Author: musicalitywrld

This shouldn’t discourage you – quite the opposite. You’ll find you can learn by leaps and bounds in situations where you are challenged, because you find yourself wanting to rise to the occasion.

This week, we explore some seemingly intimidating topics, and break down how you can make them accessible and learnable for yourself: we look at the exciting and stimulating waters of multi-instrumentalism, sit down with a singing mythbuster to learn how you can apply science to your singing for amazing results, introduce you to a process for learning to read music if it’s a skill you’ve yet to tackle, and give a primer on the seemingly-difficult-but-actually-not topic of musical frequencies.

Each of these involves going deeper than your mere practice – it involves looking at the mechanics of your practice, the “how” and “why” of why you play, how you play, and how you can improve. Get excited!

Multi-Instrumentalism

Learning a second, or third, or fourth instrument is one of the most challenging yet rewarding ways to expand your musicality.

And we’re not talking about being a guitar virtuoso and sometimes dabbling with the harmonica a little bit – we’re talking true proficiency in more than one instrument, in a way that benefits all aspects of your musical practice: your songwriting, your understanding of theory, your aural skills, and your ability to play in a group setting.

If you’re deciding whether earning another instrument is right for you at this point in your journey, or want to read more about what benefits you can look forward to if you undertake learning a new instrument, there is no better place to get the info you need than Musicality Means: Playing More Than One Instrument.

So, you’ve decided to take the plunge and add another instrument to your repertoire. What instrument should it be? Learning to play the basics on the piano is a very valuable skill that can serve your musicality in multiple ways. For more information, Jason at Teach2Teach discusses why every musician should learn piano.

Once you have a second instrument under your fingers, is there any limit to where you can take your musical prowess? New-York based musician Josh Plotner doesn’t think so, and has created some truly amazing renditions of popular songs where he plays all the parts. Be sure to check out his amazing take on “Bohemian Rhapsody” using only woodwind instruments.

In addition to all the benefits that playing multiple instruments has for performing, multi-instrumentalism has immense benefits for those that are music producers also. No matter what level you are working at, you can increase your capacity to produce music by learning additional instruments – even the enthusiast working on GarageBand! For more information about why multi-instrumentalists make better producers and how you can get started, we turn to Dan Cooper at Rodel Sound.

Busting Vocal Myths

The vocal world is absolutely rife with myths about all things singing; if you’re a singer, you’ve likely been given some bizarre advice on how to pronounce vowels “naturally”, what to (or not to) eat and drink before your big performance, or something about “singing from your diaphragm”.

Most of this well-intentioned advice, however, doesn’t have much basis.

Allan Hubert-Wright is the founder of Le Chanteur Moderne, one of the most respected vocal training institutes in France. There, he helps his students bring out the best in their voice – using modern vocal science and hard facts about the human voice. In Singing and Science: Busting Myths, with Allan Hubert-Wright, he tackles some pervasive vocal myths, gives you the truth about learning to sing, and shares insights that will save you years of frustration and wasted effort if you’re just starting to sing.

Allan breaks down a subject which gets so much attention in the singing world: how to breathe as a singer. Eager to find more resources that will help you, we found these wonderful vocal and breathing exercises from Molly’s Vocal Studio to get started you started.

Many singers begin with a certain goal, a certain style of music that they would like to begin singing. This is only natural, and a great way to begin as a singer. As you continue to progress, however, you may want to begin branching out into other styles as well. Nancy Bos teaches how you can train your voice for any style.

One of the most pervasive myths of the singing world has been the concept of diaphragm breathing. But, as Allan explained, this technique does not help a vocalist gain the strength and control that they need to perform. For another perspective and some helpful tips to begin improving your vocal breathing today, Kevin Richards from Rock the Stage NYC discusses belly breathing.

Music from the Page

Reading music can be a tricky beast to handle, and may seem like a daunting skill to acquire for those who are just starting to play, or those who typically play by ear.

In 4 Tips for Learning to Read Music – the Fun Way, Braedin Lewis of JamAlong outlines a method of learning to read music that is interactive, collaborative, and simple – a process that cuts the intimidation and tediousness factor, and sets you up to be able to jam collaboratively, play the music you love, and stay motivated while you tackle learning this skill.

Should you learn to read sheet music? While we are big advocates of learning to play by ear, learning to read music is another important part of growing your musicality skills. Take your ear training skills and bring it to the music with some suggestions from Fire Inside Music.

Using tools like flashcards and games is a fun and engaging way to study music. And, as the saying goes, “There’s an App for that”! We were happy to find an app that is equal parts interactive, engaging, and adorable – learn more about Melody Cats, an App where cats help you learn your notes, melodies, and rhythms.

Sight reading, especially with a music study buddy, is another way to improve your music reading, not to mention honing the much-coveted skill of sight reading itself! While every musician struggles to become better at sight reading, it is a skill that can be learned through deliberate practice. Very Piano gives some pointers on improving your sight reading skills.

Musical Frequencies

Science is a big part of music, and understanding the science behind your practice is a great challenge for those looking to take their practice to the next level.

This week on the Musicality Podcast, we give an introductory primer on the topic of audio frequencies. If you’ve ever wondered about the bass/treble knob on your stereo receiver, been curious about EQing, or just want to understand the sounds your instrument makes a little better, don’t miss our episode About Frequencies in Music.

This was a fascinating discussion that went into topics we don’t typically cover on the podcast. But the fundamentals of what makes music music are truly amazing and should be looked at from the scientific perspective. Bo Constantinsen discusses this topic further on whatmusicreallyis.com.

From simple 3-band to complex 64-band equalizers, EQing your musical mix is imperative if you are playing through any kind of electronics, or if you’re recording your music. Audio Skills teaches using an EQ in only 4 easy steps.

As we near the end of this week’s roundup, we wanted to share with you a feel-good story about the power of music education. NBC Los Angeles recently ran a story about how one music teacher is increasing his student’s math test scores by teaching them music. Our world of music is truly amazing, and it warms our hearts to see that Lamar is enhancing the lives of the children he meets by bringing music to them.

The Anatomy of Music

As any seasoned musician will tell you, once you get to a certain level in your musicality, the next step is to understand the “how” and “why” behind what you’re playing.

Do you exclusively play by ear? Consider how you can enrich your musicality further by learning to read music as well – the two skills go together beautifully. Are you looking to step up your singing game? Learning about the science of singing will make you impervious to the ridiculous vocal myths out there, and allow you to hone your voice on your own terms. If you’ve mastered your instrument already, your musical journey is far from over – the opportunities of learning a second instrument and diving into the world of musical frequencies are knocking at your door.

The post Multi-Instrumentalism, Busting Vocal Myths, Music from the Page, and Musical Frequencies appeared first on Musical U.

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Links and Resources

• Interview with Allan Hubert-Wright
• Interview with Jeremy Fisher
• About the Word “Tone”
• About the Word “Tone”, Part Two

Transcript

Today I want to talk about a topic that is baffling to a lot of musicians – so baffling that many don’t even get why they might *want* to understand it. And that is: audio frequencies.

Now already we’re sounding quite dry and scientific! And audio frequencies are basically a science-y view on music, and all sound. But that actually proves to be fascinating and quite powerful for a musician – once you get your head around it.

This is one of those topics that is far too huge for a short podcast episode to really cover. We could literally do a hundred episodes about audio frequencies and music. So I’m going to focus here just on the fundamental “what and why” of learning about frequencies – and leave all of the “how” for now. But I will mention at the end a great free resource you can check out if you want to dive in.

Why frequencies are important

So let’s begin with: why talk about audio frequencies at all on the musicality podcast? Well, the first thing to say is that “audio” is just another word for “sound”. All music is experienced as sound, and audio *frequencies* are a particular way of analysing, representing and understanding what’s going on in sound.

You might have come across frequencies in your musical life in a few places. We mentioned it in our previous episode on Tone when talking about bass and treble, low frequencies and high frequencies. It came up in our interviews with Jeremy Fisher and Allan Hubert Wright talking about how the human voice can do some interesting and unexpected things – and we can explain what’s going on by looking at the frequencies. You might have seen the big mixer desk in a studio or at a live gig where there are various sliders to control different frequencies. Or if you’re an electronic musician or you’ve done some home recording you’ve probably played around with equaliser settings or plugin controls that are set in terms of frequencies.

In my experience a lot of musicians bump up against this idea of frequencies and often figure out how to do what they need to with the equipment they’re using or wherever it’s come up. But most don’t take the time to really look into this topic – which is a shame because there’s a lot of exciting stuff that can be empowering to you as a musician. More on that later.

Learning about Frequencies

When I first learned about frequencies it was in the context of a high school science class, talking about waves in water, or a spring or string bouncing and vibrating, or some really abstract stuff about how light works. And I was a geeky kid so that stuff was interesting to me. And I kind of got that sound was about air vibrating and that was a pressure wave and it vibrated at a certain frequency. But I don’t think it was until I got to university and studied physics and computer science and got into the nitty gritty of frequency domain transformations and fast Fourier Transforms and a bunch of other stuff with intimidating names that I really *got* why frequency was so important for thinking about sound. And then when I did my masters we really went deep into music specifically and this scientific view on what’s happening in a musical sound.

Actually, that’s a lie. I did catch glimpses of why this stuff was cool earlier on. I remember spending lots of time fiddling with the EQ settings in Winamp to make my music sound better, and looking at the cool visualisations my computer could show based on the frequencies in the music – and I kind of got the idea that there were a *lot* of frequencies in music. It wasn’t just that a sound wave had one frequency which was how fast it vibrates the air. There was some way of looking at music that made it *all about* frequencies.

So then at university I learned all the cool underlying maths and science and I was lucky to do one of the only masters programs in the world that focused on, essentially, the science and data of music.

All that is to say: I am definitely biased! I love this stuff. But I definitely remember how baffling it used to be, and I’m happy to say that you definitely do *not* need to go as deep as all that for frequencies to be fascinating and useful to you as a musician.

What is a Frequency?

Okay. So what is a frequency? Well, it’s the rate at which something happens. A low frequency means it’s happening once in a while, a high frequency means it’s happening very very often. And in the case of sound we’re talking about how often the air moves back and forwards in a wave. That back-and-forward motion hits our ear and we perceive it as sound. We measure that rate in a unit called Hertz, where 1 Hertz means once per second, 2 Hertz means twice per second, and so on.

Humans can hear air vibrating at roughly 20 Hertz up to 20,000 Hertz – it differs from person to person and with age, but that’s a good rule of thumb to remember.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. We perceive low frequencies as a low *pitch* and high frequencies as a *high* pitch. The relationship between pitch and frequency is a bit subtle – we might do a future episode all about that. But as a starting point you can think of the range from low to high frequency as mapping to how we hear from low pitch up to high pitch.

So let’s hear an example, the simplest possible example: Here is a sound which actually does have just one frequency, like that science class explanation of how sound works. You might have actually heard of this one, it’s called “A 440” because it’s 440 Hertz and the pitch is the note we call “A”.

And here’s 262 Hertz, which is the pitch we call “Middle C”.

When a sound wave has just one frequency like this it’s called a “sine wave” – something you might have come across in maths class. And this pretty much never happens in real life. It’s great as a demonstration and a tool for thinking about sound, but real sounds, and especially musical sounds always have a mixture of frequencies in them, like you’ve taken a bunch of those simple sine waves at different frequencies, some higher, some lower, and combined them.

For example if I add a few more frequencies into this sound – essentially taking several of these simple sine waves and playing them at the same time, you might hear this.

Now that’s starting to sound a bit more musical! With a fade in and out, it actually sounds a bit like a note played on an oboe

So every musical sound you actually hear in real life, from a single note on oboe (which actually sounds a bit like a sine wave) through to every drum and cymbal in the percussion section is made up of a mix of frequencies.

On the percussion end, the sound becomes what’s called “noise” – basically what happens when you throw not just a few frequencies in there, but *all* frequencies.

That’s called white noise – and noise is more interesting than you might think – another topic for another episode…

So all sounds exist somewhere on that range, from a single frequency through to the noise of all frequencies at once.

Now that we’ve had a taste of audio frequencies and how they might relate to music I’m going to hit pause – and we’ll pick this up in a Part Two to talk about the two big reasons frequencies are important for musicians and why you might want to learn a lot more about them.

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The post About Frequencies in Music appeared first on Musical U.

And to be truthful, there is an unfortunate caste system separating those who can read music, and those who can’t. The music-readers often look down their noses at those who don’t read music, and the non-readers sometimes feel inferior. Or in many cases, non-readers actually feel that they are more authentically musical by the very fact that they play without sheet music. There is an old joke where a jazz musician is asked if he can read music, and he replies “not enough to hurt my playing!”.

The truth is, you can be a great musician whether or not you read music. And if you don’t, we encourage you to continue having a great time creating music by ear! However, if you’re this far into this article, the odds are that you are someone who does indeed wish to learn.

Chances are, then, that you’ve had the impression that learning to read music is an arduous process that can take years. Well, we have some good news for you: it isn’t!

Here’s the deal…if you approach it in the right way, using clever strategies and keeping the process fun, you can be reading music inside of a week. Ready to start? Let’s do this!

1. Use the Buddy System

OK, the first rule is never learn alone! Sure, it’s possible, but trust us: when you share the learning process with a friend, everything goes faster and you’ll get a lot more enjoyment out of it.

One of the best things about learning together is that you’ll have someone to hold you accountable – it’s harder to skip your scheduled practice when your Study Buddy texts you and says “see you in a few”!

Looking at the music itself, most of the songs you’ll be “sight-reading” have chords that go with them. In other words, 80% of songs in western culture are comprised of two things: a melody and a chord progression.

When you are sight reading per se, you are reading the melody part, but the melody by itself can get a bit boring after a while. Now, if you try sight reading the melody while your friend strums the chords, you’ll have a whole new experience… suddenly you’re not just practicing, you’re jamming!

This is why we at JamAlong recommend traditional Irish tunes as one of the best ways to get better at sight reading – they all come with cool chord progressions that your Study Buddy can accompany you with. And lastly, when you have a steady strummer next to you, it forces you to stay in time, and not “cheat” by pausing to figure out the next note.

Some Musical Games

Now that you’ve got your Study Buddy lined up and ready to go, let’s talk about some of the ways you two can learn to read music together.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• A set of Flash Cards to use to identify all the notes. We have a free set you can download, and you can either print out both the notes and the “answer” page separately, or print double sided on a single piece of paper so the note names are on the back of the card.
• A “Notation To Instrument” chart for your particular instrument (we have them for banjo, mandolin, guitar, and ukulele).

So get those printed out, and then let’s get started playing games! Here are a few ideas to get you started…

Say and Play – One of you has all the cards (or sheets), and calls out the letter name of a random note. You then have to find it and play it on your instrument. Score how many you get right, and then switch roles. Play as many rounds as you wish, then tally up your scores if you’re in the competitive spirit.

Musical Battle – You’ll need two full “decks” of flash cards for this one. Each player takes the top card from their stack. The players compare them to determine which note is higher, and the first to correctly do so takes both cards and adds them to the bottom of their stack. Continue until one of you runs out of cards.

Concentration – This is the same as the regular card game of the same name. Start with all the cards “music note side” down, spread out on the floor or table, then take turns turning over two cards. Whenever you find two of the same letter you get to keep them, and the trick is to remember what the cards were that you turned over before to find more pairs.

This is only a small example of the games you can come up with, so let your creativity go wild!

2. Sight read – but not with nursery rhymes

It is an unfortunate fact that many books that teach you to read music use the dullest melodies imaginable.

I mean, who wants to hear “Mary had a Little Lamb” or “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” again? You’ll have a lot more fun and therefore learn faster if you use more exciting material, so we’ve compiled a collection of some songs you’ll enjoy playing.

Try to guess them just by playing first, and then if you get stuck, look at the answers on page two. And as you pick through them, remember to be patient with yourself! Learning to read music is like learning another language, and you can’t expect yourself to be spouting eloquent phrases right off the bat.

3. Get involved in “jamming” styles of music

Traditional sight reading education has a penchant for classical music. To be clear, we have a great deal of respect for classical melodies and they can be quite rewarding to learn to play.

The drawback is that you won’t find a lot of jam sessions playing Bach or Mozart. If you’re going to take classical music seriously, you’ll eventually have to find yourself a string quartet or symphony to be a part of, and that’s quite an undertaking!

The good news is, there are styles of music that feature lots of written melody that aren’t classical music, and one of the most popular is Irish music.

The traditional Irish jam session features hundreds of intricate little melodies, all written out in music notation. We have had personal experience with many students who picked up a copy of an Irish tune book, and were delighted with how fun it was to practice their sight reading with tunes like “The Irish Washerwoman” or “The Maid Behind the Bar”:

Most of these Irish tune books have hundreds of songs in them, so you’ll have enough material to practice on for years to come. For example you can download some Irish tune books on our free eBooks and charts page, under the heading “Traditional Irish Tune Books”.

Now you can have an endless supply of melodies to practice your sight reading on, and you can find an Irish jam and double your practice time while having a ton of fun! Just so you know, it is common and even expected for the participants in a traditional Irish jam to bring a music stand and music books – so you won’t look out of place.

4. Composition as a sight reading tool

What – me, compose? No way.

Well the actual fact is, if you can hum, you can compose. Composing is in essence just coming up with little melodies, and anyone can do it.

Obviously most of us won’t be at the level of Mozart or Bach, but that’s not the point anyhow.

The sort of composing we’re wanting you to try is more like a musical game, where you’ll come up with combinations of notes and then use these “compositions” to help you with your sight-reading. It’s easy and fun, and you guessed it: we’ll be using our music cards!

This exercise is quite straightforward. Just shuffle your music cards, and then lay a number of them in a row, music side up. Put some longer spaces between them at random intervals (these will be where you pause, or “rest”), pick up your instrument of choice, and experience your masterpiece!

This exercise will give you infinite sight reading drills, because all you have to do is re-shuffle the order of your cards and presto, you have a composition! If you aren’t at the stage of knowing the notes on your instrument yet, you can still just “say and play” the row of notes, and you’ll get a great workout for memorizing the note names.

Playing Off the Page

Now that you have all the right approaches, let’s sum up these four ways to help you learn to read music:

1. Learn note names with a Study Buddy to turn a potentially tedious exercise into a sport
2. Practice sight reading with music that you enjoy or are curious about
3. Learn melodies and licks from music that is well-suited for jamming – then go jam!
4. Practice basic composition with our flash cards, and play the melodies you create

For more great free resources and other study materials, set up your complimentary account at JamAlong!

This method of learning to read music is about as easy as it gets, but if you feel like really spoiling yourself, you can always just book a “Live” Video Lesson with our friendly instructors here at JamAlong, and we’ll walk you through it every step. And it’s always nice to have someone there to answer questions when they pop up (and they will). Come visit us to book your live online video call!

JamAlong Music founder Braedin Lewis has been playing music since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and teaches and plays banjo, guitar, mandolin, and ukulele. He has been playing bluegrass and folk music for over 40 years, and has performed with stars like Leftover Salmon, Joe Craven, Radim Zenkel, and many not so famous. His teaching style and method have been applauded for being fresh and enjoyable, and he has helped hundreds to enjoy the “jamming game”. His motto is “you’re better than you sound!”, and he welcomes all questions and comments, as long as they don’t involve politics or eighties music.

The post 4 Tips for Learning to Read Music – the Fun Way appeared first on Musical U.

He is also the director of the voice department at the prestigious IFPRO performing arts school in Paris and conducts ongoing research into vocal function.

We recently had the chance to see Allan give a presentation, and we came away determined to have him on the show, because he shares the kinds of thing that can save years of frustration, confusion and wasted effort. So whether you don’t sing at all yet, you’re at the beginning of learning to sing, or you’ve been singing for years, you’re going to want to pay attention!

In this conversation we talk about:

• Why being told he was a bad singer as a child didn’t hold him back
• How he helped one singer finally find her own authentic voice after years of imitating various singers and styles
• And we bust three big myths in singing: about breathing and support, about what to eat and drink, and about how to correctly produce vowel sounds.

This conversation was such a pleasure and we know it’s going to be an enlightening one for any of you listening who sing or who would like to – but find some of the teaching a bit confusing.

Listen to the episode:

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Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Le Chanteur Moderne
• Le Chanteur Moderne on Facebook
• Singing and Teaching Singing: An Holistic Approach to Classical Voice, by Janice Chapman
• Vocology, by Ingo Titze
• Principles of Voice Production, by Ingo Titze

Transcript

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

Allan: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Christopher: So you stick in my mind as one of the most interesting blends of musician and scientist. I would love to hear how that came to be. What was your origin story in terms of music, and where did science come into the picture?

Allan: Right. Well, I suppose I come from a fairly musical family in that music was always part of our life. There was always singing at family parties, and someone would play an instrument of some sort or another. There was always music going on, but no one was trained per se. I knew I loved music. I was fascinated with people who played the piano. I would stare at people when they would do this in a slightly scary, stalker-ish way. I remember the big moment being when I saw my first musical theater production. I was just taken in by the opulence and lavishness of it all. When the orchestra struck up the first chords of the overture, I remember it very vividly, bursting into tears and thinking oh, my God, this is amazing. This is the best thing ever. I think that’s when it all started, really.

After that, I tortured my family by putting on shows every weekend and they’d have to sit and watch. I’d get very upset if anyone walked out of the room. My cousin … Paul, if you’re listening to this, I apologize for years of torturing you, and making you do shows with me in front of the family. So I suppose that’s where it came from, really, this desire to perform was born at that moment. It wasn’t necessarily voice. I knew it was music that fascinated me. I had a special fascination for the piano.

Christopher: Did piano come into the picture with lessons at that point, or-?

Allan: Yeah, it did. I mean, we came from a very modest family so there wasn’t much money for piano lessons, but I had a very kind teacher at school who would teach me during lunchtimes. I think she sensed that I really wanted to do it. She was very patient, and a great teacher, I think. I remember spending lunchtimes in the practice rooms picking out things with one hand, and then another, and working on them that way. She trained me, basically, for free, really. Very kind of her.

Christopher: Were you always the kid at the front of the class putting on a show for the others? Did you have any hesitation when it came to music, or were you just 100% in there leading the charge?

Allan: Oh, yeah, it was 100% in there all the time. I mean, I’d get up and sing at the drop of a hat. I would play the piano. When I look back on it, it was probably pretty bad. But the confidence was there even if the competence wasn’t. I guess I loved any chance to perform. I was in every school play, every school musical. I was in the church choir. There was a youth choir, which I thought was amazing. Although, my grandmother was very against it. She called it bloody banjos in church. That was her thought on the youth choir. I loved it. I sang at every opportunity. But I was constantly told that I was rubbish. That’s quite hard to hear.

Christopher: Oh, gosh. And that didn’t put you off?

Allan: I think that I’ve always had quite a, how would you say that in English? I’ve always had a quite a tough character. So if someone says to me, you can’t do this. Instead of thinking all right, okay, well, I can’t do this. I tend to think why? Well, how can I make it better? There must be a way. This can’t be the end of it. So when people told me that I couldn’t sing, it just made me more determined to sing. There’s a certain amount of bloody mindedness involved, I think.

Christopher: Very good. Well, I can see that, that certainly paid off in the long term. It’s kind of heartwarming to hear because so many people have that experience of being told they’re not very good, and it is the end of their musical journey. It sounds like you had that determination. So was it clear to you that you were going to go on and make a career of this? Was that always the path ahead of you as you saw it?

Allan: No, I don’t think so. I mean, I loved it. But I think in my family, it was never on the table that you would take an artistic profession. You had to do something serious, a real job. I remember really, I think what really pushed me down this path was there was a theater group in the town where I’m from, and they did youth musical theater productions, and lots of songs from the shows, and thing along those lines. I got involved with that, initially just in the chorus, I think. I remember just loving being on stage and thinking oh, my God, this is amazing. I worked so hard on my voice that I eventually got a solo in a production that were doing. I sang Enjolras in “One Day More”. I sang it awfully back then, but it was a real turning point for me. I remember standing there with the spotlight hitting me, and the music, and the band playing, and the harmonies are [inaudible 00:04:40]. I remember thinking oh, my God, this is absolutely what I want to do with my life.

Christopher: Wonderful. So what did you do then as the next step having had that epiphany?

Allan: I guess I kind of doubled up on music. I got really obsessive about it. I mean, I started to try to learn the guitar. I carried on with the piano. I got more and more serious about singing. I never learned how to play the guitar. I still can’t play the guitar, but I kept going with the piano. I went off to University, initially to study phonetics and I specialized in Voice Sciences. I went on to voice function. I think I just picked, to be honest, the most serious sounding studies that I could so that my family would be happy, but the ones that were nearest to voice so that I could get as much music in there as I possibly could. That was the trick. It was a bit of a spy mission.

I remember getting very involved with the musical societies at University. I ended up running one of them, and becoming a musical director for it. I continued my musical training on the side with that. I got really obsessed about voice function, I think, and how the human voice works. I think during my studies, especially into phonetics and acoustics, I started to find things that didn’t really gel with what I was being told in my voice lessons. That’s really where I started to want to scratch the surface of it more, I think, of how the voice works, and why these old myths were going around.

Christopher: So give an example of what you were being told in a voice lesson that didn’t quite gel with your University studies.

Allan: I suppose the big one would be singing from the diaphragm. That was the big thing. It was always sing from the diaphragm, and then they’d pat my belly button. You know, I had a lot of this going on. And of course, when you look at an anatomy book will tell you that your diaphragm is nowhere near your belly button, in fact. I remember thinking well, that’s not where it is. But nevermind. Perhaps it’s just an image. This idea, the teachers were very into this idea that the diaphragm was what you used to contract to push the air out.

Now, if you do phonetics as a study of voice production, one of the first things you look at is how airflow generates vibration in the voice. That leads you to look at the diaphragm and how it works. You have this realization that the diaphragm is an inspiratory muscle, not an expiratory one. So it’s not contracting to push the air out. In fact, when it contracts, it pulls the air in. So, that was just literally the direct opposite.

There were lots of other things. You know, it was very image-based. I think because I have quite a Cartesian world view, I was struggling with being told to sing to the bluebirds out of my head door, not to imagine a laser beam coming through my cheeks. It seemed to work for other people, but it didn’t work for me.

Christopher: I’m reminded of a previous episode with Davin Youngs who was talking about exactly that, that some of these images and metaphors can be useful to inspire the right action, but it’s important to know that they are just images and metaphors, and not get too caught up in you’re actually meant to be singing like a tree, or whatever the case may be. I think the diaphragm is a great example. I had the same in my singing training. It was all about strengthening the diaphragm to get that strong sound. I’m sure a lot of it was nonsense, and maybe some of it was effective nonsense, but I think it’s valuable to recognize what is and isn’t actually happening. So I want to come back the topic of breathing in a little bit.

But first, you were telling me something recently about how your own perspective on teaching singing evolved from there. One thing you mentioned was methods and the way singing is typically taught with a method. Tell us about that. What were you seeing that was wrong about singing teaching once you left that University stage?

Allan: I’m not sure I’d say wrong. I’d say it doesn’t gel with my world view. But if I say wrong, that kind of implies that I believe that my world view is right. So I think that what I disagree with is the more and more current trend of leaning towards trademarking something. So you have such-and-such’s voice training method, or this is the way to do it, and they all have names. I don’t recite any names, but they’re very popular at the moment. What you get is a very evangelical way of teaching in that if it’s not one of the steps in this method, then it’s not right. I was always taught at University that if you’re looking at the world in a scientific way, you don’t need everybody else to be wrong for you to be right.

I feel that that’s one of the downsides of methods is that if you accept the gospel of that method, then everything else must be wrong. What happens when that method hits its natural limit? Any system that a human designs is bound to have a natural limit. So I think that, in some ways, the training that I got during my University years was a lot more image-y and a lot less adapted to my needs, but it wasn’t, per se, a method because I think they just used whatever they felt would work. It was limited in that because they had no understanding of voice function, or at least the teachers that I was with had no understanding of voice function. If the image didn’t work for you, they couldn’t take it any further.

I think that joins in nicely with what you were saying about a previous guest in that yes, images can solicit the right motor response and that’s a wonderful way. It’s problem is trying to tell a singer to control their cricothyroid muscle, they can’t do it. They need some kind of image to solicit that response. What I think is important is that the teacher understands the voice function behind the image so if that image doesn’t work, they can find another one that does work for the person in front of them.

I think that’s only possible if there’s flexibility. If you start to get too evangelical about your method, then it becomes a set of concrete tools and those tools are the only ones you have. Why would you turn your back on any tool that might help a student that’s in front of you? so I think rather than going down a trademark method approach, I prefer the idea that teachers should have a deep understanding of how the voice works. And then they should have creative minds so they can come up with many, many different ways of soliciting a given muscular response in a student’s body.

Christopher: Well, I think apart from the business side of things, it’s hard to argue with what you just said. That’s clearly a very sensible outlook on things. Obviously, you did not leave University and found the Allan Wright Vocal Method Institute. What did happen next?

Allan: I left University and taught Phonetics for a while. A university in France was my initial attempt at having a sensible job. It really didn’t work. I didn’t like it. I’m not cut out for anything other than freeing around in front of people in the lights with makeup on. That’s pretty much my life path, I think. But I mean, I realized that I was trying to lecture in Phonetics, and I’d just talk about singing all the time. So I apologize profusely to the three years of students that had to put up with me basically performing instead of teaching them.

I think that during my third year, I started to get more and more involved with voice research, and I traveled back to the UK a lot to talk to people about voice research. There are some great trainers in the UK who inspired me. I worked with some people in the States as well. I took a lot of workshops and saw other people’s methods and approaches, all of which I think are wonderful. I do encourage people to go and check out methods. Even though I’m against them, that’s no reason for everyone else to be against them.

I think little by little, I realized that I wasn’t going to get the answer I wanted anywhere because it was all too method-y. Really, what I wanted to do was just take a scientific understanding of the voice works and see if that couldn’t be applied to helping people figure out how their voices worked. I just started, little by little, doing a bit of singing coaching on the side with friends who were in musical theater, and working with people who damaged their voices and needed rehabilitation help. Very humbly, really, just to begin with because I didn’t have much idea what I was doing, to be honest. I was just giving them the advice based on the nuts and bolts of how the voice fits together. It seemed to work quite well.

Then I opened a blog in France because I found here that pretty much all singing was strongly conservatory related. If you weren’t the Conservatoire, then you weren’t doing music properly. Obviously, only classical music was possible at that time in the Conservatoire, and I initially thought my goodness, no one seems to know how the voice works. No one seems to be interested in how the voice works. I tried to give some talks on it, and the Conservatoires met it with quite a lot of disdain, saying things like oh, we’re not taught to do this. We don’t need to know this. I just thought wow, is it really so closed off here?

So I set a blog up just saying this is what I think about voice function. I think it can be a useful tool for voice training. And little by little, it just took off from there, really. Lots of people contacted me to say oh, my goodness, we think the same thing. Nobody is saying this. Please tell us more. Then I started to just publish quite regularly on the blog. Then I ran my first public workshop, and it was a huge success. I wasn’t expecting it and all these people turned up wanting to know more about voice function. I built it from there. Over the last kind of 10 years, it’s turned into this big training organization where we try and spread voice function as evidence-based training, I would say. Evidence-based training, rather than image-based training, we try and promote this throughout France.

Christopher: Fantastic. I find the question of method versus kind of tool kit and open mindedness a really interesting one, and it’s certainly one we’ve grappled with at Musical U, where so far, at least, we haven’t said this is the musicality method, and you must follow this path. We’re very much of the attitude that every musician is different in terms of background, and goals, and so on. But it does, of course, come with a cost, which for us, we experience it most painfully in trying to provide a fully flexible training system that is still very clear and easy for people to follow. I think when you’re teaching one-on-one, it’s one thing to be constantly going back and forth with the student and adapting to their needs and so on, that for us, anyway, it’s been difficult so far to design the perfect system that feels very straight and linear for the student, but is not, as you say, a method. It’s not a strict course and it’s not exclusive of other techniques.

So I’d love to hear a little bit about how you approach things if it’s not, this is the way to do it. You have this organization, Le Chanteur Moderne, and you’re clearly providing training and workshops. I believe you also do some one-on-one teaching. I’d love to hear a little bit what that looks like in practice if it’s not putting everyone on one strict course. How do you bring all of these insights and ideas from voice function and science into the teaching?

Allan: I think the first thing that we have is that we’re a team of teachers. So it’s not just me, there are 10 of us. Each person brings their own unique take on it to the table, which is, I think, quite rich. For people who are coming along, it enrichens the training diversity. So we might get the same thing explained in lots of different ways. We just have this rule that we call ecrous et boulons, which means nuts and bolts. It means when in doubt, come back to the nuts and bolts. So if you’re lost for a solution for a person in front of you, if you can’t figure out what exercise might help them, stop. Think what does their voice actually need to function here? What needs to contract or not contract? What needs to let go? Figure that out, and then create your exercises based on that. So we’re constantly going back to listening to what’s in front of us. What can we hear? What’s the problem? And then going back to nuts and bolts to try and figure out a completely made to measure exercise for that person.

That’s slightly different in a public workshop where we might have 10 or 15 people. In there, what we tend to do is present basic voice function that singers will be able to use themselves afterwards. One of the things that I noticed over years of me attending workshops myself, is that you get a presentation of how the teachers work. You don’t necessarily leave with an idea of how you might apply that to your own voice. So what we try to do is show them a bit about voice function. We don’t make it too science-y because that can be, I think, a bit off putting for people, and give them simple exercises that they can apply so that they can if this isn’t working, I can do this. If this isn’t working, I can do this. We try to make them as autonomous as possible.

In a public workshop, there’s always it’s split into several bits. So we have some theory in the morning. Then we split into small groups with several teachers. So the workshop is always taught by more than one teacher. We split into small groups with two or three students per teacher, and then we’ll check that they can apply the exercises. We might rework them, and change, and make a suggestion especially for that person. Then each person gets an individualized coaching in front of everybody at least once in the week as well, so that they’ll work with one or more of the teachers on applying it to their own repertoire, and everyone can watch and ask questions. So we try and make it as individualized as we can that way.

I get your point, though, about … I think that’s the big difference, isn’t it? When you’re dealing with lung training, you can’t have that backwards and forwards. So there has to be a sense of, perhaps not method, but it’s certainly a structure that has to be there. But what I’ve noticed a little bit about what I’ve seen about music art is that you’re always updating it. So I think that’s where you’re bringing in your individualization. Every time you come across a new tool, you share that with your users. I think that proves it’s not a method.

Christopher: Absolutely. And yeah, I think for us so far anyway, the balance has been to combine that library of training material with a lot of personal support and guidance. So it’s not live and one-on-one, but we are there to guide, and suggest, and point people to the next step, a bit like you were saying. I love your approach there that you don’t just give the student four exercises and say, now we’re done. You help them figure out, or you provide them with the thinking required to say, okay, if I go away and I practice this exercise and it doesn’t work out that way, what can I do next? It sounds like you’re setting them up to kind of guide themselves after the workshop, which is fantastic.

Allan: Yeah, we do try. We try to do that. And we talk a lot about how the brain works, and how to learn, and how to help them kind of pimp their learning process so they can really get the most bang for their buck out of learning time. I think a lot of times, musicians think that practicing and learning is just kind of playing or singing your song over, and over, and over, and over again. Science has given us a few responses as to how we might make that a bit more efficient. So we talk a little bit about that as well in workshops, and try to help people become, I suppose, masters of their own learning process.

Christopher: Terrific. You mentioned individualized coaching there, and we met recently on the Kodály training course here in the UK where you were presenting, and also giving individual singing lessons during the course of the weekend. I heard all of these amazing comments from people who’d had that one-on-one session with you. It was clearly, seriously impactful, short 30 minute experience.

One story really stuck out to me. A lady who had had quite a lot of singing experience, and she said that she’d always felt like she was just mimicking singing styles. She was mimicking a singer or a certain genre like classical voice. She said the session with you allowed her, for the first time, to tap into what she felt was really her authentic voice and her way of singing.

I thought that was so interesting because I think a lot of people could relate to that, that singing felt like putting on an act. And actually what they want to do is express something themselves in music. So I’d love if you wouldn’t mind just sharing a little bit about what that might have looked like when you went through it with her, and what kinds of exercises or ideas you might have used to help her tap into that.

Allan: Yeah, sure. First thing, as I say, it sounds like I transformed her in 30 minutes. Actually, she came in with a beautiful voice anyway, so my job was very easy. She had a lovely voice. I think the first thing that … I took myself back to nuts and bolts, really. I tend to work on the principle if the singer says something is wrong, then something is wrong, even if it all sounds fine to me. So if they say, I’m not feeling this. This doesn’t feel like me. Even if my ear says the production is right, and it sounds musically right, I want to find out what’s going on. So I’ll try and dig a bit behind.

So we talked a little bit about her experience in running singing groups and choirs. She’s someone who has to give an awful lot of demonstrations in different styles and different pitches for people. Clearly, she started to feel like her voice was just this box of imitating, where she’d just pull an imitation out for the tenors, then an imitation out for the sopranos. I think my own experience of working with training singing teachers is that that’s a danger that they run as well, where you demonstrate so much all week, that you kind of lose your own vocal identity, I suppose. I’m not really talking about a vocal identity like a pop artist might have, where he needs to be able to be recognized in the media. I suppose what I’m talking about is the ability to feel that you just open your mouth and sing, and it comes from a very authentic, honest place, rather than open your mouth, put your larynx here, engage your breathing, all of those checklist things that we often hear.

Clearly, I think that’s what was happening with this lady. You know, she’d done a lot of training. She had a lovely voice. But everything she sang to me, she said, I can sing it this way, or I can sing it this way, or I can sing it that way. And she started to touch on problems like when I’m singing in my classical style, I have no power in the low notes. And it became clear that certain laryngeal setups, if you like, or singing recipes were associated with different styles. The problem with recipe-based singing is that each of these recipes has its limitations.

So if you take a very classical head voice sound for a woman, typically, if that singer is not taught to bring it down to connect with their speaking voice, it’ll just get kind of wispy. As she gets down to the bottom, she’ll feel like she’s got no sound. So she felt that, that was a problem. She was thinking that could be part of her voice because it couldn’t be righted if it didn’t reconnect with her speaking voice. Then she had her speaking voice, which she could only take up so far. So that couldn’t be it either. I think she just got to the stage where before she opened her mouth to sing, she felt like she had to think how am I going to do this? What sound am I looking for?

So we did a few things. The first thing we did was try and smooth out the middle of the range. We did that just by making sure that she started off in her speaking voice, and we slid up until we found a big, spectacular break. Then we played around with that a little bit, and just accepted that that’s what human voices do and it’s okay. Then we went up to the high bit, and started to realize that those high notes actually felt a little bit like what she was doing when she felt she was imitating a classical singer. Then we came back down, and she realized that it felt like her speaking voice. Then we worked on building the middle so that actually, all three of those zones came together as one voice. I mean, she didn’t feel like she had to pick one or the other anymore. She could slide between them. And we just kept going back to speaking voice. How would you say this? Speak it out loud to me.

We went through some emotional stuff. I suppose a little bit like … I don’t know if you’ve heard of Janice Chapman. Have you heard of Janice Chapman? She’s a singing teacher in the UK, and she’s done a lot of work into implants of primal sounds into singing. She wrote a superb book. Can I plug her book on this, is that okay?

Christopher: Absolutely. Yeah, please do.

Allan: Yeah? It’s called “Singing and Teaching Singing: A Holistic Approach to Classical Voice”, a brilliant book. So the principles in there, one is aimed at classical singers. There are some interesting ideas like these primitive sounds that we make. She’s not the only person that speaks about this. Quite a few voice scientists talk about it. Ingo Titze mentions it in his books “Vocology” and “Principles of Voice Production”, and the idea is that there are these natural sounds that we share with quite a lot of the animal kingdom, and that are linked to our emotions and our neural pathways for producing emotive sound.

So I’d ask her to say the text, but say it perhaps to shriek, and then to whoop, or to laugh it, or to pitchy moan it and sob it and whinge it dramatically. We made lots of little characters up and we played around with them. I think she started to realize that all of those voices were facets of her own voice. Then when we sang again at the end, she said that for the first time, she felt that when she opened her mouth and she didn’t need to ask any questions. It just came out. I think that was quite nice, a nice experience. But I’m not certain that any of it is down to me. A lot of these ideas I’ve nicked off other people over the years.

Christopher: Absolutely. It sounds like you were able to bring all of that together for her in a simple and straightforward way. It sounds like it had a profound impact for her. So that’s wonderful.

Allan: I hope so. I mean, I think the middle voice is often a big problem for everyone. And register problems are central to a lot of things. One of the big questions that comes up in every workshop that I run, they’re all created differently, but really, all anyone cares about is how do I get through the middle without yodeling? That’s what everyone is bothered about. If you can learn to balance that without getting too gimmicky, then your voice really does start to feel like an extension of your speaking voice, and it feels like it’s connected part of you. I think that’s really important if you want to hope to get any emotion across when you’re singing. You have to feel like you’re being authentic.

Christopher: One thing I really loved about your presentation at that training course was that it was refreshingly factual. You know, I’m a scientist and an engineer by background. That is my mindset. For me, for the most part, the musical training I’ve received has always felt a little bit separate. You know, there’s the musical mindset that’s very arty and creative, and wonderful in many ways. But I always love it when someone brings the two together, and this presentation you gave on breathing and support was exactly that. It was taking the science and what do we actually know about the physiology of the human body, can we answer some of these questions or concerns people have about breathing from a factual scientific perspective.

I’d love to just touch on this idea of singing myth busting because it’s where I see the power. The power of the science is that it’s so easy, with all of the respect and admiration we have for these approaches that have been handed down through the years and produced amazing art and amazing musicians, it’s easy to kind of feel, put them up on a pedestal and say well, that’s the way they worked for opera singers 200 years ago. Therefore, it must be right. I think in this day and age, more and more, we’re seeing the value of reassessing some of those inherited ideas with a scientific viewpoint, and taking the bits that are good and work, and letting go of the ones that are just confusing people and holding them back.

I’d love if you could share some of the ideas from that presentation around breathing and support, which are so often these sticking points for singers.

Allan: Yeah. I mean, it’s a presentation that I often give in one version or another because I think it was the biggest thing for me when I was learning to sing. Like everybody, I had multiple teachers, and they all had the absolute truth on breathing, every one of them. I’ve never met so many people that were absolutely right whilst disagreeing with each other. Everyone was right, and one of the, I don’t know if you remember, but one of the slides that I use is just of this massive fight, people scrapping in the street, basically. That’s just how I view breathing and singing. If you mention breathing, it’s sort of like in the touch paper in a voice teacher conference. If you just say, so how should we support? You can just step back and watch this fight ensue.

Allan: One of the things I think that I think to actually be true is that yeah, we do tend to put because it’s old, it’s good upon a pedestal. I do think currently, we tend to think well, because it was found in a lab, so it gets put on a pedestal as well. I feel that you’ve got these two groups of people who are trying to say the same thing, but not standing face-to-face, standing back-to-back. No one is kind of taking each one of them by the hand and saying to the scientists, perhaps if you didn’t put equations and graphs on the boards, the singing teachers would get it. And saying to the singing teachers, there is something other than Vera singing Opera. I think they just don’t understand each other’s discourse.

Allan: So what we try to do with my team is to try and build a bridge there. It sounds very lofty for 10 people in Northwest France, who probably have barbecues and drink too much wine, more than we do working on West Sides. But our mission is really to try and build these bridges. The breathing one is the big one for me because it just seems that singers are obsessed with it because I think it’s imprinted onto them very early on. And so they have this idea that if you know how to breathe, then everything else will be perfect. And there’s one way to breathe, and it has to be the way your teacher said. And that they’re always very marked ideas.

Allan: One of my favorite ones that I had was you have to breathe in, inflate the whole torso, don’t let anything move, and sing. If you have even a basic understanding of how pumps work, then you understand that can’t be the case. Once the air is in there, if you want to make sound, it’s got to come out. And if you don’t let anything move, then nothing is coming out. Or you get things like the belly must absolutely go in, or the belly must absolutely go out. Or the ribs must absolutely come up and not move.

Allan: I think, and I don’t know if this is because I have this massive love for musical theater, but you just have to watch musical theater productions, especially if you’ve got some modern producer with something to prove, a director with some odd stage ideas. You see the poor actors in the oddest costumes, and oddest of positions, and if they have been taught you must do this when you breathe, they would be so stuffed. The idea that you must inflate your belly, how’s that going to work if you’re wearing a corset? Or you must keep your ribcage open. How’s that going to work if you’re in a certain physical position.

Allan: So I think really what we need to look at is what’s true and what’s not true. That’s what I love about the science is that it doesn’t care what your opinion is. You know, the facts are the facts whether you believe in them or not. That’s what I absolutely love about it. So I think the big one for me is the diaphragm. Don’t try and sing from your diaphragm. You can’t. You can’t do it. Give up. If anyone has been telling you to try and sing from your diaphragm, you can just once smile politely at them, and stop trying to do it. It’s not necessary.

Allan: Just ask yourself what do I need as a singer? Really, all we know that singers need, breath needs to come through the vocal folds. So that means you need to know how to breathe out. I imagine you can probably tick that box. That’s all right. You need to know how to breathe in. That’s probably okay if you’re still alive. So those two boxes are already ticked. Then you need to have two skills, I think, which can almost be boiled down to one. Those two skills are the ability to generate higher pressure levels to get louder if you want to have control over your intensity levels. And the ability to sing long phrases. Arguably, not everybody needs that second one.

Allan: If you’re singing, I don’t know, folk songs with specific breathing patterns, you might not need long phrases. If you’re singing Mozart [inaudible 00:32:03] you might. But both of those can be boiled down to control over the pressure because as you’re singing for any length of time, the air is coming out of your lungs. If you want to be able to sing to the end of the air that’s in there, you’re going to have to keep increasing, or at least doing the same thing you would do to increase pressure in order to keep the air coming out. It’s as simple as that.

Allan: So really, all singers need is to be able to breathe in freely and unhinderedly, and to tailor their air use to what they’re going to sing. If you’re singing short phrases, don’t fill up on air, it’s not necessary. You can get to the Chip Chop and back on half a tank of petrol. You know, you don’t need to fill up just to go around the corner. And if you want to get louder, you need to have control over your pressure. If we boil it down to that, really, the only question is how do I get control over my pressure?

Allan: You can do that in many ways. I mean, it’s a balloon, basically, and where you push will increase the pressure. Science has certainly given us some answers in that it appears that some version of belly in breathing is the most mechanically efficient way to increase your pressure. That just means pulling your belly in gently as you’re singing. And if you want to create large amounts of pressure, probably feeling some work in the oblique area, in between your ribs and your arch of your hips. That seems to be a very mechanically efficient way to do it. But it’s a bit of a problem going on in the singing world at the minute. People have got obsessed with this one approach to singing because it’s mechanically efficient. But I think it’s important to remember that mechanically efficient is not the same as saying the only way to do something.

Allan: So I would think if anyone wants to give it a go, who’s listening, give yourself two rules. Let go of any abdominal tension when you breath in. Breathe in freely and easily. Don’t make it into a big thing. You don’t have to breathe in a magic way for singing. And then prop your hands around your waist, in between your ribs and your hips, and just have a gentle cough, and you’ll probably feel something pop out a little bit, a little firmer bit under there. Those are the muscles you need to use to increase pressure. You only need to increase pressure actively if you’re singing very loud or at the end of a very long phrase. In most of the cases, if you just get the musical intensity right, the musical intention right, and your registration is balanced in your throat, the breathing will probably take care of itself.

Allan: The best way, I think, for people to train then would be to get a water bottle and breathe into that empty water bottle, just blow air into it, feel what’s happening in your abdomen. Train yourself to blow it for as long as you can, then stop to sing and hum some scales into there as well. See how the whole, how the vocal folds and the abs work together to compress the air and create sound. Just do a little bit of that every day, and then your breathing will become autopilot. That should be the goal of everything, not really understanding how it works and how to do it. I don’t think we should be doing things when we’re singing. We should be being the artistic person at that point. We should be creating art. So I think if you train yourself a little bit each day until a new habit forms, then you just don’t have to worry about breathing.

Christopher: Fantastic. I wasn’t sure you could boil down the essence of such an interesting presentation into a few minutes on a podcast. I think you nailed it. Anyone listening is thinking wow, is it actually that simple? I think the science says yes-

Allan: Yes, it really is.

Christopher: It can be that simple.

Allan: And there’s more than one way to do it. So if you’re getting the sounds you want and it doesn’t hurt, don’t worry about it. You’re doing it right.

Christopher: Fantastic. I’m going to play the part of slightly confused singer, who is earnestly trying to learn and reading all kinds of things online and getting in a total muddle. I want to ask you a question we often hear from singers at Musical U, which is what should I eat or drink to sing well?

Allan: Cake and cheese, interesting answer to that question.

Christopher: What should I avoid eating and drinking as often how it’s put.

Allan: Yeah, this comes up in every one of my web talks as well. Again, people are scared about it. And the thing about singers, we’re all a bit mad, and we’re all a bit neurotic. So we start to share the crazy. This is what happens. So we read something, and Celine Dion has this, and she has this chicken soup and she takes the chicken meat out. I wonder if that’s true, just for the record. Don’t send your lawyers after me, Celine. But you know, maybe she does this. And people think oh, I’ll give that a go. And then somebody else hears you shouldn’t drink coffee. Well, I’ll stop drinking coffee. And I hear you pouring another drink in the background. Is it coffee?

Christopher: It is.

Allan: And then someone else says you should avoid dairy. What you end up with is people share all these tips genuinely thinking they’re helping each other. You get people who become terrified of food. That breaks my heart. I’m a Norther. You know, this breaks my heart. You’d be scared of food. And a cursory inspection of the science leads us to believe that Celine Dion probably doesn’t sound the way she does because she has a certain kind of soup before she goes on stage. She sounds the way she does because she works her back side off. That’s what it is. It’s down to hard work. There’s nothing else to it.

Allan: But if we just take some of these food myths and have a look at them, should I avoid dairy? No. I mean, if you dislike it. No one is forcing you to eat Camembert. But if you like dairy, yes, go ahead, Fred. You know, I mean, there is no, or at least very little, scientific support to the idea that dairy has any kind of impact on phonation. Several studies have been carried out into this. One particularly fascinating one got people who believed that dairy increased mucus production to drink either actual milk or a fake milk substitute that tasted and felt the same. They reported exactly the same reaction to both drinks. Oh, well that’s it, I can feel the top swelling now. So there’s probably a bit if you believe it’s true, it will be true. But there appears to be no medically, statistically valid link between eating dairy and any increased mucus production. So if you fancy a cheese toasty before you go on stage, just have a cheese toasty.

Allan: There was a brief study carried out as well that looked into eating before going on stage. Should I eat before I go on stage? Does it impact … Some people say it impacts range. Other people say it inhibits abdominal movement so you can’t breathe so well. Well, that study concluded that it had no impact whatsoever, neither on pitch, range, or maximum phonation tone, or access to the air. All of those things were not affected.

Allan: What else do I hear? Don’t drink coffee because caffeine dries you out. We hear that a lot. There’s a few things that I think we need to take into account. The first one is that your larynx sits on top of your lungs. It doesn’t sit on top of your esophagus. So it’s sits on top of your trachea. It’s not on top of our esophagus. Anything that’s going into your stomach is not going through your lungs. So if you drink something or you eat something, it should not come into direct contact with your vocal cords. If it does, you’ll cough violently. Your body goes into panic mechanism because if you end up with half a pint of coffee in your left lung, you probably haven’t got one left. So you don’t want to end up with a [inaudible 00:39:00] in your lungs every time you have a meal. So the idea is that the larynx closes very tightly to protect the lungs and the food slides over the top of it, pops into the esophagus, and goes down to the stomach. So there’s no direct impact of anything you eat or drink on the vocal cords themselves.

Allan: So we need to ask are there systemic reactions? Does caffeine dry out the body? Is there a diuretic effect? The research is unclear on this. Some studies indicate a little bit. Some indicate not at all. It seems to be that 300 milligrams tends to be about where some dehydration per day starts to kick in. That’s probably about five cups of coffee. It’s quite a lot. But most studies that have looked at the impact of caffeine intake on phonation have concluded that it has none, simply. People who are given decaffeinated beverages or caffeinated have no difference in acoustic or aerodynamic output afterwards.

Allan: Once again, though, if you think it’s true for you, if you find having a coffee before going on stage makes you feel like you can’t perform, then don’t have a coffee. That’s fine. It’s a crazy job being a singer. You know, we basically stand up in front of people and say I am brilliant, do you agree? 15 minutes, you know. It’s weird. Or if you’re doing auditions, you walk into a room and say does anybody want to throw stones at me for 15 minutes? That’s what it feels like.

Allan: So anything that enables you, any crazy ritual that enables you to get up there and do it is probably okay. But don’t share the crazy. If it helps you, that’s great. If we start spreading it around, we end up with singers who won’t have cheese, who won’t have coffee, who won’t drink wine before going on stage. All of these things that come in. So just come back to the science and tell yourself that nothing you eat or drink directly affects your vocal folds. Anything that might have a systemic impact is probably not going to happen quickly enough to affect you while you’re on stage. Just eat and drink whatever you like. Obviously, outside of allergies, usually at this point in a workshop, someone sticks their hand up and says, well, I’m allergic to milk. Well, then don’t drink it. It has nothing to do with singing, and lots to do with not dying. It has nothing to do with music.

Allan: So then, of course, that raises another interesting product, which is all the magic potions that you can buy for singers. All the teas, special tea that’s made from, I don’t know, slippery aloe that was handpicked by virgins in Madagascan moonlight on the third Thursday of the month. Once again, I mean, it’s just going into your stomach, and what you’re effectively making is really expensive urine. So I would say just drink a bit of water. Hydrate before you go on stage a good bit in advance because it’s not touching the folds directly. So several hours in advance, you need to drink. If your vocal folds are hydrated, they’re happy. That’s it. Eat, drink whatever you like. Eat, drink, and be merry. That’s what I think.

Christopher: Fantastic. Good advice for life in general.

Allan: Yes.

Christopher: I’m going to play the part of confused, aspiring singer once again, and ask you about the other thing I’ve been hearing a lot about, which is how to correctly pronounce my vowels. It’s something I’m getting different information about from every website I look at, and every style of music I look at. How should I be thinking about vowels?

Allan: Well, it’s a big question, vowels and one that’s getting a lot of research attention at the moment. I think one of the first things we need to ask ourself a question about is really what is a vowel? Your voice functions like pretty much, I feel, an instrument. It’s a resonation instrument. You have a reed, which is your vocal folds which down in your Adam’s apple. They’re put into vibration, or oscillation more correctly I suppose, by an airflow. Then the space above amplifies that just like a violin, or a guitar. You pluck the string and the body of the instrument amplifies the sound. The same thing happens in your voice. The space that’s amplifying the sound is often called the vocal tract, but it’s really just a fancy word for mouth and throat, that’s all they’re saying. I suppose the big difference then with the guitar or a violin is that you have a resonator that is flexible. You can’t change the shape of a violin’s resonator. You can’t change the shape of guitar’s resonator. Not without a hammer, anyway, and guitarists tend to get a bit touchy about that.

Allan: So where your voice is concerned, you can move all kinds of stuff around in your throat and mouth. When you do that, it changes the shape of your resonancer. Just like the violin doesn’t sound like a piccolo even when they’re playing the same note, then different mouth and throat shapes create very different timboral responses in your instrument. That’s why you can make so many different voices. You’re moving stuff around in your throat.

Allan: What a vowel is, is essentially a recipe in the throat. So a vowel is a particular form or shape that you create in between your vocal folds and the outside world, and it’s causes a certain harmonic response. It boosts certain harmonics in the sound you’re producing, and it dulls the harmonics. The brilliant thing, and this is how science can blow your mind, is that other people’s ears can hear this. You just kind of have to go how? How?

Allan: But I mean, that’s how they can hear when you say ah, or eh, that’s how they’re hearing the difference. There is no other way possible. You’re saying ah or eh, and even with their back turned, they can hear it. So that ear is able to recognize where these strong and weak areas are in the spectrum of the sound, and interprets it as vowels. So, that’s what we know about vowels is that they are like mini-resonators of their own. And like any resonator, they have certain pitches that they love, and other pitches that they don’t.

Allan: So anyone who plays a stringed instrument will know that they’re often what we call wolf notes, or notes that are a bit dead, or notes that will make a rolling sound when you play them. They just don’t sing well in that instrument. It would be the same in a given voice. Certain vowels or a given pitch will be more resonant, or free, or easy to produce. That doesn’t mean that you have to sing certain vowels on certain pitches, of course, because composers are very … They love their text to be pronounced as they’ve written it. They don’t want you to just go changing the words and sounds. I’m just going to sing ah here even though you’ve written it … That would make our life a lot easier, but we can’t do that.

Allan: So the interplay between pitch and vowel comes down to what the singer is looking for. If you’re looking for the most open, resonant sound that projects the easiest, like you might be if you’re an opera singer, then certain vowel choices are going to be necessary. Those vowel choices are probably going to be fairly big modifications, which is why we find opera singers difficult to understand a lot of the time. They have to produce certain shapes in their throat to enable the projection that they’re creating. That makes certain vowels difficult to pronounce. So they just don’t pronounce them. And we hear ah on a lot of the top notes even though it might be ee or oo. But they can’t tell from the vowels.

Allan: A lot of teachers will say things like you have produce purer vowels. Well, you can’t. You can’t. As you go higher in your range, you can’t keep producing pure vowels. With one exception, if you want to sing in a fairly heavy chest voice on the bottom, have a massive 14 year old boy break in the middle, you know, that kind of oh no, nobody understands me sound. And then as you go higher, shift into a very pure falsetto sound. If that’s what you want your voice to sound like, then by all means, sing purer vowels. Even that will get you into trouble eventually if you go high enough.

Allan: Basically, the maths don’t add up. Each note is producing a set of harmonic frequencies that are mathematically defined by the basic pitch. Some of those harmonic frequencies will be aligned with what the vowel wants, and some of them won’t. That has an impact on timber. So if you don’t mind your timber closing in as you go higher, where it’s more like Bruno Mars when he sings his high notes, we hear quite a closed sound, and that’s what we look for in that side of music. It’s not a mistake. It sounds good, in fact, in that sound of music. Certain vowels will lead you towards that. If you’re looking for a very open operatic tenor sound, then different vowels will lead you towards that. But at one point in your voice, make peace with it. You’re going to have to modify your vowels. If you sing on anything more than a one and a half octave range, you’re going to have to modify your vowels.

Christopher: Terrific. We had a really good example of that actually just last week. In Musical U, we have these training tracks for sulfur, and a member reported that in a certain track, the high doe sound, it was a la instead of a doe. And I listened back, and I checked all of the sound clips we used to synthesize this example. The singer had nicely sung doe on every pitch very patiently [inaudible 00:47:12] across her range. Sure enough, in that context it was a very high doe. It came out as da because that’s the limit of her range. You know, when you’re listening for sulfur and it’s right up there, you don’t hear doe, doe, doe, doe. You hear doe, doe, doe, la. You know, the D had been lost. The vowel had changed because she was right up at the top of her range. As a creative performing singer, professional singer, to her that was just how you sing the O sound at the top of the range. That’s part of her voice. That’s part of how she performs. I’m sure it didn’t cross her mind that actually in isolation it’s going to come out sounding like a da.

Allan: Yeah, da, yeah. Yes, it’s surprising, isn’t it? These things that I think working singers do instinctively. Even I’ve heard many singers say no, I sing pure vowels. When you listen to them, they’re not. They’re modifying very gently, but they are modifying vowels. I think that’s often a problem in pedagogy is that what the teacher is telling you to do is not necessarily what they’re doing. They don’t know it. They believe that they’re doing what they ask you to do. But what they’re doing is not what they think they’re doing is often the problem. But yeah, I suppose as you go up, you aren’t going to get doe. You would go to a da.

Allan: The simple rules would be, and there are some fairly simple rules to do with jaw position and tongue position and lip position, but basically, if you want a given voice quality to go higher, if you’re in your speaking voice and you can’t quite get that top note in your speaking voice and you want it in your speaking voice, open your jaw. Think wider aperture. Drop your jaw a little and put a smile into it. That’s going to make those notes easier to produce. But it’s also going to make you choose certain vowels. That explains why your singer sang da instead of doe, which requires a much more closed mouth shape.

Christopher: Absolutely. Fantastic. Well, playing the part of befuddled singer, I think you’ve just cleared up three very important points for me in terms of breathing, what I should and shouldn’t eat and drink and not dying, and how I should think about my vowel sounds and making peace with that fact that they are going to change across my range. So I hope that for anyone listening who has encountered these common sticking points, or sources of myths that has helped clear some of those up.

Christopher: Allan, you are one of the most impressively productive people I know. You’re involved in a wide variety of fascinating projects. So it may be too simple a question, but what’s next for your work and Le Chanteur Moderne?

Allan: Well, our next step, our big project that we’re working on … We’ve got two things going on at the moment. We’re currently working on having the teacher training recognized at Master’s level. That’s a big [inaudible 00:49:41]. There’s a lot of work going into that. And in our bid to I guess get the training out to more people and allow people to create their own learning plan, I suppose that sounds a bit buzzword-ish, but I genuinely believe people should be able to learn the way that fits their life.

Allan: The idea is that we want to be able to give people a choice to pick more tools and do them at their own rhythm. So we’re in the process of setting up an online classroom. We have lots of functional based voice training in there from a range of experts. So we’ve got a jazz specialist coming in to teach you how to sing jazz but based on voice function. How do you take this functional knowledge and apply it to making yourself sound more jazz. We’ve got a pop expert coming in. Musical theater people, classical people. We’re going to look at how to avoid getting tired. There’s just this massive range of online courses that we’re going to offer the people. They’ll be able to follow from home, at their own pace and their own rhythm. That’s the idea. So that’s what we’re doing at the moment. Everything is being channeled into that.

Christopher: Fantastic. That’s really exciting to hear about because I think my immediate reaction to your presentation I was lucky enough to see live was I wish everyone could see this. So getting out there online is a wonderful thing. If people listening are curious to know about that when it launches, and to learn more about your teaching in general, where can they go?

Allan: So there’s the website which is www.chanteurmoderne.com. If you don’t speak French, that’s C-H-A-N-T-E-U-R-M-O-D-E-R-N-E.com. We have a Facebook page, too which is Le Chanteur Moderne on Facebook. And we generally keep people abreast of everything of there. The website is only in French for the moment, although I am being bullied from all sides to get it put into English. So we’ll get up to there, too. We often publish articles in English and I have a voice mix on there as well so people can always check out that. And on the Facebook page, we publish in both English and French. So people can be kept abreast of everything that’s going on there.

Christopher: Perfect. Well, for those who, like me, struggle to spell French correctly, and we’re frantically trying to find a pen to write that down, we’ll put a link to that website and the Facebook page [crosstalk 00:51:50] for this episode, and that will be at musicalitypodcast.com. Allan, it’s been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Allan: Thank you for having me. It’s been great fun.

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The post Singing and Science: Busting Myths with Allan Hubert-Wright appeared first on Musical U.

Just look at how much this guy is having with not one, not two, but 90 instruments:

What is a Multi-Instrumentalist?

In the simplest terms, a multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays more than one instrument.

However, this doesn’t mean that they might rock on the guitar and maybe occasionally pick up the harmonica. When referring to seasoned musicians, it means that they have mastered more than one instrument. While there will always be an instrument that they play best, their musicianship level is high on two, three, or even more instruments. Additionally, many multi-instrumentalists are vocalists, and can sing solo or background tracks, often with their own original music.

Jazz and classical music is full of multi-instrumentalists, with woodwind players and percussionists expected to master several instruments throughout their career. For example, a saxophone player might play alto sax, soprano sax, and clarinet with equal musicality and proficiency, and many church organists also play piano exceptionally well. A professional oboist might also play English horn, and in many indie bands, the members might switch instruments depending on the tune. Speaking for myself, as a percussionist, I’ve mastered everything from timpani to congas.

And then of course, there are the absolute music gods – for example, think of Prince, who not only could sing and entertain, but jammed like a madman on keys, guitar, bass, synth, and more:

Some examples of other incredible multi-instrumentalists include Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder, and Bruno Mars. The cult progressive rock band the Gentle Giants were notorious for including all types of instruments on their tracks, from trumpet and synths to violin:

Why add another instrument to your arsenal?

While there are a multitude of advantages to playing more than one instrument well, the major reason is simple: playing more than one instrument greatly improves your overall musicianship and makes you more well-rounded as a musician.

A pianist that can sing is a great fit for a live band situation or church gig with a choir. A percussionist that also plays keys finds that they have a better understanding of overall musical form, melody, and harmony. A brass player that has mastered several brass instruments and piano has a much more comprehensive understanding of music theory, aural theory, and musicality than one who exclusively plays the trombone.

Taking a real-life example: while Bruno Mars is best known for his emotive, pitch-perfect voice, little do most of his fans know he can also rip on the drums:

And the benefits don’t end there…

Expand Your Understanding

If you only play the flute or drum set, your understanding of music is limited to your experience and practice. You might only comprehend melody, rhythm, or harmony, instead of seeing music as a collective whole.

On the other hand, a singer, woodwind player, brass player, or percussionist that also takes the time to learn piano will gain a much greater understanding of harmony, music theory, and musical form.

Similarly, a piano player who picks up the drumsticks or guitar will increase their understanding of the role of rhythm in a tune. Singers who choose to master a few instruments will find that when they sing, they will hear how their part works together with the band behind them. And for instrumentalists that aspire to be band, choral, or orchestra conductors, learning at least one instrument from each family and good vocal technique is integral to their professional career and musicianship.

Hone Your Songwriting Craft

For bands, songwriters, composers, and music producers, it is necessary to play and understand more than one instrument to create high-quality work.

How can you write for guitar if you don’t understand chords, or write a symphony if you don’t know the nuances of a violin or trumpet? Yes, you can read books, work with other musicians, or just hope and pray that the notes on the page make sense in live performance, but the information and practical experience you will personally gain by learning more than one instrument will be invaluable throughout your career.

Go Beyond the D.A.W.

There is a growing trend of recording engineers and music producers that don’t read music or play an instrument. They rely solely on what the computer can produce with knobs, faders, and effects.

While this takes talent in itself and yields some incredible music, any music producer will benefit from picking up a few instruments.

Do so, and you will be able to troubleshoot why a certain drum beat sounds canned, or why that guitar lick you punched in doesn’t work. You can save money in the studio by recording instrumental parts yourself, or mix in live audio of your instrumental performance with the loops and presets in your software. There is intrinsic value in mastering more than one instrument in contemporary music production and audio engineering.

Instrumentalists, you’re not off the hook here – this is a two-way street! Learning to mix yields enormous benefits for your musicality, with opportunities for you to learn about the frequencies of your instrument, the effects you can add to alter its sound, and much more. Additionally, if you take the time to understand digital audio workstations, EQing, effects, and track mixing, you can effectively be your own audio engineer in a pinch!

Become A Better Collaborator

When you are a multi-instrumentalist, you can speak the same language as other musicians in your band or ensemble. When the drummer starts talking about a rhythm that sounds like “Claka-claka-dum-dum-splash,” you know exactly what they are saying.

When the guitarist and keyboard player compare notes on chord progressions or the singer wants to rewrite a lyric to make it more singable, you will understand exactly what they are chatting about because you have taken the time to expand your musical palette.

The Full Package

Finally, in a world where everyone can be a musician with a swipe on a smartphone or tap on a screen, being known as the person that can play keys, drums, and sing will make you infinitely more marketable than your peers.

This is very true for those that are pursuing work in the studio, as a live musician, or in education.

The best band directors and orchestra conductors are the ones that have mastered a few different instruments in order to properly direct the musicians under their baton. The best music teachers are those that can show their students how to play an instrument because they have studied that instrument. And in the studio, where time equals money, if you can hire someone that will play a few different roles, then you are more than happy to hire them for multiple gigs.

While we are focusing on the musicianship angle of playing more than one instrument, the financial and career benefits cannot be ignored. Being a multi-instrumentalist increases the number of valuable skills that you have under your belt whether you mostly play on the stage, in the studio, at the concert hall, or in your garage.

Becoming a Two (or more!) Trick Pony

Playing more than one instrument can seem daunting if you are just starting out on your musical journey. Maybe you have dabbled with the drums or can pluck a few chords out on guitar, but you haven’t mastered an instrument yet.

When to Go For It

If you have the time, passion, resources, and energy to pursue more than one instrument at a time, then go for it. Young students, for example, are like sponges, easily absorbing everything that they come across. Part of this is the malleability of the young mind and part of this is just time. A kid in school band has countless hours to improve their instrument, while their tired parents are lucky to get in thirty minutes of practice time per week.

So, yes, go for it and pursue a few instruments.

It helps to pursue instruments that are in the same family, like violin and viola, or drums and xylophone, rather than trying to master two disparate instruments like accordion and French horn.

There is also the financial aspect, which we will chat about in a second. If you are beginning your musical journey and choose to conquer two paths at once, just be sure to give yourself time to learn both well, or maybe major in one and then spend extra time on the other. Remember that you might be learning the basics of theory, reading music, and rhythm at the same time as you are learning these instruments.

If you have already gained at least an intermediate proficiency on one instrument or voice, it’s a good time to pursue a second or third instrument. Why? Because you have already learned some of the basics of music theory, reading music, and ear training, you will probably find that the second or third instrument will be relatively easy to learn.

When to Hold Back

When shouldn’t you try to be a multi-instrumentalist? If you are already overwhelmed with a crazy schedule, then you might want to wait. This way, you don’t start pursuing an instrument then become discouraged because you can’t dedicate the right amount of time to it.

An example? I have an acoustic guitar that sits in my living room because I made the mistake of thinking that I could teach myself guitar while getting ready for a new baby in the house. I learned enough to help me with my songwriting, but for the most part, the guitar sits gathering dust for now, or at least until Junior goes to kindergarten… 

Fortunately, most of us will be able to make time to learn a new instrument, even if we have to set aside some other hobbies and obligations to do so.

You’re Going For It… Now What?

If you’ve decided that yes, you do have the time, energy, and resources to go ahead and start learning a second (or third, or fourth) instrument, congratulations! You’re about to undertake a journey that will excite you, challenge you, and do incredible things for your musicianship.

Here’s what you’ll need to get started…

1. Find Resources and a Community

The first thing you want to do is find great resources on the instruments that you want to pursue, as well as information on music theory, ear training, and live performance. While we don’t offer direct beginning instruction, Musical U has countless resources that will up your musicality on any instrument – whether you sing, play guitar, piano, or drums.

Learning harmonies on the piano? Look no further than some of Musical U’s chord progression exercises. Want to develop a better ear for tuning a guitar? Check out their great resource on tuning your guitar without relying on a tuner. The Musical U community includes experts ready to help you on your musical journey, as well as fellow musicians that have struggled with the same challenges as you.

2. Borrow an Instrument, then Buy

Buying a new instrument is a big investment, especially if it’s not your primary one. Thankfully, many music stores have options like rent-to-own instruments.

For younger students who are just learning, you might be able to find a friend, family member, or neighbor who doesn’t mind lending their instrument to your family. Some teachers have old instruments just lying in storage or in their own homes. Certain instruments, like pianos, guitars, and violins, are so popular that finding a good instrument second hand might be the best option, though you may need to repair it before using it.

Once you have grown comfortable with your new instrument and are sure that you wish to continue learning it, you can make the financial commitment to buying an instrument.

3. Get Learning!

There are hundreds of options available for anyone who wants to learn how to play more than one instrument. With thousands of instructive YouTube videos and virtual music lessons available, you can start learning your new instrument from the comfort of your home at a reasonable rate. If you prefer an in-person approach, learn from an instructor at the local music shop, or a talented relative or friend.

Once you get comfortable with your instrument and are ready to apply ear training to it, Musical U is an enormous help to get you from “just playing” to playing musically. Included in a membership is access to Instrument Packs for bass, guitar, piano, and singing, which contain both instrument-specific and general advice for bringing out your musicality. And with new content released daily through articles, podcasts, and tutorials, you can expand your musicality even further – and these resources are valuable to all musicians.

Want to challenge yourself more? Take the time to contact professional musicians and instructors to help you achieve a higher level of musicianship and understanding – some of them may just let you pick their brains!

4. Play Live

Once you have gained an intermediate understanding of your new instrument, set up a live performance. This can be something as simple as a living room concert, or something as complicated as a full band show, but take the time to show off your new musical skills. Even if you are a perfectionist nervous about a less-than-stellar performance, there is value in performing live. It motivates you to improve like nothing else does.

Jack of Many Instruments

With the world of possibilities that learning a new instrument presents, you may be tempted to go straight to the online classifieds, buy a second-hand flute, and get jamming.

However, engage in an honest self-evaluation before you commit to anything. Ask yourself, Do I have the time? How will my potential second instrument complement the one(s) I already play? What benefits do I most hope to reap? How do I want to learn?

The post Musicality Means: Playing More Than One Instrument appeared first on Musical U.

However, many musicians who start out playing music as a mere hobby soon find themselves wanting something more – exposure, a small audience, maybe even a gig or two. Many even decide they would like to write and record an album.

Having something to work for is a fantastic motivator for your practice, and goal-setting can help take you from a play-for-fun musician to a performer, recording artist, songwriter, or whatever your heart desires.

This week, we explore some avenues that can take you from a hobbyist musician to a more deliberate, directed practitioner. We interview the founder of a music entrepreneurship academy, learn about a music program that encourages students to enter the mindset of a composer and producer, and discuss how to maximize your chances of successfully completing an online music course.

Before we dive into all that, a quick reminder on a very special event happening tomorrow, and a quick briefing on June’s offerings…

New in June

With the long-awaited arrival of summer comes new Musical U announcements and content for you to sink your teeth into.

Firstly, a reminder that this month’s Masterclass is tomorrow, June the 30th. Davin Youngs of the Chicago Singing Circle will be giving an hour-long live lesson on the topic of sounding good as a singer – so if you’ve ever been afraid to sing in front of people, or think singing is irrelevant to your instrument playing, or are reluctant to record your singing voice – you won’t want to miss this! Register here, and we’ll see you tomorrow!

This month, our Instrument Packs see an exciting new addition with the Major vs. Minor Resource Pack, we’ve beefed up our Three-Chord Songs and the Four-Chord Trick module with an extra lesson, and beloved guitar Resident Pro Dylan Welsh is hitting the road this summer – and we have the info on his tour dates.

Excited to learn more? What’s New in Musical U: June 2018 has the finer print!

Music Entrepreneurship

The “starving artist” trope unfortunately leads to many musicians believing that it’s unrealistic for them to ever hope to make a living, or even an income from their music – so they resign themselves to becoming “bedroom musicians” instead of pursuing a career.

But how about some professional advice on, well… becoming a professional?

Besides her achievements as a singer-songwriter, Bree Noble is the founder of Female Musician Academy and the host of two podcasts, Women of Substance Radio and the Female Entrepreneur Musician podcast. Through these channels, she gives advice on getting recognized and getting paid for their musical passions – through an avenue that suits them, and with a focus on empowering women in the industry.

Tune your ears into Getting Heard and Getting Paid, with Bree Noble, and learn how to elevate your music practice to a music profession!

Bree’s poor eyesight meant that she had to learn to memorize music at a very young age. Because of this, she was able to develop memorization skills that would serve her well throughout her musical career. John Ward Music Lessons discusses the benefits to developing memorization skills.

Many musicians may have decided to move onto another career if they were unable to read the sheet music, but Bree found a way through with her memorization skills. Memorizing music provides something that Ford Barker calls “performance security”, a skill that helps you avoid memory slips and mistakes in a live setting.

Bree has found a great niche in helping other musicians develop their marketing and promotion strategies. If you want to become a commercially successful musician, learning how to promote your music is absolutely essential. Adam Harkus unpacks music promotion for aspiring musicians.

Most people discover new music through YouTube, Spotify, and other online platforms – which means that you need to build a presence online! Michael Musco breaks down 10 ways that you can make your musical presence known on the worldwide web.

Music Tech

Richard McCready’s Music Technology program isn’t your average school music curriculum – you won’t find his students playing classical pieces in a band setting, or working through theory textbooks.

Instead, the program approaches music education from a creative, hands-on angle that sees the students creating a whole new piece of music using computer software. Under the teacher’s guidance, they are in the driver’s seat for all parts of the process, from conception, to composition, to mixing.

Learn about the story behind Richard’s program and its incredible results in classrooms in Creating, Composing, and Computers, with Richard McCready. Don’t sleep on this interview if you’re a self-taught musician – Richard also has some valuable advice for independent learners, including insights on composition, aural skills, and keeping yourself engaged and motivated in your learning journey.

It was fascinating and inspiring to hear how Richard’s students are using technology to explore their musicality. However, technology isn’t just limited to composing and recording – it can make your everyday musical life easier. Bridey at Pianosaurus Rex explores the ways in which technology can be used in music lessons.

With so many choices on the market, how can one make a decision on what software is right for them? We discovered Dr. James Frankel on the Music Tech Tips podcast with our friend Katie Wardrobe. Dr. Frankel has helped to bring a suite of music tech products to market at Music First.

GarageBand is one program that can easily be used for recording, and is now even available as an app on iOS. Interested in exploring some other options for recording like a pro? Hear the Music Play has compiled a list of recording tools that you can carry around in your pocket.

Music technology is a quickly changing industry, which makes it harder and harder to keep up with all the changes. Chris and Paul at the Music Education & Technology Podcast recently got together to discuss all the changes just during this past academic year. Find out what’s new and improved in this packed episode!

Online Music Courses

So, after much searching, sifting, and comparing, you’ve finally found an online music course you’d like to dedicate your time to.

How can you make sure that you remain excited, motivated, and on track?

In About Succeeding with Online Courses, we look at the most common roadblocks musicians encounter when learning online, and how to successfully maneuvre around them to make your learning experience as successful and fun as possible.

With more people beginning to take online courses, we are becoming more dependent on the various devices that we use. It can be overwhelming to try keep our smartphones and other devices organized as we put more and more information into them. Amy at Piano Pantry talks about how she organizes her devices to help them work for her.

Staying motivated and having confidence in your abilities to progress are key to being successful in any online course. Pick Up Jazz details three ways to boost your musical confidence.

Being successful in an online course requires you to have the motivation and desire to continue working through the lessons – and even repeating them when necessary. Cari Cole, an accomplished musician in her own right, discusses what she calls the 3 C’s of a Musician Mindset to help you succeed in your online course.

Finally, developing good practice habits will prove very useful in helping you progress through an online course. Practice habits are not just limited to helping you develop on your instrument – they can help develop other aspects of your musicality as well. Ross from Music and Guitar Lessons talks about learning music theory… by practicing music.

Semi-Pro

There isn’t a binary of “professional musicians” and “hobbyists” – rather, it’s a continuous spectrum where you can decide how much you want to engage with the music scene or the industry depending on your goals. And most often, success in the “professional” world comes through a long series of stepping stones.

Though it’s unrealistic to expect to sell out a venue for your first live gig, you can set a goal to spread the word about your performance enough to get a decent audience. You may not write the song of your dreams the first time you give it a go, but over time, you’ll refine your approach and see better music coming out of you. The first online music course you ever attempt may be a disaster, but your second or third is more likely to be a good fit, and leave you with a sense of accomplishment and excitement.

The post New in June, Music Entrepreneurship, Music Tech, and Online Music Courses appeared first on Musical U.