Author: musicalitywrld

This week, we’re taking a step back, slowing it down, and focussing on how to achieve your long-term musical goals by building good practice habits and foundations, rather than using quick fixes and band-aid solutions.

First, vocal coach extraordinaire Gino Burgio has some valuable advice for ESL singers on how to continuously improve their pronunciation, and for their coaches on how to best encourage their students. The Musicality Podcast interviews Ged Brockie, professional composer and teacher, who shares the most important thing you can do while studying music, and explains how it helps you become a natural musician in the long run. Jazz aficionado Zac Green explains how to build a solid foundation for playing jazz guitar (read: improvisation!). And rounding out the week is a podcast episode on the 10,000 hour rule, and how musicians can apply it to become masters of their craft.

Last, and certainly not least, Musical U’s own Andrew Bishko gives advice for new piano teachers on putting together engaging, student-focussed lessons on TimTopham.com.

Singing in Tongues

Learning a second language is hard enough as it is. New alphabets, words, and sentence structures are half the battle – the other half is being able to speak with a convincing accent.

Imagine worrying about all that, and on top of that, needing to ensure you’re in tune and on beat.

Welcome to the challenge of singing in English as a non-native speaker!

Thankfully, Gino Burgio has tips for both the ESL singer and those who coach them. In Singing in English: Tips for ESL Singers and Coaches, he details how to understand and teach the intricacies of English pronunciation, and encourages students and teachers alike to take advantage of modern technology to make the learning experience as holistic and immersive as possible.

Every language has their own particulars that must be learned if you are going to sing the lyrics accurately. For classical singers, especially those that sing opera, learning the languages of Europe are especially important as most opera originates from Europe. Schmopera discusses four vowel sounds that singers will be challenged by when singing in a foreign language.

When learning a foreign language, there are certain muscle movements that create the particular sounds in that language. For native English speakers, it can be difficult to ingrain sounds like the rolled r, for example. When learning to sing in a new language, practicing the idiosyncrasies of the new language are imperative as they will lead to muscle memory. The Worship Vocalist shows more examples of how muscle memory is important to singers.

It can be difficult enough to memorize lyrics in your native language, so it is naturally more difficult in a second language! Many singers struggle with consistently memorizing the words and melody that they are preparing to sing. Hark Music has five fantastic tips that’ll help you have that song memorized in no time!

Steady Success

In spite of what interviews with uniquely lucky artists might tell you, success in music rarely happens overnight. The vast majority of us will need to spend hours playing and playing and playing to perfect our skills and get gigs and recognition.

Unfortunately, there are no “quick fixes” if you really want to become good – you’re going to have to dedicate a large chunk of time to your practice, and be ready to spend extra time on the areas that you struggle with.

Professional musician and teacher Ged Brockie knows all about getting into music for the long haul. A professional musician for over 30 years, he has performed all over Europe and the UK, composed music for film and television, launched a music festival and a summer school, published two book series for self-taught guitarists, and launched the Guitar and Music Institute website. And it all started with the purchase of a £60 guitar when Ged was just 15!

In Beyond the “Quick Fix”, with Ged Brockie, he gives insights on how to resist the “quick fix” to really develop your musicality, how to hone your entrepreneurial skills (which are crucial for the modern musician!), and the connections between theory, technique, and musicality.

It’s no secret that we are big fans of the Guitar and Music Institute Podcast here at Musical U. While the title of this episode implies that it is only for guitarists, there are many practical tips for any musician looking to make their hobby a paid profession.

Ged talked extensively about the music business and finding your own niche to be successful. While the world has gotten more advanced in communication, that has also made building your career more complex as well. For some expert tips on finding success, That’s My Gig shares some excellent strategies for success.

In the last decade, the explosion of social media and mobile devices have changed the way that we communicate with the world. It wasn’t too long ago that the word “selfie” was not a part of our vocabulary! With these changes, artists need to also amend their approach to building a community of followers. Learn more about how to encourage your fans to post pictures of your performances from The Music Site.

Mastering Jazz Guitar

Jazz unfortunately has a certain reputation of “inaccessibility” – musicians often assume that the complicated rhythms and improvised melodies that jazz is famous for will prevent them from ever being able to play it.

We won’t lie to you: improvisation is, in fact, challenging. There’s no one way to learn it, and it does require some out-of-the-box thinking and creativity on your part.

The good news: building a good foundation comprised of certain chords, chord progressions, arpeggios, and licks will equip you with the basics of jazz guitar improvisation. From there, you can progress to building your own licks in no time!

Head over to 6 Steps to Learning Jazz Guitar Improvisation to kickstart your jazz guitar journey, with Zing Instruments’s Zac Green’s easy-to-follow tips to get you playing jazz guitar in no time.

Starting improvisation can be very intimidating! Learning arpeggios is a great way to start, as these are chord tones that will sound good over the chord progression. We talked about this topic recently on The Musicality Podcast. GypsyandJazz.com takes it another step further with a great lesson on improvisation using arpeggios.

Zac mentioned one of the major chord progressions (often referred to as chord changes) that every jazzer will want to have under their fingers: the II-V-I progression. Once you have that down, there is a whole world of additional standard changes that are preferred by jazz musicians. Expanding your vocabulary to include the most important of these progressions will help you gain confidence in your ability to improvise over any chord change! Jazz Guitar Licks has compiled fourteen of them to get you started.

After getting the blues in your head, arpeggios under your fingers, and chord changes in your ears, it’s time for some sweet licks.  Musicians will listen to great albums and transcribe solos so that they can incorporate some of these lines into their own improvisation. If you want to learn how to play licks, jazz etudes are another great place to start. David Magyel has a great jazz improvisation lesson to help get you started!

10,000 Hours to Greatness

Mastery of any skill takes time – a lot of it.

Malcolm Gladwell, for one, has proposed an exact amount of time. He hypothesizes in his book Outliers that mastering a skill takes 10,000 hours of practice, whether you’re a chef, pro skateboarder, welder, or musician.

Though there is at least some truth to this rule, it also comes with many asterisks. For example, how you practice is just as (if not more important than!) how much you practice.

Also, the 10,000 hours refers to the amount of time you potentially need to put in for total mastery. Think about all the milestones you’ll reach on your way there – you don’t need to be a “master musician” in order to improvise beautifully, play by ear, or write beautiful music. You’ll be happy to hear that these skills will come to you long, long before you come close to the 10,000 hour mark!

In About the 10,000 Hour Rule, we discuss how you can make the most out of your practice time (regardless of whether you make it to 10,000 hours or not!), how big of a role talent plays in all this, and how you can enjoy your long and winding musical journey!

It’s easy to get wrapped up with that big number of 10,000 hours and forget that there are many accomplishments along the way. No matter what your goals, you can speed up your progress by using more effective methods to practice music! We talk a lot about deliberate and interleaved practice here at Musical U, and we’re not the only ones; Dr. Flegg provides a great lesson on interleaving on his Structured Practice Method website!

The beauty and simplicity of aspiring for 10,000 hours is that you are able to map out a process for getting to mastery on your instrument. It’s not so much reaching that amount of time, but deliberately planning your practice to aspire to meet your musical goals. There are numerous stories from other musicians on how they put a plan into action and achieved their goals. Read more about how Jason Haaheim gained freedom in his musicality and ask yourself, “am I willing to do the work?”

And, above all, remember that the reason we are all learning music is because of a passion deep within us. While there will be struggles along the way, enjoying playing and the process of improving is very important! Music Lab discusses how to keep lessons fun for children, with advice that transfers nicely to adult learners!

Modern Piano Pedagogy

Have you mastered the piano, and want to help others do the same? A career in teaching may be right for you. The joys

Piano theory may stay the same, but teaching styles are constantly changing and evolving. Now more than ever, music pedagogy has seen a shift away from a strict, one-size-fits-all approach, and towards a more tailored approach that has the student’s interests, cultural background, and musical strengths in mind.

Musical U’s very own Content & Product Manager Andrew Bishko shares his formula for combining his decades of piano wisdom with a personalized, student-centric teaching approach on Tim Topham’s website for creative music education.

In How To Be A New Piano Teacher with Old Teacher Wisdom, Andrew talks about structuring lessons, using students’ home lives and cultural milieus as starting points for their piano journeys, and the three layers of listening that piano teachers should be doing if they want an engaged, successful student. To round it off, he shares some great anecdotes from his teaching years that will have you itching to dive into piano pedagogy yourself!

For the Long Haul

Getting to where you want to be musically may not take 10,000 hours, but it’s a good idea to settle in, get comfortable, and enjoy the ride – it’ll certainly be a long journey, whether you’re aiming to sing fluently and flawlessly in English, master jazz guitar, become a successful piano teacher, or gain fame as a professional musician.

Something to think about: there’s no “final destination” in music – instead, the completion of a goal opens up new doors and new goals to strive towards, ensuring that you’re always learning, creating, and evolving.

The post Singing in Tongues, Steady Success, Mastering Jazz Guitar, 10,000 Hours to Greatness, and Modern Piano Pedagogy appeared first on Musical U.

“It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert,” states the 10,000 Hour Rule. Undoubtedly, working passionately and diligently towards your musical goals is a great formula for success, but what if musicians could get the results they want before hitting this numerical milestone? We discuss the truths and myths surrounding the 10,000 Hour Rule, and how to best allocate those hours to become a master musician.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Interview with Ged Brockie
• Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell
• How Musicians Should Spend Their 10,000 Hours
• How to Get More out of Every Practice Session

Transcript

In our recent interview with Ged Brockie of the Guitar and Music Institute he made reference to the “10,000 hour rule” when we were talking about the relative importance of talent and hard work for a musician. I wanted to pick up on that and talk about it on this episode because it’s a useful concept – but one that’s often misunderstood.

Have you heard of the “10,000 hour rule”? If so, you might have heard someone say something like: “It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert”.

10,000 hours equates to practicing 6 hours per day, every day, for four or five years. If you’re a hobbyist spending just 30 minutes per day then you’re looking at about 60 years to hit the 10,000 hour mark!

This is something that’s referred to across various areas including music – people have run the numbers to show that the Beatles put in this effort for song writing, and that Mozart did to become so incredible while still a child.

But that simple statement can be seriously misleading. So let’s unpack it a bit. Where did this “rule” come from, what does it actually say, and what can we usefully learn from it for our own musical development?

The “10,000 Hour Rule” was coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. It’s a catchy and inspiring idea and one which has really entered mainstream culture.

The problem with this rule is that people mis-remember it, or hear it wrong from a friend in the first place.

You will hear people say “it takes 10,000 hours to become really good at something”.

But that’s not true, and it’s not what Gladwell claimed.

The clue to this confusion is right there in the name of the book: Outliers. Gladwell wasn’t talking about becoming good at something, or even excellent. He was talking about mastery. The chess Grand Masters. Olympic athletes. Internationally-touring concert pianists.

So don’t be discouraged if you can’t practice six hours a day for 5 years!

For most of the musicians who mention the 10,000 hour rule to me, their aspirations are to become “an excellent musician”. Someone who can jam easily and confidently with friends, perform in concerts, maybe even make a living playing music.

All of these can be achieved long before that 10,000 hour mark.

So it may not take you 10,000 hours – but there are still some valuable things we can pick up from this idea of the 10,000 hour rule.

The first is that the way you practice matters. This is a detail that’s often glossed over but it’s vital. Clearly just putting in the hours isn’t enough. Spending 10,000 hours doing mindless drills or working on the same easy material clearly isn’t going to turn you into a superstar!

The original idea of the 10,000 hour rule actually comes from research by Anders Ericsson of Florida State University who published a paper analysing violin students at a conservatory and how they had practiced.

Notably Ericsson himself believes that “talent” doesn’t exist and everything boils down to the way you practice – more on that and his concept of “deliberate practice” in a future episode.

So however many hours you’re going to spend, make sure you’re practicing in an effective way. You might like to check out episode 10 with Gerald Klickstein for some great insights on how to spend your practice time, and I’ll put a couple of links in the shownotes to more on that.

The second useful thing we can learn from the 10,000 hour rule is that “talent” is mostly a myth. We’ve heard some interesting and different opinions on this from our guests on the show so far but one thing has been unanimous: however much natural ability you might have at the start, it’s the work you do to improve as a musician that matters most.

So don’t worry if you feel untalented in music. The true greats have put in the time. While the 10,000 hour number can seem intimidating, there’s also something deeply reassuring about knowing that becoming great really is just a matter of hard (and smart) work.

And as this show is dedicated to exploring, that goes for all the “inner skills” like playing by ear, improvising and creating your own music too.

The third useful thing to take away from the 10,000 hour rule is: this is a long journey! As we talked about with Ged on the last episode, there are no “quick fixes” in music if you truly want to become good.

In today’s world of overnight success stories and everybody wanting shortcuts, it’s good to be reminded that things which are worthwhile in life take time. In fact, that’s what the word “worthwhile” means: it’s worth your while to do it.

By knowing that everything in music is learnable and the journey is going to take time you can pursue your musicality with the mindset that will lead you step-by-step to success.

So those are three valuable lessons from this concept of the “10,000 hour rule”:

1. How you practice matters
2. Talent is mostly a myth
3. This is a long journey

Before I wrap up though, I do want to address a couple of other important points. Like the idea that the 10,000 hour rule is about getting good rather than being about absolute mastery, there are other misconceptions and misunderstandings that are worth clearing up.

One is the dangerous idea that we’re talking about a fixed endpoint. That you’re going to have to put in 10,000 hours before something happens.

Of course, that’s total nonsense.

If you’re pursuing 10,000 hours of musical training and you’re practicing in the right way then every single one of those hours is going to make you a better musician.

It’s not an either/or on/off thing, where you’re not good until you hit 10,000 hours and then you’re an instant expert! It’s going to be a gradual process, and one that’s continually rewarding, as you get better and better.

So don’t be overwhelmed. Not only do you not necessarily need 10,000 hours to get to your personal goal in music, you’re going to be getting closer and closer with every hour you put in.

The other really dangerous and misleading thing about the rule is it gives the impression that there’s just a simple straight line to success. And even the way I just described it might give that impression, that it’s just hour after hour, getting better and better.

As we all know, musical training does not proceed in a straight line! Not only are there tons of areas you’re going to want to explore and improve in, you will inevitably encounter things that come easier and others that are hard to progress with, you’ll take diversions and wrong turns – and your path to success will be a very personal and winding one.

So when thinking about the 10,000 hour rule you also need to keep a realistic sense that this isn’t a simple and predetermined course you’re following. That’s why we have such a flexible training system at Musical U, because it’s vital that you be able to plan your training and adjust it along the way to match your background, your goals, and your experiences.

There are going to be twists and turns. Anticipate that, and get the support and guidance you need to help you correct course – and you’ll be able to persist and overcome and get to your goal.

So there’s just one more thing to mention regarding the 10,000 hour rule. And that is: how exactly should a musician spend those hours? We’ve already mentioned one aspect of the answer, the way you practice is important – but what you practice is, of course, too. Stay tuned! We’ll be tackling both of those in future episodes.

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The post About the 10,000 Hour Rule appeared first on Musical U.

Anyone familiar with the dulcet tones of Wes Montgomery or Pat Metheny will know that jazz guitar is a law (and sound) unto itself. You can be an accomplished rock or blues guitarist, but still not have a clue how to maneuver around jazz.

The biggest challenge of jazz guitar is improvisation. Most guitar styles include improvisation to a greater or lesser extent, but jazz is the genre that requires improvisation as a prerequisite. You can’t play jazz guitar without improvisation. But there’s the rub: improvisation is hard. It’s less tangible than, say, chord theory, and as a result, it’s as slippery as an eel to learn. Or so it seems.

Yes, improvisation at a Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny, or Django Reinhardt level (the master of them all, in my opinion) cannot really be taught. But like most things, there are plenty of signposts along the way to help you learn to improvise, even if the “guts” of the craft comes from the heart, not the hands.

So what are the basic steps to learning jazz guitar improvisation? Let’s take a look.

1. Learning the Blues

The foundation of jazz guitar improvisation is, surprisingly, the blues!

The first step is to learn to play a 12-bar blues using harmonised jazz chords. Once you’ve got that down, you should practice playing minor pentatonic scales over the blues sequence. Add some some easy licks to get you started, and you’ve just created a nice basis for improvisation. At this stage, it’s useful to learn rhythm patterns, melodic patterns, and how to choose the right notes to play over both.

2. Understanding Triads​

Triads are the building blocks of chords, so in our second step you should focus on understanding triads.

Study major triads in root, first, second, and octave inversions, and then take a look at the classic I-IV-V jazz chord progression​. Once you’re done with major triads, then move on to minor triads in root, first, second, and octave inversions. If you’re feeling brave, take a look at Im-IVm-V7 in different keys and different positions!

3. Learning II-V-I formations

Now it’s time to look at classic jazz progressions – namely the ubiquitous II-V-I progression. Like the I-IV-V progression in blues, the II-V-I is everywhere in jazz. Learn the progression in the seven major keys – jazz standard “Satin Doll” is a wonderful tune to help you practice these progressions:

Then, study II-V-I progressions in the seven minor keys. “Alone Together” is a great standard for practicing minor II-V-I.

4. Mastering Guide Tones

To absorb the sound of a chord progression, it’s a good idea to learn what are called “guide tones”. Guide tones are the 3rd and 7th scale degrees of a chord (because this is what determines a major, minor, or dominant chord).

Understanding guide tones will therefore allow you to hear the quality of chords being played, helping you make sense of progressions.

For your next step, learn guide tones over the I-IV-V and II-V-I progressions you’ve just learned.

5. Triad and Four-chord Arpeggios

Ok, by this step we’re cooking on gas!

Now we fix our gaze on arpeggios, specifically triad and four chord arpeggios. Learning arpeggios equips you with a wonderful vocabulary – the gypsy jazz genre (to name one) uses arpeggios to amazing effect.

As well as major and minor arpeggios​, we should learn Dm7, G7 and Cmaj7 chords showed with triads, plus Dm7-G7-Cmaj7 improvisation examples using triads​​.

6. Learning Licks and Pattern​s

By the time you’ve reached this step, you’ve learned triads, guide tones, and arpeggios. This will already give you a lot of improvisation gumption.

What’s our final step then? Well, it’s to listen and absorb the great jazz guitarists and learn their licks and patterns!

Having equipped yourself with the basics of jazz guitar improvisation, you will appreciate how these licks and patterns were formed. Greats to listen to include Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Joe Pass, Jim Hall, Barney Kessel, Lenny Breau, Ted Green, Pat Metheny, John Scofield and many others…

The Road to Jazz Mastery

So there we have it: 6 steps to learning jazz guitar improvisation. If you’re serious about learning this skill, sign up for the free 11 Day Jazz Guitar Improvisation Bootcamp online course which covers all the above and more. The course instructor is Scandinavian guitar sensation Mikko Karhula who walks you through all the above points. You’ll be improvising like the best of them in no time!

Zac Green is a guitar fanatic and teacher who does double duty as the editor-in-chief of Zing Instruments‘s blog, writing about everything from the best guitar songs for beginners, to music industry news and advice for those looking to go pro.

The post 6 Steps to Learning Jazz Guitar Improvisation appeared first on Musical U.

Playing multiple instruments can both broaden and deepen your understanding of music, and is one of the best things you can do for your musicality. In that spirit, even if you’re not a guitarist yourself you’ll want to stay tuned, as Ged’s story and perspective on learning music is still going to be very interesting and relevant for you.

Ged has been a professional musician for over thirty years, performing throughout the UK and Europe. He’s helped develop courses for higher education, launched a summer school and a music festival, and composed original music for television, theatre, and film.

Somehow, amongst all of that he’s also found the time to:

• Publish the “Fastline” series of guitar tutor books teaching jazz, blues, rock and more
• Write a book with accompanying tutorial videos called Drop Two Voicings Uncovered
• Create a huge website at GuitarAndMusicInstitute.com
• Launch the GMI podcast earlier this year

Ged is a great storyteller, and in this conversation we talked a bit about his early beginnings in music, what it was like growing up as a musician in Scotland in the 80s, how things have changed in terms of learning music and performing, and his perspective on what’s good and bad about the current status quo in music education.

He shared his opinion on whether there’s such a thing as musical “talent” (and if so, how important it is), the most important thing you can do while studying music to turn you into a real musician, how learning music is like learning a language, and the connection between theory, technique and musicality.

We also talk about a man smashing a bus stop.

We hope you enjoy this wide-ranging and illuminating conversation with Ged!

Listen to the episode:

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Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• GMI: Guitar and Music Institute
• The GMI Podcast
• GMI Podcast Episode: Interview with Christopher Sutton, CEO of Musical U
• Drop Two Voicings Uncovered – The Must-Have Book for Guitarists
• Fastlines Blues Guitar Method and Jazz Guitar Method

Transcript

Ged: Hi. This is Ged Brockie from GMI: The Guitar and Music Institute; and you’re listening to the Musicality Podcast.

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

Ged: It’s absolutely fantastic, Christopher. Doesn’t seem like a week since I talked to last… oh, wait a minute…

Christopher: So for those not in the know, I was recently a guest on the GMI podcast,  a fantastic show with interviews, teaching and more for guitar players and musicians of all strengths. We’ll be making reference to that a few times, so do head to the show notes if you would like to listen in on that previous conversation.

So, Ged, I’d love to start in the beginning and talk a bit about how you first learned music and what those early experiences were like for you.

Ged: Well, I had a very interesting background. It was a very musical background. I had quite a religious background, actually. I was always exposed to simple songs and melodies, Scottish psalms, and all that sort of stuff. I was always singing. At the age of five, I started taking carol lessons with my aunt and that lasted for a couple of years. I was always being asked to sing in choirs and things at school. Then, at the age of 10, there was a guy that came round and we all had to go out to this room and see if we could play a trumpet.

Well, it was a cornet actually. I managed to get in there, so I was playing the cornet for a couple years. The thing about trumpet envy… I was playing the cornet and you went to Edinburgh School and everybody just wanted to be in first trumpet. So, you’re looking at these guys and all this flash, the first trumpet players, you know, and I was just in the cornets.

So, after that I went to secondary school. Again, was well into singing. As you did back in the day, perhaps not so much nowadays… bunch of pals, we said, “Why don’t we start a band.” So, I thought, “Yes, I want to be the lead guitarist.” So I, at the age of 15… My mother didn’t have any money. She was a widow. So, I was walking down the road one day and I saw an old lady struggling in her garden and I said, “Do you need any help?” Not expecting her to turn around and say, “Yes, I do.” and she did.

Now, I’d seen this guitar, it was £60-70. It was in a shop called, The Music Box, which was up beside Usher Hall in Edinburgh city center. That strange place. A very strange place run by two, to me at 15, very ancient men. Both bald. I thought they were brothers. I don’t know if they were actually lovers. I don’t know. Everything was in glass boxes with dead flies in the bottom of it. I mean it really was a creepy, creepy place. And I’d gone up to this place and seen this guitar. I knew that was the kind of guitar I wanted. It was actually a Fender Strat copy called a Hondo II. For anyone who knows anything about guitars: it was £69 and the action off the strings was about an inch off the neck. That’s a distance from the pushing hand… It was really bad, but to me I was just amazed. I fell in love immediately and I remember looking at the strings. It’s funny how certain things never leave you. I remember looking at the strings and thinking I’ll never be able to play that. Seems funny now but I’m still trying after all these years!

Basically that lady said, “Yeah, I do want some help.” I remember, I got £5 for 10 hours work a day. I worked for 6 days garnering half of, more or less, the money. In those days, a way back in the early 80s… Which does seem like the mists of time now. You didn’t just go and get the thing and pay it up. You paid it up, and then got the thing. So. I was paying it up and I had a little book, a little cardboard thing. They would take my money up. Then my Aunt who had given me the carol lessons, that I was telling you earlier, she said, “I’ll pay the rest of it.” So I took the money up. Went up and they had sold the guitar. Basically, they got another one, which, I don’t know if it was as good as the one that I was looking at, but it was still a Hondo II.

That was really the beginning of my musical journey. I do have OCD, I guess. When I get my teeth into something, I don’t give up. I just keep going and that was it. I wanted to be a musician. I fell in love with music. I had this music background, but interestingly… Fast forward almost thirty years… The reality was: I was adopted by my mum. It was a bit of a funny one, because I was actually adopted by her and her husband, who was my uncle.

If the listeners are still with me.

So, he died when I was age seven. I had a brother, who I didn’t really know. It turns out that brother had seen me at big concerts and stuff like that, and made contact. I was interested. So I went on to see him and it was absolutely unbelievable, because he was into guitar. He was in all the things I was into. He’s a plasterer by trade and when I was doing the plastering in this upper part of my house that I built it. I found plastering really easy, so it must be in the blood.

But the interesting thing about all of this is that: My real father, although a complete vagabond… you know it was wine, women and song. That really was his gig. He was a musician. And he used to write songs. My brother also said he wrote songs for Lena Martell, who had a big career on stage. I just think it’s kind of weird that I’m so into music. I’ve got the language in me. Then, you find out that actually, if you go back, that’s how it maybe is, or why it is.

I don’t know. I don’t know. This is going to be a weird interview, guys, because Christopher’s going to ask me a question and I’m going to be all over the place, but there you go.

Christopher: No, that provides a fascinating insight into your background and also your mindset about music. I’d love to ask, though: You’re someone who at this point has seriously impressive career in performing, composing, and educating in music. I’d love to know, looking back, how much of that success would ascribe to having a gift or a talent for music? And how much is it down to hard work and educating yourself step-by-step?

Ged: I take a very strong line on this, actually, because you will always meet people who say to you… We have choices in life. People don’t realize they have choices. People think they have to do a certain thing. They have to get married. They have to get a job. They have to get a mortgage. They have to be in the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For me, that’s a daft way to go about life. What was the question, again?

Christopher: What proportion of your success would you say comes down to that?

Ged: Yes.

Christopher: That you felt that you had earlier on or that drawing to music.

Ged: So, you meet people and if they’re impressed by you, they’ll say, “Oh, you’re really talented.” As if that’s, “Everything came easy to you.” They’re almost, I feel at times, saying, “You know, I would be able to do that if I was talented. Therefore, that’s my get out of jail card free.” Which is absolute nonsense, because it’s like when you get a little nugget. You burn away and burn it away, you find how much gold is actually held within it. People have got to actually work hard at things and the talent comes from the work.

OK. There might be a guy who takes up guitar, or a girl that takes up guitar, and they work really hard. We won’t know if they are fundamentally great musicians until they’ve done the Japanese 10,000 hours, or whatever it is. We won’t know. Then, we can make a judgment call on how much they’re bring to the party, in terms of giving to the human race an artistic expression. That doesn’t mean to say that they might be fantastic players. Is it sublime? Well, we can only judge that over a period of time and looking back.

Don’t forget, that a lot of people who become famous, a lot of them… Why did Beethoven write Moonlight Sonata? Why didn’t someone write it before him? Well, he came along when the technology was there, with iron in the frame to have two tons of tension on the string, therefore he could sustain the notes. Technological advancement and actual application from an artist go hand-in-hand. Talent is everything, but it can only be expressed through hard work.

Does that answer the question? I don’t know.

Christopher: It does. What I’m hearing is that there is something inside us that gives us a natural inclination or aptitude to music. But it certainly wasn’t the case, by the sound of it, that you bought that first guitar, were an instant rock star and have just dabbled in music, having great success ever since.

Ged: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I suppose there’s some synergy with the fact that when I played the guitar, I immediately took to it. There was a whole lot of cultural things that are mixed up in for a 15 year old boy around 1980. There was no computers. There was no games. There wasn’t all these other things. We have to acknowledge that there’s been a massive cultural shift in the way that the Western world, and the young people of today, see their futures. I don’t think so many of them see that wrapped up in expressing themselves, sadly, through music. Their expressing themselves through new mediums, such as: media, the gaming world and all of that.

Christopher: When you were studying music at Leeds City College and when you went on to get a First and be given an award for your academic excellence, was it clear to you that you were on a career path, there? Were you studying it, because you saw this as your route forward in life?

Ged: Well, it’s the age old problem, isn’t it Christopher? I’m a musician. I don’t think of myself as an artist, but it’s who I am. It’s what I do. It’s my first love. You can read into that whatever you want, you know? “It is my first love,” says he with a broken marriage behind him many years ago. It is fundamentally that. It wasn’t a case of: Can I do this? Should I do this? For money to be gained. It’s just what I was going to do with my life. But, I’ll tell you this. There was a small amount of people, just like, I guess, in any course on anywhere in the world, not specifically music, that… We went out and gigged all the time. And, you know, 90% of the course members didn’t do that.

But, I do remember going backwards, because I married at the age of 21. My wife and I had a house in Leeds and I remember going back to her one day. I was quite upset, because I had just played terrible. I hadn’t yet got the language of music to the point of expression. That there was a point that was a really big movement toward that actually at the end of that course. But, I do remember thinking I’ll never be able to do this. And yet, it’s all I wanted to do.

Now, I can explain that to young people very, very succinctly, but back then no one had explained that to me.

That’s again, a big thing in all my development, but in terms of what changed things for me… In Scotland, we do four year courses. So, I was only doing a three year course on the English one, but it was a degree equivalent. I’ve got to say that the course that I did in Leeds, the stuff that they’re offering a degree for now is just a pale shadow of what we did. Believe you me; because, in the final year there was a 10,000 word thesis, along with oral transcriptions. This makes me sound like I came out of the Ark, but actually, I learned how to use a nib pen and Indian ink. There was no computers, or nothing like that. Eventually, your brain got to understand how long a staff was and how many notes and all of that.

All of that sort of thing, but as part of that 10,000 word thesis, which I did on a guitarist who part of the time lives in Scotland, called Martin Taylor, was analyze loads of his music. Through that moving the needle on the record and writing stuff down… It didn’t just come overnight, but that was a major thing in actually beginning to understand the language of music.

Christopher: So, if we look back to that moment when you came home to your wife and you were seriously distraught, because your performance had not gone the way you’d hoped. You felt like you couldn’t express yourself the way you really had the burning desire to. Looking back, if you could go back and say something to you then, what would you have said? What could you say that would enlighten them as to the route forward?

Ged: I would say that music is a funny thing, because in many ways it’s a language. I mean, that’s what it is. It’s different than a language, but it’s the same as a language. Fundamentally, it’s a language. If you’re learning a language… If you’re learning to speak French. Russian. German. Doesn’t matter what it is. You’ve got to start with letters, into words, and then into phrases.

A classic example would be: Learning a phrase, which we regard as a lick. So, I’m trying to improvise. I would learn a phrase, which we would call a lick. Now, imagine that in the scenario of learning a language, you learn: I would like to take my grandmother to the toilet. OK. So then, you’re in the company of someone who actually speaks that language and you’ve got your own little phrase: I’d like to take my grandmother to the toilet. Everyone’s chatting and laughing and they’re having a good time and then you blurt out at the wrong point, “I’d like to take my grandmother to the toilet.” Everyone stops, looks at you and starts ringing their glass looking at it in an embarrassed fashion. That is akin to learning some phrases, going on an improvising gig, not having language internalized, and then just trying to join the dots together. It’s going to sound all over the place.

So, what I would say to me, back then, is: “Toughen up. You’re learning a language. You just know a few words. It takes years for most people to actually be able to have their own version of learning a language and being able to speak it.”

Christopher: I suppose what I’d most like to know, is: How did you go from that young performer, frustrated and disappointed, to someone who had such career success and went on to found such an impressive website, GMI: the Guitar and Music Institute, in 2013? What did you go through to turn you into someone who was ready to just go out there and say: “I can help young musicians. I can help guitar players.”?

Ged: Well, for many years the only thing that makes a musician better is constant wood shedding, or practice, and playing. You’ve just got to go out and play and play and play and play. The more you play, the better you’ll become. It’s important that you play with people that are slightly better than yourself. One of the big problems with teaching people, is in every true musician… They’re like children. All musicians I know are just like kids, like big kids. Like I am, because we’ve somehow managed to retain that childishness, which leaves us open.

You know, if you’re playing in some… I don’t know… restaurant or fancy hotel, or something, it’s always the kids that come running up. The adults aren’t interested. They’re talking nonsense. They’re talking about mortgages and houses and money and cars and things that can… It’s the kids that are… True musicians have that in themselves. They never lose it. You’ve got to be strong enough to say, “I’m not good enough. I need to play with people who are better.” That will drag your level of competence up. You need to go through the fire.

There have been times in my life where I’ve done gigs and things, and the sweat has been, literally, running down the side of my face and my legs have been shaking. And I tell you what, that’s difficult when you’ve got a peddle board under you. You’ve got to go through those moments. I’m assuming that, that’s allied to the work that needs to be done to get you into those moments. If you work hard enough, you will be given opportunities to shine. If you haven’t worked hard enough, you won’t be asked again, because frankly, the paradox is: What’s the difference between, say: watching a theater show that’s put on by amateurs or a theater show that’s put on by professionals.

Let’s face it. You go along and you watch it and the amateur show can be absolutely amazing, so what’s the difference? The difference is that the amateur show have nine months to prepare and the professional show had three days. You get the gig, because you’re expected that you can go along. You can sit down in that chair and, more or less, read what’s there and if you can’t do that it’s bye-bye. But, if you can do that you’ll be rewarded handsomely.

Christopher: So take us back to 2013. What was going on in your head that made you start GMI? It’s an enormous undertaking to create a successful website, not least one that has created such a wealth of useful resources, as GMI has. What was in your head at that time, that made you think, “I will start a website and start doing this.”?

Ged: The main thing was that I’ve always been interested in technological advancement, specifically internet. I’ve always been wrapped up in it and I don’t know why, but it seems to pull my chain. So, I was there. I bought out with another guy, Band for the Day, which was an online site where bands competed to be band for the day, and that led to various things. It was a massive counting machine. People liked it, but, unfortunately… and, again, this is a good example of the person I am… My business partner’s a great guy, but I would be up until 3 o’clock in the morning working on this every day. I wanted to work. Bands. Young bands. People aren’t willing to buy tracks. Fundamentally, it didn’t work, because there was no money. There was no revenue and there was huge gaps in my knowledge.

In 2012, or that, I started to think about… I was getting on a bit. I’ve got a lot of knowledge. I’ve done a lot of things. I love to compose. I love to perform. I also love to teach and that wasn’t really the story when I was a younger man, but with age comes, maybe, wisdom. I don’t know, but there is that feeling. You want to… not too much wisdom in my case, but you do want to try and help people through, because there’s so much nonsense out there now. I looked around at what was out there and I just thought, a lot of things I teach are things that I don’t see out there.

I’m not saying everything I teach is unique, but if you go into YouTube and check out “Drop Two Voicings Uncovered”, it’s not had a lot of views, but there’s already five comments that say, “This is the best explanation on the internet.” I’m not saying that to pick myself up. I’m just saying that to push forward the point that I have ideas and concepts, and thought through how to actually put things down. I felt I could do a good job of it. That was one thing. I was getting on a bit. I thought, I want to get it down and out there whilst I still can do it. Still got my marbles and I can still play and… fit and healthy, reasonably healthy.

Christopher: I see, so, for the listeners that haven’t yet visited theguitarandmusicinstitute.com. Can you tell us a bit about the website and what they can find there?

Ged: It’s taken many… It’s changed and it’s changed. It’s been edited and got better. Fundamentally at its core there are courses for people to do on guitar. Now, there was also courses, which I’ve taken down, they will go up in another medium, but there’s a thing called, “Performing Musician’s Blueprint”. That was all about how to get gigs. How to get better gigs and all that sort of thing. There’s also a course, that I created, it’s pinning for musicians; because Pinterest just sends me a bucket load of traffic every day. It’s just an amazing website. I would say to anyone out there, that’s listening to this, who does want a lot of traffic, get onto Pinterest. It’s hard to imagine that a bunch of graphics could have such an impact, but they can.

So, there’s the core studies, which will be added to from Beginner right through to Advanced. I got a little bit of an investment from some friends who’ve seen what I’ve done. They were retiring. They had a wee bit of spare cash and they threw it my way. I had a decision to make. Do I reinvent the wheel by paying other people, because I didn’t have much real desire to do it myself. Showing them how to play any pop song… Wonderwall, whatever. I saw this piece of software, which was called, Curation Suite; because if you think about it, if you see a story, any story, on the web or on the newspapers and then, you do a search for that story, what do you see? You see the same story a thousand times. Most of it is coming from one source, which is probable writers. All of these newspapers are fundamentally coat hangers for adverts and all they’re doing is curating stories and adding a little bit of commentary. The same pictures on the web. It’s the same video.

I thought, this is silly. Why don’t I start curating things and actually adding value to it. In that way, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel and that’s what I’ve done with the “How to Play” series. That will be getting bigger, as time goes on. What else do I have?

We have the podcasting. In February of this year, I started podcasting and I’ve taken to it, like a duck to water. I’ve met really great guys, like yourself, and others. There’s so many people out there with a story to tell and let’s face it. We all just want to talk about ourselves and that’s where podcasting is fantastic. You don’t need to say much. You ask a question and off they go. The podcasting thing, it really is taken off. It’s quite amazing. What else do we have on there… News. There’s publications. I’ve all the publications. There’s loads of free stuff on GMI, but I’m porting that over to the shop. People can get backing tracks, and all sorts of stuff. It just goes on and on, Christopher.

Christopher: It certainly does and it’s such a delight, as a new visitor, to explore everything that you have to offer there.

Ged: Great.

Christopher: It’s really perceptive of you to recognize the value of curation. A lot of musicians have – I was about to say delusion… That’s a bit harsh, but they have the feeling that if they create a tutorial on how to create the C chord on guitar it will be better than everyone else’s. Therefore, they should create videos for every chord and then, for every song. They end up recreating the wheel, as you put it. Actually, the value to your audience at GMI is you selecting the highest quality material that’s out there and putting it in one place, where they can get exposed to the best material.

Ged: Yes. I would take, let’s say it’s how to play… What did I say earlier? Wonderwall. Let’s just for argument’s sake… I’ll write… I would do that. I do things when something happens. They’re on tour. Someone’s died. They’re bringing out a new album. If you think about a musician, they don’t actually have a lot of stories to tell. I mean once… “Oh, I’ve got a new album out.” “Oh, I’m going on tour.” Everything else is just fluffery. So what I do with the curated part of it, I’ll add in other videos. Stairway to Heaven is one of the obvious ones that I did. There’s a great video of someone playing it flutes in Japan and there’s someone else doing it another way and then you get the original one. So, you’ve got all these videos and then I’ll put up some stuff that you can hear on iTunes. Some Twitter feeds. It creates a bigger experience, rather than, here’s Ged playing.

Does the world really, really need another bad rip-off of Stairway to Heaven? I shouldn’t say that, seeing that they all went to court, but anyway. You know what I’m saying. Does the world really need that? No, it doesn’t. That means that I, little old me, here in Edinburgh in Scotland, can have a massive impact. I’m pulling from all the best sources in the world every single day. GMI curates. The links are there. I want to make it clear to people, this isn’t about plagiarism. The links are there to all the sources. Even the image links. There is added commentary when needed from me, but I do have a Latest Guitar News page on GMI, which I just put the latest guitar news. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. They click that and go to those websites.

Christopher: It’s really impressive, the audience you’ve built at GMI. It’s a testament to the quality of that curation and the effort you’ve been putting in for several years now. I’d love to ask… You didn’t call it the Guitar Institute, or the Guitar Institute of Edinburgh. You called it, the Guitar and Music Institute, and I’ve also seen it described as a place to learn guitar and musicianship. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you teach beyond guitar.

Ged: Well, in a way if people go to GMI, or if they go to YouTube, or if they see it on Amazon, although, those videos aren’t up there. There’s a lot of theoretical concepts that are not just for the guitar. If I take the thing I was talking about earlier, about “Drop Two Voicings”. What I see on YouTube is a lot of people talking about things. They’re talking about drop two voicings. You could get a monkey to tell what a drop two voicing is. You don’t have to be Einstein. I am certainly not, but they often leave out the reasons for drop two voicings and the reason is to do with voice leading. That’s something that isn’t just for guitar. That’s for everything. That theoretical knowledge that is in there could apply to absolutely anyone.

The musicianship areas that aren’t covered… There’s no need for me to do it, because there’s a great site called Musical U that is oral sharing it. I’ve been scratching my head, when I’ve had a moment to think, how I can integrate or help people use Musical U more. Entrepreneurship. Not musicianship, but entrepreneurship. That is the most crucial thing for young people today, is to be entrepreneurial. Is to be able to see opportunity, where none exists. To think of ideas. To make things happen. It’s really exciting to actually have an idea and see it through.

Christopher: I see. Absolutely. So, this maybe ties back to something we talked about on the GMI podcast, recently; which was that young musicians these days are prone to cherry picking. Looking for a quick fix to a problem that’s immediately in front of them. That’s very different from the kind of broad attitude of musicianship and entrepreneurialism that you just described. How do you see musical education today and what could young people do to give themselves a better chance of succeeding, as a well-rounded musician?

Ged: Really difficult one and I don’t want to be to negative, but it’s probably going to sound that. It’s hard to see that you’re actually making history. Just by existing, you’re making history and once you die you are history. It’s hard to get an idea off the changes that are going around you. Just to be aware of the cultural changes and we’re all connected in some way, now. It’s much more seismic in the way things change. The way people think about things. We live in a culture where people are famous, just for being famous. You know? Why would you want to work hard, when you can just be famous for having big breasts, or something. I mean that’s, sadly, where we’re at. People with no discernible talent are being held up as paragons of virtue to the young of today. That has to have had an effect on everything. It bleeds right through to the consciousness to those that are interested in music.

I’m not saying everyone back in the day, because then I’m beginning to sound like old man. It would be fair to say that there was a lot more people interested in music, back then, and playing instruments. I’m talking about guitar, here. People really wanted to get good. I mean if anyone wants to argue with me about that, that’s fine. I’m not here to make a big judgment call on it, but just listen to the charts. We’re going back to knocking the rocks together. Some people might say that if that is a reflection of where we’re going, then it’s not a really nice one.

There is a feeling that, “I just want to do what’s necessary.” Almost a Bluffers Guide. If you think about it, 20 years ago when I was working, or 30 years ago, going through as a musician, if someone phoned me up and said, “Ged, can you play blues?” “Yeah, I love blues.” “Ged, can you play reggae?” “Yeah, I love reggae.” And all you would need is a standard. A few licks, or key holder licks to prove that you knew or understood that. That’s not going to get you past the guys that really know it, but let’s face it: How many of them are about? So, I do think that young people are being swamped with this: “don’t work hard. Just get a few things together.”

If you go on YouTube and you want to play… What’s that song?… Hotel California, and all that sort of stuff. They just learn a few licks. They don’t even watch the whole video. Even if it’s a good lesson, they just watch the bit. “I’ll take that.” That is not going to help create a rounded musical technique and an ability to hear things. Having said all of that, of course, there are some incredibly talented young people out there and I’ve got the honor and privilege to come in contact with a lot of them and see what they’re doing. The University that I teach at, some of the musicians… This is Napier University in Edinburgh on the BA Popular Music course. To be honest, most of the good players are going towards Jazz/Rock fusion and Jazz but some of the players are just absolutely astonishing. That flies in the face of everything I’ve said, but it does make me think, “Wow. Thank goodness for them.” Are they becoming less and less? I don’t know.

Is there a place for people play? This is a big, big point that feeds in to people just wanting to be cherry picking. Where is the audiences? People go to massive concerts, because there’s thousands of people going. If you want a big audience, get a reasonably big one. If you want a massive audience, get a big one. If you want a huge audience, get a really big audience. People bring people. For working musicians on the ground, how much work is there?

I know when I do concerts, I notice in a specific thing, if I’m doing Gypsy Jazz, or something like that… The audiences are getting older and older. Do you get to sixty and suddenly say, “I’m going to start going to XYZ concerts.” I’m going to find out in 10 years, but I’m convinced that, that doesn’t happen and that the audiences actually may be drying up, cause it’s all there on the screen.

Christopher: Yeah, that’s a really powerful observation, given what you were saying earlier about the importance of regular gigging and getting out there and performing with musicians who are much better than yourself. That is definitely a challenge for today’s musicians. That the opportunities to perform live and the audiences, even for local gigs, can be much smaller than they were 30 years ago. It’s definitely making things a bit harder.

Ged: Definitely. I hear stories of musicians having to pay to play. Pat Metheny, the seminal Jazz guitarist, he’s out there just above all others. Had said, quite a few years ago now, that he felt this was the last generation of Americans who were going to be interested in improvising. That’s quite a down thing to say and quite a worrying thing to say. The home of Jazz… That’s really scary.

You see all these things. I was talking to a friend the other day, recording a record label, or at least we were, and he was saying that musicians are now saying that people who run bars and stuff; they always say, “Oh, you’ll get really good exposure. There’s no payment, but you’ll get really good exposure.” The obvious answer to that is then, “Well, why don’t you give all your beer or your meals away for free, because let’s face it: You’ll be getting great exposure for the pub, or the restaurant, or the café.”

Christopher: It’s a tricky cultural and environment to try and be a forming musician in. One thing I love about GMI though, to come back for a moment to musicianship, is that, as you demonstrated with that drop two example, you don’t just say, “Here are the notes to play. Go off and play Wonderwall.” You explain things and you give musicians the intellectual understanding of what they’re doing and why.

For my part, while I totally identify with your, maybe, slightly negative view of today’s young musicians and the cherry picking, in their defense what I’d say is that a lot of music educators don’t provide that intellectual understanding. A lot of those young musicians simply don’t get to experience what it means to sit down and improvise, or play by ear. All they know is that roped learning. For my own part even, I had a Squier Strat as a 14 year old. I learned to play the intro riff to Stairway to Heaven. It never occurred to me, to learn to play the whole song. I had the intro riff, that was good enough to impress people.

It was another 10 years, before I sat down with a guitar and tried just making something up myself, really. That was because no one there had shown me that, that was an option. These days, my favorite activity is to sit down with an instrument and improvise. Just make something up from scratch. Without the experience of how much fun that can be and how possible it can be. It’s all too easy and I have sympathy for those who do just jump from YouTube tutorial to YouTube tutorial and learn the licks and the rifts.

Ged: The thing about theory is that I don’t see theory as something over here. It’s right in front of you and it’s a force multiplier. Especially, if you’re not a genius, which I certainly I am not. The theory is a force multiplier. By understanding that, my whole take on music and say, composition, is meld between art and craft. I may think up something, but I want to just write it down. Then when you start looking at it on the paper, it’s a very difficult thing to try to explain to someone when, conceptual ideas, that have been learnt on the right-hand side of the brain suddenly merge into the left-hand side of the brain.

We’re talking about language, here. When we can speak a language, we don’t think about the verbs, or nouns that people say, or that we say. We just express ourself. It’s getting to that point. There’s no doubt about it that theoretically concepts are a force multiplier and allied technique. I use the expression, “Technique is a gateway to expression.” Through some theoretical concepts if I work that into my playing; if I can play something you can’t play, technically. Or, you can do something I can’t play, then either of us have a out in terms of actually expressing ourselves in a way that we wouldn’t be able to do if we didn’t have that knowledge or physical understanding.

I don’t really see people as people. I see them as balls of energy. That’s what they are, creative. I remember years ago, I’d gone to the boozer and I was walking down the road. I saw this big, fat guy over the road and he was eating a fish supper and he came up to a bus stop and he put his foot right through it. Right? He smashed this big pane of glass. I was bemused by it. I just thought about it. There’s obviously a lot of reasons why he did that, bound up in frustrations, certain frustrations. For him, smashing that bus stop in, was a creative thing. Most people would see it as a destructive thing and it was, but it’s because he doesn’t have an out. That’s why music education is so important and helping people to see the world through our… Whether it’s music, or sculpture, or painting, or whatever it is.

Christopher: Given everything we’ve been talking about in terms of musicianship, as a whole, versus just instrument technique and the power of performing and learning the music theory behind things and also, the challenges of the modern environment where there’s a YouTube tutorial at your fingertips, for anything you can imagine. I’m just a huge fan of the Guitar and Music Institute. I think the website you’ve put together, as well as, your YouTube channel, your social media, all of the meriade places you’re available and helping musicians online is just phenomenal. The one last thing I want to mention, for those interested, is the books you’re currently publishing on Amazon. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Ged: Yes. Well, the thing is, Christopher, as soon as I got to Music College, I actually started publishing and that was back in the days when computers would run in coal. I had an Atari computer and I remember, I’d spend all sorts of money to get this Atari. It has a tiny screen and I got a 30 megabyte hard drive, which was quite massive. It was absolutely huge. I bought this program called the Copyist, which I remember I was telling you, we were taught to use a fountain pen and all that sort of stuff. Well, that went out the window.

Now, we’re just using the Copyist and it was pretty tricky, because what you saw on the screen wasn’t what you actually got from the printer and you had to wait 10 minutes for it to print. It was pretty tricky.

So I published a whole bunch of books back in 1991, there was… I couldn’t bring out one book, I had to bring out 10 books. Now, this is a salutary tale to anyone who’s thinking of being entrepreneurial. The reason I started was, I thought, “Oh, that’d be quite good. I’ve got something to see.” The books consisted of me recording a whole bunch of stuff, writing a whole bunch of stuff, notating a whole bunch of stuff, creating the designs, getting the designs and everything and all of that.

The reason I did it all was because there was a guy who is putting an ad in Guitar Player Magazine. Yeah, Guitar Player Magazine. He took a full page ad, and I… a friend of mine got one of his things and it was rubbish. It was like badly poor copy. It was in a poly bag, badly recorded. But once I’ve come through the whole thing, I realized the reason that he did was because it was cheap and it he sold hundreds, whereas my products were expensive because if you added up all this sort of the monetary things. It just didn’t work. So, I dusted those down through CreateSpace and Ingram Spark. It’s just amazing. It’s literally amazing. The FastLine series are just cheap, about £4. I mean, what do I make off a book, I don’t know, 20 pence or something.”

I regurgitated all of those and gave them new covers and people just buy the book and download the stuff from GMI. And then I brought out “Drop Two Voicings Uncovered” which is about 90 odd pages. Again, I used QR codes inside the book so people… because people don’t want to turn on their main computer, right? They’re using the book, so I figured well if there’s a QR code, why put a thousand words of text when I can actually talk over the phone? I’m going to talk and show.
So what they do is they just need to place their phone, get a QC code reader, and then the video come up right beside the book and they can learn from that and watch. And it’s like idiot-proof. It’s all chord boxes, physically. So people can quickly get it under their figures and I think that’s what people love. Right now, I’m about to start writing the… I have started writing the book that comes after Drop Two Voicings Uncovered and that will be really for folks interested in jazz and more expansive harmonic scenarios. I’m not going to hold back on that one.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, sent me links to those and the other GMI resources in the shownotes for this episode. Ged, I think what I admire most about you is that these days it’s super easy for someone to flip on a webcam and kind of thoughtlessly flip music education material out there. And you only need to look around YouTube to see that happens a lot! You, through the way you use technology and also the way you teach, the concept you teach at GMI, you put such thought into it and how to leverage technology and how to teach in a way that will genuinely help and empower the musician. And I certainly applaud you for that. I think it’s fantastic work you’re doing.

Ged: Thank you very much.

Christopher: For our listeners, if you haven’t already checked it out, the Guitar and Music Institute, it’s guitarandmusicinstitute.com, “GMI” by another name. You will just find a wealth of resources free and paid, as well as the amazing curation of content that we talked about earlier. So do head on over and check it out. Thank you again Ged, for joining us on the show today.

Ged: It’s been wonderful. Thanks to all your listeners for putting up with my ramblings. Cheers Christopher.

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The post Beyond the “Quick Fix”, with Ged Brockie appeared first on Musical U.

From Mexico to Japan, the amount of international performing artists that are singing in English might surprise you. Although time and regular practice can allow ESL singers to become proficient in a non-native language, learning how to sing without an accent can be incredibly challenging and even costly.

Every penny counts when constructing a budget to record vocals in a professional studio.
It’s unfortunate when a foreign artist spends large sums of money to sing in English at a high quality recording studio, only to end up with a lackluster performance with many mispronunciations.

Not all of us are blessed with the ability to speak multiple languages. If you do speak another language then you know how difficult it is to translate ideas and structures in your head and then attempt to transmit that information via a system that is unfamiliar with you.

One of the best ways to efficiently maximize an artist’s financial resources is to invest in a vocal coach that has experience working with international students. The benefit of working with a skilled international vocal coach is obvious to an ESL artist, as they do not want to waste valuable time and money tracking vocals that will be anything less than phenomenal.

Why Sing in English?

Here’s just a few reasons that English as a Second Language (ESL) artists decide to sing pop and rock in English:

• Historically, pop and rock styles have been highly popularized in Anglophone countries, and these styles have been further refined and perfected there
• English has been universally accepted as the global language of pop and rock
• Linguistically, the mechanics of English are considered far more flexible and simple to master compared to many other linguistic systems
• A foreign artist singing in English can vastly broaden their market exposure than if they were to release material in their native language

How to manage singing in English without breaking the budget

Here, I’ll be approaching the issue of singing in English for non-native speakers in two ways:

• Advice to ESL students for learning and improving both on their own and with a coach
• Pointers for vocal coaches with ESL students on understanding what it might be like singing from an ESL student’s perspective

Imagine This:

You have been studying singing and technique for quite some time. Although you are beginning to feel more comfortable, not everything is committed to muscle memory just yet.

Let’s take a moment to inventory all of the things you actually have to do simultaneously in order to sing well:

• Pay attention to your singing breathe capacity; don’t overfill and don’t underfill
• Remember to breathe in from your diaphragm
• Be sure to sing with projection and energy, and let the audience “feel” you
• Execute smooth passaggio transitions
• Maintain supported muscle tension in your cheeks
• Curve your lips properly to execute sharp vowels and consonants

As if that wasn’t enough, now you have to balance projecting energy, while simultaneously maintaining all of the technical aspects.

But wait!

There is one last important thing to do if English is not your native language.

You have to do everything just mentioned while properly enunciating and pronouncing the English words.

For ESL vocalists, working with a coach will make this challenging task perfectly achievable. For teachers, seeing the world through their pupil’s eyes will put some of their challenges into perspective.

Let’s take a look at a few key tools that both ESL students and their coaches can use to make the most out of pronunciation coaching:

• Using positive reinforcement as a driving force for improvement
• Understanding common idioms and metaphors of the English language
• Understanding the sounds present in English that may not exist in other languages
• Using modern technology to enhance the learning experience

Positive Reinforcement

First of all, students: remember that what you’re doing is challenging. The very fact that you’re multilingual and have taken on the task of singing in a foreign language is reason enough to be impressed with yourself!

When practicing, it’s excellent to have goals, but it’s just as important to be gentle, patient, and rewarding with yourself.

Pronunciation improves over time, with continuous practice, and not overnight. Though it’s easy to get discouraged, it’s very likely that your pronunciation is steadily getting better, and the change may just be too gradual for you to notice.

For this reason, it’s helpful to sing in front of or send recordings to your coach or someone else who can track your improvement more objectively and encourage you to keep going. Always acknowledge the progress you’ve made, and celebrate when you meet a goal you’ve set for yourself!

Speaking of encouragement, I have some motivational news for you: singing in a foreign language will speed up the process of learning that language for you. While singing, you are stringing words together in a natural way, while associating them with a melody that you will remember. This works wonders for muscle memory related to pronunciation.

The Vocal Coach’s Role

I personally do not speak any other language fluently, and as a teacher, I’m always quick to remind my students just how impressive their ability to master both singing and the intricacies of a second language really is!

For vocal coaches, it can be challenging to keep into perspective that our natural comprehension of the English language is not the same as our ESL student’s. It’s imperative to avoid being too blunt when honing in on the problem areas.

It may be tempting to roll up our sleeves and attack the areas of concern as quickly and forcefully as possible, but we must be careful to not come off as too harsh to our students.

The student will be much more motivated, and in a space to be more productive, when you are providing steady positive feedback.

Any small improvement in their enunciation should be cause for celebration, as this reminds them that they are making progress, no matter how far off they may appear to be from perfect execution.

Idioms & Metaphors

Though the mechanics of English are relatively straightforward, the language throws a few curveballs with weird expressions that do not mean what they appear to mean.

When we speak in our native language there are certain contextual things we take for granted such as idioms and metaphors.

English speakers may be used to expressions such as “raining cats and dogs”, but to a foreign singer/songwriter that writes their own lyrics, these expressions are typically not understood well, yet often used incorrectly.

The particular expression referenced above is what is known as an “idiom”.

The same situation applies to metaphors as well. Metaphors such as “she’s got eyes of the bluest sky” etc… are often times misunderstood and incorrectly applied by ESL students.

Before any performance instruction may begin, it is important to identify these overlooked discrepancies and offer them some assistance to rectify before continuing.

What good is a flawless performance if the core structure and meaning behind the lyrics is confusing or doesn’t make sense?

So if there happens to be an area that stands out a little, do not hesitate to shift focus on lyrical structure. At a very minimum bring it to their attention to correct for next session and do not spend too much time working on enunciating lyrics that will most likely be completely omitted.

Making Sense of Idioms for the ESL Student

To best understand idioms, put them into context! Spend some time asking your coach and other Anglophones around you for explanations and examples of the idioms.

Ask for feedback on your lyrics. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t understand idioms right away, and keep incorporating them into your music!

Unique Sounds in English

When vocal coaches delve into specific areas that require attention, it is important for them to realise that various sounds of the English language are not commonplace in ESL singers’ native languages.

For example, in some languages, when pronouncing any words with an “R” sound, there is a tendency for ESL singers to want to roll the “R” sound with the tip of their tongue.

Whereas in English, we don’t traditionally roll R’s.

In the Persian language for example, English words that begin with a “W” are often times mispronounced with a “V” sound. It can be incredibly challenging to communicate abstract principles like this to an ESL singer to improve their performance. Please review the example to see how I incorporated positive reinforcement as well as detailed focus on the mechanics of the particular area of concern that was causing the issue.

Modern Technology

ESL singers: it’s likely you’re already using the internet to help you in your journey to learning English. In addition to countless language-learning platforms such as Duolingo, there are plenty of fantastic resources for learning to pronounce difficult words while singing and sound more like a native speaker.

These include video tutorials, pronunciation guides, and more. Work with your vocal coach to find the supplementary online content that you learn best with.

Teaching Remotely

Thanks to the technology of today, vocal coaches can now work with clients on the other side of the world, and international performing artists don’t have to leave their comfort of their home to get personalized, one-on-one vocal coaching from an Anglophone teacher.

There are some caveats to the long-distance teaching approach, of course. It is incredibly challenging to try to provide written instructions to an ESL student to improve problem areas, which is why I am a big advocate of utilizing audio/visual applications.

Although many audio/visual applications are available on the computer, such as Skype and Facebook Video Call, mobile applications that can be used on your cell phone are incredibly convenient and effective.

In addition to Skype and Facebook Video Call, Apple Facetime, WeChat and WhatsApp are a few others to add to our list of free available audio/visual resources.

Although WhatsApp and similar devices allow you to transmit small recordings back and forth, I find that adding the visual element helps the student to also “see,” in addition to hearing the parts they are performing incorrectly. The added visual element seems to help get the student to achieve the desired results more easily than sound recordings alone. Every student learns differently and your results may vary, so feel free to experiment.

The Journey to Perfect Pronunciation

Non-native singers work incredibly hard to be able to execute all of the mechanics of proper singing technique combined with proper English diction. This is excellent for the coach and the singer alike to keep in mind – singing in English as a non-native speaker is not an easy task, and requires constant focus, dedication, a good ear, and the ability to multitask.

It is essential for both the student and the teacher to use positive reinforcement throughout the coaching process, and to pay attention to any misuse of idioms or metaphors – coaches should encourage singers to continue to use them, even if students feel a little unsteady doing so at first.

Every student learns differently. It is up to your vocal coaches to understand your learning style and adapt accordingly, and it’s up to the student to communicate if something is or is not working.

Lastly, an incredible cultural exchange takes place between the coach and the ESL singer in this scenario. Both parties have the opportunity to learn about a culture other than their own, and expand their respective worldviews.

Personally, it’s a fun little twist of events to allow my students to see the world through my eyes as a teacher, as well as for me to understand what it’s like from their perspective. I sometimes will ask the student to teach me a little phrase in their native language after the lesson to try to sing and speak back to them.

With that, I wish both ESL coaches and ESL singers success as they embark on their collaborative learning journey!

The post Singing in English: Tips for ESL Singers and Coaches appeared first on Musical U.

But sometimes, you need a little kick to get you to try something a little tougher or something outside your comfort zone. This can work wonders in expanding your musical practice and fast-tracking the development of your musicality.

This week, we at Musical U have three challenges for you:

1. Hand over the reins of your creative process to a songwriting challenge, and see how imposed limitations can bring out your creativity
2. Go beyond singing “pretty” – learn how to sing smart
3. Use your ears to try to pick out the individual notes played simultaneously in a chord

But before we dive into how to do all that, to get you inspired, we have an interview with a man whose job brings him face-to-face with the ultimate challenge: making musical masterpieces that will be put to use in everything from luxury car commercials to the TV adaptation of your favourite book series. The most impressive part? He writes, arranges, produces, and plays multiple instruments on nearly every single track!…

The Background Music Magician

The music we notice is the music we’re listening for: music at a concert, on the radio. In short, places where we’re listening for it.

But what about music in places we don’t actively listen for it? In movies, commercials, and TV programmes?

Drummer-turned-background music composer Mike Reed creates music that will complement the visual media it’s used for. Playing the multiple roles of writer, producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, he crafts compositions that you might hear in your favourite Netflix show or next season’s blockbuster movie, if you just open your ears.

In Creating Background Music Masterpieces, with Mike Reed, Mike talks about what drew him to background music composition, compares the creative and business sides of his work, and gives some truly inspirational advice with bearing on everyone involved in the world of music.

As a truly solo musician, Mike is responsible for all parts of the compositions that he writes. This includes taking the initial ideas and arranging them into a full piece of music. Forrest Kinney gives a great introduction to the art of creating an arrangement.

The music composition industry can be difficult, and finding your big break can seem impossible at times. To learn more about how one composer broke into the film composing industry, tune into The Portfolio Composer’s fascinating podcast episode with Albanian composer Aldo Shllaku.

Mike’s success in finding a niche in the music industry is an inspiring story indeed! The music industry can be so complex that we often don’t think about all the people that have jobs that create music. Thinkspace Education discusses four incredibly interesting behind-the-scenes careers in music that you may not even know existed!

Challenges for Songsmiths

Some days, the songs just flow out of you. Melodies and lyrics pop into your head, fully-formed and ready to be turned into a song.

But sometimes, the creative well runs completely dry. Every time you pick up your instrument or try to put pen to paper, the magic just won’t happen.

We’ve been there, and we know that sometimes you need something to force you to write.

Enter the songwriting challenge: an exercise where you must write a song (or several!) about a certain topic, or in a certain amount of time. As those who take the challenge soon find, these limitations actually foster creativity, rather than stifling it – your brain will find incredibly inventive ways to work with the constraints imposed on your songwriting process.

In Songwriting Challenges to Cure Your Writer’s Block, we introduce you to the types of songwriting challenges out there, where you can find them, and how to make your own challenge.

The multitude of different songwriting challenges that are available for your next project means there is something for everyone. While many of them are about producing a song per day, or week, we found a challenge to write a song in only 10 minutes. Quite the challenge! Andy Guitar gives you some tips to ace this challenge!

Often, starting the songwriting process can be the most difficult part. What are you supposed to write about? A popular topic throughout the ages is to write a love song. Dylan Laine shares her process for writing a love song in only one hour.

An additional benefit to songwriting challenges: they remove many of the barriers that songwriters face when starting the songwriting process! They do this by encouraging productivity through deadlines and fixed objectives. Many people find that they are actually much more productive when they have a timeline that they have to meet. Speed Songwriting has even more tips on improving your productivity when writing.

Chords: Dissected

Most musicians, with a bit of ear training and solfège (solfa) practice under their belt, can learn to replicate a series of notes and identify the intervals within it.

But what about chords, when several notes are played simultaneously, with multiple intervals to worry about at the same time?

This week on The Musicality Podcast episode About Chord Tones, we present you with the challenge of figuring out chord tones: the art of dissecting chords into their individual notes. Beyond just being a neat trick, being able to identify chord tones opens up brand new avenues of songwriting, allowing you to hand-pick the perfect notes to go into each chord, and effortlessly solo over your progression.

Furthermore, it works wonders for your improvisational chops, because you now have the tool that bridges the gap between melody and chords.

Learning the structure of chords and what notes are used to create the harmony is an important aspect to learning how to use chord tones. By learning how to solo within the confines of a chord, you’ll get more comfortable with chordal structure and how the notes are laid out on the instrument. This is a practical application for a visual instrument like the piano or guitar; My Guitar Workshop explains how to get started.

Any musician can really benefit by knowing how to improvise with chord tones. These can be a great stepping stone to get more confident in your ability to improvise over chord changes, and there’s no time like the present to start, with Mutant Bass’s clear cut step-by-step method.

Once you have mastered working within the chord tones, it’s time to expand your boundaries into all the other notes in the scale. This will enable you to add color and interest to your music and express yourself. To try your hand at this, Jazz Piano School has a lesson to get you started!

The Art of Singing Smarter

Your voice is an instrument.

And as with any instrument, there is a science behind making beautiful sounds come out. Though many singers can glide by on their instincts and by purely listening, they often hit a roadblock when the time comes to sing sheet music, collaborate with other musicians, or perform vocal techniques.

This is where “singing smart” comes in – it’s a method to the madness that the vocal world can be. Learning proper singing technique, ear training, and solfège will help you achieve everything you’ve ever wanted as a vocalist, be it improvisation, vocal fry, or being able to sing sheet music you’ve never heard out loud.

Meghan Nixon of HowToSingSmarter.com applies ear training and music theory to her vocal coaching to give her students the freedom to approach new songs, techniques, and challenges with confidence. In How to Sing Smarter, with Meghan Nixon, we sit down with her to learn about her singing background, ear training-focussed teaching approach, and how she came to launch her website, where she provides a treasure trove of resources for singers of all levels.

In her interview, Meghan talked about how she has taught hundreds of musicians over the years. If you are serious about becoming a musician, finding a teacher and taking lessons are a great place to start! A Higher Note discusses why you should take the plunge, especially if you’re uncertain.

For Meghan, she was better able to hear some pitches when she began to play the piano as well. The piano provided a visualisation of the pitch that wasn’t as readily apparent when only using her voice. You may have struggled to sing without your instrument – and you’re not alone! This podcast from All Things Vocal explains the phenomenon of why it feels so weird to sing without your instrument.

Have you ever found that interval or pitch that you just can’t internalize in your ear training? Meghan takes us through her method for mastering Ra, or the minor 2nd, interval of the chromatic scale.

Get Challenged, Get Ahead

Taking a break from our regularly scheduled music practice to engage with challenges is a great way to discover a new musical skill: in this case, maybe you’ll learn that you songwrite best under strict time constraints, or that you have an excellent ear for chords, or that you picked up sight-singing quickly and easily.

Or, maybe you yourself are inspired to take a page from Mike Reed’s book and try your hand at not only writing a song, but also arranging it and playing each instrument yourself.

The post The Background Music Magician, Challenges for Songsmiths, Chords: Dissected, and The Art of Singing Smarter appeared first on Musical U.

Learning and understanding chord tones will help you create memorable melodies with tension and release and solo over existing progressions. This in turn will help you play by ear, improvise, and write songs – enabling you to choose the notes that sound the best, rather than using trial-and-error to form your chords and melodies.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Interview with Meghan Nixon
• Playing By Ear with Brad Mavin – Chord Tones
• Chord Ear Training How-To: Chord Types
• Practice I-IV-V Progressions

Transcript

In this episode we’re going to be talking about chord tones, something which came up in my recent interview with Meghan Nixon of HowToSingSmarter.com.

Depending on the instrument you play and the way you play it, you might be very used to thinking about chord tones – but most likely you aren’t, and you may be missing out… As Meghan explained, chord tones can provide us with a helpful framework for playing by ear and improvisation, letting us choose notes that are musically meaningful in the harmonic context. Whether you play piano, guitar, saxophone or sing, whether you want to play by ear, improvise or write music, this is a really powerful concept to get your head around.

I’m going to talk a bit about chords and chord tones, then demonstrate why this concept of chord tones is useful, and then talk about how you can get started using this yourself.

About Chords

The concept of a chord is very useful: it gives us a single clear label to mean a whole group of notes. We can say “the chord progression goes C, F, G” and we’re actually communicating about a whole bunch of notes that are to be played, to create that harmony.

But this is the drawback of the simplification too: it leaves many musicians almost oblivious to the fact that chords are made up of individual notes. Sure, we all know intellectually that this is what’s going on. But when we listen to or play music we often think of chords as whole, solid things, and we miss the point that there is a lot to be learned from thinking about them in terms of their individual notes too.

In fact, I think pianists and jazz musicians are the only people who do generally think about the individual notes of chords. Even guitarists who play a lot of chords tend to think about a chord as a certain fretboard shape and it’s only the more advanced players who start digging into that and exploring where those shapes come from and what else can be done with them.

About Chord Tones

Before we go any further: what do we mean by “chord tones”? Well, as we talked about back in episode 5 on half steps and whole steps that word “tone” can be confusing! We’re not talking about the interval of a tone or a “whole step” here. We’re using the looser meaning of “tone” to just mean “note”.

So “chord tones” are simply the notes present in the chord. If we imagine a line of a song where a single chord is playing, and we’re trying to play the melody by ear, or choose notes for an improvised solo, we might initially be considering all the possible notes in the key, all the notes that belong to the scale. But we can also ask: which of those notes are being used in the current chord?

Here’s an example. I’m going to play a scale to give you an idea of the key we’re in, and then I’ll play a chord in that key.

Now I’m going to play the scale again, with the chord as a harmony underneath. Try to hear which notes from the scale belong to the chord.

Could you hear how some of those notes matched up and felt relaxed and comfortable, while others created more tension? None of them sounded terrible or out-of-key, but there were definitely some that went better with the chord.

Now you might be thinking “Well, duh, that’s why it matters what chords you choose for a song!” and that’s exactly right. If you’re starting from a melody then yes, you can choose the chords based on which will harmonise it nicely.

But the key thing to understand about this idea of “chord tones” is that the reverse is true too.

If you’re starting from a chord progression, then you can go a long way in understanding the melody or what improvisation will work by thinking about the chord tones present.

As you just heard, some notes will fit in really comfortably while others will create tension. And so by choosing your notes based on hearing whether they belong to the chord or not, and if they do which note of the chord they are, you have a huge shortcut to picking the “right” notes for playing by ear or improvising a solo.

How to Use Chord Tones

So how can you get started taking advantage of this? Well, that’s going to depend a bit on your musical life, but step one is going to be to get your brain and ears familiar with what’s going on.

At Musical U, in our chord ear training modules one of the key things we help people do is get past that stage of hearing a chord as just a single blur of notes, and be able to dissect them aurally into each note, so that you can hear both the overall sound and each of the notes present. That’s a key skill if you want to make use of chord tones by ear. Without that you can still proceed using your brain and knowing in advance what the notes of the chords are, but it’s really best if you can bring your ear and brains to the task together!

Once you’ve done a bit of groundwork to get your ears dissecting chords, start with simple songs. Pick a song that uses just three or four chords, ideally the I, IV, V and maybe vi. If you don’t know what I’m talking about there, I’ll put a link in the shownotes to explain! I’ll also include a backing track or two where it’s just simple chords you can experiment over.

Then take a little time to figure out the notes in each chord. If it’s one of these simple progressions then you’ll have three notes per chord. For example, a I-IV-V in C Major would have the notes C, E and G for the first chord’s chord tones, then F, A and C for the second chord’s chord tones, and G, B and D for the third chord’s chord tones.

Next, simply spend some time playing along with the song making use of those notes. Your goal is to be able to actually hear how those notes are present in each chord. You might start by just playing the root note of each chord, then play the arpeggios (meaning each note in turn, lowest to highest and back again), then start experimenting a bit with little melodies based just on the chord tones.

From there you can move into playing by ear if that’s your interest, using these chord tones to give you an insight into which notes are being used in the melody. Can you hear where the melody blends well with the chords and where there’s more tension? You’ll often find that phrases start and end on a note from the current chord but might draw on other notes from the scale in between.

We have a great tutorial by guitar teacher Brad Mavin on our site which walks you through using this chord tones approach for a pop song, I’ll put a link in the shownotes. There are some guitar specifics but I think it can be applied for any instrument.

Or if you’re more interested in improvisation then your next step is to explore how you can shape your phrases by choosing notes which do and don’t belong to the chord. This is a really great way to quickly get that powerful tension and release in your solos. Which notes can you linger on to create a clashing sound that demands resolution, and which note do you need to move to, to create that release? The chord tones have the answer.

This is a key technique for jazz musicians who will improvise a solo thinking almost entirely about the chord progression rather than the key. The key and its scale alone don’t really reveal the complex harmonies going on in a typical jazz standard, but following the chords can reveal the notes and scales you need to use to create a dynamic and powerful solo that matches the song well.

This was the context where Meghan was talking about it: as a singer if you need to improvise it can feel a bit overwhelming. You need to really hear the notes you choose before you sing them and getting your ear around the chords makes it far easier to narrow it down to the notes which are going to sound good. It provides you with a kind of palette of sounds that you can then draw on to shape your solo.

Conclusion

So that’s what you need to know to start making use of chord tones. It’s a pretty simple idea: that we can approach melodies and solos based on the chords – and learn a lot from which notes belong to the chord and which don’t. But this simple mindset shift can have a big impact on your success in playing by ear, improvising and simply understanding how music fits together.

Add chord tones to your musical toolkit and you’ll have a powerful new insight into the music you hear and the music you play.

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The post About Chord Tones appeared first on Musical U.