Author: musicalitywrld

We wanted to do something special to mark Episode 100 – and we’ll tell you in a minute what we’ve got for you, it’s truly something remarkable.

So we talked about what to do in the team. And we’re all hugely appreciative of *you* and everybody who listens to the show. So we thought about asking for listener contributions of comments or questions.

But the thing is, for the most part, you guys are pretty shy! We know from the download numbers that there are a ton of people listening, but it’s relatively rare that we get a new review or someone reaches out by email or leaves us a voice message.

And we get that! Hey, a big part of what we do at Musical U is helping people become more confident in music and be proud that they’re actively learning the skills that most people assume require musical “talent”. But we know a lot of you listening aren’t there yet – So it would be a bit nuts to expect our podcast listeners to be rushing forwards bravely to put themselves out there and get in touch!

So we didn’t do that. But we did just want to mention it here so you all know how much we appreciate you, remind you that you are always welcome to get in touch at musicalitypodcast.com/hello – and give us the opportunity to say a big thank you for listening to the show.

A special thank you of course to our *members* at Musical U who’ve trusted us with their musicality training and provide the financial support we need to put this podcast out for free every week.

So when we were talking with the team about what we could do to celebrate hitting Episode 100 the other idea that quickly came up was that we could recap some of the stand-out lessons and quotes from our amazing interviewees.

Which would be cool. But you know what would be even cooler? If we could get those same superstars to contribute something fresh and new – and something that would be really impactful on *your* musical life.

So that’s what we did. And a huge thank you to all our past guests who contributed a clip. We were hoping to get a handful back – and ended up with 26 contributions!

The question we asked was:

So what you have here – and these are going to run into a second episode too because there were so many! What you have here is an incredible collection of the most punchy insights and wisdom from more than two dozen of the world’s leading music educators and musicality experts, all in one place.

We have Gerald Klickstein, author of the must-have handbook for aspiring musicians, The Musician’s Way.

We’ve got the guys from the Music Student 101 podcast, my favourite podcast for learning about music theory.

We have #1 Billboard hit singer and award-winning song-writer Judy Rodman.

We have David Reed, the man behind the terrific Improvise For Real method for learning to improvise.

We have Forrest Kinney, author of the immensely popular Pattern Play series of piano books.

And I could go on and on…

This might actually blow your mind a little bit, we know that we had to take breaks when listening to the clips to let things sink in a bit before absorbing more! And we’re going to be splitting this episode in two, because there’s no way you could sensibly absorb all of this in one go…!

And speaking of jam-packed with amazing insights – before we dive into those answers from past guests, we must let you know about the Musicality Podcast Power Pack.

To celebrate hitting episode 100 and all of the amazing guests we’ve had, we went back into all the archives, collected together all 100 episodes and then we found and created a bunch of cool extra bonus resources and material to help you get the maximum possible impact from everything in the podcast so far. We’ve put it all on a handy USB thumb drive so you can literally have the world’s top musicality experts in the palm of your hand.

We’re making this available for a limited time only with free worldwide shipping. To get your copy, visit musicalitypodcast.com/celebrate – and of course not only will you be getting this fantastic resource to accelerate your own musicality training, you’ll also be supporting the show. We should also mention this would be an awesome gift for a musical friend or family member.

So if you enjoy the show, and whether you’ve listened to one episode or all hundred, please go check out musicalitypodcast.com/celebrate and see all the cool stuff we’ve packed into the Musicality Podcast Power Pack for you. This will be available for a limited time so go take a look today!

Okay, so in this episode you’re going to hear the first 11 experts answering the question:

These are in no particular order, except that I’ve tried to group them to make for two great episodes for you to listen to.

In this episode you’re going to hear:

• Respected author Forrest Kinney, talking about the adventure of playing.
• Saxophone guru Donna Schwartz with the one crucial thing that might be stopping your performance from sounding musical and resonating with your audience.
• Our very own Andrew Bishko talking about “practicing magic”.
• Jazz guitarist and the man behind Learn Jazz Standards Brent Vaartstra sharing the one thing you must focus on to have consistent long-term success.
• Improvisation expert David Reed about when to introduce improvising into your musicality training.
• Thought leader among piano teachers Dr. Melody Payne about the simple rules that can make you sound more musical.
• Award-winning musician and Lydian Chromatic Concept expert Andy Wasserman talking about the “treasure hunt” of unlocking your musicality.
• School music ed revolutionary Jimmy Rotheram talking about the four things which greatly impacted his own musicality.
• Award-winning artist, song-writer and vocal coach Judy Rodman explaining what makes music compelling for the audience.
• Natalie Weber from the world-famous Music Matters Blog on what helped her as an analytical person tap into her creative side.
• And our friends Matthew Scott Phillips and Jeremy Burns from Music Student 101 round off this first episode by sharing several activities which can help you continually “level up” your musicality.

Enough from me! Let’s dive in.

Listen to the episode:

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Interview with Forrest Kinney
• Interview with Donna Schwartz
• Interview with Andrew Bishko
• Interview with Brent Vaartstra
• Interview with David Reed
• Interview with Melody Payne
• Interview with Andy Wasserman
• Interview with Jimmy Rotheram
• Interview with Judy Rodman
• Interview with Natalie Weber
• Interview with Music Student 101

Transcript

Forrest Kinney

Forrest Kinney: So the question is how to develop or how to tap into one’s inner musicality. This is Forrest Kenny and for me there’s really only one answer and that is to put away the scripts, put away the expectation that you have to be impressive or good or that you have to accomplish a lot or prove that you’ve accomplished a lot and just sit down at the piano as I’m doing right now and play. Play a tone. Listen to it and how does it make you feel? What does it make you want to do? Well maybe that’s not the sound I want. Maybe I want this sound. Maybe just start with a favorite sound.

Actually, for me, this is a nice sound this morning. And so what I’m doing is I’m immersing myself in that sound and I’m responding to the suggestions that it’s giving me. Now, I know that might sound a bit odd, but I believe if we listened to tones long enough, they do give us suggestions. This one is saying to me, “No.” Aah. Now that’s more what I feel like.

Now how did I know what to do? Well, I’ve been playing for decades and so my ears and my hands are all connected. So I get a sense of where to go, but even if that wasn’t it, I would have explored and experimented until maybe I would have found what I wanted. But it’s this process of playing and exploring and discovering where I think we really begin to have the essence of the music experience.

So, I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen next. Am I going to go here? Or am I going to go back here? Am I going to play a blues note? No. It’s an adventure and if I’m possessed by the idea that I need to be impressive or accomplish something or look good or play correctly, that’s gonna paralyze that cultivation of that responsiveness and sensitivity that’s really what musicality is all about. Musicality is our responsiveness to what we’re doing at a musical instrument.

So, what I try to help others to do is just to play like a child. To forget all these adult concerns and get to that essence and then the paradox is, when we do that, over time, we find that without any intention to be good, suddenly, we’re really sounding quite good. That’s the paradox. Without trying to be impressive, we become impressive. The core of it is, the connection with the sound, the responsiveness of the sound and the enjoyment of the sound just for the sake of making music. Not for any other purpose. It’s much like having the piano as a friend. We have friends because we enjoy their company. We enjoy spending time with them, having conversations. And that’s really the kind of relationship we cultivate with our instrument when we just sit down and play and have a conversation each day.

So, that’s what I encourage you and others to do, is get back to that, what I consider the essence of making music. So enjoy.

Donna Schwartz

Donna Schwartz: Hey, Donna Schwartz here from DonnaSchwartzmusic.com. The site to bring your saxophone playing up to the next level.

One thing, there’s so many things, oh my gosh. One thing that I learned from one of my mentors and it sticks with me to this day, not only when I’m playing but also when I’m teaching is this: If you’re improvising or if you’re creating a solo, you’ve got to make it rhythmic. Audiences react to rhythms a lot more than a thousand notes at a time. If you can make your solo sound more rhythmic so that people can feel what you’re trying to say, you’re going to get more of a greater response from the audience and it’s just going to feel right, it’s going to sit better.

Now, why am I giving this particular tip? I notice a lot, with a lot of students, a lot of people that reach out to me, they’re having problems playing particular solos or improvising. When I hear them, they’ve got the notes pretty well but there’s no sense of rhythm. There’s no sense of timing as people call it. In order to improve that timing, you’ve got to think about being rhythmic and really focusing on those rhythms because in solos, it’s not just about the notes, it’s also about the rhythms. Remember what Miles Davis said, “Silence is just as important as the notes.” That is a pretty big fact when it comes to being rhythmic. I hope that this tip helped you and I’m so happy for the musicality podcast, such a great podcast. I’ continue to urge people to listen to it.

Thanks so much.

Andrew Bishko

Andrew Bishko: Hello, this is Andrew Bishko from Napasha Music and from Musical U, receiving the question here, what’s one thing I’ve learned that could help musicians tap into their inner musicality? The first thing is to really claim that I have something to share about my inner musicality. I always feel like I’m such a baby in music, there is so much left to learn, but I’m right here and now claiming I do have something to share. When I look at musicians that I admire and I watch them perform and see them really getting into the music, when music seems to be a part of their inner expression, it’s magic. It looks like magic to me, and the one thing I’ve learnt is that I too can learn to practice magic. For me the practice of magic really began when I started playing Klezmer music, and I had to really look deeply into the melodies that I was making.

I was encouraged to play melodies, pick a melody and then play it many many times over, and play it in all different kinds of way. Changing the dynamics, the articulation, changing the rhythm, slowing the melody way down and focusing my attention on every single note and the meaning of every single note within that melody. I learned that there is no such thing as a repeated note. That every new note, every note, is a new event in time. It has its own fragrance, its own special qualities, its own gravity. This focus on melodies, on spending quality time with my melodies, became such an enjoyable practice for me and it’s affected everything that I do with music.

So even now when I play chords, I have this sensitivity to how things are moving through time and how I can maybe just make a little change in my timbre or a slight change in the dynamics or articulation, that will add more meaning to what’s happening in that moment. And I get into it and I enjoy it. It’s so pleasurable. So I want to encourage you all to find that one musical thing that you love to do, that you want to practice over and over again, that you want to delve into the depths of it, find every little nuance. To play something over and over and over and find the nuances in all the different ways you can do it. Whether you’re improvising or playing something that’s already been played before, take that attention to slow down and enjoy your melodies, and you’ll find that magic within yourself. So I invite you all to be musical magicians. Thank you so much. Bye bye.

Brent Vaartstra

Brent Vaartstra: Hey, what’s up, this is Brent Vaartstra from learnjazzstandards.com. If there’s something that I’ve learned throughout my musical journey that I think can help others tap in to their inner musicality, it’s not something scales. It’s not learn this song. It’s not here’s this music theory concept. It’s actually a lot simpler than that, and it is learn the stuff that gives you energy.

Learn the stuff that gives you energy because at the end of the day, what’s going to help keep you motivated and what’s going to make you feel energized to continue on throughout your musical journey through the times where things are tough, where you may feel like you’ve hit a plateau. Maybe you feel like you’re not improving fast enough. Maybe you are comparing yourself to other musicians who are better than you.

If there’s one thing that’s going to help you get over those hurdles is by feeling energized by what you are learning. That means that sometimes, it’s not learning the things that everybody is telling you to do. You don’t have to learn that scale or learn that particular piece. Sometimes, those things while they’re all important, those things aren’t the things that are going to get you out of bed.

At the end of the day, we’re all playing the music because we love it, because it gives us joy and we have to remember that. If there’s a particular piece of music that you really want to learn, go ahead and learn that. Throughout that process, you’re going to learn all the other musical lessons along the way. Maybe there’s a tune or a song that you really want to play but you’re not quite there yet. Then you can put that up there as a goal, as something to reach for. That’s your thing that’s giving you energy that you’re going to climb up the ladder step by step to get to that point.

Always be searching for that thing that gives you energy and that’s what keeps me excited to improve as a musician is always searching and reaching for that thing. I think if we’re all doing that, we’re going to learn all the musical lessons that we need to learn along the way and improve as musicians.

David Reed

David Reed: Hi, this is David Reed. I’m the founder of Improvise For Real and the creator of most of the learning materials at improviseforreal.com. I think the tip that I would like to share is to make creativity and your own freedom of expression on your instrument a really fundamental part of your practicing right from the very beginning.

In other words, don’t think of expressing your own music or being creative in music as something that comes later, maybe after you’ve learned a bunch of theory or you’ve mastered your instrument or you’ve learned a bunch of scales, but rather think of it as an important part of the way that you learn about all these musical materials in the first place, just the same way we would study any other art form. If you take a painting class, you’ll be learning techniques and you’ll be learning about materials and things but right from the first day you’ll also be making your own paintings.

You’ll have to make your own decisions about how to use the things that you’re learning and you’ll have some creative freedom there. That’s a wonderful thing that you can apply in music as well. I’ll give you a very simple example of how to do that. Let’s say you’re starting out and you’re just learning the notes of a single major scale. That’s really all you need. Well instead of just practicing that scale mechanically up and down with a metronome, go get yourself a jam track in that key, put the jam track on in the background and improvise freely with the notes of that scale.

It’s going to sound beautiful because every note of your scale is going to harmonize perfectly with that backing track. That’s the whole magic of playing in the key of the music, is that everything sounds great. You’ll still be getting your technical practice because you’ll be playing the notes but you’ll also be developing yourself creatively and you’ll be really getting a headstart on learning about harmony and composition and the music that you can make with these sounds.

That would be my tip, is don’t wait to include creative activities in your practicing. Make it a basic part of the way that you’re learning about music right from the beginning.

Melody Payne

Melody Payne: Hi, this Melody Payne of melodypayne.com and I wanted to share with you one thing that I’ve learned to help students play more musically from the very beginning. I wrote a blog post about three rules for magical, musical, moving performances and I believe that we can give our students concrete rules of playing musically from the very beginning.

Such as when the notes go higher, play more loudly. When the notes go lower, play more softly and usually the last notes of a piece are the softest. Those are the three rules that I usually give to my students and before long, they’re playing musically automatically without even thinking about it.

Andy Wasserman

Andy Wasserman: Hello. This is musical artist Andy Wasserman. Certified instructor of George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, The Art and Science of Tonal Gravity. I’m honored to be able to tell you something I share with students that may shed light on their ability to tune into their inner musicality.

As a lifelong full time professional musician, what intrigues me about this question is the key word inner, the interior perspective is indispensable if the wisdom required to uncover our innate talent is awakened and taken to a higher level where it’s free to grow and flourish. Imagine with me for a moment, that your awesome process of music making is like a treasure hunt. No matter what age you are, level, style, or whatever instruments you play, unlike the children’s game where a map gives clues to search an external location for the treasure, our musical treasure hunt is internal.

Now, imagine we’re searching for a treasure chest. Inside it is musical gold, our priced, unparalleled individual sound. It’s as unique as your fingerprint. Some people call this the universal sound but the cool thing is this, the treasure is actually in our very own chest. This singular treasure in your chest is where you’ll discover your sound and the most necessary thing of all, the heartbeat of rhythm and the fountain of emotion. It’s the basis for meaningful, enjoyable, and authentic music.

While creating our music, this inner music is our center of gravity. I like to say, it’s the music in us that hears the music. Connecting inwardly opens the door to listening in a new way. The hidden meaning within the treasure trove of sounds in our heart has the capacity to resonate as pure joy while we play as long as we trust it. That is why so many of us devout so much energy to the musical process because we simply love doing it.

Working on becoming the best listener we can be, brings balance into our lives and allows us to express our humanity, and in expressing ourselves through this ancient language called music, we have the humbling opportunity to return the inner resonance of our sound back to its source.

Jimmy Rotheram

Jimmy Rotheram: Hi, I’m Jimmy Rotheram from Feversham Primary Academy. I’m the music coordinator here. I’ve been asked by the guys at the Musicality Podcast to give some tips on how to tap into your inner musicality.

I’d say the first rule of any kind of music making is it should be ultimately a pleasurable experience. If you’re practicing and practicing, it should be with an end in sight and with a goal in sights, or otherwise it can just be frustrating and it can become quite a grind. If you find that practicing is becoming like that, then maybe it’s time to take a few steps back or do something completely different rather than sort of sticking at it and getting yourself very frustrated.

It is true that the more you put in, the more you get out of music but it’s also important that it should be a pleasurable experience. The thing I would recommend most for anyone who wants to improve the musicianship is to get some Kodály training. For me it works wonders. I was always a musician that could play by ear and I’ve been able to do it since I was a very small child. However, I always found reading music very, very difficult. The way that it was explained to me at school, dotted crotchet is worth three quavers and a quaver’s worth half a crotchet. It was explained in a very mathematical way. I was particularly good at math. What helped me was having rhythm as movement, and that’s rhythm’s syllables. A quaver’s not a TiTi. A crotchet’s ta so a rhythm would be something like ta, tee, tee, tica tica, taw. Titi, ta, tika, tika, ta. Far more easy than trying to think, “Well, that’s worth half of one of them and that’s worth two and a half of one of them.” It’s really hard work.

One of the things that Kodály training really improved my sight reading to the point where I’m actually saying now I’m quite good at it which I never, ever thought would be possible.

Another great tool that you learn through Musicianship and Kodály training is relative solfa. I always explain the benefit of solfa as being it makes some very difficult things suddenly very easy. For example, if we’re trying to sing the Locrian mode, the way I was taught that was that the Locrian mode has the most alterations of any scales so it would have a flattened second, a flattened third, a flattened fifth, the flattened sixth, a flattened seventh, and you’re trying to work all that out in relations were made to scales. Very, very difficult indeed.

There’s a really easy way of doing it and that’s simply to do “do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, ti, la, so, fa, me, ray, do”. But start in ti instead so you go “ti, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, la, so, fa, mi, re, do, ti”. That makes it much, much, much easier.

As well as the Kodály training, I would recommend joining a choir. Joining a choir is a great way of just picking up lots of musicality and a lot of it will happen unconsciously, but you’ll get a very big understanding of how many are of good sense of pitch, very good sense of tone, a sense of working with other musicians, and synchronizing with them and bouncing with them. I’m not sure if you get an opportunity if you’re an instrumental player, join the band, or join the choir, even if it’s just as a hobby because that will keep you motivated to keep practicing and keep your standards up.

Finally, I would say get a good teacher. You cannot underestimate the value of a good teacher. I had things that I was getting frustrated on and I practiced it for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and I was on end. All that it took was a really good teacher just to kind of move me away from the piano to a bit movement away from the piano and then a few little tweaks to my technique. All of a sudden, I could play these things that I’ve never dreamt myself able to ever do and also it was very easy for me. I didn’t need to do hours and hours of practice, just a few top tips from a top teacher, really, really made all the difference to me.

So there are my big main tips for tapping into your inner musicality. Remember, that everybody’s musical. It’s a myth, things like tone deafness and being unmusical – everybody’s musical if you get the right sort of experiences and the right sort of training. Good luck to everybody. All the best with it and do enjoy it and believe that you can do it.

Thank you very much. Bye.

Judy Rodman

Judy Rodman: This is Judy Rodman of judyrodman.com.

The subject of tapping into one’s musicality is fascinating. What awakens the muse to create musical expression?

In my work as a singer and songwriter and vocal coach and producer and musician, I have found that the most important thing is to remember that all art, including musical expression, is about creating messages.

Sometimes as with carving sculptures, the message only becomes clear as we make choices to explore melodic twists and turns. To add or clear away surplus chords, riffs or embellishments. Practicing technique is important but it can’t be the end goal if one wishes to dig deep into one’s creative source.

So how do you find a message? I find it really, really useful to ask questions. What is this guitar riff, keyboard pad or chord progression saying? Listen deeply and I swear there will be words. Or, what tempo, major or minor chord, melody or harmony choice would best express the heart of this message? And most importantly, to whom am I delivering this message? To what one heart? If I get through with the message, what would that look like, in the listener’s body language?

The point of your musicality spear will sharpen when you ask these questions. Great music delivers messages that get specific responses from specific hearts, so it follows that creating great music involves exploring, choosing and intending to deliver great messages. Especially those that somehow, in some way, make the world a better place.

Natalie Weber

Natalie Weber: Hi. My name is Natalie Weber from musicmattersblog.com. One of the things that has been the most helpful to me over the years with my music education is learning to really listen and giving myself time and space to experiment and create, specifically at the piano since that’s my instrument.

As somebody with a pretty driven type A personality, a lot of my music studies and then even as I got into teaching music were centered on getting things right or checking things off of a list and so, it was a pretty big step and sometimes, honestly felt like a bit of a step backwards, but just to not worry so much about what I was accomplishing and just to take time to explore and to create and to listen to different sounds.

One of the things that was helpful in taking that step was just seeking out different tools and resources and people who encouraged that kind of experimentation and exploration at the piano and then, building up a repertoire of tools that could help me in that whether it was a specific chord progression to try improvising different things or different compositional ideas, just things that helped me break outside of the box and the traditional mold of just read it off the page, check it off the list and move on.

That’s been huge in my own music development and interestingly, has helped me in reading music and building my strengths as well as helping give me tools to grow in areas where I tended to be a little bit weaker.

Matthew Scott Phillips and Jeremy Burns

Jeremy Burns: Hello, Chris and all those at the musicality podcast.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Hello.

Jeremy Burns: Congratulations on your 100th episode. I am Jeremy Burns.

Matthew Scott Phillips: And I am Matthew Scott Phillips.

Jeremy Burns: We are from the podcast music student 101.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yes.

Jeremy Burns: And we have been giving a great question from Adam Lee over at the musicality podcast. He says, “what’s one thing that you’ve learned that could help musicians tap into their inner musicality?”

Matthew Scott Phillips: Tap into their inner musicality? That is a big question.

Jeremy Burns: Let us define that just in case people don’t fully … If you haven’t listened to 100 episodes of musicality podcast and don’t know what musicality is, according to webster’s musicality is, musical talent or sensitivity. The quality of having a pleasant sound or a melodiousness.

Matthew Scott Phillips: And if you ask our musicality podcast, they just saying, basically it’s musicianship.

Jeremy Burns: It is musicianship.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Pure and simple.

Jeremy Burns: So tell me, Matt.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yes.

Jeremy Burns: What are some things that you could … that you found that has helped tapped into your musicality?

Matthew Scott Phillips: If I had to offer advice on this subject, I would say, just listen to music. Listen actively to music and try to understand what’s going on in whatever way you feel comfortable. Try to understand the chord progressions, the phrases, try to understand how that all works together. Sit there and think about it, sit there and listen to music. Actually listen to these principles at work. It can be very easy to get bogged down and music theory ideas or in practice routines or in learning the sound or this or learning this or that concept. And we can forget that all of these concepts came from music. Music doesn’t come from the concepts. The concepts come from music.

Jeremy Burns: Very nice.

Matthew Scott Phillips: I would say, listen to as much music as you can. Listen to different music. Go outside your comfort zone, listen to something you don’t listen to a lot of and try to understand how that works, what it’s trying to do and how it’s going about doing that. Do that a lot and you will find … I have found at least that that has helped my musicality more than anything else, just relishing in that sense of wonder I feel whenever I hear really good music.

Jeremy Burns: And you’re also … It sounds like you’re also kind of listening to other types of music that you’re not quite as familiar or comfortable with.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Oh, sure.

Jeremy Burns: And maybe applying some of your analysis, some of your theory analysis to that.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s all the same 12 notes so that … you can think about … you can listen to a lot of things and apply what you know and it is a source of constant enrichment, it’s as a source of constant growth.

Jeremy Burns: Your method is based on more theory and ear training and kind of applying the knowledge that we are sharing with you guys and the musicality podcast is sharing with you guys.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah, absolutely. Applying some theory, applying some ideas and also just … If you don’t hear any of that, that’s okay. Just listen and listen actively. Not have it on the background while you’re studying or something, but actually listen and pay attention.

Jeremy Burns: Okay, very good. I want to share my perspective from a performance standpoint.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Excellent.

Jeremy Burns: And this is something that came to me a long time ago, even when I was first learning how to play the bass and I’ll just lay in bed with the lights off and just play my bass and just get to know the fret board, get to know the instrument, gets to know how it feels to where it becomes an extension of yourself. That’s how intimate you want to get with your instrument, but that takes a lot of time and work to do.

Matthew Scott Phillips: It does.

Jeremy Burns: But keep in the back of your mind that as you’re doing this, anytime you even think about your instrument or music or notes that you play or sounds that you hear, anytime you pick up your instrument, if not to some nano degree, you’re getting that much better. It’s kind of like gaining experience points in the role playing game of music.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Even if you’re just noodling around.

Jeremy Burns: Yeah. Noodling, that’s a good one. What would you call that, Grinding?

Matthew Scott Phillips: Grinding.

Jeremy Burns: Grinding from experience points?

Matthew Scott Phillips: I tell you, one of the best decisions I ever made in my life was deciding I could not afford to buy the bass guitar and also a case. Because if I had put it in my case, I would have put it in the case and put it under the bed and largely forgotten about it, right? But because it was just sort of sitting in my room, every time I walked in I would pick it up.

Jeremy Burns: Saying, “Play me.”

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah, I would pick it up and I would play around and I would try to play whatever song was in my head at that moment or something and it helped me become really familiar, not just with my instrument but the way my music, the way my instrument functions.

Jeremy Burns: To even do that, to even set up some kind of a system for yourself that has that in consideration, shows the amount of passion that you have for music, you itself and I think that the innate passion that someone has about music for music is evident if they’ve made it to this episode.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Absolutely.

Jeremy Burns: Or episode 50 for our podcasts that is coming up. I think if the passion is there, It kind of comes naturally. But all those little things, if you do them, they can add to your musicality or your musicianship or just your relationship with music.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah. Don’t forget, play with people.

Jeremy Burns: Play with people. That’s another important thing because you’re not going to know how to get in the pocket with yourself. Right? I don’t think.

Matthew Scott Phillips: I think you’re always perpetually in the pocket with yourself, right?

Jeremy Burns: Right, yeah. Sometimes you need a, maybe a drum player with a better sense of tempo than you do to really show you where the pocket is and if someone to work with and find the pocket together.

Matthew Scott Phillips: It helps your people skills too.

Jeremy Burns: Help your people skills.

Matthew Scott Phillips: It helps your collaborative abilities.

Jeremy Burns: Which is extremely important, I think, in the business world in music.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah.

Jeremy Burns: And just playing with other people.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah. Playing with other people.

Jeremy Burns: Because what do we always say? They’re not going to call you and say, “hey, we were going to get you for this Gig, but you’re just beep.” And we don’t want to work with beeps.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah.

Jeremy Burns: They just won’t call you. They’ll call the next person who’s not a beep.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Yeah, and work with him or her. Yeah, absolutely. All of those things are important. All of those things are actually more important than being good, I think, at least in terms of enhancing your musicality, I mean if you and your buddies start a band to play around just because you like it. You don’t have to be the next dream theater. Just the fact that you’re playing together is enhancing the musicality. Just the fact that you’re sitting and playing your instrument in your room and it’s in your hands and you’re thinking about it. Just the fact that you’re listening to music with an ear towards, “well why does this music doing.” All of these things are extraordinarily important in your growth as a musician.

Jeremy Burns: Right?

Matthew Scott Phillips: The things that are often … can be overlooked in our quest for conceptual understanding, right?

Jeremy Burns: Right. Yeah, and of course, keep on listening to the musicality podcast.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Absolutely. They’re doing a great job over there.

Jeremy Burns: And check out and musical you, because I’ve been really digging that. I’ve been getting a lot from musical you.

Matthew Scott Phillips: And it’s a great little resource. It really is.

Jeremy Burns: It really is. Thanks again, Christopher Sutton. Thanks again, musicality podcast and thanks again musical you.

Matthew Scott Phillips: Thank you guys so much and congratulations on your 100th.

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post Unlocking Your Musicality: Part One appeared first on Musical U.

Listen to the episode:

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Interview with Todd McCarty
• Heat on the Street
• Approaching Improvisation module preview
• Podcast episode: Approaching Improvisation
• Podcast episode: Improvising Rhythm
• Podcast episode: Improvising with Scales and Chords
• Podcast episode: Improvising with Structure and Phrasing
• Podcast episode: Learning to Improvise
• Lisa McCormick’s website
• Interview with Leila Viss
• Interview with Marshall McDonald
• Interview with Bree Noble
• The Female Entrepreneur Musician podcast
• Ira Glass on “having taste”

Transcript

In our recent episode with Todd McCarty we talked a lot about getting your music out there and finding fans.

And I know that some of our loyal listeners may have hesitated to actually listen to it, because despite what I said in the intro about it being relevant to all, I know that a lot of you don’t feel like you’re ready for creating your own music or sharing it.

So I wanted to address that today – because at Musical U we really believe that creating and sharing music isn’t an advanced thing for the best musicians only, it can and should be accessible to every musician from day one. But I totally recognise that with the way music is often taught, you might be feeling a bit intimidated or reluctant to think about that. I’m channeling my past self here – I spent a long time with a chip on my shoulder about this stuff and feeling like there was a big barrier between people who just played instruments and those who really went out there and created music worth sharing.

Today I want to share with you two simple ways to get started creating music worth sharing, and then talk a little about the sharing itself. I think, and I hope, that the ideas I’ll be sharing are going to be useful for those of you who feel like you’ve never created any music of your own, and also for those of you who dabble, or indeed spend a lot of your time writing songs or composing music.

Creating One Note at a Time

The first way to get started creating music is something from our Approaching Improvisation module in Musical U. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while you’ll have heard our Improv Month episodes where we talked a lot about getting started with improvising in music, and at the time we were releasing our full Improvising Roadmap in Musical U. One of the modules we released then has gone on to be one of our most popular across the whole site, and that’s Approaching Improvisation.

It’s designed for people who’ve either never improvised before or have tried one of the “paint by numbers” rule-based systems for improvising – and it gives you a totally fresh way to look at the beautiful simplicity that improvisation can be all about.

What I wanted to share today from that module is something Andrew from our team calls the “Listen/Play, Play/Listen” approach. It’s the idea that whenever you’re making music you can either be hearing something in your head, i.e. listening, and then bringing it out into the world. Or you can be playing something, for example from sheet music, and then listening to it as it emerges from your instrument. The first, Listen/Play, is essentially about playing by ear, which is one wonderfully free avenue to improvising. The second, Play/Listen, is about really paying attention to what comes out of your instrument and allowing it to inspire and guide you.

In the module we combine these two ideas and build on them step-by-step to help you explore improvisation in a way that’s pure, and simple, and incredibly versatile.

And that’s what I wanted to share today, on this theme of creating something worth sharing. Because completely independent of all the specifics of scales, and keys, and pieces you’ve learned and instrument technique you may or may not have – these two approaches provide a way to tap into your creativity.

We recently had a phenomenal masterclass at Musical U with Lisa McCormick, creator of the Note2Self method for music practice, and I think we’ll probably talk more about that in future episodes – but one comment she made almost in passing really stuck out to me and is relevant here. She said we need to remember that even a single note in music can be beautiful. Pick up your instrument and play just one note – and really listen!

That’s actually something else we feature in the Approaching Improv module, starting from one note and building up, and it’s that which I really wanted to put in front of you today: that reminder that in opposition to all the grand ideas we might have and the great ambition we might (or might not!) have for our music, we need to remember how simple a lot of the greatest music is. And simply sitting down with your instrument and playing, and listening – and listening, and playing – that is a beautiful route to creating something which truly comes from inside you.

So that’s the first way to get started creating. And if you want more of the specifics about how to make that improvisation experience fun and effective I’d suggest checking out our Improv Month episodes, I’ll put links to those in the shownotes, because there are some extra ideas and guidelines that’ll help.

Creating From a Starting Point

The second way to start getting creative is something that’s come up a few times in interviews on the show, such as with Leila Viss talking about “stealing like an artist” and Marshall McDonald talking about starting from a solo or a melody you like and starting to play around with it. A moment ago I talked about creating pretty much from a blank slate, just sitting down and starting from scratch. But it can be just as effective to start from something very specific that you know how to play (or want to figure out by ear) and using that as your starting point.

For example, just changing the ending notes of each phrase. Try taking the melody up instead of down, or vice-versa. If you stick to the notes in the key you won’t sound too strange – or try exploring outside the key and see how it sounds! Of course there are a lot of ways to experiment. In our improv Roadmap we call these “dimensions”, such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, timbre, and so on. They are all ways to take something known and make it your own.

One personal tip on this front: try to silence your inner editor when you do this. If you’re anything like me then when you sit down to try to create your own thing and start from some existing bit of music you’re going to almost immediately hear a voice in your head going “Well, that’s almost the same, you can’t claim that’s your own” or “this is silly, you’re just making little adjustments”. You need to ignore that voice and keep exploring. Sure, changing one or two notes in the riff from Layla or a John Williams soundtrack melody isn’t going to provide you with your own unique masterpiece! But ignore that inner critic and keep exploring and experimenting and you’ll be surprised how quickly you find your way to new territory and the riffs, melodies, rhythms, harmony and more which truly are unique and have come from your own taste and creativity.

So that’s the second way: simply experiment!

Again, that’s something you can take away and do immediately – but it can also be bolstered by knowledge and skills, and all the musicality material we teach at Musical U comes into play here. It’s a lot easier to experiment in a way you find satisfying if your brain and your ears understand what’s going on in the music. Don’t let that hold you back, if you haven’t yet done musicality training. But I just wanted to mention it as an opportunity if you find yourself enjoying that experimenting and wanting a way to feel a bit more intentional with it.

So there are two ways to start creating, and I hope one or both will help you start creating little bits of music that you really enjoy playing and hearing.

Don’t forget: Record Yourself!

Remember to record yourself whenever you’re playing around like this! I was talking with Glory St. Germain from Ultimate Music Theory recently and she made this point, that whenever you’re in that creative mode, even in a relaxed experimental way, make sure you have a recorder running! Because you never know when you’ll play something and think “wow, that sounded great!” And it’ll be a lot easier to capture and return to and expand on if you can listen back rather than relying purely on your musical memory.

What about Sharing?

So now that you’re creating, what about the sharing side?

Well, in the spirit of this show I’m not going to plough into the nitty gritty of online publishing and social sharing and establishing your online presence as an artist and all of that. If you’re already a songwriter or composer and you’re at the stage of wanting all those details I’d suggest our recent interviews with Todd McCarty and with Bree Noble, and checking out their websites – links in the shownotes.

What I am going to talk about is that critical word in this episode’s title: I said creating music worth sharing. We’ve covered the creating, we’re not going to talk about the sharing in detail. But from what I know of our listeners here at the Musicality Podcast it’s probably that word “worth” that’s going to trip you up.

So I’m going to talk to myself as a teenager. This is after I’d learned the fundamental instrument technique on a few instruments but before I’d discovered ear training. For about ten years, with the exception of a brief period where I did dabble with song writing, my mindset was definitely “I’m not really creative, I can’t make my own music, I’ll just play what’s been written before”. I’ve mentioned on the show before that I couldn’t play by ear, and improvisation to me meant just noodling up and down a scale and hoping it sounded okay. I wrote a couple of strange songs and one very angry one about my girlfriend dumping me, and that was about the sum total of my creative output for that decade or so.

And really it all hinged on that question of “worth”.

There’s this great video of Ira Glass, host of This American Life, talking about the curse of having good taste. And to paraphrase, he explains that what makes us passionate and gets us into creating art is that we have good taste and we know what we love – but then the irony is that it takes a really long time for our own creative output to get good enough to live up to our own taste and expectations, so it can be a really painful and discouraging journey if you’re not expecting that. I’ll put a link to the video in the shownotes.

So this is the key to it, I think: to put it bluntly, we need to lower our standards!

And that phrase normally has really negative connotations, like we’re giving up or copping out, or producing mediocre work.

That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about readjusting our sense of what’s worth creating. Remember that idea, of a single note being a beautiful thing to hear. By playing just that one lovely note you’ve made the world around you tangibly better than it was when there was just silence. If that’s the case then surely there’s a whole spectrum of things worth creating between that single note and the musical masterpieces you might be hoping to one day create.

So the first step is to accept that simple can be beautiful, short can be beautiful, different can be beautiful. And if you play something and you like the sound of it then it was worth creating.

The second step is to decide that if it was worth creating and it brought you joy to hear it then maybe it could do the same for someone else. Meaning it’s worth sharing.

Again, “sharing” doesn’t have to be this big intimidating thing. It doesn’t need to mean publishing, it doesn’t need to mean standing up live in front of a crowd, it doesn’t need to mean making it available for anyone in the world to hear and critique. Sharing can be as simple as playing back the recording for a musician friend and saying “Hey, check out this riff I played the other day, it’s kind of cool, right?”. Or even, as Gerald Klickstein suggested in his interview here on the show, it can just mean playing for an audience comprised of your cat!

Take small steps and you’ll realise that the things you’re capable of creating are worth creating, and the things that are worth creating are worth sharing with other people too.

This is something we talk about in our Get Confident module in Musical U, that there’s a great big mindset shift you can make in your expectations of other people’s expectations. We tend to think that other people are going to be really critical and judgemental and expect only perfection from us – when in fact, if you approach the right people in the right way, it will be only a positive experience to share your music with them.

Think about your musical friends, think about your family, think about a mastermind group like Todd McCarty was talking about. Or yes, think about your cat. Figure out who you do feel comfortable sharing even just a little musical creation with, and then go for it.

This is the best way – and in fact, the only way

Now I’m guessing that when you saw the title of this episode, “About Creating Music Worth Sharing” your mind might have immediately leapt to song writing and composing and publishing on YouTube and Spotify and all that. Clearly that’s not what we’ve covered!

But what I want to end with is one more point: It’s not an either/or thing. If you begin to create in the ways we’ve discussed, and you begin to share in the ways I just suggested, you’re going to find that it’s all a smooth and fun path towards those big impressive acts of creating and sharing. You don’t need to do the big things from day one, you don’t even need to think about them from day one.

Start creating. Start sharing. You might be surprised where it takes you, and I guarantee you’re going to enjoy the journey.

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post About Creating Music Worth Sharing appeared first on Musical U.

There is always more to learn, and new avenues of musicmaking to discover – regardless of your level. The pros know this better than anyone, and this understanding helps them continuously enrich their knowledge base, push musical boundaries, and create better and better music.

Meet ZSonic, a DJ and producer who has been at it for 18 years, playing gigs all over the midwest and composing music with an unlikely instrument: the turntable. In the years prior to joining Musical U, he was feeling stuck in his approach. He was practicing long and hard, and yet experiencing frustration with the process and results.

With the help of Musical U, ZSonic has developed healthy practice habits that allow him to be creative, consistent, and focussed in his music – and has began composing his own music again after a two-year hiatus, with the help of his newfound singing and audiation skills, and his piano chops, all of which complement his turntabling technique known as “skratching”.

In our interview, ZSonic talks about his musical journey and the setbacks, realizations, and successes he’s had along the way, what made him give Musical U a try, and how it’s exposed him to a new practice framework that allows for creativity, accountability, and efficiency. And of course, he gives us a peek at “skratching”, or the fascinating art of creating tracks from vinyl using a turntable, resulting in an incredible musical collage that transcends genre.

I’ve loved music my whole life! I was inspired at a young age by the DJs, dancers, and musical guests on “In Living Color”. I would emulate the rapping and dancing. My first rap group was called “The L-A-Z Rappers” with my cousins Lisa and Anna (naturally, I’m Z). We even had a hit music video – well, it was a hit with our family.

Both of my parents listened to a lot of different music, with well-rounded collections of vinyls, cassettes, and CDs. It was a pleasure growing up with a diverse influence of styles and genres.

I took violin lessons when I was in first grade. I didn’t like it. That didn’t last very long. In 4th grade I took some piano lessons. That lasted a little longer than the violin. I still didn’t stick with it. In 8th grade, I picked up an electric bass. That was fun, but I didn’t dukey-stick with it.

Then, as a high school sophomore, I got into electronic production and DJing. This was awesome! I didn’t have to choose just one instrument – I had control over them all. I went on to win the Senior talent show by performing an original rap and turntable skratch to a beat I made. I’m a one man hip-hop army!

I’ve now DJed all over the midwest and done sample-based production for about 18 years. I’ve released many original songs and remixes over multiple labels, domestic and international. I’ve taught children how to rap and DJ at the Hip-Hop Academy in Kansas City, Missouri. I did freelance audio engineering for a couple years, during which I essentially lost time to work on my own music – that was soul-sucking.

As a result, I decided to not do mixing and mastering for other people and just focus on my own music. Over the last two years, I’ve been learning music theory and piano in an effort to be able to compose original music. Fortunately for me, I’ve been able to apply what I’ve learnt to my main instrument, the turntable. Studying and practicing piano has really made my skratches more musical.

It’s very hard for me to pick a favorite, so I’ll mention two pieces I feel are very important.

The first is C2C with their 2005 DMC Routine, a clear demonstration of the turntable being used as an instrument to create any style or genre. It illustrates how any piece of recorded sound can become an instrument and how multiple turntablists can work together to create music as a band. So cool:

The turntable is also a great improvisational instrument that can work with more traditional instruments. Here’s a video of one of my favorite turntablists, DJ Kentaro, jamming with an amazing shamisen player, Kinoshita Shinichi:

I just finished a 21 Days of VGM Challenge via Video Game Music Academy. I am continuing to work on my composition skills with a focus on writing melodies.

I have a couple of collaborative songs with another turntablist DJ and fellow Qbert Skratch University member, Fresh Kit. I am working on a song for a Brooklyn-based Footwork label, Zona Music. I am also building a repertoire of original dance music to release via my own label and to perform live. I’m always working!

I was losing steam with my piano practice. I had also been practicing ear training for a couple years and didn’t feel like I was improving much. I felt like I didn’t really understand how to apply the theory and ear training to actually making music.

I first heard about Musical U via the fantastic Hooktheory.com. I was interested in it when I first heard of it, but I wasn’t ready to commit to a full membership, so I signed up for the email list. I’ve heard a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will present themselves. Musical U presented themselves in my email with a fantastic sign up offer, and I got on board!

One of the biggest benefits I’ve received from Musical U is a more musical mindset. I no longer just practice to get better – I practice with a bigger picture in mind.

I have found a much more musical focus with everything I practice. This has reduced stress and allowed me to find balance. I used to practice as much and as hard as possible, which is not a sustainable approach. I had previously gone two years without really writing music, just studying and practicing. Musical U has given me the mental tools to form effective practice habits that allow me have fun making music.

I have learned that I need to encode and apply – so I study and practice, then immediately apply it to my own music. This was definitely a missing link for me. Not only does this strategy help me learn faster, but I actually get musical ideas out there!

I was surprised at the amount of foundational practice concepts, goal setting, and planning strategies on Musical U. The change in mindset that happened in the first week after joining was very profound. It has shaped my whole life for the better. I haven’t just learned about music – I’ve learned effective practice strategies that I can apply to any aspect of my music. This helps me constantly improve in all areas.

I have learned that singing is a major weakness of mine. In fact, I wasn’t practicing or learning anything singing related before Musical U. I was trying to play melodies by ear, but as I’ve learned, if you can’t sing it, it’s so much harder to play by ear. Audiating (hearing music in my head) and singing have greatly improved my ear. I am still a beginner in singing, but I have had a new path opened up to me in that I now see the musical benefits to singing. I know my musicality will improve in great strides once I’ve developed a basic singing proficiency.

Everyone at Musical U is so wonderful and supportive. The staff and the other members are inspiring and helpful. I feel like I can really be my musical self – everyone is very open-minded to different styles and approaches. This is a very fertile learning environment.

I have had this idea of writing music and doing cover songs using the piano, my voice, and the turntable as an instrument. Prior to Musical U, my plan was to practice the turntable as hard and as long as possible until I reached mastery, then practice piano in the same manner, then practice voice. I would spend hours a day on one thing, just doing boring drills, really.

Now, I’ve learned to balance these musical components with shorter, consistent, and focused practice chunks. I’ve started to apply these skills in a way that resembles my end goal. I’m having a lot more fun and I’m making a lot more music!

Writing down goals along with a plan is crucial for progress. I strategize, then execute. By pre-planning what I will practice, I eliminate the decision-making step when I actually go to do my practice. This way I can focus much more efficiently on listening and performing as accurately as possible.

Journaling after I practice is extremely helpful – I write about what went well and what needed improvement, helping me hone in on what works and what doesn’t, and what to practice next time. This way, I can continue to improve my focus during my practice sessions.

I’ve learned that improvement doesn’t have to do with how long or how much I practice. It has to do with how consistent and focused my practice is. As Bruce Lee said, “Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.”

To quote another great: Mick Kremling said, “The only time you should look back is to see how far you’ve come”. The progress journal makes this very actionable. I can see how far I’ve come in the last week, month, even year! This is a powerful motivating force to keep me moving forward.

The online Personal Journal at Musical U is a really great supplement to my daily written journal. It gives me an accountability system, as I know the Musical U staff and members are looking at my journal, and they want to see me improve.

Having people other than yourself who are dedicated to your improvement is very powerful – I honestly can’t believe I went so long without it. Not only do they provide accountability, but also support and encouragement. If I get to a roadblock, I don’t have to beat my head against the piano indefinitely or scour the internet for reliable advice. I just ask the Musical U community on my personal journal!

Sharing Your Journey

We at Musical U swear by progress journals – there’s hardly another tool that allows you to track, examine, and share your successes and setbacks quite like it.

Even musicians with ample knowledge and experience under their belt stand to benefit greatly from keeping a written record of their practice – just ask ZSonic, who relies on his journal for everything from planning to retrospective self-critique, even with a successful decades-long career.

Not only does this allow you to track your progress, but in online communities such as Musical U, it helps hold you accountable to your peers – all of whom want to see you succeed, improve, and meet the goals you’ve lovingly inscribed in your journal.

The post Musical U Member Spotlight: ZSonic appeared first on Musical U.

You might be wondering why we’re discussing music industry stuff here on the Musicality Podcast, where we normally focus on the music side rather than the business side of being a musician. Well, we’re not suddenly making a shift to focus entirely on career topics, but we were really keen to feature Todd on the show because we know that a lot of musicians, particularly hobbyists, would love to get their music heard – but are either intimidated or overwhelmed by the modern landscape of music publishing. Streaming services can in theory provide immediate listeners – but may not. And record labels are still doing what they did in the 1950s – or are they?

We wanted to ask Todd about the real story behind the successes in the music industry and what the opportunities are – not for the rare “talented” virtuoso, but for the passionate amateur musician who just wants to get some fans.

Todd was a professional drummer who went on to act as tour manager and promoter, run a record label and be a Senior VP of Sales at Sony Music. He has several platinum and gold sales awards to his name and so he’s certainly a man who knows what it takes to make it in the music business.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Todd’s own background as a professional drummer and how a pivotal audition hammered home an important lesson about the music business
• We find a polite way to ask Todd: What’s the point of record labels these days?
• And he reveals the one thing that musicians get absolutely backwards when it comes to getting fans

Todd has a refreshingly clear and frank perspective on the music industry, something that can all too often seem confusing and overwhelming, and he provided some really big insights and mindset shifts that we know will help you, whatever stage you’re at in getting your music out there.

Listen to the episode:

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Heat on the Street
• About Teachers, Coaches, and Mentors
• 35 Ways to Make Money with your Music
• How to Get Followers on Spotify
• Sign up for the Heat on the Street mailing list

Transcript

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

Todd: Hey, thanks for having me, Christopher.

Christopher: So, you are known for your website and blog heatonthestreet.com where you share really fascinating insights on the music industry, but I believe you are also a musician by that brand yourself, is that right? How did you get started in music?

Todd: That’s right. I play the drums since a young age maybe seven or eight years old I started playing the drums in elementary school and took private lessons. Tried my hand at playing professionally in bands, failed a few auditions, and realized that I needed to have a back-up plan, and the music business was the back-up plan.

Christopher: Interesting. I’m a bit envious. I’m currently learning drums myself, and I have these vague aspirations of joining a band as a drummer, so I’d love to hear a little bit what that process of learning drums was like for you. Where you taking lessons with a teacher? Were you just kind of self taught? Was it in your family? What did it look like for you to learn music?

Todd: Yeah, I think it started with just going to parades as a youngster, and you know, being overtaken by the pounding of the drums in the marching band. Strangely, I never ended up playing in a marching band, but it just led to drumming in grade school, and middle school and high school. Taking private lessons and always kind of identifying as “the drummer” with my friends and family and making it known that I wanted to have a career in being a drummer, and yeah, I think the most interesting part of my journey as a drummer though was the split between teachers.

I started with a very classical drum teacher who was in a philharmonic orchestra, very classically trained, and it was for me, personally boring. I wanted to be a rock star. And making that switch and realizing at a young age that I wanted to have a rock drum instructor really, really helped me out a lot. I went to a drum instructor that was just a rock guy, and he really made me love the instrument and made it exciting for me, and I progressed from there. He also just taught me a lot as a human being and how to approach the music business and was much more than a drum teacher to me.

Christopher: Tell me a little bit more about that ’cause I think a lot of our listeners will have had instruments of some kind or another, but I think it’s rare and special when you find that teacher you really connect with. So, what kinds of things was he imparting to you or opening your eyes to during that teaching period?

Todd: He definitely taught me that of course, mastering your craft and practice and drilling and not skipping steps, I think those were big lessons early on. He wouldn’t let me go right to being a rock star, you know? And he did right by me as a teacher to not let me skip steps. I think the other thing that he did was let me know that I had to, if I wanted to have a career in the music business, I had to market myself. Not just learn my craft, but I also had to learn the music business, and that was really good advice.

Christopher: Gotcha. And you mentioned before you had some failed auditions along the way. What happened that kind of shifted your track from I’m gonna be a professional drummer to maybe I’ll take a different angle into music?

Todd: I think the big moment was I auditioned to be a Disney musician. I was living in Orlando, Florida and I was playing in rock bands and touring with my band and just had an air of confidence and I walked into the audition and heard other drummers drumming and it didn’t sound like they were doing anything that I could or couldn’t do, and so I walked in there and I didn’t rehearse one bit, I just said, “Okay, what do you want from me?” And they told me to do 16 bars of jazz, 16 bars of rock, and then 16 bars of just free form soloing. And so, I did my thing and wasn’t prepared to do 16 bars, I wasn’t counting right in my head, I might have played some cool licks, but I wasn’t auditioning to their standards and thy quickly let me know I had failed and disrespected the system.

It was humbling and they really like let me have it, and I needed to hear that to understand that drumming on a professional level, your ego and your talent was only going to get you so far, there was a system and a process and there was a hundred other guys in line that were playing by their rules that were much more qualified for the job, because of that, whereas … yeah, it was a good lesson for me to learn that there was more to it than just playing and talent.

Christopher: So, was that a decisive, clear message to you and you said, “Right, that’s it. I’m not gonna be a professional drummer”? Or was it just kind of one sign along the way that maybe you’d take a different route forwards?

Todd: I think it was not I’m not going to be a professional drummer. It was just a nice ego check that when I approached the music business I had to have a respect for it. And so, from that point on I really worked to figure out the game and play the rules of the game and not try to just drive my way through it. So, I still played semi professionally in touring bands and making money and doing recording projects and that type of thing, but I don’t think I stopped fully being a professional musician until my music business career took off to the point where I just didn’t have time to do it, and even then I was still playing and it was more physical limitations that I had developing. Early signs of arthritis, the pain associated with it made me stop.

Christopher: I see, so this kind of phase of your story I think is what made me so interested to speak with you, because I think a lot of our listeners are somewhere on that trajectory between high school learning the instrument and out there touring with a band and trying to make it in the industry. And I think it’s so interesting that you went through that yourself, but then you took this sort of into the music business so that now you have actually the whole other side of the picture. You know what’s going on in the head of those people auditioning, the musicians for Disney. And you know what’s going on in the head of the record execs who are deciding the A and R stuff.
So, I was really keen to kind of bring you on and share some of your insights for those musicians who are on that trajectory of I want to make it in the music business. I want to have a music career. I’m somewhere on that trajectory, but I’m maybe, I’ve got ego issues, maybe I don’t understand the marketing side, maybe I’m totally baffled by what the 21st century music industry even looks like, and so maybe you can share a bit about how you got started on that side of things and where your music industry career took you.

Todd: Yeah, no, I appreciate you picking up on that. It’s definitely something I thought about throughout my music industry career, and running a record label with a staff of 20 people and hiring all of those 20 people, I did get to learn what types of people made better record company employees or music industry employees, and I definitely think that the musicians who have been in musicians shoes had empathy for musicians and really made better employees because they could empathize with the musicians. It was as simple as that. Not to say that people that weren’t musicians couldn’t do great things in the music industry, it’s just that it made it a lot easier to get along with musicians and do business together. I always thought that was important.

Christopher: That makes a lot of sense. It’s funny I was talking just last week with a few peers of mine who run similar music education websites and we were having that debate of does everyone on your team need to be a musician themselves. And on my team, everyone is. I really believe like it gives you a particular insight into the people who are using your service or your products, and to me it’s really important that everyone on my team plays an instrument or does something in music. But, you know, not everyone feels that way, so it’s interesting to hear you really saw that in the label side of things.

Todd: Yeah, it’s true. I think artists would feel better also if they can rest assured that there are a lot of musicians in the music industry that have been in their shoes, so it’s important, but I think to answer the other part of the question, you are business person right from the moment that you create a piece of music and put it out into the world. I didn’t realize it when I was booking my own concerts for my band and doing the PR and press along our tour dates that we would book. Pressing up records, and booking shows, and selling tickets. That was all entrepreneurial skills, so musicians are actually great entrepreneurs ’cause they learn from an early age how to market and promote themselves and build a lemonade stand, so have confidence in yourself that you actually have entrepreneurial skills early on in becoming a musician.

Christopher: That’s a great observation. So, what were your first positions before you got to the point of running the label with 20 employees and what was your route into the industry?

Todd: I alongside of being a touring musician, I needed to find jobs that would work well with being a musician. So, I tried a series of different things. One was a cab driver, and it allowed me to have more time to do music and be able to tour and get back two months later and still have a job. Along the way I became an inside sales person for a telcom company selling internet service and phone service bundles and stuff, and I was really good at it. I built up a big client base, and made a lot of money for the company, and I took those, but I didn’t like the telcom industry.

I wanted to do music, so I took those skills and said, “I can apply skills to record label industry”, so I got a break from a guy who trusted me and let me take on a few projects selling his music into records stores and into distributors, and I did the same thing I did for telcom, and I applied it to the music business and it worked. After a couple months that one client turned into 20 clients, and I started selling music in the record stores and distributors and I ended up doing that for a company called Fearless Records, a small independent label in California with three or four employees. They hired me as their Head of Sales, and quickly made me the General Manager after a year or two, and I stayed there for 13 years and we grew that company to 20 employees and tens of millions of dollars in revenue. So, that was my course into the business.

Christopher: Very cool. And one thing I love about your site is the simple name of it heatonthestreet.com. I think it’s fantastic. And maybe you can just explain to listeners where that phrase comes from and why you chose that for the title of the site.

Todd: Yeah, I picked that term up, heat on the street, somewhere along the ways, I can’t remember who first said it to me, but what it means to me is organic, word of mouth promotion, because that’s really for any marketer the best form of promotion, you know, word of mouth. And once your project takes on a life of its own with the fans and on the streets, it gets so much easier. Everything falls into place, because your fans are your marketing campaign. You don’t have to advertise and when you do advertise, it converts at a lot higher ratio, so you don’t have to spend as much money. You don’t have to do a lot of the things that artists who don’t have that organic buzz have to do. And it makes it a lot easier, so that was the magic. If there’s any magic in the music business, that was it for me is the organic buzz and word of mouth buzz. So, everything that I do revolves around creating that, and it really is fan-driven. I believe anybody can make fans, and nurture those fans, and entertain those fans, so that’s what I teach on the blog heatonthestreet.com.

Christopher: Very cool, and I definitely want to pick your brains a little bit about building a fan base, but I love the way you describe it there in terms of that being the magic, like if there’s any magic to it, that’s the secret sauce. And you know, on the show, we talk a lot about the myths and misunderstandings in music that end up holding people back, you know, there’s the myth that the great musicians are all just born gifted and they can play their instrument from day one and it all comes easy to them.

When you pick that apart, you realize actually there’s a lot going on behind the scenes or under the hood that lets them do what they can do, and it sounds like it’s a little bit the same in the music industry. You know, I think we all have that kind of notion of the talented pop star who comes out of nowhere, get a record contract, and is immediately number one best-selling artist. We imagine that’s how the music industry works, but I think the way you described it just there hints at the fact that maybe actually there’s more of a system to it. There’s a bit more of a logic or a process that people can have in mind.

Todd: There definitely is. Yeah, there’s with every industry there’s just the way thing work. There’s a system in place, and if you can figure it out and learn about it and educate yourself, anybody can establish some success in the business, so I definitely don’t believe in overnight success stories. You know, even on YouTube when a seven year old virtuoso, there was somebody behind that kid teaching them and spending time with them to develop whatever gift it is that they might have. I just think it’s your mindset. It’s just believing that you can do things.

To touch on the overnight success story, I think most of those people naturally test things. It’s like trial and error. They just, it’s repetition, it’s getting your reps in and failing at things, testing different things out and seeing what works better. I’ve been involved in a lot of successes actually too, and I don’t think any of them were overnight successes. There’s a lot of hard, hard work and long years of working away.

The most recent example I can think of a number one is Portugal. the Man. They’re a band in American who had a number one, the number one selling alternative song and number one most played on the radio for alternative music for 2017. I started working with the band right from the beginning in 2003 or 2004, so it’s been well over ten years, and it took the band that long to finally break out and have a hit.

Christopher: Well, it sounds funny to say it that ten years of hard work is a reassuring thing to hear, but I think it is deeply reassuring to hear that there isn’t magic or a luck to it or at least that’s not the main thing. There is kind of a strategy or a path you can follow that will deliver the results, ’cause I think otherwise a lot of people get frustrated feeling like it’s a pot shot and when you’re 13 that’s exciting ’cause maybe you get picked, but if you’re you know 30 or 50, and you still want to make it in the music industry, that idea of a pot shot with someone picking you is not so exciting. You’d kind of prefer to have a nice proven strategy to follow.

Todd: Yeah, no there’s definitely. There’s just a mindset that you can establish. Believing in yourself and not just simplifying things and making it, “Well, if I just become the best musician possible, everything else will happen.” You do have to master not only the craft of your instrument, but of the music industry.

Christopher: Cool. Well, I want to dig into the details now in a minute, but before we move on, how common is what you just described as an attitude in the music industry, you know if we pick the average A and R guy or the head of a label. Are they thinking in terms of talent and finding the next superstar that’s just an overnight sensation? Or is everyone in the industry thinking the way you are?

Todd: No, I think within the music industry, I think everybody’s thinking along the same lines that I am. We’re not just looking for the next like virtuoso talent. We’re looking for a proven commercial success, so there’s lots of different ways for the industry to find out if your project is going to be successful. As soon as you put your music out on a streaming service it’s out there to be scrutinized and shared or crawled by an algorithm. If it has viral potential, the algorithms could pick up on it. Examples of those are YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, all of those are algorithms and they’re watching how many people listen to you music, share your music, skip it you know, if they don’t like it, talking about it, leaving a comment, all of that stuff.

So, the industry has lots of ways to track all of that information and they can already tell if you have a fan base or not before you contact them or submit your demo. It’s very easy for them to recognize what artists are out there with not only talented songwriting and great art, but also who’s connecting the dots and making it successful online.

Christopher: That makes sense. Before I ask you about how someone can get to that point to where they have traction and they have a fan base, I suppose I should ask the clarifying question of how should we even be thinking about the music industry or record labels in this day and age? You know, you just mentioned streaming services. I know that some people listening are thinking you know, labels are done for. I’m just gonna put my music online and it’ll take care of itself. What would you say to someone about how to think about should I try and get a record contract? Should I try and get a label to sign me? What is the role the music industry is playing right now?

Todd: Yeah, I think staying DIY and doing things yourself and creating your own fan base and nurturing that fan base and proving to yourself that you have fans and proving to the rest of the world that you have a fan base. I think until you’ve done that, don’t enlist the help of a record label. The way to think about it is build your fan base first and then when you’re ready, you’re making money and you’re ready for larger investment or a partner, that’s what the labels for. They can come in and take something that you’ve built and pour gas on the fire. So, I think focus on that. The bigger the fan base you build, the more money you’re going to be making on your own and at that point, it’s going to be hard to justify giving up a large percentage of your income to a record label. But if a label can multiply what you’re doing and you can grow exponentially by putting some air play, TV promotion, movies, in-store play, tie ups with drink companies or fashion brands, or exposure to the mass media and publicity, then that’s when you can justify getting the help or partnering with a record label, but until then just focus on building your own business and having your own income. It’s going to be more profitable for you to do it on your own in the early days.

Christopher: Okay, perfect. Thank you. That’s a really clear mental model of how to think about the role the record label plays these days. I think probably going back 50 plus years the record label was your only route to getting your music heard beyond just playing locally to a large extent, and now we have this amazing opportunity online, but I think people haven’t quite reconciled those two, and I think the way you just described it makes a lot of sense. Yes, you can get your music out there totally DIY, you can build up a fan base, you can build up some revenue even, but then there’s still this kind of level of growth that requires the assets and the channels and the network that record label can bring to the table.

Todd: Yeah, yeah, and to add a little bit to that, because let’s face it, I think there was some research somewhere that said that 90% of musicians no matter all the bad stuff they’ve heard about record labels, 90% of the musicians if given the chance would still want to sign with a record label. But even then there’s different types of record labels, you know, if you want to be famous and be a pop star, major labels dominate that space. They have offices worldwide that specialize in all of those things I mentioned you know, air play, TV, movies, brand partnerships, and they have offices in each territory around the world that can help you do that, so they’re probably going to be the partner for you.

But there’s a lot of great independent labels out there too, and if you feel like there specialized, that independent label is specialized in a community of people or fans that you know would like your music, then an independent label might have something more to offer you than a major label. They can quickly plug you into their labels community and fan base and add a lot of fans to what you already have. Independent labels have a lot of value when it comes to specializing in a certain type of music or a certain community.

Christopher: Got you. Okay. And so, if we imagine our listener is in that phase of they’ve got some music together, they may or may not have published it at all yet, but they certainly haven’t built up a substantial fan base yet. What advice can you offer or what ideas should they be thinking about in terms of building that fan base in an efficient and successful way?

Todd: Okay, yeah. I think it depends on the musicians goals. If they’re more of a hobbyist and just doing it as an outlet for enjoyment, but still wanting to kind of put it out there for the world to consume, you need to approach it differently from a performer and somebody who wants to tour and perform and build a large fan base. Then there’s also the songwriter who might not want to be a performer, but is not necessarily doing it as a hobby that wants to make an income from it. Those are three very different approaches.

What I would say to the hobbyist is just it’s never too early to start putting your stuff out there. Put it on YouTube or Spotify, let the algorithms take control and maybe they’re gonna like it, maybe you’ll get noticed, it’s gonna take on some sort of viral life. If it’s not too big a concern to make money from it or grow a fan base, just put it out there. Don’t just do it haphazardly, put it out there with intent, so where you could kind of set it and forget it. Make a YouTube video or put it on Spotify, but do it in a way that’s smart and optimizing for those platforms. So you can research and learn how to properly put a music track or video on YouTube or how to properly put your content on Spotify or Apple Music or a streaming service. So, don’t just throw it up there.

To the songwriter there’s lots of ways to get involved in that, but I think the best advice I can give is get a mentor in the song writing field. You don’t have to have a network of 50 or 100 music publishers or music supervisors or people that have the power to get your music out to the masses. It might be just one or two people that you make a connection with that really like your music that help you bring 90% of your business. And not everybody has to like your music out there. Find the people that just like what you’re doing, that specialize in the type of music you’re making. It’s important to find those people. You don’t have to cast such a wide net. So, go and find the one or two music supervisors that really specialize in your music or maybe it’s film trailers or film soundtracks, or commercials or jingles, of things that you do well, and make contact with those people. They’ll bring you a lot of business.

For performers and bands, it’s a much more involved process, and if you have a group of people it’s a lot easier than being a solo artist. You can divide duties and conquer, but you want to learn how the music industry operates. You want to learn how to build a fan base. You want to set yourself up for success in every aspect of the music industry. So, I think for the performer, the best advice that would be make sure you’re building a fan base, you’re keeping in touch with those fans, you’re finding who your target fans are and trying to convert them into fans. Then once you’ve got them as fans retaining them and making them love everything that you do from the music to your merchandise to concert tickets and fan clubs and all of that.

I think that’s hopefully an overview of the different ways musicians can get into it and how to get it started.

Christopher: Thank you, yeah. And I think those three sets of advice aren’t mutually exclusive, and you know, I think that message of building up and fan base and really focusing on getting people super engaged with your music, that’s actually really key for the hobbyist as well, you know, whether or not you’re trying to build up a fan base to get the labels interested and get to that level of growth, it’s still kind of the crux of why you’re putting your music out there, right?

Todd: True.

Christopher: And I love the advice to be strategic, yes, put your stuff out there early, but don’t just fling it out there and hope for the best. You know, there are things you can learn to actually help get eyeballs or ears rather on your music, and get the exposure you’re hoping for.

Todd: Yep, that’s right.

Christopher: And I’d like to touch a little more, if you don’t mind, on what you said for songwriters in particular about finding a mentor. That’s something that’s come up on the show a few times, and I’d just love to hear your perspective on what that mentor role looks like? Who is a mentor? How do you find one? What do those conversations look like? What do they help with or not help with? How should people be thinking about the role a mentor could play in their musical life?

Todd: Yeah, I’m big on mentors. I’ve had a couple of great mentors whether it’s been musically or professionally or just kind of life advice. What they would look like my dad always gave me great advice, and one of them was he said, “If you want to get advice from somebody pick somebody that’s a generation older than you, not somebody your own age, or not somebody too much older than you, because somebody your own age doesn’t have enough perspective. They haven’t been through those experiences most likely. And somebody that’s too old their advice might be out of date.” It just might not relevant to what you’re doing, they might not understand you enough, so one generation ahead is really kind of good. People make great mentors, but a book or a class can be equally as good. And I can also warn having just one individual as a mentor might not be so healthy, might not be a broad enough opinion. It might be too narrowly focused on one skill set, so get multiple people.

I mean, I think podcasts actually are a great source of mentorship. I certainly have listened to hundreds of podcasts and picked up so much knowledge from them, so I kind of consider podcasting and podcasters as mentors to me. Yeah, so I think, well actually there is one more, probably my favorite as far as mentors is Masterminds. So, getting on a group call of three or four people with similar interests, but in different fields even and sometimes they’re called Masterminds, sometimes they’re called accountability groups. But you get on there with some friends or colleagues and you talk about what you’re working on and everybody gets ten, 15 minutes to talk about what they’re struggling with or what they’re trying to do and then they let other people talk for a couple minutes on advice on what you should do, and everybody brings a different point of view. I really enjoy those and do them, and they kind of go for a couple months, then fizz out and then you find new friends or a new group of people to do it with. I just think they’re really fun for mentoring as well.

Christopher: That’s a fantastic suggestion. I’ve done a lot of Mastermind groups myself on the entrepreneur side of things, and you know that conversation I alluded to earlier talking about whether your team members should be musicians or not, that was on a Mastermind call. I have to admit, I’ve never really thought about it in the context of musicians trying to make it into the music industry or trying to build a fan base. I love that idea, and you know, we’ve certainly seen the power of accountability in the sense of just partnering up inside Musical U, practice accountability, you know, did you do you practice this week. That’s worked really well, and so I can certainly imagine that you know, if you’re a hobbyist musician wanting to get your music out there, it could be a huge asset to just have a call once a week with a few other people in that same situation and share what’s the latest YouTube strategy or what’s the main thing you need to know about this, that or the other, and just share those successes and learning points too.

Todd: Yeah, it made me think of something else even in the record label business, learning marketing tactics from different people where I had a group of friends. One was into hip-hop, I was into rock music, and then we had another friend that was into EDM, and each of them ran labels, so you had three people in this group that ran record labels, but completely different mindsets. EDM musicians put out singles and are very focused on remixes and just singles. They’re marketed and sold completely different. Rock musicians are focused on making albums and marketing albums and touring and ticket sales. Hip-hop there’s a totally different culture in how to market into that world, and it’s highly promotion-driven and tapping into large communities and that. So, I learned so much from those different record labels and it helped my rock label business as well.

Christopher: Fantastic. So, I want to be respectful of your time, and we should wrap things up shortly, but I do want to make sure listeners know what are you up to these days and where can they go if they want to learn more from you about the music industry about building up a fan base and about getting their music heard?

Todd: Yeah, heatonthestreet.com is a musician’s advice blog and there’s always relevant topic for building a fan base, learning how to use Spotify and tactics for promotion on Spotify. There’s articles on how to get started in the music business and how to make money in the music business. There’s articles on 20, 30 different ways to make money in the music industry. So, there’s lot of advice to musicians on there.

I do consulting for record labels, artist, managers, and even do some coaching and mentoring for artists myself. But my main focus is trying to educate a lot of musicians and that’s what I love about heatonthestreet.com is it allows me to reach a large audience of musicians and helping more people rather than a handful of people, so eventually I hope to open up a music academy and turn Heat on the Street into an academy online. That’s not there yet, but maybe one day it will be.

Christopher: Terrific. So, the last thing I really wanted to ask you before we wrap up was you know, we’ve discussed a lot of myths or misconceptions and I think hopefully cleared up a lot of stuff for people listening, but is there one thing that people misunderstand about succeeding in the music industry that you could just kind of wave a wand and fix for them right now?

Todd: The thing I hear most frequently from musicians is if I could just get on a show with a bigger artist I could get fans that way or if I could just get a record label, then I would get fans. I’d just like to tell them that that’s a backwards approach. First you want to make the fans, and you want to create demand, then you can invite people to come see you perform or then you might attract a record label. If you grow your business, a record label will want to partner with you, but you have to build the fan base first.

So, if you support well established artists and you get that opportunity to get the show, you want to be the band that promotes and builds your fan base before you get to that show, so that the promoter comes away impressed. They gave you an opportunity to support that artist, but in fact, it turned out that the audience loved you and you were the kind of artist that stole the show, or you had a long line at the merch table, or you just gave the crowd that kind of overwhelming feeling and kind of stole the show.

That’s the artist you want to be. You don’t want to be the artist that show up and hopes to siphon fans from the headlining artist. So, that’s kind of the misconception I hear most is if we could just get the opportunity, we would be building fans much quicker. I just don’t think it works that way.

Christopher: Cool. What a fascinating insight. That’s a real mental shift for people to make, but I can see how it would be a really powerful one. So, as we mentioned there is a ton on heatonthestreet.com for you to check out if you’re looking for details on everything Todd has been talking about in terms of getting your music online or building up that fan base or even getting signed. Do check out his website for sure, and I think all that remains is to say a big thank you, Todd, you’ve been really generous with your time and your wisdom today. And I know you will have cleared up a lot of myths and confusion for our listeners, so thank you so much for joining us today.

Todd: Thanks for having me, Christopher. I hope everybody enjoyed it and please check out heatonthestreet.com and just thanks again for giving me the opportunity to come on and chat with you all.

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post Today’s Music Industry and Finding Your Fans, with Todd McCarty appeared first on Musical U.

In this episode, we discuss the value of using your voice as a training tool to hone your instrumental skills – and how your voice is closely tied to rhythm, phrasing, and storytelling in music.

Listen to the episode:

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• About Singing as a Tool
• Learning to Sing in Tune, with George Bevan
• Making Music with Ease, with Gerald Klickstein
• Inside the Jazz Mind, with Marshall McDonald of the Count Basie Orchestra
• Musical Storytelling and the Art of Cabaret, with Fiona-Jane Weston

Transcript

On this podcast we often talk about the specific skills of musicality: such as playing by ear or improvising.

But there’s also the broader notion of “playing musically” – which is a slightly more subtle thing. And while it’s closely related to all those specific skills, it’s something to be cultivated in its own right.

When you see a great performer and think “Wow, they’re really musical” or “Gosh, they have incredible musicality”, it might be specific skills you’re noticing, like their ability to play anything they hear, or sit in easily with a new band, or improvise something that sounds amazing, seemingly out of nowhere. But it might just as well be a concert performer who isn’t demonstrating any of those specific skills, but plays in a way that moves the audience and makes a really deep impression with their music.

That’s what I mean by “playing musically” and one valuable thing to know about if you want to play more musically is the notion of playing like you’re singing.

Now before we dive in, one thing to clarify: I’m not going to be talking about making an instrument sound like a human voice. That’s a fascinating topic in itself. I remember back when the first MUSE album came out there was this particular solo on a track where I just could not tell whether the distorted sound I was hearing was a guitar or a singer – and that was really cool and made me realise just how expressive guitar playing can be. And it’s not limited to distorted sounds and audio effects, I think we’ve probably all heard a saxophone or a violin play and felt a deep instinctive connection as if we’re singing or hearing somebody sing. So there is a lot of interesting stuff around instrument technique and the way you can make your timbre sound more like it’s somebody singing. But that’s not what we’re going to be covering in this episode.

We’re going to be talking about some powerful things you can learn from singing to make your playing sound “more musical” – whether you’re a singer yourself or not, and whatever kind of timbre you want your instrument to have.

When I chose the topic for this episode I was expecting to go deep into one specific thing about approaching playing as if it’s singing – but when I started to think about it I realised this is actually a big and multi-faceted topic. So I’m going to cover a few different interesting angles in a lighter way. Because I think that if any one of them resonates with you, you’ll be able to take that idea away and quickly make your own playing much more musical…

1: Inner hearing is closely tied to singing, and that leads to a musical performance

All the main methods of musicianship training like Kodály, Orff, Music Learning Theory, and so on agree: to play musically you need to develop your inner hearing. The ability to imagine music vividly in your mind.

This is imtimately tied to your singing voice and while it is possible to develop good inner hearing without singing it’s vastly easier to do so through using your voice as a training tool, as discussed in episode 37.

What’s more your voice is the most direct route to bring the music you hear in your head out into the world without the complications of key signatures and fingering and instrument technique.

If you’re flinching at this and thinking “singing’s not for me” then I’d encourage you to check out episode 12 with George Bevan for the low-down on how anyone can learn the fundamentals of singing quickly and easily.

So one reason approaching music from the viewpoint of singing is that a musically meaningful performance almost always stems from the performer having a vivid mental model of the performance they want to create – and that inner hearing is deeply tied to our ability to imagine ourselves singing, or indeed to actually do it.

I loved how Gerald Klickstein, author of “The Musician’s Way” talked about this back in episode 10, the importance of forming your own mental model of how you want your performance to sound *before* working away on your instrument trying to produce it.

If you don’t find yourself frequently getting your current repertoire stuck in your head on loop, or absent-mindedly humming it to yourself during the day then you probably aren’t spending enough time and effort on the mental model side of creating a compelling performance. Challenge yourself to sing the pieces you want to perform and imagine yourself singing them and you’ll find you get a whole new depth of understanding of the expressive possibilities available to you.

2: For natural language phrasing

The second reason to think in terms of singing is a much more literal one. Singing and spoken language evolved together and a lot of the rhythmic ideas in music actually stem from the rhythmic patterns in speech. In music we formalise things tightly in terms of quarter notes and triplets and time signatures and rests – but listen to a great musician play and you’ll realise they are absolutely not sticking rigidly to the precision of a metronome for their rhythms!

They’re also not strictly obeying the dynamic markings like forte and piano, crescendos and diminuendos – or at least they’re not sticking only to these. The performer has enormous leeway to make their own decisions about note emphasis and volume, and the best performers make full use of that.

Now I’m not saying that you should completely ignore the written rhythms or dynamic markings and make it all up completely – but to stick intensely strictly to them would be a big mistake too.

Often when talking about Musical U I’ll make reference to how we can help musicians get away from “playing like a robot” and instead feel free, confident and creative. A big part of that is in those specific skills like playing by ear and improvising that we teach, but a lot of it also comes down to making your own musical choices, such as interpreting rhythms and dynamics in your own way.

So what does all that have to do with playing like singing? Well, one big gateway here is to think in terms of words. Whether or not the piece you’re playing has lyrics, you can approach rhythm and phrasing as if the notes you’re playing are syllables of words in a sentence. You can make up meaningless scat syllables DEMO or even write your own lyrics – or use the existing lyrics if they exist. But the point is that the stream of notes with rigid rhythms defined in the sheet music will suddenly reveal all kinds of subtleties and possibilities.

This is what Marshall McDonald was talking about in episode 94 when he mentioned concert pianists actually taking a breath between phrases, almost as if they were singing each one rather than playing it.

And here’s the really cool thing: We all speak and listen to language, pretty much all day every day. Which means you already have a deep instinctive understanding of how spoken phrasing works.

It’s pretty hard to explain to a musician in words how to make their phrasing sound more expressive – there are tips you can give but often it’s best done through demonstration and mimickry. But another big shortcut is to just ask: if this was a spoken sentence, how would I say it?

If you’re playing solo you actually have complete freedom in this. For the tune to be recognisable you won’t want to wander completely from the official rhythm but you can bend it pretty far. If you’re playing in a group then you need to be a bit sensitive to which players have that freedom at any given time – for example the rhythm section of drums and bass in a rock band tend to be pretty rigid in keeping the beat, which gives the other players and particularly the melody part a lot of freedom to play around with rhythm. In an orchestra everybody needs to be quite careful about their timing for things to sound cohesive – but there it’s really the conductor “playing” the orchestra as their instrument, and so it’s he or she who has that rhythmic freedom.

So next time you work on a piece try looking at the notes not as individual notes or dots on a page – but as syllables of words of sentences. Try speaking or singing them and explore what you feel would be a natural way of expressing it. Then bring that to your playing.

3: For conveying meaning

The third way to approaching playing like singing is kind of a subcategory of the last one. When a piece actually does have lyrics, it can be instructive and inspiring to really give thought to the content of those lyrics.

This is what Fiona-Jane Weston was talking about in episode 96 when she said sometimes the words are saying one thing while the music tells another story – and to perform the piece credibly you need to understand and express both sides.

So stepping away from the message of “you have total freedom and words or singing can be an avenue to finding that”, this is more about “there is a message already in the piece, and considering the words can help you find it”. Naturally those two aren’t mutually exclusive, you can use the words to understand the piece, and then also to help you express what you’ve found. But I did want to distinguish them because they are very different benefits of approaching playing like singing.

What does this mean in practice? Well it means if you’re an instrument player you need to always consider: does the music I’m playing actually have words to it? If so, what are they, and what do they tell me about how I should be playing this music? If you’re a singer then it means taking a bit of time to consider the lyrics not just in technical terms of vowels and breathing but in the artistic sense of what the song is about and why each word was chosen by the writer.

If we start from an assumption that composers and songwriters had good reason for choosing the words they did, and that the power of the music they wrote is strongly tied to those lyrics – then it’s clear that for any musician to perform the music without carefully considering those words would be really missing out on the potential musicality of their performance.

There’s a broader point too, about understanding the context the music was written in, aside from lyrics. In my conversation with Fiona-Jane she talked about needing to know the storyline a song fits into to really get its meaning and convey it well, and I gave an example from my own past, of spending months learning a piece that was inspired by a painting – without it ever occurring to me to go see what the painting looked like! If we value the artistic creation of a piece of music then we owe it to its creator to pay some attention to the context they wanted it to be understood in.

A small corollary here. I said this idea of considering the meaning of words was different but not entirely separate from the last point, about playing notes as if they’re syllables. And to return to an idea there, that you can make up your own words for music that doesn’t have lyrics: don’t underestimate the value of doing so, especially when you combine it with this idea, of drawing on the lyrics to guide your artistic expression. To put it simply: If you take a piece without lyrics and you write a set of words that are all sunshine and butterflies and play it with those words running through your head – and then the next day you write a different set of words all about tragedy and yearning and play the music with those words running through your head – I think you can probably imagine how differently those two performances would turn out!

The last thing I’ll say here is just: please don’t be intimidated. If you’re anything like I was then you might already be feeling a little lost in all of the technicalities of music, playing the right notes at the right time – and this layer of artistic expression, and the idea of bringing such meaning to your playing might seem lofty and very advanced. But as I hope my butterflies versus tragedy example demonstrated, this doesn’t need to be high art to be effective. Any musical performance can be enhanced by the musician having a vivid inner model of what they want to create, playing notes as if they’re parts of words and sentences, and having a specific lyrical meaning in mind for each phrase they play. This applies to you playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” just as much as it applies to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach or Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah.

The downside of playing like singing

So if approaching playing like singing is such a powerful concept, are there any downsides? Well, overall I’d say none so big as to discourage you from trying it. But one thing worth mentioning is that it *can*, if you’re not careful, actually restrict your creativity rather than enhancing it.

For example I spent a while learning jazz standards on piano and I would always hesitate when picking one I didn’t know and wonder if I should look up the words or not. Because as we’ve talked about, those words can bring a great richness and depth to your performance. But it is also easy to get trapped in that interpretation of the notes. In a way there was something elegant about approaching the new piece purely as dots on a page, and trying to find for myself what the form was, where the best phrasing lay or which parts were most important, and how it all could work as a whole. Once you know the lyrics, a lot of that falls into place, and a bit like when you see a movie before reading the novel it was based on and seeing all the characters in your mind played by the actors they were in the movie, it can be hard to get that idea out of your head once it’s there!

The good news is it’s hard but not impossible. I found that the scat or “bum bum bah” idea mentioned earlier helped, as I could consciously blat out the lyrics with some meaningless syllables, and that let me escape a bit from any preconceptions about how the music should be played. And it’s no coincidence this is a core part of jazz improvisation, the idea of taking the melody and then starting to strip away the details of the verse version and cut it down to its core and start playing around with what it could be.

Conclusion

So, as I said at the start: I thought this was a neatly-defined topic I could share a few pointers on, but I quickly realised there’s a ton of interesting stuff here to explore. I’ve pulled out three ideas about playing like singing that I hope will be useful for you: The idea of using singing, or inner hearing, to develop your ideal performance before you try playing it out loud. The idea of treating notes as parts of words and sentences and leveraging your natural instinct for spoken language to help you find the rhythmic and dynamic possibilities available to you. And the idea of really paying attention to the actual text of a piece to ensure that you appreciate the artistic intention behind it and can convey it as powerfully as possible to your audience.

I won’t pretend to have covered this topic fully but I hope one or more of those ideas gives you a fresh perspective on the music you’ve been playing and how you can make your performances sound more musical, just by shifting how you’re thinking about the notes that you play.

This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!

Free Worldwide Shipping
Pre-order discount available now!

→ Learn More ←

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post About Playing Like Singing appeared first on Musical U.

While that might be enough to get some people to begin taking up guitar or piano or saxophone, far too many others who have an interest in learning a new instrument never take the time to actively pursue it.

The Barriers to Entry

So what stops many people from choosing an instrument that interests them and just going for it?

Some people believe that “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” – the notion that if you’re an older adult who is relatively set in your ways, learning an instrument will be too complex for your mind.

For others, learning a new instrument sounds great on the surface, and they understand the benefits it can bring to their lives… but being able to balance the interest in learning an instrument while also juggling the rigors of being an adult – a full-time job, a spouse, raising children – is far too challenging.

But the two above excuses pale in comparison with the biggest obstacles most people face – the worry of making a mistake and the fear of failure.

These fears extend far beyond just the realm of music learning. It’s in our nature to try to find reasons to not accomplish a goal we know is important when it involves the risk of messing up or failing.

Your friend, for example, may know that he needs to lose weight. He understands that there are successful methods in place to help him live a healthier lifestyle. And he is certainly aware of the mental and physical benefits of being slimmer.

However, overhauling your lifestyle is a difficult and daunting task – it’s so much more comforting to go to that family barbecue, eat cheeseburgers, and guzzle soda.

Falling into these old patterns of behavior feels good because of its familiarity. When something is familiar, it’s not scary. And if it’s not scary, you’re free from fear.

When seated nicely in your comfort zone, you never have to worry about making mistakes. You’re the master of your own cushy domain.

Fear: The Ultimate Musical Bogeyman

In truth, our mistakes are much bigger than simply making the wrong choices when presented with smarter options. In fact, when it comes to music learning, the fear of making mistakes can be crippling.

Some people are monumentally hard on themselves, or terribly embarrassed about being judged by others, so the idea of sitting with an accomplished individual that knows a given instrument like the back of their hand feels daunting.

In fact, if you’re an older adult that’s had a lot of success in your personal and professional life, it can feel downright intimidating to sit down to play the acoustic guitar or violin or keyboard and commit errors in front of your teacher.

The truth is, as human beings, many of us fear failure. And any time you’re posed with the opportunity to move outside of your comfort zone in order to have an enriching experience, the fear of failing can be so strong that it creates a “fight or flight” response within the body.

And many people do choose to take flight, running as far away as possible from the chance to learn a new instrument.  

To have a new experience.

To acquire a new skill or tap into a talent that’s gone dormant.

A Necessary Evil

The problem with this choice is that it’s antithetical to the learning process. Whether you’re learning to ride a bike or play the piano, mistakes are a necessary evil.  

You have to fall off your bike a couple of times before you understand how to properly balance your body weight on two wheels. And you have to hit the wrong notes a few times before you truly master the music alphabet.

When we have a fear of making a mistake, we make a mental connection to both danger and judgement. When it comes to music learning, it’s important to remember that your music teacher is present to help grow your skills, not shrink your ego. Wherever you choose to take music lessons is a safe space for all who enter. The only danger is in not walking through the front door.

Will you be a perfect student? No. Will you make mistakes? Absolutely. But it’s important to make mistakes.

You cannot learn how to play an instrument properly without seeing where you erred, and then using those mistakes as your foundation to master the instrument.

Holding your violin bow the wrong way initially and being corrected by your teacher will enable you to master the correct hold. Messing up a difficult bar or two leads you to hone in on the tricky spot and play it through until it’s no longer a problem area. Ineffective practice, with self-reflection and adjustment, will turn into deliberate practice.

For the Long Haul

Nobody comes out of the womb being proficient in anything – not even the rare child prodigy. One has to hone his or her skills through commitment and hard work.

Learning a new instrument is as much about the mind as it is about the body – both your memory and your muscle memory improve over time. How fast they improve is directly tied to your commitment to practice and repetition. Because learning a new instrument is very much a mental exercise, it would be wise to understand that your mental attitude helps set the tone for whether you will have success over the long term.

If you accept the challenge of learning a new instrument from a positive point of view – that you understand it won’t be mastered overnight, but through repeated practice and perseverance you will accomplish your goal – then you are already halfway there.

LeBron James isn’t successful because he’s physically gifted. LeBron James is successful because he works hard at his craft. He’s dedicated. He’s persistent.

He doesn’t always find ultimate success in the form of a Championship ring every single year, but he doesn’t let his fear of failure hurt his chase for that success. Instead, he learns from his mistakes. He works hard in the off-season to get better. And he’s always back on the basketball court come the Fall.

This is how you achieve success in learning anything in life – especially a new instrument.

Following Through

So, you have the positive mindset you need to embark on your musical journey. You have accepted that mistakes and failure will be a part of it – as will triumphs, breakthroughs, and revelations.

So how do you translate your mentality and musical goals into action?

Nobody loves hearing this, but learning an instrument is going to take a whole lot of good, hard work. This will mean playing the same tricky passage over and over until you’ve mastered it, wrapping your head around some difficult theory, and listening to criticism.

Practice everyday, even if some days, it’s only for ten minutes. If you’re learning alone through books or an online course, read them multiple times and take notes, if needed. If you’re getting in-person lessons from a teacher, never be afraid to ask for additional help. Internalize the music alphabet and learn to speak the musical language – these basics go a long way.

Michael L. Moore is the founder of Digital Piano Review Guide, a website aimed at helping beginners find the ideal piano that best fits their needs and lifestyle. The website also provides basic instruction on how to play the piano.

The post Why Mistakes and Failure Are Essential for Music Learning appeared first on Musical U.