Author: musicalitywrld

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Links and Resources

• The Truth About Talent, with Professor Anders Ericsson
• The Talent Myth: Why Talent is the Least Important Part of Being a Musician
• Beyond the “Quick Fix”, with Ged Brockie
• About the 10,000 Hour Rule

Transcript

Hey there podcast listener,

This is the first in a series of episodes we’re calling Musicality Unleashed.

I said in our last episode that these are designed to help you kick off a seriously strong musical 2019 – and I wanted to just take a moment to let you know where this is all coming from.

Last year, as we worked on the Foundations of a Musical Mind course we had the opportunity to step back from Musical U, and all the publishing and podcast episodes we’ve done so far and get a fresh perspective.

In the process we got a whole new clarity around what really matters – both in terms of the mission we’re on at Musical U and what matters for you personally in your musicality journey.

It’s not new stuff we’re conjuring up from scratch – so if you’re a long-time podcast listener or Musical U member then a lot of what I’ll be sharing in these Musicality Unleashed episodes will sound familiar.

But I realised we had the opportunity to really distill down literally thousands of articles and hundreds of hours of podcast content into the crucial few concepts and mindset shifts that can have the biggest impact on your musicality.

Now I could talk about this stuff all day! So I set myself the challenge to explain the most important concepts as succinctly as possible – aiming for just 5 minutes each.

So what you’re about to get is a series of short, punchy episodes, each representing a fundamental insight or mindset shift you can make – which if you truly take on board can transform your musical life for the better.

These episodes also mark the start of our video podcast so if you want to check out the video versions then please head to musicalitypodcast.com where you’ll find the links to our YouTube channel.

Wherever you’re at on your musicality journey and whether you’ve been with us at Musical U and the podcast for years or this is your first time tuning in, I hope you’ll enjoy Musicality Unleashed and the impact it will have you *you* and *your* musical life.

So here we go with the first one. And I figured why not start out with the biggie. So let’s talk about “talent”…

The Truth About “Talent”

Have you ever seen an incredible musician, someone who seems like they can do absolutely anything in music – beautifully, expertly and apparently effortlessly?

If so you might have thought “Wow, they’re talented!”

You probably felt inspired – but also a bit intimidated. Maybe even disappointed because you feel like you don’t have the talent it would take to be able to do that yourself.

And I can understand why. Everywhere around us society talks about “talent” and glorifies the overnight success story of the “gifted” musician.

And when you see someone step up on stage and hold the crowd enthralled with their performance, or improvise an amazing solo out of nowhere, or sit in with a group of musicians with no preparation and just jam along – it can seem magical – like they must have been born with something that you just don’t have.

But those amazing skills of the “natural” musician actually don’t require talent at all.

In fact, so-called talent doesn’t actually exist.

If you think about it, surely if the superstars we admire all had a natural “talent” then they would all have seen great success from an early age and throughout their life? Yet what you’ll always find if you dig into their backstory is years—decades even—of struggle and practice before society suddenly decides they are “talented”.

And if you go on believing that it’s talent that sets those “natural” musicians apart from the average musician you’re going to go through life feeling “untalented” and like you’re lacking the “gift” for music. And you’ll continue living your entire life feeling disappointed that you can’t play like the people who inspire you.

If you’re someone who is really passionate about music, you might stick with it anyway. But compared to those amazing “naturals” you’ll feel slow, robotic – and like everything in music is just harder than it should be.

Those skills and confidence you dream of can be yours – but only if you cast off society’s myth about musical talent.

Here’s the thing: although the idea of “talent” is widespread it’s actually totally outdated. In recent years all the scientific research has has conclusively proven: there is no such thing as “talent”.

Last year I had the chance to speak with Professor Anders Ericsson, the world’s leading expert on the question of “talent”.

He’s spent over a decade researching talent and there are two big findings from his research.

First: The traditional idea of “talent” simply doesn’t exist. Not a single research study has been able to demonstrate that some people are born with a musical gift that others don’t have.

The most you can say is some people have a natural inclination for something when they’re young. That can get you going quicker in your learning – but that headstart dwindles over time.

The second big finding is that there’s no known skill where an innate “talent” is required.

All those amazing musical skills like playing by ear, improvising, writing incredible music, performing with rock-solid confidence? Every one of them is learnable.

So what sets those amazing musicians apart if it’s not talent?

It turns out that they have different “mental models” for understanding music than the average musician. And they’ve put in hard and smart work to develop those mental models.

Dig into the backstory any of those “talented” stars and overnight successes and you’ll find a long trail of hard and smart work that got them there.

And while it might take years to get to that superstar level the truth is that it’s never too late to start studying these skills of the “natural” musician and unlocking for yourself all the amazing musical experiences they can provide.

That means the opportunity is in front of you to become that incredible “natural” musician yourself. Everything you’ve dreamed of in your musical life is possible, however “talented” or not you might have thought you were.

Learn more about the mental models and other mindset shifts required to reach your full musical potential in the rest of this Musicality Unleashed series.

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The post Musicality Unleashed: The Truth About Talent appeared first on Musical U.

Happy new year! We’re excited to announce some changes that we’ll be making to the Musicality Podcast to continue bringing you the best content for helping you nurture your inner musicality. Here’s to your continued musical success in 2019!

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Musical U YouTube channel

Transcript

It is 2019! A very happy new year to you!

Today we’re breaking from the normal episode format because I wanted to jump on to give you a heads up on a few changes coming up on the podcast.

We’ve been publishing the Musicality Podcast for well over a year now and we’ve been firmly consistent with our pattern of each week having an interview, followed by a teaching episode of some kind.

But as you may have noticed, recently we’ve begun to switch things up a bit. We’ve had some episodes with the Musical U team doing a roundtable discussion, recently we had a few teaching episodes in a row. And today you’re getting to hear our shiny new intro music for the first time, with members of the team introducing the show, big thanks to Andrew, Adam, Anastasia and Stewart for helping with that!

But we have some bigger changes coming up…

The first to mention is that I’ve been working on a special set of episodes for the next couple of weeks to help you to kick off the new year strong in your musical life. We’re about to relaunch our crazily popular course “Foundations of a Musical Mind”, and I’ve been inspired to want to share some of the most impactful concepts from that course here with you on the show. I always love new year’s as a moment to set yourself up with what you need for success in the year ahead so I’m hoping these episodes are going to help you do that.

The second major thing is that we’re going to be switching to a video format! Don’t worry, our audio show will continue as normal, but if you would like to watch our interviews and new episodes in future you’re going to have that option. Just head to musicalitypodcast.com to find the link to our YouTube channel and get instructions for subscribing to the video feed. I’m really excited for this, I’ve already recorded the first several interviews in video and it really adds a lot, I think, so I’d encourage you to go check that out and consider watching the show in video in future.

So between those things for the next month or so our schedule might be a bit varied – so I just wanted to give you a heads up so that you’re not confused or concerned if there isn’t always a Tuesday/Thursday release pattern.

Some things definitely aren’t changing – we’re going to continue bringing you terrific fresh content every week to nurture your inner musicality, and I’ll be continuing to seek out and talk with the world’s leading experts to bring their insights to your earbuds. Just in our next few interviews we have an award-winning avant-garde composer, a Billboard chart-topping songwriter, as well as a master of writing educational rap tracks for use in schools – oh, and we’ve also been planning ahead for a very special series of episodes dedicated to one of the greatest musical groups of all time.

So 2019 is going to be a good one, I’m psyched! And as always we would love to hear your input on the show, get in touch at musicalitypodcast.com/hello

As ever I’m grateful and honoured for Musical U to be a part of your musical journey – and here’s to your musical success in the year ahead!

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The post A Change is Gonna Come appeared first on Musical U.

Perhaps you would like to practice more efficiently? We’re going to take a closer look at mindful practice and how you can give it a try. This is not only something that will make you a better musician, but also eliminate a lot of frustration and help you to focus on the task at hand.

What is Mindfulness?

According to mindful.org, “Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

Even though being mindful about what one is doing isn’t a new phenomenon, the word is popularly used in connection with meditation and yoga.

Regardless of whether you care about meditation and yoga or not, being mindful when practicing is essential for learning properly. After all, if you’re not concentrating on what you’re doing, you’re not going to learn much at all.

Mindful Practice

The very first thing you need to do is to turn off your cell phone and everything else that might disturb your concentration.

One way to get into the right mood and start concentrating is to prepare and warm up. Taking out your instrument, tuning it and finding your music is the preparation that tells your brain, “Okay. You know what’s going to happen and now you’ve had plenty of time to adapt to what we’re doing next.”

Getting in the Swing of Things

Instead of starting your practice session by playing the hardest piece of your repertoire, you should warm up. This will both help your fingers to get warm and will help with other aspects of your playing, such as intonation.

The kinds of exercises you can do depend on what instrument you play, but scales and arpeggios are good examples. Start by playing really slowly, giving yourself time to intonate properly. And even if you play an instrument that doesn’t require any intonation, like the piano, you give yourself the opportunity to slowly increase the tempo.

Here are a few suggestions that you can use when warming up:

• If you play a wind instrument, you can play exercises that help with your breathing and articulation.
• If you play the guitar, exercises that strengthen the left hand are great. Practice hammer-on and legato exercises.
• If you play a string instrument, try the scales using different positions. You should also play some bow technique exercises regularly.
• If you play the piano, there are countless etudes that are composed to help with different technical skills that you can play (of course, there are etudes for most other instruments as well, but the piano repertoire is extremely vast in this area).

When you have warmed up and it’s time to start practicing for real, the importance of mindful practice becomes even greater. To illustrate this, we’re going to take a look at one of the most common mistakes people make.

I’m a piano teacher and even though I remind my students of this constantly, it still happens a lot when they’re practicing at home.

Plowing Through Mistakes

What happens is that they practice the first few measures of a piece until they know them pretty well. Then they move on until there is something they find difficult and they get it wrong. At that, they stop playing and start all over again from the top.

What do you think they should do differently?

They should stop at the difficult passage and analyze it, trying to understand why it’s tricky and how they should play it. Then, when they know in theory how it should be played, they should practice that particular section over and over again.

When they simply start over from the beginning, they don’t give themselves a chance to fix what they get wrong. They just hope that it’s going to go better the next time around. The problem is that it doesn’t. Then, they end up playing the beginning of the piece hundreds of times.

Eventually, they do get past all the difficult passages, but only after having started over every time, they got it wrong. The result is that once they have learned the whole song, they will play the beginning really well, but struggle toward the end because they haven’t played that as many times.

The Solution: Mindfulness!

This is why it’s important to break the song down into tiny pieces that you practice until you can’t get them wrong. Then, you can move on with the rest of the song. In order to do this, you have to be mindful of what you’re doing.

Many people feel like practicing like this is a waste of time, but most often you actually save time doing it this way. When my students have a hard time playing a couple of measures, I ask them how many times they think they would need to play them in order to know them well. They take a guess, perhaps 30 times. Then I tell them to play it 30 times and we’ll see if that works. You’d be surprised at how few times it usually takes – 30 sometimes drops to 8!

But the point is that if they would have played from the beginning every time, it would probably take them at least 30 times because their concentration is disrupted by everything else they’re playing.

Mindful practice also means that you concentrate enough to really listen to what you’re playing. As soon as you identify something that should be done differently, you focus all your attention on that problem, instead of trying to make everything work at once.

A Mindfulness Challenge to Try

If you simply have been playing without any plan, it can take some time to get used to mindful practice. For this reason, I came up with this challenge to get you started!

This is a challenge that works no matter which instrument you play. You’ll need a metronome, which you can download online if you don’t have one.

Select a piece that you know how to play well, perhaps one of your favorites. Record yourself playing it the way you usually would, but don’t listen to it just yet, keep it for later. Then, set the BPM on the metronome at half of what you would normally do.

Record yourself as you play the whole piece through. The slow tempo will allow you to pay extra attention to accurate rhythm and intonation. Then, it’s time for you to listen to your recording. Be critical of your playing and think about what could become even better.

Now, set the metronome to a tempo slightly faster and do the exercise again, trying to focus on the things you want to improve. Listen to the new recording and see if you managed to play it any better this time. Identify something more that you think could be improved.

You’re going to do this twice more until you’re back playing at the tempo you normally do. Now, it’s time to compare the first and last recording. Is there something different about them?

This exercise might feel time-consuming, but it’s extremely useful to do now and then. It allows you to really focus on what you’re doing and makes you aware of things you need to address when you practice.

More Mindfulness Resources

Did that exercise help? If you want to learn more about this subject, I recommend reading the following articles:

• The music lesson as a template for mindful practice
• Musicians: How to tell if you practice mindfully or mindlessly
• How to practice effectively…for just about anything
• Itzhak Perlman talks about practice

Quality Over Quantity

It has been proven that musicians that practice many hours also are more successful, so it doesn’t only come down to quality. But if you’re the kind of musician that maybe only has 15 minutes or half an hour a day to practice, you are going to improve much faster if you practice mindfully.

Don’t try to rush through a lot of material because there’s a lack of time. It’s better to choose maybe one or two things to focus on and to do them well, rather than trying to speed through things and sacrificing quality.

Even though mindful practicing sounds a bit harder than just playing however you want, the reward will be worth it. A wise person once said that we have to choose between two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The pain of discipline is always better, just like mindful practice always is better than mindless!

Naomi Wilson is a Musicologist and experienced music teacher from Sweden. You can find more of her helpful advice and content over at Hobby Help.

The post Mindful Practice Makes Perfect appeared first on Musical U.

It may seem unbelievable, but a huge percentage of music, especially (but not limited to) popular styles like pop, hip-hop, country, rock, and others, is built on the I, IV, V, and vi chords. But before we bewail the supposed harmonic poverty of pop, it’s important to recognize and respect why this is true.

Why Four-Chord Songs Are So Great

These chords provide the harmonic bones of the scales that we use. These four chords can be arranged and rearranged in thousands of different patterns. When we do so, we stimulate the most important melody-generating tendencies in the tonal architecture of a scale.

The patterns provided by the I, IV, V, and vi chords are immensely satisfying to the listener, and have been so for hundreds of years. So is it really so terrible that by learning four chords you can play thousands of songs, and play by ear much more easily, and even write your own hits?

Inside Musical U we have long recognized the importance of these chords with our dedicated Play Chords by Ear Roadmap and many modules dedicated to training on three and four-chord progressions.

In this month’s Instrument Packs, Musical U’s Guitar, Bass, and Piano Pros bridge the ear-to-instrument gap and show you how to play I-IV-V-vi progressions on your instrument.

And Speaking of Harmony…

Applying music theory isn’t just for instrumentalists – singers who want to harmonize can benefit greatly from understanding theory to construct meaningful, beautiful harmonic lines. Former Swingles member, Singing Pro Clare Wheeler knows a thing or two about harmony…

Singing

Ever wonder how some singers seem to come up with cool vocal harmonies on the spot? It’s not magic – there is a science to it that you can learn. In Harmonizing, Part 2, Singing Pro Clare Wheeler continues to expand on the parallel method of creating vocal harmonies:

Including:

• Recap of Harmonizing, Part 1 – using scale degrees to create one parallel harmony.
• Working with a new song in three-part harmony.
• When, why, and how to easily adjust when the parallel method isn’t working.
• Full scores for the exercises.
• MP3 demonstration and background tracks to help you in your practice.

Beautiful vocal harmonies add such richness to the music! Understanding how to come up with them yourself will also add to your appreciation of the harmonies you are already singing, and those that you hear in the music you love.

Piano

The songwriters that create songs for mainstream music don’t write hits by accident – these songwriters know which core-chords are going to be the most impactful to their listeners.

Those chords are not in the hundreds, not even dozens… when we distill these hit-making chords into their simplest form we are talking about three or four chords. Doesn’t that sound more manageable?

In this resource pack, Piano Pro, Ruth Power, teaches you how to play I-IV-V-vi progressions on your keyboard:

Including:

• How to build on your previous knowledge of I-IV-V progressions.
• Introducing the “Sad Twin” (often referred to as the “relative minor”.)
• Five fun exercises in varying styles from dance to pop to doo-wop and more.
• MP3 demo and backing tracks that illustrate and provide practice opportunities for each exercise.

Once you have mastered these patterns, you’ll be ready to take them out into the real world. To fully master these handy chord progressions, begin to learn them in all 12 keys. It’s a fair amount of work to master this, but just think how many hundreds of songs this opens up to your playing!

Guitar

The various chord progressions with the I, IV, V, and vi chords are so valuable for learning songs fast and playing songs by ear, that Resident Pro Dylan Welsh thinks of them as one of the ultimate guitar hacks!

Dylan unveils a systematic mega-approach to mastering I-IV-V-vi all over the fretboard in every key:

Including:

• How you can very easily find out what the I, IV, V, and vi chords are in any key using patterns found on the guitar fretboard.
• Running through each of these chords in every position on the guitar.
• Expediting the process of learning and executing songs efficiently.
• Practice with memorizing the fretboard.
• A brief overview of the super-handy CAGED system of fretboard organization.
• A nice long MP3 backing track for you practicing pleasure.

This kind of practice is very, very structured and targeted. It may feel like work, but if you put the time in, it will make a massive difference in your improvising (as well as in all other aspects of your guitar playing).

Bass

It’s nothing short of amazing what a working aural and practical knowledge of just four chords – the I, IV, V, and vi chords – can do in terms of you being able to play many thousands of songs by ear.

Steve Lawson, our Resident Pro for bass, helps you make that ear-to-instrument connection:

Including:

• Why these four chords are important – especially in pop music.
• What we can do to help us recognize the I, IV, V and vi.
• How to recognize the movement between the chords.
• How to come up with basslines that connect them in interesting ways.
• Six exercises to sensitize your ear to the harmonic shifts between pairs of chords, then all six chords.
• Scores for suggested basslines for all the exercises.
• Six MP3 tracks in various styles for practicing the given basslines and inventing your own.

Coming up next month…

More fascinating, fun, and growthful resources from Musical U’s Resident Pros.

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

The post I, IV, V, vi Chord Progressions and Harmonizing: Resource Pack Preview appeared first on Musical U.