. So, that would be absurd. In the same way that I wouldn’t necessarily play, “Dup … dup.” But I might play, “Bum … bum, da … da, dum … dum.” And with that, you’re suddenly changing how you stick something. The sticking that you use, or rather than a hand to hand, you’re actually expressing the feeling of what you want to get through. So, I suppose by having, as they say, less, meant that we actually explored so many different other avenues in order to play our instruments.

With that, and I remember my teacher taking maybe a phrase from a piece of music, so again that it could be a bit of Bach, “Da … da.” And he would say, “Right, let’s make this more happy. What can we do to make this more happy? At the moment, it sounds maybe a little serious, or it might be it’s got a more masculine feel about it. How can we make this slightly lighter? Or more cheeky, or a bit grittier, or how can we make it more march-like or whatever it could be?”

Therefore, we would think, “Well, does it need to be in another key?” So that, “Aha, what would happen if we tried it in A major as opposed to B major? B major is kind of beautifully and silky, but A major is just a bit more string-like. Would that work?” So, this was dealing with transposition, without thinking, “Oh, can you transpose this up or down? Or, X, Y, or Z?” But, “How can we make this more string-like. Or, how can we make this more snowy? Or, how can we make this more dark,” or whatever. It’s using those kind of terms through our music making and our discovery that I think was really important.

But all of this was coming from piano repertoire, violin repertoire, flute pieces, and you name it. But at all of this at the same time, the improvisation, the listening skill, the feeling, how things felt like to play. Exploring that sense of touch, which then, that explores your sound colors, and you dynamics. And your trust in how you use your instrument as well, so you don’t become hostage of, “Well, I must be seen playing it like this.” Or, “I must remember to do X, Y, or Z.” It’s just I suppose, putting on a jumper or a coat, and you’re putting on your instrument. You know what I mean?

You’re kind of making it fit for you, it’s your body, it’s your imagination, it’s your length of arm, it’s your size of hand, it’s your stature, and so on. And that’s what the instrument has to fit, really, and it is just like putting on a piece of clothing and thinking, “Aha, yup, this is my instrument. This is how it fits for me.”

Christopher: Wonderful, well I’m always really intrigued when I speak to someone such as yourself, who has this … who highly values that emotional connection with the instrument. And the value of creativity and learning, and emphasizes that learning can be joyful, it can be something you actually look forward to doing rather than a forced to do. But who has also reached the highest levels in terms of performance, and I wonder, was there ever any conflict for you? I think that you maybe touched on it there when you talked about how transposition could be taught for a purpose, rather than just for the sake of it.

But I’m wondering, there is a value in developing the instrument technique, does that just happen by implication when you immerse yourself creatively like that? Or does it take a skillful teacher to kind of word in a syllabus as it were, to all this enjoyable learning? Did you ever have a clash between I want to be a very polished performer and, I love this free exploration with the instrument?

Evelyn: I think yes, and I think we … I do feel it’s important to have the sense of curiosity and freedom, but also to have that support system of the teacher. Whereby, they are literally that, the support system. And they can just guide here and there, and just sort of poke around here and there at the needs for that particular individual. It’s when there’s a … And I should also say that it is important as a performing musician myself, and as a professional musician, to at times be under real stress. To understand about stress and release, stress and release, stress and release. That’s really important.

So, to know what it feels like to be nervous. And I get nervous before performances, of course I do. But it’s then how I use those nerves or how I recognize those nerves, and how I own those nerves, and see those nerves as just a natural progression of the performance. That I get nervous, but I know that there’s going to be then the release factor. And I think health-wise, that’s extremely important to have that balance. So, that works for me.

But I do feel that it is important to just have those moments where you’re kind of out of your comfort zone, I suppose. And because sometimes people think that, “Ah, you’re a musician, that must be fantastic. Oh, it must be such a great, great life,” and everything. And yes it is, of course it is, but we’re not playing our instrument every single day in the way that we want to, every single day. Those are compromises if you’re performing with other people and so on. Or it could be the acoustics that you’re in, or the quality of the instruments that you’re playing and so on.

There are lots of different factors that happen all the time actually, that you’re always having to compromise in one way or another. However, the feeling of giving, giving the sound meal all of the time, is something that overrides all of these other things. In my own case, I mean, as a professional musician, I know that I’m in the music business, obviously. And I’m here talking with you and your viewers today, however, I haven’t yet touched my instrument. So, I haven’t yet done any practice or playing, or rehearsing, or anything like that. Because I’ve been dealing with the actual business aspects.

And that’s a reality. Now, I’d love to forgo all of that and just play my days away. But, that’s not the reality of the kind of profession that you’re in. So, I do think early on, it’s important to … understand that it’s not all roses. And even whether you’re a professional or an amateur, to put yourself in these slightly more stressful situations, I think is pretty crucial. You learn a lot.

Christopher: I loved the way you framed that, as tension and release, or finding that balance. I think that’s a really valuable way of looking at it. You used an expression there I’d love for you to explain a bit more, which was a sound meal. That you’re providing a sound meal, what does that mean?

Evelyn: Well, a sound meal is exactly that. I mean, if you walk into your kitchen and you’re preparing a meal, cooking a meal for people, then I don’t know, you may have vegetables, or your fish or meat, or whatever it might be. But everything is there and you put it all together one way or another. And you prepare it all, and lo and behold, it’s there on a plate for people to enjoy. And that’s what we do as musicians. So, we have our instrument, we have the tools that we need in order to bring this sound meal together, we have the music, we have the lights, we have the this, the music stand, and our spare reeds, or mallets, or whatever it is.

It’s all of these things, and we pop them all together, and we mix this with that, and mix that with that, and don’t know though what. And then lo and behold, when the time comes, we give this sound meal. The piece of music or if it’s an improvisation, or whatever it is, but we give this sound meal to our customers. And we just allow them to digest this meal in any way that they would like. So, some people sitting up in the balcony may have a fantastic view of everything on stage, but not necessarily such a good aural experience than the people sitting, let’s say, in the stalls or something. I don’t know.

So, we can’t assume that everybody is digesting that meal in the same way. And I think with music of course, we have so many different mediums of digesting the meal. Sometimes it’s without the visual aid, so sometimes it’s just aurally. Sometimes we feel really satisfied when we have that aural experience and the visual experience. Sometimes it’s even more unhoused if we’re sitting in the front row. As opposed to right at the back and we’re kind of, “Ooh, ooh, who’s that playing the bassoon?”, or something. And so, we’ve got to think about that too. But yeah, that’s what I mean by a sound meal.

Christopher: Terrific, and that touches on a couple of things I was looking forward to talking with you about. And the first of those is what you just describe there, which is that you can listen with your eyes as it were. I’ve heard you explain this a few different ways, and I think it’s something we often overlook as musicians. We think, “What will I wear for the gig?”, maybe, but we don’t really consider how important that visual sense is. I was reminded of this a few minutes ago when you were talking about seeing a tractor on a farm, and there’s a visual connection to the sound. And you can have one without the other and still know what’s going on. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about this aspect of the visual information that affects our experience of music? And maybe, how we should be thinking about that as musicians?

Evelyn: Well, I think that an audience member knows when they’re given something really honest. So, that isn’t about a good performance, a bad performance, I’m not talking about that. I mean an honest performance. And that’s a feeling, really. You can feel that when you see the person. It’s not necessarily about what is being worn as they’re playing, it can just simply be presence. And presence is a form of listening. So, that musician on that platform, or whatever they may be, is very much listening to the audience. Now, the audience may not be making any kind of sound at all, it’s the presence of the audience.

And we all know that when there’s the presence of the audience there and their participation as receivers of the sound, actually that’s something to us as musicians, as far as our interpretation is concerned. And it almost becomes as though we’re talking on this tightrope, because the nerves are kicking in and we want to do our best, and we’re sort of concerned about all sort of other things. Will we forget a piece of music, if it’s not an improvisation? But all sorts of things can kick in that can just sort of make us wobble on that tight rope.

But actually, when we do appreciate the audience being there, their presence, it’s then it opens up the experience as though we’re all sharing this piece of music together. We’re all discovering this piece of music together. And that’s really important, so it isn’t a case of them and us, or them and me, or whatever the situation is. It’s really, “Now, here we are. We are all digesting this sound meal together.” And I think that can really make a difference to how we connect physically with our audiences. And how then, true that performance actually is.

Because you can then allow to take chances. You can allow to still keep asking questions during the performance. Not just during a practice period or a rehearsal period, but during a performance keep asking questions. And yes, it may mean that your go, “That didn’t work!” But anyway, the fact is that you put yourself in that situation. And when you make that a kind of, oh, what can I say? Almost like an attitude in a way, the risks that you take become so exciting. They become really … it’s like being on fire. People want to be part of that, really, they want to feel as though, “What’s going to happen next? What now?”

Rather than, “Ah, yeah, I know this piece of music. Yeah, yeah, I heard this before,” but it’s, no, you’ve never hear this piece of music with this person before. So, every time we play, it’s as though we’re giving a world premiere. Even if we’ve played a piece a million times before, we have not played it in front of this audience. Therefore, it’s a world premiere.

Christopher: Tremendous, and I think you touched there on the other aspect of a sound meal that I wanted to different into. Which is, it’s easy to say “play it musically” or “play it with expression” or try and get the audience on board. What does that mean in practical terms? I love the way you talked about it earlier in our conversation, in terms of the different kind of dimensions of music you could explore, of making it happy or making it sad, doing more than just playing with the timing or playing the correct notes. How do you think about this if you sit down to prepare a new piece, how do you think about, how will I shape this musically? I guess, I’m curious in advance of the performance, and also in the moment when you’re trying to kind of make that connection with your listener?

Evelyn: I’m not sure, actually. Because I think it just sort of … depends on the situation, I find that as as percussion player, so thinking about myself as an instrumentalist. I’m thinking about the practicalities of the piece of music. This may not everybody something that a violinist or a wind player, or even a pianist has to think about. As a percussion player, if it’s for multi instruments, you have to think practically how do you think this might be set up. So, where would you like the snare drum to be? Where would you like the marimba to be, where would you like that cymbal to be, and so on. And those are things that you will not set yourself or decide upon straight away, that will take up … I mean, that can happen over a long period of time.

It can even change during or after the first performance. I mean, I actually remember giving the premiere of the Christopher Rouse Percussion Concerto, and we had four consecutive nights with that piece of music. And every single night, I changed the set up. Because it was just, “Ah, what would happen if I placed the steel pan over there? Or, what would happen if I placed it with those over there?”, or something. So, I had that opportunity to do that. But then, really, when I look at a piece of music, it’s like reading a book.

So, you look at the shape of the piece, you look at the climaxes of the piece, you just look at the story of the piece knowing that that story will change as well. So, that story, you might be given certain words of that story. But all of the filling in of the words, that really make the story, that will happen over a course of time and several, several performances. And then I’ll begin to simply read through the piece. Some of it, I may be able to read through better than other places in the piece. Some might be sort of really awkward, but then I’ll be thinking, “Okay, so that section I’m definitely going to have to look at from a percussion point of view.”

Or, “That bit, I’ve just got no idea what I’m going to do with that yet,” musically, and so on. And it’s not trying to force anything. I think for me, whenever I learn a piece of music, it has to be a really natural state that you’re in. I have to say that it’s not always possible to be in that frame of mind, because sometimes you get pieces very last minute. You have very little time to learn them, in which case, you are basically in sixth gear. And you’ve all of the sudden got to be a Michael Schumacher, but having never gone into a Formula One care or something.

And you know that, “Right, I’ve got to read this really quickly. I have got to make decisions on this really, really quickly.” But again, you know that they can change over the course of the performances. So, it’s a kind of different state of mind sometimes. But ideally, it’s making sure everything is natural to the way that you work. And again, we’re all different. Some people like to put the piece of music on their music stand immediately when they get it, and start reading it.

Some people like myself, like to sort of read it like a book, without any instruments. And then think, “Okay, what would happen if I did this and that?” And then, read through it, but with no expectations, no mad analysis on it, just sort of let it kind of … just try it on as it were. Try it on and then see what needs adjusting, so you’re almost like a dress maker.

Christopher: Great, and you said something there which was, “What would happen if this, what would happen if that?” If we imagine someone in the position where they’ve practiced to the point that they can play each note a the right time, on the right pitch, with the right instrument. But they’re feeling like this just isn’t working, or, “I’m not sure, I don’t really feel like a musician. I’m feel a bit kind of robotic and rigid.” Yeah, do you have any advice for how they can change their mindset or do anything practical to tap more into that creative, curious spirit you were talking about earlier?

Evelyn: Well, I quite like to, I suppose, play games. And most of those games are pushing your boundaries as regards to the technical aspects or the physical aspect of playing, and what we can do, as well as the sort of sound world that we’re dealing with. So, for example, if I feel I’m getting just a bit sort of same-y with something or a bit … whatever it is, it’s not exciting or something isn’t quite working. Then I could change the sticking completely and I could just sort of decide, “Right, I’m only going to do that with the left hand now. And I know it’s ridiculous, but who cares?” It really then mixes things up for you physically, and it pulls tools out of your system that you didn’t know you had.

And you think, “Ooh, now what would happen if I did that on, let’s say, a pair of cymbals or on a drum kit? Ooh, that’s quite interesting.” And before you know it, you’re exploring techniques and ideas on other instruments that you wouldn’t otherwise had even thought about. So, that goes back again to the days of my school time, whereby taking bits of piano repertoire, and flute and so on, onto a tambourine, onto a cymbal, onto a base drum. I feel that that really keeps me sort of buoyant in a way.

Or for example, for years, I played Steve Reich Clapping Music, which is normally for two players. But where I play it by myself, playing both parts with my hands using four mallets, so it seems as though it’s then four people actually clapping. And then I sort of keep cross time with my left boot. And I thought to myself, I’ve done this for such a long time, now I’m going to do it with both my feet this time. So, do the clapping part, but with my feet. Then do other rhythms with my hands. So, of course, at the moment it’s like a car crash. I can’t do it yet, but the fun I’m having in doing it.

And it’s sort of making me realize, the stronger parts of my body, the weaker parts of my body, and where things need to be sort of lining up, and so on. And that really, again, it’s just totally out of my comfort zone. I don’t have to do this, there’s no mad reason for me to do it. It’s not for an exam or anything like that, or for a concept, it’s just simply because want to be curious. To think, “Well, can I actually do this?”

So, I think this sort of boils down to your own imagination and how you’re willing to really push that imagination, or just peel that extra layer from the onion to see what’s underneath, to just sort of open that door and think, “Ooh, what’s through that door?” It’s literally like that, turning the next page, thinking, “Ah, what’s the next chapter?” But that’s really down to the person too, to be curious to follow that through.

Christopher: I love that. I’ll confess, I’m someone who never really felt creative in music. I come from the very traditional play the notes on the page kind background. And so, I’m always looking for ways to kind of trick myself into being a bit more curious, a bit more exploratory? And I love that idea of just treating it as a game, see how you can push your boundaries.

Evelyn: Yeah.

Christopher: And I know a lot of people watching or listening are going to find that really useful.

Evelyn: Well, and I think another thing that I sometimes do is if you’re set in a particular tempo with a piece of music, when … and that’s where you need to be with it, and that’s what it says on the piece of music, or whatever it is. You can really say to yourself, “Well, today, I’m actually going to play this as though I’m at a funeral or something.” And the tempo is ridiculously slow, I mean, absurdly slow. But what does it feel like? What happens to your body physically, what kind of ways do you then play your instrument? How do you sustain those phrases when it’s so, so slow? What happens dynamically to you? It’s the same piece of music, but only the tempo that’s changed.

But a lot more other things will have changed as well. And it’s really taking note of those things, and that’s all about listening. So, it’s not just listening to the sound, but it’s listening to the whole picture of how you operate. What is the engine, the body, actually doing? And where are the bits that need oiling and that kind of thing? So, that for me is good. Or doing it vice versa if you’re playing a really slow piece of music, but absolutely up in that tempo, so that it’s ridiculously fast.

And that makes sure there are some compositional ideas. It may sort of highlight things like, “Oh, my gosh, this finger needs a lot more attention. I hadn’t realized that before.” Or, you know what I mean, just thing physically that might feel a bit uncomfortable. Or you might say, “Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought, and I really quite enjoyed that.” It’s things that you can also share with other people too, so it doesn’t have to be done in isolation.

Christopher: Very cool, and I think what’s clear is that again like we were talking about, this isn’t just let’s be creative and have fun for the sake of it. Clearly, these kinds of exercises are both nurturing your creativity and pushing you to a new level in terms of technique and proficiency.

Evelyn: Yes, it is, and I think also it gives you a slight sense of empowerment as well. And I don’t mean that in an egotistical way, I simply mean it gives you that … feeling that you can, you are allowed to do this. You are allowed to explore, you are an explorer of sound. That’s what being a musician is. We all deal with sound and we are basically presenting this sound world to our customers. So, it doesn’t matter which instrument you’re playing or whatever it is, we all have the same kind of playing field in a way. We have a tool and imagination, that’s what we’ve got. Those are the two ingredients that we all have if we’re embarking on this sort of thing. So, it’s just then how you want to deal with those things.

Christopher: Tremendous, well, I think we’ve kind of touched on it from a few different angles. But I do want to ask you the direct question which is, I guess two questions. The first is, what does listening have to with musicality? If we have a musician who wants to feel more musical, how does listening factor into that. And the second, more broadly, you mission is to teach the world to listen, what does that mean to a non-musician? Or, what’s the significance of listening beyond this kind of world of performance that we’ve been talking about?

Evelyn: Well, that the whole … I mean, we imagine that musicians listen really well. We listen in a type of way, I suppose, or we can be kind of led down that tunnel. And we are quite critical listeners of what we do. We’re quite critical listeners of what other people do too. But at the same time, we can be extremely selfish listeners. The kind of listening that we do as musicians needs time out. So, we need almost that time to … not listen, to yet more music. And that can sometimes be overload, and we sort of forget to listen to ourselves. So, listening to ourselves not as musicians, but, “Well, how am I feeling today?” Or, “What’s going through my mind today,” and how could that actually affect then what we do as musicians?

Christopher: Yes.

Evelyn: So, I found in my own situation that I went through, I think around about when I reached the age of 40 or something, where the diary was so overloaded with concerts and things, that I’d got to the point where the last thing I wanted to do was to play. It was just too much, basically. It was too much playing, too much listening of the same kind of thing. And I found that I just needed to back off, so I simply weeded the diary out. And from that point on, it’s been a case of really thinking about the projects we want to be involved with, and why you want to be involved with them.

And that’s really helped my listening actually, so that there’s not this overload that’s going on. There’s not this feeling where you’re just going from one to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next. And I think that’s really important, so we all have our own … schedule or time schedule of how we operate. Some people like a lot in the diary, some people like much less, some people are much more middle ground. It’s entirely up the individual. But it is important to really listen to yourself.

It’s almost like putting on … in airplanes, where they ask you to put on your own mask first before you can help someone else. And I always remember in the early days, thinking, “Well, that’s ridiculous, you need to help other people first before you put your own on.” But actually, of course you need to put your own on first, so that you’re in a good state to help someone else. And it’s the same with listening, you’ve got to have this engine operating really well before you can then listen further to what needs to happen.

So, that’s important. And I think that again, listening for me it’s about being present. It’s about focus. It’s about concentration. It’s can you imagine us having a conversation … Now, we’re doing this by Skype, but we’re still listening to each other. But wouldn’t it be a very different scenario, if I was on my phone texting? And I was sort of seeing if the lunchman was coming. Or, “What’s going on?”, and I’m texting or whatever. And, “Oh, yes, Christopher. Yeah, yeah, that’s really nice. Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.” It would be a totally different experience.

But being present and wanting to be present, and for that other person to feel the presence, I think is so crucial. And even more so, as we are all busy texting and emailing and all of that kind of thing, the beauty about music and creating music, is that you’re experiencing it with other people. You really are. So, even in the privacy of your own four walls, I suppose it’s the difference between rehearsing and practice. For a lot of us, we think, “Ah, gosh, we’re in this room. So, we’re practicing, we’re practicing, were practicing.” And then we’re leaping to a performance.

But actually, if in those four walls, you think, “No, I’m rehearsing.” So, even if you’re playing a scale, you’re rehearsing. So, you’ve got the audience there, or you’ve got the scenario that you want. And you imagine yourself being in a cathedral where the acoustics are so wet, or in a dry studio or somewhere. You’re imagining yourself in a different environment than the four walls. Then your sense of projection and the decisions that you make as a musician all change.

So, that’s all about listening, it really is. So, it isn’t just about the piece of music that you’re playing. Are you playing right notes, wrong notes, is the rhythm right, is it wrong? Whatever it is, it goes beyond that. It really does. It’s giving. Yeah, it’s a presence, that that’s what listening is.

Christopher: Lovely, well, I was saying to you just before we hit record how inspiring I found your work. And we’ll certainly be linking in the show notes to some of your essays, and videos, and presentations, so that people can learn a lot more about your mission.

Evelyn: [inaudible 00:48:06].

Christopher: I just wanted to say a big thank you, despite that weeding of the calendar, you are a lady who manages to tackle a lot of really fascinating projects. So, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to join us on the show. And also, to ask what’s coming up next for Evelyn Glennie? What’s the future holding?

Evelyn: Oh, heavens. I think it’s really a time of, I suppose, thinking outside of the box. A lot of the projects that I’m involved with are projects that I did not have on my hit list, as it were. For example, last year, I wrote my first ever theater score. That was for the Royal Shakespeare Company, for the play Troilus and Cressida. And that was hugely exciting, and again, quite scary to do, but in a good way. So, I very much enjoyed that. And at the moment, well, I’m preparing a new percussion concerto to be played in Turkey in February.

So, that will be going through the motions of what we talked about in this particular podcast. And it’s just a wonderful kind of way, or a wonderful profession I should say, whereby you never quite know what’s going to happen. You think you have everything planned out and then whoosh, off you go in another direction. And that’s a really healthy thing to do, and I think the older you become, the more important that is to do.

Christopher: Wonderful, well, I highly encourage people to check out evelyn.co.uk, which is your main website. And we’ll have links in the show notes. Very big thank you Evelyn for joining us today.

Evelyn: Thank you very much, thank you.

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The post How To Truly Listen, with Evelyn Glennie appeared first on Musical U.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Intro to Improv practice plan
• Approaching Improvisation module
• Introduction to Improvisation
• About Improvisation – podcast episode

Transcript

Hi, my name’s Christopher Sutton and in this video I’m going to help you recognise and overcome the one thing that’s preventing you from learning to improvise.

In a minute I’m going to talk about where that fear comes from, how you can overcome it, and how to make it easy to learn to improvise.

But before we do that: why does improvising matter, anyway?

Did you know that most musicians can’t improvise?

We’re kind of used to that so it doesn’t sound too shocking. And it’s why you might not have worried too much about the fact that you can’t do it.

But imagine if most people who spoke English couldn’t come up with their own sentences or have a conversation. That they could only recite phrases and scripts they had carefully learned before, word by word.

Imagine if *you* could only speak like that, unable to express your own ideas, stuck with the strict sequences of words you’ve learned by rote or read from a page. You can say “Where is the bathroom?” or “I have a blue pen” – but that’s it.

You’d barely feel like you could speak, right?

It would be incredibly frustrating – because you know what truly speaking a language is meant to be like, where you can imagine a thought and then express it easily through words.

Whether you’ve known it or not, this is exactly the situation you’re in with music if you can’t improvise.

Now I’m not going to tell you that you *should* improvise, and I’m definitely not saying that every musician should be up on stage taking a solo. That’s totally up to you.

But I hope that the language example makes clear why at Musical U we *do* think every musician should learn to improvise. Because it’s a deep part of feeling truly musical and enjoying music to its fullest.

Improvising can be learned – and in a fun, easy way.

In fact, the only thing truly holding you back from improvising is: fear.

Improvising is scary! Why is that?

Well, if you’re like most musicians you’ve been focused on instrument technique and learning to play particular pieces from sheet music, chord charts or tab.

This ingrains in us a mindset that notes are “right” or “wrong”. If you play the wrong pitch or you play a note at the wrong time, you’ve made a mistake. And mistakes are something to avoid, regret, and work hard to prevent in future.

That’s great if your goal is to be a perfect music-playing robot.

But there’s no real freedom there.

When you force music into that “right or wrong” framework you crush any possibility for creativity. And that means you’re missing out.

Let’s come back to the language analogy for a second. The one advantage of being restricted to only saying learned phrases and scripts is that it’s relatively low-risk. You can practice those specific sequences of words and be confident you’ll say them right.

To move beyond that you need to be willing to break things down into small blocks, learn how the blocks fit together, and start trying to assemble your own creations.

As a language speaker this means sometimes you’ll use the wrong word or say something that doesn’t quite make sense.

You have to risk sounding a bit odd to begin with!

But I’ll talk in a minute about how to minimise that downside – and the point is that the payoff for taking that small risk is huge.

Because not only do you get this new freedom to create your own ideas.

There’s actually something else even bigger you’re missing out on.

If you’ve studied a foreign language you’ll know: there’s a magic stage of learning where you actually start to think in that language. It’s ingrained so deeply in you that you instinctively know how to bring new ideas out into the world in that language.

Music can be like that for you: to imagine your own creative ideas and bring them out into the world for others to hear and appreciate. But the only way to get there is by embracing improvisation.

So let’s talk about that painful point: the dreaded “making a mistake”.

There are two big things to address here.

The first is a mindset shift. At Musical U we call this “taking on the improviser’s mindset”.

The improviser’s mindset is that notes aren’t right or wrong. The only thing that matters is what sounds good to you – and, crucially, that if something *doesn’t* sound good, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not even the end of the performance.

You can learn a variety of strategies and attune your ears and musical instinct to quickly turn any “wrong” note into something that sounds great – and might even convince your listeners you did it on purpose!

Making that mindset shift is a critical step in learning to improvise. But even without fully adopting that “apparent mistakes are okay, there’s no such thing as a ‘wrong note’” mentality, we can reduce or even remove the pain of playing a wrong note.

How? By giving yourself the opportunity to experiment in a zero-risk way.

Practice improvising when nobody can listen. If nobody’s listening, is there any real problem if you play a note that sounds bad?

Well, okay, actually I lied. It’s not quite zero risk – and that’s because we’re never truly alone. We are all always accompanied by that inner voice of self-doubt, our inner critic, our ego. The voice that feels shame when you get a note “wrong” or your playing sounds less polished than you had been proud to accomplish in the past.

To open up the amazing world of improvisation you need to be willing to set aside that inner critic – even if only for a few minutes.

To do this simply tell yourself: I’m going to spend a few minutes experimenting. I’m not expecting myself to be amazing and I’m certainly not expecting every note to sound amazing. I expect some things will sound bad or wrong. That’s how I’m choosing to spend my time for the next few minutes.

In my experience and for our members at Musical U, going into it with that explicit intention can be really effective for setting your ego aside and separating the learning of improvisation from the high-accuracy playing and performance you’re normally focused on in your music practice.

Now if you’re looking for the practical specifics on how to get started improvising we’ve got plenty of material at Musical U that can help you with that – both the full training inside our membership and some free resources to get you started. I’ll have links along with this video to get you going.

But before any of those practical tips can be useful to you, you’ll need to shake off the fear of improvising.

So first, give yourself the space and time to learn to improvise and tell yourself very clearly: I’m choosing to do something where I won’t sound so polished and accomplished, where I expect to make mistakes and that’s part of the process.

Once you’ve set aside that inner critic you’ll be able to begin exploring this new skillset – and gradually you’ll grow into the improviser’s mindset, where you truly know that there’s no such thing as a “wrong” note and you can freely create and express your own musical ideas in any situation with confidence.

Want a clear, step-by-step guide to getting started with improvising, which works for any instrument or genre, with no prior knowledge or special skills required? Get our 5-Day “Intro to Improv” Practice Plan for free, just click the link or visit the shownotes for this episode at musicalitypodcast.com.

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The post Can’t Improvise? There’s just one thing holding you back appeared first on Musical U.

If you’ve ever felt unsure about your voice – maybe that’s even held you back from trying to learn to sing – or if you are a singer and you’re trying to tap in to “your sound” or “your true voice” – stay tuned.

Today we’re joined by Nikki Loney from Full Voice Music. Nikki is a professional singer and voice teacher and creates resources to help other voice teachers with young singers in particular. Nikki was introduced to us by Sara Campbell, our former piano pro at Musical U who’s a voice teacher and singer herself, and she made the connection because Nikki’s speciality is something near and dear to our heart here at Musical U: helping people “make peace” with their voice.

It’s easy to imagine singing as a technical skill, like learning how to move your fingers right to play guitar or piano. But although there is that pure technique that must be learned, singing is unique among instruments because it is so deeply and intimately a part of who we are.

And that means that for many beginner singers – or those who want to begin, or even those who dream of beginning but feel it’s beyond them – the biggest barrier is how we feel about our own voice.

This is such an important part of the the big bundle of “learning to sing” and it’s rarely given enough attention in the establishment of learning to sing – so that only those who are already comfortable about their voice and being a singer actually learn to sing.

As you’ll be hearing, we have a shared passion (slash rage) about how society and culture treat singing and how things can be made dramatically better and more welcoming to those who’ve felt locked out of the world of singing – as well as those who are on the path but have hangups about how they sound.

Nikki has some fantastic insights from a breadth of experience teaching, and in this conversation she shares:

• The gift for singing that she had growing up – and it’s not what you might think.
• How she found her own voice – and what literally it means to do that, to “find your voice”
• How to know if you’re good enough to start singing lessons and what specifically can help you to find the right teacher

This conversation was a total delight and we know that whatever relationship you have with singing there are going to be some fresh perspectives and we hope some powerful encouragement for you in this episode.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• The Full Voice
• The Full Voice podcast
• Sane Singing, by D. Brian Lee
• 10 Things Your Voice Teacher Wants You To Know About Singing Lessons
• The ONE Word That Will Make Your Students Sing Better
• Helping Students “Make Peace” With Their Voice
• Strategies For Shy Singers – The Full Voice podcast episode
• Vocal Exploration Exercises – The Full Voice podcast episode

Transcript

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

Nikki: Oh, Christopher, thank you so much. I am so honored to be here. I am so excited.

Christopher: Likewise. So I have so much admiration and respect for the way you approach the topic of helping people get singing and it made me super curious about your own singing backstory and how you came to learn to sing and find your own voice. Can you tell us how you got started in music?

Nikki: Oh, sure. I have to say that I was super lucky and super blessed. My dad was, well, is, he’s still will us. My dad was a singer in the 60’s. He was an R and B singer and he was in the Toronto scene and he played and performed. He played guitar, he sang and it was his passion and he’s always shared his love for singing with me. So when I was little, little, little he would pull out the guitar and he would teach me songs and whenever anybody came over to the house I would have to sing for them which was fine when I was a little girl but when I became a teenager I was a little resentful of it but he was relentless and made me sing everywhere and anywhere.

He encouraged me to sing in choirs at school. He encouraged me to participate in every opportunity possible and he was and still is to this day my biggest supporter. He still comes to my shows. I don’t perform as much as I used to but when I do he’s there and I, it’s truly a gift and I didn’t recognize how special that gift was until my early years of teaching voice when I saw, in some of my students who didn’t have that support and it became really clear right in the early days that, you know, the kids that had the support from mom and dad would stay in lessons. They were successful in lessons and the kids that were just dropped off and didn’t have that kind of support system they struggled and often they wouldn’t stay in lessons for very long and so I started to recognize how lucky I was with my dad’s support and my mom, too. My mom was always there but my dad was my biggest fan and he fought for every opportunity that I could get and he, I mean, I was in the recording studio when I was, like, 14.

Christopher: Wow.

Nikki: I was, yeah, I was singing in a school assembly and there was a songwriter in the audience who was, like, “Well, she’s got a beautiful voice and I want her to record this song,” and my dad’s, like, “Sure. Let’s do it,” and he, it’s, just, those opportunities just were always available and I just was surrounded by people who were super supportive and who, just, you know, people were always saying lovely things and “You sing so beautifully. I love hearing you sing,” and I was really lucky because I know that’s not what happens for a lot of people.

Christopher: Yeah, for sure. So you mentioned, you know, there were moments where you weren’t really up for performing at home when your dad’s friends were around or whatever but apart from that it sounds like you were, just, kind of, thrown in at the deep end and swam. Was there any kind of performance anxiety or any uncertainty about your identity as a singer or did it all just kind of flow naturally enough?

Nikki: Well, in my, that’s a great question, actually. In my early, when I was really young I was always singing with my dad so it was, I always had him beside me. It wasn’t until I was older that I took more of a solo role and by that point I had had so much experience singing in front of people but when I went to college, so, oh, and that’s the other support I got, too. I just want to mention, like, I know that some people’s parents discouraged them from studying music postsecondary and that, of course, that wasn’t the case. My dad was thrilled when I said, “I’m going to a school for music.” He was, like, “Of course you are.” So, but when I went to school I studied jazz. I studied at Humber College and that was probably, I was really thrown into, well, improvisation. Improvisation scared me to death. Do want to hear a funny story about improvisation and fear?

Christopher: Sure, yeah.

Nikki: So with my father I was always singing songs that I had heard and listened to and I was very good at imitating the sounds of other singers and sounding and singing exactly like the recording and that was just what I did but, of course, when you go to school for jazz you’re supposed to improvise and you’re supposed to come up with a solo and you’re supposed to scat and I had never, ever in my entire life done that. And I remember my first ensemble class, you know, we’re all playing this jazz standard, which I learned and I knew the head really well and then the teacher is, like, “Okay, now we’re all going to solo,” and started going around the class and I’m dying. I’m, like, I’m, I have no clue what to do and, like, all color drained from my face and my stomach tightened up into a knot and I literally was, and I had never felt that before.

I had been so comfortable because I was in my element and now, all of a sudden I was supposed to make up this solo and I just looked at the teacher and I think I squeaked out a few notes and he was very kind. His name was Pat Lebarbara. Amazing saxophone player. And he recognized that, you know, I had never listened, I wasn’t listening to jazz and it was a new art form and new genre and he was very kind.

He took me aside and he said, “Don’t worry about it,” you know, “You start by singing the melody, and he gave me some tips and got me started but I had never experienced that level of uncomfortableness and being completely out of my element and my whole experience at college was really exciting and terrifying because finding my own voice and learning to play with melody and learning to just be free and just be willing to make mistakes was really challenging and there was a lot of tears and frustration because I had been so confident before and all of that was taken away and then I had to build it up again and it took a good, I would say, probably, like, three years, well it was three years in college and then it wasn’t utnil years after I graduated from college that I felt that I had found my authentic voice and I felt comfortable in my ability as a musician but, yeah, but I always have flashbacks to that class and I, I’m glad because it allows me to help my singers because I appreciate how they feel and how terrifying it is when you just don’t know what to do so I channel that fear when I work with them.

Christopher: I want to talk a lot more about that as well as finding your voice and what exactly that might mean but before that, why did you put yourself in that situation as someone who had been singing, imitating singers, having a great time of it, then it was time to go to college and you chose to major in jazz singing which would require this of you?

Nikki: I know, right? That was a great, that’s a great question. So I, my dad, again, insisted and is really supportive and I had to take vocal lessons, obviously, all the way through high school and I had fantastic teachers and I studied classically so I studied classical voice with private teachers but then I was also performing pop music, country music with my dad and with others and the options back in the day, so we’re going back twenty-something years, the only really options for post-secondary back then were classical voice, which was not my passion and the other one was the jazz program.

Now, it’s much different now. There’s so much more available out there for people who want to study postsecondary but there are really my only two options back then and I had been working with a lot of fantastic musicians that had graduated from that program who were doing a variety of things from jazz to contemporary music. A lot of them were session musicians and they all spoke really highly of that program, so that was really the only option for me because I wasn’t interested in a classical voice program at the time.

Christopher: Gotcha. Well, I didn’t know you were going to tell that story but I feel like in that story it is, kind of, everything I wanted to discuss with you so that’s ideal and the first thing there being, you made reference to how this helped you come to own your own musicality. You felt like you knew what you were doing in music at the end of the program in a way you hadn’t before and you also made reference to finding your own voice and I guess that’s opposed to imitating other singers and I’d love to hear more about that. What happened those three years that had that impact on you and what did it look like to have found your own voice?

Nikki: That has a lot to do with the amazing musicians that I met when I was going to school. We’re so, when you surround yourself with passionate people who are, just, really crazy about what they do, I mean, that energy just, that just, you absorb that, right? You know, when we surround our people who are growth mindset and passionate we just learn so much from them and I really had a great group of musicians and started to get some recording studio experience and it’s funny because I first got my recording studio experience because I was really good at imitating, like, certain singers.

That, kind of, got me in the door and being able to, you know, when you work with a producer and they are, like, “Well, I want this kind of sound,” that’s a really great skill to have as a studio singer but as I started to work with musicians and I started to write my own songs it became really apparent that I wasn’t going to sing these songs well if was trying to sound like somebody else and, again, it was uncomfortable for a while because I really didn’t know what sounds would go with the words that I was writing and there was a lot of discussion about it and the other thing that I think was really helpful is because when we were songwriting we were always recording ourselves so we would have an idea, we would record it and then you’re listening, you’re always listening back and I know it’s one of the hardest things for musicians, whether you’re a pro, whether you’re an amateur. That raw data of your voice or your sound coming back at you is, I mean, it’s so difficult sometimes to hear that but we need to hear that so I was always listening to my voice and critiquing it and it was one of my friends who was, , a fantastic singer and he was so helpful because I was, of course, like a lot of singers, telling everybody what I hated about the track and what I didn’t like, and, no, I don’t like this and I don’t like that and one of my friends turned to me and goes, “Yeah, but what do you like? Like, what sounds are you making that you like?” and then he was very good and he was, like, “I really like the way you do this,” and “I really like the way that that verse sounds, the way you said that word,” and I realized, that was one of those big light bulb moments and that’s something that I try to teach my students when I am working with my singers in the teaching studio is we can criticize ourselves all day long but it’s far more productive to listen to something, go, “Wow, I really like that word,” even if it’s a word, like, “I love that word I’m singing.”

If you can find those sweet moments that are, that you really like, you’ll start, you change the way you listen to things and I like to do that with my singers as well, like, I’ll say to them, you know, “Who’s a singer that you like?” and we’ll listen to the track and we’ll go, “What qualities in this voice do you really, that you like?” And I’ll share some of my thoughts. I’ll go, “I love the way she uses,” you know, “she uses her chest voice here. I love the way she uses that breathy sound,” and we’ll start to listen in a different way and if we can do that with other singers then we can certainly do that with ourselves so it was my friend that really encouraged me to start listening to my voice in a positive way and he was so, he was such a positive guy and I think that was one of those big moments where I started to hear my voice differently, rather than, just, “I hate that note. I hate that sound, that note.” You can do that all day but you’ve got to find those sounds that you do like.

Christopher: Fantastic, and you gave a couple of examples of observations, there, you might make and things you like that, I guess, would become part of your palette or how you think about the way you sing. I wonder if you could flesh that out a bit more for us. If you imagine yourself on day one of three years of college and at the end of the process, what kinds of things were you exploring to find your voice and what did it look like when you were, like, “Yes, I know how to pick a song and sing it as me.”?

Nikki: That is a great question. When you’re singing other people’s songs and you are, when you’re listening to the sound quality in your voice and you’re imitating you disconnect, I think from the lyrics. At least that’s what I noticed with a lot of my students. Like, a lot of people don’t really look at the story that they’re telling and I always tell that to my students. “You’re a storyteller. You’re a storyteller that is using words and the music and pitches so when you’re imitating you’re listening to just the sound quality that the singer is making and you’re trying to copy that.

And when I started songwriting and writing my own lyrics I started to think about how I was going to express it because the words actually meant something to me because it was my story and in doing that, my story, my ideas I started to realize how I was inflecting and coloring the words. Some teachers call it word coloring. Some teachers call it inflexion, like, when you put the emphasis on the words when you sing and that was, that had a lot to do with finding my own voice and really thinking about how I wanted to tell the story. A

And then in writing my own music, telling my own stories I was able to go back to songs, cover songs, or jazz standards that I had sung and thought, “Well, what is this story? What actually is this song about and what does it mean to me?” and that opened up a whole other opportunity of expressive singing and, of course, performing, when you are a good storyteller, I mean, is just such a, it’s a different relationship with the audience, right? You’re not just singing them a bunch of notes or “Here’s my highest note and here’s my lowest note.” You’re telling them a story and you connect with the audience at such a huge level and it’s a beautiful moment and I honestly would say that’s didn’t really happen until my 30’s. (Laughs)

Christopher: Interesting.

Nikki: Yeah.

Christopher: Despite having been singing from such a young age.

Nikki: Yeah. Yeah, because, again, I was listening to the sounds that the singers make and then, and I would like to say that that’s an important skill for a singer to have. Like, we want to be able to hear sounds and then know how to create them within our own voice but if that’s where our focus is then the text, the lyrics, the story might get pushed to the side and I think authentic singing is also authentic storytelling and when you can really connect with the story, you will connect with the audience.

Christopher: Wonderful. Well, one thing we like to do on this show is take these, kind of, fuzzy, abstract ideas in music education and really pick apart what’s going on, you know, things like, talent or gift or having a good voice and try and figure out, like, what is there there in literal, specific terms and I love the way you just talked about finding your voice because it was very practical. It was very specific and I think people listening can really understand now what that process looked like where often, you know, it can just be seen as a magical transformation that happened through your dedication and passion to singing.

Nikki: No, I, you know, I would love to say that it was a magical transformation. It was a long journey and I think that as a singer, well, as in any musician, our relationship with our instrument, whether it’s our voice or whether it’s guitar, it’s a long journey and as we grow, as we connect with other singers or other instrumentalists we learn from them and we’re inspired by them. It’s a slow process which is difficult, I think, for humans because we want everything to happen right away but it’s, I think it’s just part of growing as a human and an artist, right, as a creative person. Those, creativity is not an instant thing. It happens in waves and you have to kind of be okay with that.

Christopher: At this point you would be thinking, I guess, very much, as a teacher and when you look back on that period you can see with a teacher’s eyes what was going on. I’d love to know in the moment in that period how much was it a conscious process of thinking, “Okay, I’m going to listen with these questions in minute and I’m going to adapt this part of my voice and I’m going to change my performance in this way.” Were you consciously trying to shape your voice in that way and come to the point were you felt like you knew your voice or was it kind of a subconscious thing from the environment you were in and the kind of exercises you were doing?

Nikki: That’s, wow, I’m going to have to think about that. I’m going to go with, it was, in the beginning, it was very subconscious and I think it was the feedback that I received from, whether it was my colleagues or my musicians that I was working with and then the audience. Like, I think I started to recognize that because I, I didn’t recognize it at first but I, it was slow and then it was the realization that I’ve changed my focus.

One of the things I think that is challenging for singers and for musicians, we get really, really stuck in technique, right? We, and you should, like, you want to understand how your instrument works and how you use it. You want to have healthy technique, obviously, because you don’t want to injure yourself and that is important but it causes a disconnect with the emotional and the feel and the authenticity and so I think my perspective had changed into more storytelling, into more expressiveness.

I wasn’t worried so much about technique and that took a while for me to consciously recognize that my focus had changed, so I would way it was a slow process from just letting go of all my fears and worries. Does that make sense?

Christopher: It does. It does and it clearly was a journey. It’s a story and I love that we’ve approached these topics from your own story because I wasn’t expecting to but it’s fascinating because I think a lot of what you teach now and what you do with your students, it sounds like the roots can kind of be traced back to those formative years which is really fascinating and maybe we can address that same question now from the flip side, which is as a teacher now. When a student comes to you and you feel like they’ve got the technique okay by they’re still in that, kind of, imitation mode and they’re saying to you, “I’m writing songs. I don’t feel like I’ve found my voice,” what kinds of things would you be doing with them to help them in that process?

Nikki: Well, again, I really like to talk about the lyrics. I really like to, we do a lot of exercises in the studio where we talk about the character, the story. There’s, I mean, there’s acting techniques that I often draw from which are really helpful. There’s the, and I have to shout out to my friend Nate Plumber because he gave me these. Like, there’s three questions that you have to ask yourself when you’re singing a song and the first one is, “What do you want?” Right?

What do you want? You’re singing these words, what is it that you want? And then the second question is, “What are the obstacles? Why aren’t you getting what you want?” and then the third question is, “Can you overcome, or do you overcome the obstacles or can you overcome the obstacles?” And that, when you kind of dissect the lyrics like that, that’s where some of the emotion, not some, all of the emotion and the intensity can come from.

So I always do this, especially with pop songs because, again, the kids, my young kid students, my teens and even some of my pro singers, they’re singing contemporary music, are often, they’re not relating to the text so, you know, I’ll take an Adele song. So what does she want? She wants the guy. What’s the obstacle? He’s either married or he’s moved away. She’s not going to get the guy. And then the third question is, does she overcome? No, and that’s why the song has that raw emotion to it, because she’s not getting what she wants. S

So we use those kind of techniques to talk about lyrics and connecting to the lyrics and where you’re going with that energy. One of the things I would say to people who maybe are struggling a little bit of performance anxiety, when our focus shifts from technique and notes and pitches to the, what the song is really about I feel that you kind of disconnect from a lot of the stage fright, because you’re too busy thinking about what this song is about to be thinking, “Oh, my goodness. Those people are looking at me,” or “I just sang a bad note.”

Like, those things are not on your radar when you’re connecting to the words and I think that that has a lot to do with it. We get distracted and we’re, we’ve got all our fears running around in our head. Well, what is this song about? What is the feeling that you feel when you sing this song? What do you want? And that’s a really good technique for stage fright, which is, put your focus into the story and you’ll feel so much better and you won’t have the, I call it the disk space, you won’t have the disk space to get all upset about, you know, the things that you, the fears that you, you know, the false narratives, right? You don’t, you won’t have time for that. So that’s one of the tools I use. Like, if you’re stressed out about your performance you’re not thinking about the song and story enough.

Christopher: Mmm. That’s amazing. I feel like fiinding your voice is kind of a lofty concept and in your own story it came in quite late in the process. You know, you were successfully singing and performing for many years before you found your voice but it sounds like, actually with your own students this isn’t a super advanced skill you teach them one day. It sounds like this is something you would be talking with them about from the outset, continually.

Nikki: Mm-hm. Yeah. I really, well, first of all, I think the human voice is, just, such an incredible instrument. It’s so, I always remind my students, there’s no other voice like yours. There’s no other sound than your sound and I also remind them that the human voice is capable of making a lot of different sounds, expressive sounds, singing sounds.

There’s so much that we can do with our voices and I want them, I encourage them, to explore sounds, their sounds, and explore other singers’ sounds and I always challenge them, like, they’ll sing a song for me and I’ll say, “Okay, that was awesome. I liked this, this, and this.” “But what if you tried it like this? What if you tried it like this? What if you sang it a little differently? What if you used this sound? What do you think? ” You know, what if, and that exploration, I love that word.

I love to challenge my students to get out of the good and bad mindset so instead of, “This is good and I like this,” and “This is horrible and I don’t like this,” exploring gives us that freedom without, you know, punishment or, you know, there’s no bad end to it. Exploring allows us just to see those colors and I, when I work with students of any age, but especially the kiddos, I always tell them and their moms and dads, I always say, “Look, in my teaching studio I want you to try a whole bunch of styles of music. We’re not just going to sing one style. We’re not just going to sing pop. I want you to do a classical study just to see. Just to see how it feels. Just to see how it sounds.”

I love when my kids get to their teens because I love introducing jazz and I, that was never, that was something that I didn’t have, which, that introduction, when I was younger which I think made me so uncomfortable in my college days so I kind of want to make sure my students at least have a taste of it so they’re not going to have the fear that I did and the worries that I did.

So we’ll do some jazz standards and we’ll talk about improvisation and we’ll do some pop songs. We’ll dive into musical theater and putting the acting in and in it’s not, you know, it’s not super focused. It’s more, “Let’s see what this genre is like. Let’s see what this is like. What does your voice sound like when you do this? What does your voice sound like when you do that?” and I think that approach is, I just want them to have doors open for them. I don’t want them to narrow their training so that they feel limited later on. I want them to be able to go, “Okay, you know what? I am going to try. I am going to get up and sing with this jazz band, ” or, “You know, I am going to audition for the school play,” or “Yeah, I am going to sing in the choir at church,” or whatever. Like, I want them to have that flexibility and that freedom so exploring allows us to find all the different colors, the different sounds in our voices and be confident with them. Does that make sense?

Christopher: It does. It makes a lot of sense and I love it all but I’m going to play devil’s advocate for a minute.

Nikki: Oh, my gosh. I love it.

Christopher: (Laughs) A moment ago you said you liked to tell your students that every voice is unique. There is no other voice quite like theirs and I have no doubt there have been countless students whose response is, “Yeah, mine is just that bad,” and for our listener who is thinking that and heard you talk about, let’s try this, Let’s explore that, maybe I’ll feel ready for the church choir, there are going to be listeners who have heard all that and thought, “That is all so far beyond me. Like, I’m not even good enough to get into that exploration stuff. My voice sounds bad. This isn’t really an option.” What would you say to those people?

Nikki: Well, the first thing I would do is I would give them a big hug.

Christopher: (Laughs)

Nikki: And I would like them to know that they’re not alone in that fear, in that worry. I have quite a few students in my studio right now who at some point in their life somebody has said unkind things about their voices and I, that, which is trauma, really. Those kind of comments, especially if you were told at a, like, if you were young and somebody said, “Oh, you shouldn’t sing,” or “You should just mouth the words,” that stays with you for a lifetime and I, might heart is heavy for those people. I really, truly feel for what they’ve been through and one of the things in my teaching studio is that, like, I really want people to make peace with their voice. I want to get them to know their voice.

What I would say to them is that there is, like I said before, there are so many colors and sounds that the human voice is capable of and we just need to be brave and there is also, I think we have to, kind of, approach it in a vulnerable way, like, we have to be, we have to be brave, we have to be vulnerable and, but there are sounds there that are beautiful and if you really struggle with that, and I know that there are people out there who struggle with that, I highly recommend that you reach out to a teacher who can help you find those colors, can help you find those sounds because they’re in there. I don’t believe that, like, I truly believe all my business cards.

It says, “Yes, everyone can sing,” and I truly believe that and I get very, very (no pun intended) vocal with people who put down other people. Like, I’ve got a dad who constantly tells me how much his wife can’t sing and I’m, like, “Do not say those things.” Like, “Don’t say that. I don’t believe that.” I also would like to, just, mention the culture, the pop culture of the whole Canadian Idol, American Idol, America’s Got Talent, our good friend Simon Cowell and his really, I mean, that whole thing where people would go and sing horribly and he would make fun of them, unfortunately has created this environment where people think it’s okay to do that and it’s not. It is not okay to say those horrible things to people.

You know, art is subjective. There are singers who I love the sound of their voices and there’s singers who I don’t. It doesn’t mean that they’re bad singers it’s just that those sound qualities or their emotions, I don’t connect with it but it’s not, I have no right to pick on anyone’s voice and when my students bring in songs that they want to sing and maybe I’m not a fan of the vocalist and I’m, this, I’m saying this to teachers out there, we do not have any right to criticize the singers that our students, like, connnect to. We have not right. I am not going to go into a lecture about how it’s horrible singing and it’s this and it’s that. The music and the sounds that bring students to us is so personal and we need to stay out of it. And there’s always something we can find that’s positive about something unless it’s, like, death metal screaming. That may be, may be —

Christopher: Hey, we have members at Musical U who are super into their death metal screaming.

Nikki: Right? Exactly. But as a voice teacher I don’t know how to approach that but, yeah.

So we, the music that you listen to, the sounds that you like, no one can take that away from you and there , the human voice is incredible. There are beautiful sounds in there. Find somebody that can support you through that and talk to them about your fears. But the one thing I will say, which is, again, the rule in my teaching studio and what I try to teach my students, the negative self-talk where we’re constantly saying things like, “I hate my voice. My voice sounds horrible,” I strongly urge people to be very mindful about the words that they use when they’re talking about their voices.

Some people do it and I’m doing air qoutes here in a joking way but truly it’s not. Those unkind words chip away at our confidence. They chip away at who we are and when we, when we’re on repeat and we’re constantly saying those things over and over and over again, we will believe them. So a lot of people that have come to me who are really struggling with their voice have a very deep-seated narrative about their singing and so that’s really one of the first places where I start which is that we have to come up with different language for your voice.

And I would like to say for anybody that’s either working with a singer or with a teacher or anybody who is thinking about working with a teacher, when you come in to a teaching studio saying, “I hate my voice,” that’s not really giving us a lot of feedback and it’s difficult for a voice teacher to help you. It’s like going to a hair dresser and saying, “I hate my hair.” The hairdresser’s going to go, “Okay. Is it the color? Is it the cut? Is it the way it is after you shampoo? Like, what is it about your hair that you don’t like?” and they can give you a better cut.

I know that’s a silly analogy but it’s the same thing for singers. What is it about your voice? Is it thin? Are there notes that you’re having a hard time with? Is it, do you struggle with pitch? Are you having a hard time matching pitches or is it the quality of the voice, is it the intonation of the voice? When you can create and use a better language about what you hear you’ll work more productively with a professional and they’ll be able to offer better strategies so that you can make better progress.

So ditch the negative self-talk and the self-vocal-loathing and think of what exactly is your struggle? What sound? And I have a few students in my teaching studio. They’re actually, I love them. I like forward to their lessons every week. They’re older gentlemen. They’re in their forties, almost fifties. One of them is semi-retired. They’re guitar players and I’m so proud of them. They’ve found their courage. They reached out and they’re like, “I really want to do more singing in the band that I’m playing in,” and I’m, like, “Yes, let’s do it,” and what we’ve found is, and again, they came in and the first thing they said is, “I hate my voice and my band doesn’t want me to sing,” and but what I discovered is they were just singing in the wrong register. They were trying to sing songs that just physically weren’t, they weren’t really capable of but when we found songs that were in the keys and in the registers they sounded fine and they’re so happy.

Christopher: That’s fantastic. I love everything you just said and I’d almost end the interview there because I think, how could you improve on that but there are more things I want to ask you so I’m going to continue on even thought I kind of want to let you do a mic drop and just walk off the stage.

Nikki: (Laughs)

Christopher: I super-appreciate what you said about the cultural context of getting feedback about your voice and I think it goes for your internal dialog, too, when we see things like X Factor and we assume it’s okay to have that in a critic and it’s positive but it is not and I was reminded as you talked of this Buzzfeed article from a little while back which I forget the exact title of, but it was, basically, “Ten jokes from the T.V. show ‘Friends’ that are just not okay anymore’,” and it was looking back at episodes and pointing out, like, there were jokes about being fat, there were jokes about being gay and at the time that seemed like fair game. It seemed funny, it seemed fine and looking back ten or 20 years later we’re like, “Really? Like, that’s not okay. Like, that’s just really negative and unpleasant,” and, you know, if you go back further in history it’s even more stark, the kind of things people used to think were okay to joke about.

Nikki: Of course.

Christopher: And I feel like we’re kind of at that moment where, hopefully in the next 10 or 20 years people will realize, like, you should not be making fun of someone for the way they sing. You should not be criticizing someone’s music tastes. That’s just not okay. And I think it would do so much for aspiring singers and those who want to get into singing if we did not have that cultural atmosphere, where, you know, there’s the gifted few and everyone else should be a bit ashamed of themselves.

Nikki: Oh, my goodness, I agree with you 100% and that conversation comes up in my teaching studio a lot. It comes up with parents and with the kids because a lot of my students love those shows and I often remind them, you know, there’s, when they do the shots of the audience, right, the audience is chuckling and laughing and jeering and they’re, they’ve made an assumption.

The example that made me irate was the Susan Boyle. You know, when she walked out on stage and here’s this, this plain woman and everybody’s laughing and all the kids are, everybody’s, like, whispering to each other, I was disgusted and then everybody was shocked because she had this beautiful voice and I even had students that came in, “Did you hear her singing?” and I found that so offensive. I’m, like, “I’m sorry. People, older people who aren’t really beautiful are not capable of singing beautifully? Like,really?”

Christopher: Like, she wasn’t okay until we’d known she can really sing and then it was fine for her to be a human being.

Nikki: Exactly. It was, and I found that really offensive and usually when I tell people that they’re, like, “Yeah, you’re right. That doesn’t make sense.” I said, “T.V. reality shows, those competition shows have created a very, well, they’ve continued that myth, that opinion, that, yes, you’re born with it or you’re not, , as you know as a music educator, is not true.”
And I’ll use the example of my son. My son loves baseball and people will say to me, “Your son is so good at baseball,” and I will laugh and I will say, “My son does nothing but play baseball and he wasn’t born with it. He was interested in it and that is what he wants to do and so, yes, out of, like, 10,000 hours of throwing a ball and catching a ball his coordination is really something but he wasn’t born with that. He’s put in the hours and people just assume that, you know, you’re born with this beautiful singing voice and I hear that from parents.

Parents will call me up and say, “Could you assess my daughter to see if it’s worth lessons and my, and this is, I’m kind of sarcastic, but it’s, like, “Sure. I’ll do it right now. Question number one: does she like to sing?” “Oh, she loves to sing,” I said, “She’s ready for lessons. Bring her on in.” That is the only prerequisite that I have and, you know, I said, the benefits of singing lessons, you know, are just, there’s so many. It has nothing to do with the talent or ability or any of that. Like, just, if you love to sing then nurture that, right? So that mindset of we have it or we don’t is so damaging and yes, I agree with you.

The thinking that we have the right to critique people is just, it’s so unfortunate and when I do recitals for my studio I always get up and before everybody performs I welcome the audience and I thank everybody for their commitment and thank everybody for the opportunity to work with their kids because I really, truly, I love what I do and I love that opportunity. I really cherish it but I remind people that, you know, it’s, first of all, it takes an enormous amount of courage to get onstage and we have to acknowledge that. We have performers today that, this is their first performance and we have performers that have been singing their entire life and there is awesome in every single person that gets up and you’re going to see it and I always remind them, you know, that this is, there’s something in each performance that’s special and you’re going to see it. You’re going to find it if you’re looking for it and I find that I think that’s really helpful because, you know, a lot of them, are, like, “Well, she didn’t sing very loud,” or, you know. Well, yeah, she’s eight.

Christopher: (Laughs)

Nikki: So, yeah but I think just reminders like that and just checking in with that mindset is important.

Christopher: Mm-hm.

Nikki: And we all have those voices. We all have that self-doubt. I know every creative human being on the planet has those moments and, you know, you have to take that deep breath and, again, you know, surround yourself with supportive people. Maybe it’s a teacher. Maybe it’s a friend who loves music as much as you do and just support each other, you know?

And the other thing I always, I wanted to put out, too, and I always encourage my students, make sure you take the time to compliment others and support others. Like, if you put that energy out and that positive reinforcement out you’ll get that back, right, and so I’m always encouraging. I will always say to my teenagers, I say, you know, “Can you go find the younger students and just tell them how much you enjoyed their performance?” or, “Can you tell each other what you thought of the performances?” Like, I always encourage that kind of interaction because I think sometimes we need a little nudge, you know, “Hey, did you like that performance? ” “Yeah.” “I liked it, too. Go tell them.” (Laughs)

Christopher: For sure. So we focus a lot at Musical U on helping people take those first steps in singing and we do it in a fairly practical, scientific way of, like, let’s get you matching pitch and let’s get your voice under control and there’s value in that but I also really love the way you talked about it just now in terms of the mindset and your response to, “Is my daughter good enough for voice lessons?” I love that but I wonder if we could talk a little bit more for the person who’s listening and even having heard you say that is kind of feeling like, “I’m not ready for my first singing lesson.”

Like, singing lessons are serious business for people who want to get really good at singing and you need to be kind of okay at singing before you get in there with a teacher because “I don’t want them to laugh at me,” or “I don’t want them to, kind of, cringe when I sing. Like, I’m not really ready for that one-on-one situation yet.” Is there a thing they can do to prepare themselves for it or is there anything they should know about that student-teacher relationship if they’ve never been in a singing lesson before?

Nikki: Yes, there is. Sometimes people have this opinion that voice teachers are, well, one, the big one is we’re trying to change voices. We’re trying to change your voice. Professional voice teachers, first of all, we don’t want you to actually come in and sing perfectly for us. That’s actually not very helpful and we don’t sing perfectly all of the time, either. So I would like for those of you out there that are listening and you’re, like, “I’m not ready for that,” I want you to know that your voice teacher wants to champion you. We want to support you. We are not ever going to laugh at, I never, ever, in a millions years would I laugh or make fun of a student.

I have never turned a student away no matter where they are. I recognize and I think most of my colleagues would agree how much courage it takes to ask for help. How vulnerable you can feel, I mean, I don’t like going into a store and asking for help so I appreciate how scary it can be but really, I, when in my teaching studio the teaching studio is a safe space. It’s a space where you can show the teacher where you’re struggling and it’s so important to show the teacher, like, this is what I’m not good at.

We actually need to see what you’re not good at and if I can give you a little bit of inspiration, the voice, sometimes, a lot of times, there’s very small corrections that a teacher can give you that can make huge improvements so sometimes it’s little things that we see and we notice and we’ll go, “Okay, you know what, if you relax your jaw a little bit that sound’s going to get a lot nicer,” and so there is, it might not be the huge ordeal that you’re thinking and the one thing that I would say, too, is if you’re thinking about lessons one or two lessons isn’t going to help you.

You want to, like, you might want to have a trial lesson with a teacher to see if you’re a good fit and if that teacher makes you feel comfortable and they should be interested in making you feel comfortable but you want to commit to, most teachers offer packages, you know, like, I offer four, six and eight packages because one or two lesson is going to probably confuse you and you’re going to leave a little more confused and overwhelmed than you arrived but it takes a while.

It’s a really intimate relationship and it takes a while to get comfortable with a teacher and the teacher needs to get to know you and to know your voice and as you get more comfortable and you get more relaxed you’re going to show them more of your voice and they’re going to be able to offer you more and more strategies and corrections and ideas that you can take back so if you can get over that initial, awkward first couple of lessons it can truly be an amazing relationship and if you connect with the right teacher you will, just, I think it can be, just, really beautiful.

I’ve seen a lot of my adult students, like, I was telling you about the gentlemen that are the guitar players. They’re having so much fun in their bands now. They’ve found songs they connect with, songs that they can sing really well. Some of the guys are now doing harmonies and it was a hard struggle. We had to work hard on that but it’s so wonderful and they are, they’re enjoying themselves. Their music is becoming a joy again rather than a stress where they’re worried because they weren’t meeting certain expectations. So the initial, I’m not going to lie, the first couple of lessons with anyone can be a little stressful and a little nerve-wracking but once you get over that hump it can be an incredible relationship. Discovering your voice and what I call making peace with your voice is a gift that you can give yourself but it requires some courage and some vulnerability and hugs.

Christopher: Very good. Well, you touched on what I think is often the other barrier, there, for people which is “Okay, I could definitely get along with Nikki and I can see that she’s a nice, encouragnig vocal teacher and we’d have a good time but how do I know the singing teacher I go along to will be like that? Is there anything people can do to increase their odds of finding a teacher who takes this kind of encouraging attitude?

Nikki: That’s, yes. Most, that, I think you want to do your research, so you want to check out, most, I mean, most professionals will have, like, a website and they should have, like, their teaching philosophy. They might even list some of their performance experience.

I think it’s important to find a teacher that has similar performance experience that you are either engaged in or you’re looking to participate in. I think one of the things that, ooh, I’m getting on thin ice, here. I’m kind of calling out some of my colleagues. If you are a contemporary singer you want to work with a contemporary voice teacher so somebody who is classically trained and is only experienced in classical is not your person and people can send me nasty emails if they want to but you want to check out their websites. You want to check out their teaching philosophy and I think if you are really articulate in what you are looking for a professional voice teacher should be able to say, “Yes, I can help you,” or “You know what, I might not be the teacher for you,” and, again, don’t take offense to that but “I’m not the teacher for you but here’s my colleague,” and I love doing that, like, there are certain, if people come to me and they’re looking for, like, advanced classical lessons that’s not me.

I’m not, I don’t specialize in languages. I don’t prepare students for a high-level classical auditions but my friend down the street does and my friend in Westdale, she’s an expert on that and they also know that if students are auditioning for a jazz program, well, Nikki is your girl and she can totally help you with that so even within our community we know our superpowers and we can refer out. So if you are a student and you can articulate what you’re looking for, you know, “I’m a musician. I haven’t done much singing. I’m looking to develop some confidence. I sing in acountry band,” like, if you can give those details to the teacher ikt they’ll either say, “Well, yes I can help you,” or “No, I can’t,” and, again, a lotof teachers will offer a trial, a couple of trial lessons. I would, and, you know, can I share a great resource for…

Christopher: Please do.

Nikki: …that’s not mine?

Christopher: For sure.

Nikki: My, there’s a really beautiful book that’s written and by my good friend Brian Lee. It’s called, “Sane Singing,” and Brian is a brilliant voice teacher. He’s down in the U.S. and his journey was very difficult. He had a couple of teachers that were not beneficial for him which basically put his singing career on hold for 19 years and his book, “Sane Singing,” which you can get on Amazon is probably one of the most beautiful written books about finding a good teacher and advocating for yourself if you are looking to learn how to sing.

And he talks about finding the right teacher and he talks about, you know, why it’s important to connect with the teacher and what teachers should be trying to do and he also talks about how you can assess your own vocal progress because sometimes that’s difficult, right? “Am I getting better? I don’t know. I think I am.” So I highly recommend that book. It’s beautifully written, it’s full of, so the one thing that I love, which we’ve been talking about today is about being kind, kind to yourself.

One of the things that Brian says is, if you have kindness for yourself and for others you will have a beautiful singing voice. Right? It’s like, it’s that whole energy so that’s a great resource for anyone that’s really stuck and doesn’t feel that they have the courage to make that next step to connect with a teacher.

Christopher: Fantastic. Thank you. Well, we’ll definitely link to that in the show notes of this episode.

Nikki: Yes, please.

Christopher: And I still have several more questions, Nikki, that I really wanted to pick your brains on, including talking about tonic solfa and how you use moveable do and hand signs and I think we’re going to have to invite you back on for a part two because I need to be respectful of your time today.

Nikki: I would love that.

Christopher: And tell people about The Full Voice.com and what you provide online if they want to know more about Nikki Loney.

Nikki: Oh, thank you. Well, my company, thefullvoice.com, is, we create resources for teachers working with young singers and, again, we’re trying to create fun and colorful and play-based learning.

Historically the study of voice has been very serious business and, again, a lot of teachers have not really been interested in working with singers because of that, the historic nature of teaching singing but we know so much more about kids, we know so much more about learning styles. We know so much more of the power of play-based learning.

So my company is really invested in embracing those philosophies, those teaching philosophies and creating resources for teachers to have educational and super fun vocal lesson and even though we’re geared towards kids and essentially we’re trying to help those foundational first lessons be incredible so that they have a lifetime of joy with their voice and even though our resources tend to be for the young singers there’s so much that translates for your teens and I make my adult students play the games too, actually. They have a lot of fun.

I think our adults, I mean, we always assume they don’t want to have fun but they do so Full Voice is about creating resources for the young singer, supporting the private voice teacher. We also connect with composers that are writing the music for young singers and it’s just a really supportive, fun community and we’ve connected with teachers all over the world. The podcast, The Full Voice Podcast, is for voice teachers. I do interviews with teachers from all over the four corners of the globe, just sharing their joy and their passion for teaching, for singing and we have free downloads and lots of sample so teachers if they’re interested they can get started on some of our resources, and, yeah, we have a lot of fun. I get to have fun with kids all week long. (Laughs)

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, as I said, I think, at the beginning of the conversation, I have so much admiration and appreciation for what you do at The Full Voice and I feel a bit guilty every time I listen to one of your podcast episodes and you say, “Hello, voice teacher,” and I think, “Oh, I’m not a voice teacher but I really like your show,” but I did just want to make the point, the podcast is fantastic and I often say when we’re talking to someone on the show who teaches teachers, often there’s really great material that even if you’re teaching yourself if you’re a student and in particular I’m going to link to a couple of podcast episodes, there’s one on vocal exploration exercises and another one on strategies for shy singers and both of those, whether a teacher or you’re a student are chock full of really useful nuggets as this conversation has been. So just a huge thank you, Nikki, and keep upthe great work because I love everything you do at The Full Voice and I know our listeners had a blast joining us for this conversation today.

Nikki: Well, thank you, Christopher. This has been so much fun. I really admire Musical U. You guys are, again, I feel the same way. You guys are just doing so much good work and giving passionate people, inspired people the place to learn. I think it’s wonderful. I’m so glad we’ve been able to connect.

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The post Find and Make Peace with Your Voice, with Nikki Loney appeared first on Musical U.

A piano is a wonderfully expressive instrument that can create a variety of sounds and convey a wide range of moods.

But even with the undeniable beauty of both the sound and the instrument itself, there are some definite limitations.

Let’s say you’re a pianist who owns a grand piano, and your nephew, who lives some miles away from you, is getting married. As a wedding gift, you want to play the happy couple a collection of tunes you’ve compiled.

But how easy do you think it will be for you to get your instrument there? It’s a bulky instrument to transport, and you’ll probably find yourself wishing for an instrument that is more portable.

So, what can you do? Can you get an instrument that is smaller and cheaper, but still sounds and feels almost like the piano?

Yes, you can: the humble keyboard.

The Difference Between a Keyboard and a Piano

However, if you’re a lifelong piano player, you might find that there is a huge difference between your native instrument and the keyboard, and you may even feel intimidated when faced with a keyboard.

A piano is a mechanical instrument that comes with weighted keys while the keyboard is an electrical emulator of the piano.

They differ in many ways, including sound, features, and cost. Each has their own advantages and drawbacks. Let’s explore that.

Piano

Pros: A piano comes with weighted keys that are good for strengthening your fingers while playing. When you accidentally graze on an occasional incorrect note while playing, it becomes less noticeable because of the weightiness on the keys.

Cons: A piano can be expensive, and it comes with high maintenance costs. Also, a piano is large and bulky, and always comes with 88 keys – not exactly what you’d call portable.

Keyboard

Pros: You pay a fraction of the cost of a piano and less maintenance is required. With the touch of a button, you can change the sounds and add timing, beats, and effects, giving you a great many options for playing and performance. You can connect the instrument to a computer and use it to create music with a digital audio workstation. Lastly, keyboards come in different sizes and different numbers of keys, so you can choose the instrument that suits you best.

Cons: Not all keyboards function as realistic emulators of the piano. The feel and sound will never be totally identical to an acoustic piano.

So, What Can a Keyboard Do for Piano Players?

This question is commonly asked by many pianists, since they see a keyboard as a low-level instrument.

Most brands that produce keyboards are focusing greatly on improving instrument experience and reducing the limitations that come with it – narrowing the gap between the keyboard and the piano.

For pianists, a keyboard can be a fantastic sidekick – a light, portable instrument that you can use for gigs and for on-the-road practice, and perhaps even a tool to experiment with different sounds, effects, and styles.

Things To Consider Before Buying a Keyboard

If you are wondering what to look for in a keyboard, here are some qualities to consider before you head out and make a purchase. Decide what’s most important for you to have in a keyboard, and narrow your search…

Available Sounds and Styles

A keyboard comes with a selection of sounds and beats that you can use to play different music styles. Depending on what your keyboard offers, you can play blues, classical, jazz piano, or even modern electronic music.

A keyboard is a wonderful tool for musical exploration because it enables you to try out different sounds and styles with just the press of a button.

For example, you can choose a pre-programmed rock beat from a variety of options, and play chords overtop the beat with your left hand. Then, you can use your right hand to play a guitar sound to add a little something extra, and boom – you’re a one-person rock band.

Additionally, many keyboards include options for attack, decay, sustain, and release – parameters that alter the feel of the notes you’re playing and add a new color to music, which is a feature not available on a piano.

Think about what parameters you want to be able to experiment with, and find a keyboard that matches your desires.

Different Size and Feel of the Keys

Some portable keyboards have small keys that have a plastic feel – and this can be a deal breaker. Pianists often find that switching to a light and unweighted instrument can prove a bit challenging while your hand is adjusting to the lightweight keys.

Fortunately, you can find many models that offer a more realistic experience with their weighted, full-size keys. Even better, you can find an instrument with touch sensitivity, meaning the harder you press a key, the louder the resulting sound.

Keyboard Range

If all you know is piano, you are probably used to 88 notes ranging from A0 to C8. However, keyboards can have 49, 61, or 76 keys, which can be challenging if you’re used to the full range.

Nevertheless, they can be viable options depending on the music piece you are playing. You can play many piano pieces in full on 76-key models, as the lowest and the highest keys are often ignored by composers.

However, for more convenience, you can go for an instrument with a full key range.

If you’re looking for a keyboard to use with music editing software, a small-range instrument is enough – you don’t need to worry about pitch and octaves as they can be easily manipulated in the software.

Purchase and Maintenance

There are many reasons why a piano player would opt for an electronic keyboard, and one of them is the price. Whether you are buying a new or used piano, you can expect to pay a few thousand dollars up front, with additional costs of tuning and repairs down the road.

A keyboard is far more wallet-friendly – you can buy a portable small-range instrument for around $100-500, while a full-sized or better quality one will set you back $500-1000.

You don’t have to pay thousands of dollars for a keyboard for you to get experience as a pianist – there are many great “entry-level” keyboards that are quite affordable and offer a solid experience. That being said, you’ll find that high-end instruments feel and sound almost exactly like a piano while the low-end offerings are not as authentic.

As for long-term ownership, there’s a definite upside: keyboards have low maintenance costs, so no tuning and repairs to worry about on an ongoing basis.

Size and Portability

Have you ever had to move apartments with a piano? The maneuvers required to even get the instrument into the building are no small feat, and moving the instrument up and down can damage the wall, door frames, or the instrument itself.

Keyboards are of course more portable, but there is still the consideration of size when you’re going on trips with your instrument, or if you have limited storage or a small living space. A deluxe 88-key model is nice to have, but may not be the most convenient option for cramming into your small car.

Authenticity

If you are a piano player and your “normal” is the authentic sound and feel of an acoustic piano, you’ll feel very uncomfortable when playing a toy keyboard. If you don’t want to feel baffled or intimidated when you move to the keyboard, you should look for an instrument that will play and feel close to an acoustic.

For you to enjoy playing a keyboard, you need an instrument with a feel, touch, and sound that emulates an acoustic piano well.

If your budget allows, you can go all-out and get an instrument with 88-fully weighted keys and an ivory and ebony finish. That way, you’ll enjoy the benefits of an electric keyboard while experiencing the authenticity of an acoustic.

Keys for Everyone

With countless manufacturers and models to choose from, you’ll definitely find a keyboard that fits your needs – you just have to spend some time figuring out what you want from the instrument.

Even though you won’t find a keyboard that will perfectly mimic the experience of a piano, it’s possible to get quite close. And who knows – the features, settings, styles, and general bells ‘n’ whistles you’ll find in a keyboard might open you up to a whole new way of thinking about playing piano!

The post I Play Piano – Why Keyboard? appeared first on Musical U.

Playing by ear and improvisation are two of the most sought-after skills in music. The key to learning these skills is to train your ear to effortlessly recognize the relationships between notes – and the answer doesn’t necessarily lie in learning intervals! Musical U founder Christopher Sutton talks about the intuitive solfa method for recognizing notes and why it works.

Watch the episode:

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Full Facebook Live video at Ultimate Music Theory
• Music Theory You’ll Love to Learn, with Glory St. Germain
• Starting Solfa

Transcript

Hey, Christopher here from Musical U. This weekend I was invited to join Glory St. Germaine, over at the “Ultimate Music Theory” Facebook page to do a Facebook Live all about how to make ear training so fun and easy – that you’ll actually do it!

We had a blast, it was a really fantastic conversation, talking about improvisation and playing by ear and solfa vs. intervals and how to learn to sing – all kinds of good stuff.

I wanted to share just a little bit with you today, and if you enjoy it, head over to the Ultimate Music Theory Facebook page where you can watch the full replay.

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Glory: So tell us about how we can do ear training that’s gonna really make it enjoyable for us.

Christopher: Sure. Well, I think let’s begin by just addressing front on why isn’t it enjoyable? I think that is often people’s experience and I think teachers often struggle because they haven’t really been equipped with ideas or frameworks for teaching ear training in a way that will be fun and easy for their students.

What we’ve found is that the fundamental problem is that ear training is taught in a way that’s separate from everything else the student is doing typically. And, Glory, when you were on the musicality podcast last year, I think you and I bonded over the fact that music theory is often handled in a similar way, and it’s kind of put in a little box and people study it because they’re meant to, but actually they don’t make the connections to the things they truly care about in music, like their instrument, like the music they’re playing, like the music they’re listening to. So it becomes this kind of duty, and a chore, and it’s all very dry and abstract.

This goes for music theory and it goes for ear training, and fortunately because there’s that kind of root cause, the solution is also quite simple. Not necessarily easy. It requires some creative thought, but fundamentally the way to make ear training fun and easy is to connect it to the stuff in music that is fun and easy for you. Connect it to the things you care about and are passionate about. And we can definitely talk a little bit about how teachers can do that in the context of a lesson, because that is what transforms ear training from being … For me, it was a week before the exam, you better learn these aural skills, let’s learn the reference songs for intervals and hope you pass.

And of course, nobody did, because suddenly aural skills were a thing out of nowhere that made no sense to anybody. And if that’s your only experience of ear training, you’re not going to get very far and you’re not going to see the value and you’re not going to enjoy the benefits. That’s really what we’re trying to get away from.

Glory: Well, and when you think of the ear training too, that when you do learn to hear those intervals, I mean, even think about if you’re out and about and you hear a song that you really love, you need to recognize what is the distance? Is that ascending or descending? And if you can hear that, you can actually just go over to your instrument and play it. Sometimes that’s how … You wonder, “Well, how can just play that by ear?” Well, because I can hear it.

And in developing sort of our ear training, I guess there’s two different approaches when we’re learning to hear things. Are we learning by intervals? Or by solfa? I want you to talk a little bit about maybe what’s the difference and then what do you think is the better approach or how is it different? I guess depending on the student, sometimes that makes a difference, too, right?

Christopher: It can be a very personal thing. Yeah. If you went back a few years, I would have been very diplomatic and said they’re both good approaches, they’re both solid, choose whichever one works best, you can use them together. At this point, I’m actually a little bit more opinionated about it.

And the crux of it really is what we’ve been talking about that you don’t want to do ear training in a vacuum. And I think if you approach this topic of intervals and solfa from a purely theoretical perspective, they both work, they both make sense. You can analyze the relative pitch distances between notes based on the note that came before, which is the interval. You’re just going note to note, what is the interval each time? Or in terms of solfa, which is the same thing, but always coming back to the tonic. What’s the relationship to the tonic? The note of the key or the scale.

And so in theory terms, both of those tell you what is the picture of the note and so they should be equivalent. What we found, and I think what is quite consistently the case, is when it comes to actually applying these skills, there is a clear winner, and yes, you can use intervals for playing by ear as you just described, Glory, and you can use them for improvising and you can sit down with some blank manuscript paper and use intervals to figure out how to write down the melody you’re imagining in your head. You can. What we found is that it’s hard work.

To set the context, we started our company, which is called Easy Ear Training, with an interval training app. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-intervals, but what we kept finding was that people would get in touch and tell us the same thing I had found myself, which was you can get very good at recognizing intervals and still really struggle to write down a simple melody or play it by ear.

Glory: Yes, that’s true.

Christopher: And the reason is that basically your brain can’t recognize intervals quickly enough to apply it in that musical context. When you hear a whole string of notes, if you can stop and pause and take them one by one and listen to the individual pairs, yes, you can use intervals to work them out. But in the real musical context, if you’re in a jam session or you’re hearing a song on the radio, of course you don’t have that opportunity. You need to be recognizing them immediately as you hear them.

Glory: Yes, yes, that’s right.

Christopher: And so what more and more we’re kind of taking a stand and saying is that although you can use intervals for those practical applications, solfa tends to be a much better approach for people. And the reason is simply that this is basically how our brain already interprets music. If you think about this a little bit, you’ll kind of instinctively feel it to be true. We interpret the notes we hear based on the tonic. We have this sense of the key and what are the notes in the scale and what’s my harmonic context.

And when we hear a note, its musical function, its musical role, the kind of character it has in a melody or a harmony – is based on its relationship to the tonic. Our ears are already interpreting notes that way, and what solfa does is it just makes that explicit and it gives you names to put on those notes, so that when you hear them, you don’t just hear what they sound like. You actually recognize and identify them, and that’s super cool because it means you’re not dependent on the note before. You can hear any note from a melody and immediately know what it is. And of course, that makes playing by ear or improvising or transcribing or writing your own music vastly easier because you have that instant recognition of what is the scale degree.

Glory: Yeah, and I think that is such a wonderful, wonderful skill that can be obviously developed.

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The post Intervals Versus Solfa: Which Is Best? appeared first on Musical U.

There are all kinds of forms a song can take – and many well-known songs make their own rules entirely when it comes to structure. But today, we’re going to talk about the three most common song forms you’ll find in music today: verse-chorus form, refrain form, and AABA form.

The Verse-Chorus Form

The vast majority – probably at least 95% – of songs in the charts today are verse-chorus forms, so it’s likely that you have a good idea how they work, but let’s jump in with a bit more detail.

The Bread and Butter

There are two main sections in a verse-chorus structure: the verse and the chorus. They come in alternating pairs, something like this:

Verse | Chorus | Verse | Chorus

The verses typically all have the same melody – give or take a few minor differences – but new lyrics every time. The choruses typically have the same melody and same lyrics every time. In fact, short of maybe a few changes in the instrumentation, they’re usually identical.

Verses and choruses work in pairs: that’s the central idea of a verse-chorus structure.  The verse’s job is to set up and build into the chorus, where the main idea of the song is expressed directly.

Here’s Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”:

After a short intro – more on those later – the structure goes something like this:

[0:33] – Verse 1

[1:09] – Chorus 1

[1:38] – Verse 2

[2:14] – Chorus 2

[2:51] – Verse 3

[3:16] – Chorus 3

[3:41] – Chorus 4

Here’s a few things you probably noticed:

Lyrically, the verses set the scene and provide some details and clues about what the song is about. Then, the choruses really get to the heart of what the song is about – “Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?”

Musically, you’ll also hear how the verses are much lower in intensity than the choruses, featuring a generally lower vocal register, a thinner texture, simple guitar strumming as instrumentation, and quieter dynamics – whereas the choruses tend to rock out more.

All of these dimensions ensure that the choruses are the main event in this song – the thing that really lands, and the thing you really remember – while the verses provide contrast and build up. This simple alternation of sections (though you’ll see there’s a double chorus at the end to round the structure off) is a really simple but effective way of structuring a three- or four-minute song.

Bridging the Gap

Beyond the essential two sections of the verse and the chorus, lots of verse-chorus forms mix this basic structure up by adding other sections to keep things interesting.

One very common section is the bridge – sometimes called the middle eight or primary bridge – which typically goes after the second chorus, like this:

Verse 1 | Chorus 1 | Verse 2 | Chorus 2 | Bridge | Chorus 3

Let’s see how this works in an example, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”:

Here’s the structure in a nutshell:

[0:04] – Verse 1

[0:34] – Chorus 1

[1:07] – Verse 2

[1:37] – Chorus 2

[2:06] – Bridge

[2:28] – Chorus 3

You probably noticed the same principles as we saw in “Complicated” apply: the lyrics and music work in verses and choruses, and the main lyrical theme and highest musical intensity are found in the chorus.

But in this case, we also have a totally new section: the bridge. And like most bridges do, this one has completely new music, and goes somewhere fresh in the lyrics: it starts by adding a broader perspective to the song, with phrases like “Us girls we are so innocent”.

The end result is that the bridge takes us away somewhere new, somewhere that adds an extra dimension to the song, before returning us back to the chorus.

Before the Bang

Another section we should talk about is the pre-chorus. If you listened really closely in both “Complicated” and “I Kissed a Girl”, you probably noticed that somewhere in the second half of the verses, the instrumental texture started to build subtly but decisively. This is done, for example, by adding an extra guitar figure, a thicker drum beat, or a vocal register that starts to get gradually higher and more intense. Have another listen if you want to see what I mean.

If the job of the chorus is to be the song’s main event and the verse’s job is to lead up to it, you often find the verse beginning to grow in intensity in preparation for the chorus.

But sometimes, this job of growing into the chorus is done by a dedicated section called the pre-chorus, also called the climb or transitional bridge:

Verse 1 | Pre-chorus 1 | Chorus 1 | Verse 2 | Pre-chorus 2 | Chorus 2

You’ll see what I mean in Train’s “Drive By”:

Here’s the structure of the first minute or so, in summary:

[0:17] – Verse 1

[0:32] – Pre-chorus 1

[0:48] – Chorus 1

[1:22] – Verse 2

So what makes this a pre-chorus and not just a verse that builds towards the end?

Honestly – often you could argue a case either way. But in “Drive By”, I’d put my money on there being a pre-chorus at 0:48 because the lyrics take an abrupt turn in direction at “Oh, but that one night…” – the song’s story suddenly goes somewhere new. At the same time, the music jumps up in intensity as the drums suddenly get more insistent.

Generally, the idea that a song’s verse builds into the chorus is a universal one. But in some songs, where the writer wants a dedicated section that makes a bigger deal of this build, they use a pre-chorus to get everyone excited about the chorus to come.

Starting (and Ending) Strong

And finally, two more sections we should cover: the intro and outro.

You probably heard in “Drive By” how the instrumental groove starts four measures before the vocals come in. That’s a really common way of starting a song, and gives us all a few seconds to get into the world of the song before the lyrics kick off.

There are a handful of different ways to end a song. Sometimes, you get an outro that is just a few measures of the groove over and over. Sometimes, an outro is just the chorus again with a repeat and fade out.

So that’s a quick look at verse-chorus forms. As we’ve seen, there’s no one single template for a verse-chorus form – just different sections you can combine in different ways, depending on what kind of journey you want the song to take the listener on.

Now, let’s move on and have a look at two other common song structures you’ll find in modern music.

The Refrain Form

Refrain forms are like compressed verse-chorus forms: instead of a separate verse and chorus, there’s a single repeated section (confusingly, often also called a verse) that finishes with one or two identical lines each time, called the refrain – like a mini chorus.

Here’s a well-known example:

After an extended introduction, you’ll hear how each verse has the same melody each time, but different lyrics until you get to the final “hallelujahs” repeated over and over:

Verse:

Well I’ve heard there was a secret chord…

Refrain:

Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Verse:

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof…

Refrain:

Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You’ll also hear how the refrain isn’t all that different musically from the rest of the verse (and in most cases is less intense than the rest of the verse), so though the repetition of the lyric might make the refrain look like a chorus on paper, in practice it works the opposite way.

Refrain forms work great in songs where the story is especially important – where you want to avoid having a chorus making a big deal of itself as part of your structure, and instead have a backseat interlude to add interest while keeping the focus on the verses.

The AABA Form

The final form we’re going to look at is the AABA form. This structure pretty much does what it says on the tin, with two contrasting sections arranged in an AABA format. Here’s a very well-known example, The Beatles’ “Yesterday”:

In this tune, the core of the AABA form goes like this:

[0:05] – A

[0:22] – A

[0:39] – B

[0:59] – A

Then, as often happens, it continues with an extra B, then A. Finally, there’s also a short outro:

[1:17] – B

[1:37] – A

[1:54] – Outro

Here’s how the lyrics fit in with the AABA scheme:

A: Yesterday, all my troubles…
A: Suddenly, I’m not half the man…
B: Why she had to go?
A: Yesterday, love was such…
B: Why she had to go?
A: Yesterday, love was such…

There’s a few other subtleties we should mention. The two sections don’t take us on a big journey of highs and lows like the verse-chorus form does, but there are still some ways contrast is created in this form.

The A sections are more matter-of-fact and self-contained. Like the chorus in a verse-chorus form, that’s where the most direct expression of the song’s message is. The B sections, on the other hand, are more expressive and a bit more adventurous – the melody is more complex and the harmony is generally richer.

Similar to the bridge in a verse-chorus structure, the B in an AABA form is sometimes also called a bridge – the B section talks about something slightly different and has the definite feel of taking us somewhere new before returning to the A, the home base.

Anatomy of a Song

So there we are: three of the most popular songwriting forms.

As always, none of what I’ve said is a rule or a formula. There are tons of different ways to apply the ideas that these forms are based on.

The way you really master the ideas I’ve talked about here is analysing as many songs as you can to understand their form and structure. That way, you’ll pick up on tons of the subtleties on how these forms work, what they lend to a song, and how you can create new forms in your own songwriting.

Enjoy getting acquainted with the anatomy of your favourite songs!

Ed Bell is the author of the popular book The Art of Songwriting and the creator of The Song Foundry, a goldmine of resources for songwriters. He has contributed articles to Making Music Magazine and Songwriting Magazine.

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