Author: musicalitywrld

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.

There are musical artists who you won’t see on stage, and whose names you won’t always find printed on the back of your favourite 12-inch vinyl. They make music that does not simply stand alone; instead, it blends with another art form – so seamlessly that you don’t always notice it.

We’re talking about the people who make the music for entertainment we consume on a daily basis: it could be a hair-raising score for a Hollywood thriller, a tune for a potato chip commercial, or background music for a seven-season television show. It could even be a soundscape for a museum exhibition. We’re talking about background music.

Musical U had the opportunity to chat with drummer-turned-background music composer Mike Reed, who wears the hats of writer, producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist in his eclectic compositional work to create a diverse array of material spanning genres from classical music to synthpop. His compositions get put to good use in everything from minute-long commercials to blockbuster films – among which are The Legend of Tarzan, Cuban Fury, and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Here, he shares his compositional techniques, discusses what an ordinary day on the job looks like, and compares the solitary and the collaborative aspects of his work. 

I was brought up in the Salvation Army Band, playing cornet from age 5 or 6. I then progressed to trumpet, and started playing in the Devon County Youth Orchestra. In the meantime, I had some music theory and piano lessons and then went on to take up drumming lessons at school as a teenager. At the same time, I was experimenting with writing programs to control a Casio keyboard from my ZX Spectrum computer (this was in the late 80s and early 90s), and also taping songs from the radio to try and work them out by ear.

Drums always seemed cooler than the trumpet! I had some drum lessons while at school, and then went on to study with the legendary drum teacher Bob Armstrong after I’d finished university. Bob sadly passed away earlier this year, but he was one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met – musically and personally.

I can’t pretend that I was the most successful drummer ever, but I was lucky enough to do some recording with The Prodigy amongst a few other big names, and play on a number of film soundtracks for the composer Michael Price (who is now very well known for his work on Sherlock). I still play for various projects, but my session drummer days are behind me.

Concurrently with drumming, I was pitching on some TV advertisements in the USA through a friend who was with a music advertising company over there. As that progressed, I began to enjoy it more than drumming on other people’s music, and started to look for opportunities to do more.

Unfortunately, with adverts, there are usually many other composers pitching, so you often don’t “win” the job.

Library music, while not quite as instantly lucrative as a big advert, is reasonably stable and less plagued by various creative types up the advert music chain sending feedback like “It needs to sound more green”, or “Can you make it sound soft and hard at the same time?”.

I started co-writing with a few other composer friends who were already doing library music, and gradually found my way in from there.

Trial and error! I really enjoy the sounds that come out when someone who is musical picks up a new instrument and approaches it in an untrained way – not that it always works! I muddle through on guitar and bass with lots of editing, and my classical background means I have at least an inkling of how orchestration works, so that helps for programming string sections and the like.

I was very lucky at university to have Sebastian Forbes as my orchestration and composition professor – I wish I had taken more advantage of his genius while I was there. I also learnt a lot from playing on other people’s music – both as a drummer at university on other students’ projects, and later professionally.

Generally though, I think I’ve learnt most from just listening – soaking up as much music in as many different styles as possible. My learning process with production has been similar. Many of my university friends have ended up as recording engineers and I’ve learnt a lot from them about production, mixing and equipment. I do lots of listening and experimenting – often failing, but I always get there eventually!

Basically, the bulk of my work is writing and producing music to a brief – that could be anything from massive bombastic orchestral epics to tiny evolving synth drone soundscapes.

I write, produce, and mix it to be delivered to a music library company.

A music library is a bank of pre-written music that is ready to use on productions – TV programs, adverts, films, and so on. If a filmmaker wants, for example, a tense string quartet piece, they can search through these libraries catalogues and hopefully find a few options. Then they pay a fee to the company to use the track.

Generally, I have a bunch of briefs in different styles from library music companies in at any one time. Unless I’m working on something to a tight deadline I generally just see how I feel in the morning after doing the school run, and start coming up with ideas for whichever of the briefs I feel like.

I generally come up with more ideas than I need for a project and then whittle them down to my favourites. I often leave things and come back to them to get a bit of distance. Then it’s a process of “working up” the ideas – fleshing them out, working on sounds, and eventually mixing.

Often there are revisions to do on tracks I’ve submitted, and sometimes I come up with ideas for briefs myself or put some tracks together to pitch to a company. I also ghostwrite a lot for other (more well known!) composers in TV and film, and that’s generally more deadline-based and takes initial priority on many days.

It’s a struggle, to be honest. I’m not great at meetings or maintaining contacts, but I seem to have managed so far! I have an accountant and he’s set me up with an online accounts system which means I no longer have to think much about that side of things. Anything business-related, I try to keep to defined blocks of time rather than bits and bobs when I’m trying to be creative.

I do 90% of things myself, although I love to bring in other musicians when budget allows. The most common thing is to bring in various singers on projects, but occasionally guitarists and other musicians too when something that I can’t play well enough needs doing. Obviously, it’s great when budgets can stretch to a full real orchestra, but those are few and far between!

I think it helps with my “voice”. I enjoy rhythm and much prefer writing rhythmic things to long lyrical melodies, so it’s nice to be told that comes across!

Drums and rhythm are alien to many composers, and it’s not unknown for some to outsource their drum programming and percussion writing, but I like to build upwards from rhythm which hopefully means I have at least the potential for a different sound.

Contacts and friends are a big part of this business, so develop and nurture those as much as possible. Most importantly though – listen, experiment, fail, try again, learn from everyone and everything, and don’t stop learning or being inquisitive about music (or life in general)!

Mike Reed is an eclectic and prolific composer, drummer and producer. Based in rural Devon in the UK, his work can be heard on countless TV programmes, films and commercials all over the world, including movies such as Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Cuban Fury, The Legend of Tarzan, major UK and US TV series, and tracks by bands as diverse as The Prodigy and David Gray.

The post Creating Background Music Masterpieces, with Mike Reed appeared first on Musical U.

As you’re going to discover in this conversation, singing smarter is perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your experience and results as a singer.

During the course of her career in music, Meghan has helped hundreds of people become better singers and musicians. She works with voice and piano students of all ages, levels and genres in her busy private studio in Arvada, Colorado. She is a classically-trained vocalist with a degree in Jazz Performance from Michigan State University and has performed in Jazz, Rock, Funk, R&B, Bluegrass and Folk bands. She’s been teaching voice for 15 years and focuses on healthy singing technique, ear training and musicianship.

In this episode Meghan shares with us:

• The framework she puts in place with all her students that helps them approach new songs, sing the right notes, and even sight-sing music they’ve never seen before.
• The truth about “tone deafness” and how she helps first-time singers to quickly get the hang of singing in tune, and
• How she went from being too scared to even try improvising as a singer, to knowing clearly and confidently how to assemble the right notes at the right time.

We loved chatting with Meghan about what it means to “sing smarter” and how it can help all those of us who aren’t necessarily “natural singers” to feel just as confident and capable as those who are.

Listen to the episode:

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

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

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• HowToSingSmarter.com
• The Tone Deaf Test
• Beginner Solfa Sight-Singing Practice Exercises
• Improvisation in Singing

Transcript

Meghan: Hi, this is Megan Nixon from HowToSingSmarter.com, and you’re listening to the Musicality podcast.

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

Meghan: Hi, Christopher. I’m so happy to be here.

Christopher: I’d love to start at the beginning. Could you tell us a bit about how you got started making music?

Meghan: Yeah. I have always been a singer since I was a little child. I started piano lessons at eight and voice lessons at 11. My voice teacher, my piano teacher were best friends and from a very small town in Michigan in the US. Just from there on, my love of music and my abilities bloomed. I knew that I always wanted to go to school for music and do this as a living.

Christopher: What were those early experiences of learning for you? Did you feel like you were just a natural and everything was easy or was it more a matter of hard work and study and discipline and cruel teachers who made you do a lot of homework?

Meghan: I did not have any cruel teachers. I had some really spectacular teachers. I would say that some things came naturally to me, but a lot of it I had to work at. I am definitely a practice singer, I would not say that I came out of the womb sounding amazing. I do remember distinctly when I was 11 years old, and I think I’ve heard a recording of it since, where it was my first voice lesson and my tone quality was really nasally, SWV was really popular at the time, I don’t know if you remember who they are. It wasn’t a good sound, but it didn’t take long for my teacher to show me how to do it the right way. Some things came naturally, but I would say I put in 100s of hours of practice to become a really good singer.

Christopher: You were singing through high school and through college, then?

Meghan: I was. I was in choir from when I was a little kid to all through college and high school. I would say that my challenges in high school and college were more on the ear training side of things. That was not something that I was super natural at. I had a really great choir director who did a lot of ear training exercises with us as a class. For instance, he’d have the major scale written on the board and then we’d jump around intervallically and a lot of the kids around me could do it, so I would just listen and follow. To me, it was like pulling a note out of thin air. There was no context. Knowing how to get to do to fa did not mean anything to me. I didn’t know how you could hear that without singing do, re, mi, fa, but just do fa was not something that made a lot of sense to me.

In college, I ran into some similar things where I kind of felt like I almost had a deficit as a musician. I knew I was a really good singer, but I didn’t think my ear was up to par and I thought that was just something that I wasn’t that good at. I was a jazz major and so improvisation is a big part of that and that is huge as far as ear training goes.

I remember particularly one, I think it was even called ear training class or maybe musicianship class, and we were supposed to do a line where we would end on a nine. Maybe it would be like a chord, you’d sing a line and you were supposed to resolve here. I knew what the nine was conceptually, I knew it was the second scale degree, but I had no idea how to hear that, how to land there. If I was playing on it the piano, that’d be easy, I’d know what note it was. I just wasn’t good at it and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t have any teacher who specifically taught me any techniques that were really applicable that I could practice in all 12 keys and then suddenly, I can hear the nine now. It was just some random thing that these people were somehow pulling out of the air that I just couldn’t do. It wasn’t … I’m sorry, go ahead.

Christopher: Sorry. The people around you, could they explain how they did it, or did it seem like they just kind of instinctively knew?

Meghan: Yeah. I went to school with a lot of natural singers, kids who really had, it almost was like everything was just aligned perfectly from when they came out of the womb, and that’s not most singers. I did encounter a lot of kids like that, and they just heard it because they’d heard it over and over and it made sense to them, but my ears just weren’t there, I needed an extra step, I needed something applicable that I could sit down at a piano and figure out. As the instrumentalist, even if they couldn’t hear the nine, they knew where it was and so they could press that button. As a singer, you can’t do that, you actually have to hear it.

Christopher: It can seem like cheating can’t it when a pianist, he just pushes the right button and the right note comes out. For a singer, it’s not that simple.

Meghan: No. It wasn’t until I actually started teaching myself after I graduated, which was pretty much right after I graduated, I’ve been teaching private lessons for about 15 years, that I started to figure out not only how to teach myself those things but how to teach my students those things. If I couldn’t do it, certainly I couldn’t teach them. I just found that it’s simply a scale and I got better at it very quickly once I realized that, that it wasn’t a deficit that was something that was born in me. It was simply something I hadn’t known how to practice correctly.

Christopher: That’s really interesting. Were there any particular teachers or resources that helped you find that path to being able to do it?

Meghan: I had a lot of great teachers, I really did. The one who focused the most on ear training I would say was my high school choir director, but that wasn’t a one-on-one scenario. He probably didn’t know that I couldn’t do it, because I’m sitting next to a girl who can and I can follow her. It really was just me sitting doing and being like, I’ve got to figure out how I can hear these things. I just worked out some little exercises. I don’t think that anyone showed me how to do it, I just think knowing how to play the piano is a huge part of that, so I always encourage singers to take piano. It’s really the singer’s best friend.

Christopher: Yeah. It’s almost the opposite the singing isn’t it, in that everything is so visual and linear on the keyboard and you’ve got that structure.

Meghan: You’ve got the correct answer. You know what I mean?

Christopher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Meghan: Singing is very different. I know instrumentalist think singing a lot of time seems kind of like an intangible study, you know what I mean, because it is very different. That’s one of the reasons too that singers sometimes get away with not knowing as much because the nature of the instrument is that you can intuit some of that stuff. The kids I went to school with who had just natural ears and they could hear that nine but I couldn’t, it’s almost a disadvantage, because you don’t have to sit down and work those things out, sometimes you can figure them out just by working with your body, but then you’re left with not knowing how to communicate that.

Christopher: I think that’s such an important point and as you say, it’s kind of a double-edged sword. Singers can get quite far just on instinct and listening without really understanding what they’re doing or how to get better. The catch is, if they really want to be good or they really want to develop their musicality and be able to communicate with other musicians, they’re actually in a much blurrier place than a lot of instrument players who’ve had to do it step-by-step throughout.

Meghan: Yes. I would say most of my friends are singers, just through all parts of life and my husband is a piano player. One of my best friends is an amazing singer, but she does not like to teach and she doesn’t feel like she has the tools to teach, because she was just always so natural. I had to work step-by-step to figure so many things out that I feel like I really have a template of how to teach somebody else how to do that.

Christopher: That’s great. That led on in due course to you creating the website HowToSingSmarter.Com. Was there a particular inspiration or particular thing that made you think, “I should bring this online. I’ve cracked something that other people don’t seem to be teaching.”?

Meghan: Well, at first I created it kind of as supplementary to my students who were studying to me privately. I’ve got like 40 private students I teach every day but Sundays, it’s something I really enjoy. I put that online for them initially but I think all signers can benefit from this. I’ve had so many students who are adults who will come in to me, and someone 20 years ago, a teacher, a parent told them that they couldn’t sing and so they’ve been avoiding even Happy Birthday in public for the last two decades or three decades. I realize there’s so many people like that who really think they can’t sing, that this would be really beneficial to a wide group of people, because singing is a pleasure that every human should be able to happily partake in.

Almost everybody can get better. There are really, it’s only, I think statistically it’s like two percent of the population is tone deaf, which for your audience specifically means like, if I play this note and this note or sing those notes, a tone deaf person can’t hear that this note is higher than this note. They’re the same. Most people can hear the difference, and if you can, then you can learn to match those pitches. I think I’ve had one student maybe in 15 years who didn’t improve, and I’ve had 100s of students. I just thought it was, I want people to get joy from singing, because it’s such an awesome, I love singing. It’s my favorite thing to do. Everyone should be able to do it and almost everyone can benefit and get better from just some study.

Christopher: I think that’s a really valuable message and I know a lot of our listeners are probably instrumentalists rather than singers and probably have that hang up about singing, maybe they had the bad experience in choir as an eight year old, or maybe they just never dived into that world, so they assume they can’t do it. You’re absolutely right, we’ve had close to a million people take our tone deafness test at ToneDeafTest.com, and it backs up that research, that it’s really maybe two percent of people who genuinely can’t tell the difference. What I always say is, if you can enjoy music, you’re not tone deaf, simple as that, because you wouldn’t have the relative pitch to understand anything in what you’re hearing. If you enjoy music, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t learn to sing in tune.

Meghan: That’s a great point. I’m going to steal that.

Christopher: I think there were a couple of things that really drew me to HowToSingSmarter when I discovered it and they really resonated with the way we approach singing at Musical U. Those were, firstly as you say, the focus on helping people who are at that very beginner stage, learning to match pitch, learning basic vocal control and helping them pass some of that emotional anxiety about singing out loud in front of people.

Meghan: Yeah.

Christopher: The other is the solfa system and movable do solfa in particular, which I think people put it into two categories. They either think it’s super basic and just for kids, or they think it’s super advanced and way beyond them. I love the way you teach it on your website, because you show that actually it’s just a very practical tool for getting a deep understanding of what you’re singing.

Meghan: Yeah.

Christopher: Could you tell us a bit more about how you approach those two things on HowToSingSmarter.com?

Meghan: One was solfa, sorry, what was the other one?

Christopher: Singing-

Meghan: Beginners, singing in tune? Okay. Those go hand-in-hand for me. When I am teaching a student who has trouble matching pitch, and I mean, you know, a student comes in, the first thing I do is have them sing a simple vocal exercise. Maybe that’s a little too advanced. Maybe I’d have them sing, and then I gauge if they can sing that, then we’re cool and we go on to do some harder things. If they have trouble matching pitch immediately, then the first thing I’ll do with them is jump around within their register, having them close their eyes, listen to the note, hum the note, and then try to sing it. Usually within literally 10 to 15 minutes, people are much better at it. It’s about focusing on something that they’ve never focused on before.

They’re just going to, if they’re not actually focusing on, this is a pitch, this is an exact place, this is a distinct thing that you can focus on and then aim for and then hit. Then the next thing that we’ll do is start with the major scale, and that’s always where I start, because in music language, we almost compare everything to major scales or major intervals. More than half of the songs that we sing are going to be in major keys, it’s more common. Being able to sing that simple major scale in tune is the beginning to be able to sing a song in tune. I always say a major scale is like a really boring song. A song is just going to be some other version of those notes, but it’s the same intervals, it’s the same notes.

What we do is we start with me playing the piano as they sing, and usually it’ll stay there for a while if they have a hard time matching pitch, and I’ll show them how to play the C major scale on the keyboard, so they can go home, sit at a piano or even a virtual keyboard if that’s all they have available to them, and sing each pitch as they play it and try to lock in. When you sing a note with a piano and it locks in, you can feel it, there’s like a buzz, but if you’re … They’re trying to find those pitches, but then there’s that moment when I see it on their faces, that they can feel the connection between the pitch on the piano and what they’re singing. I really focus on the major scale and solfege is a really important tool for that.

Once you get past something simple like being able to sing the major scale in tune acapella, the next thing that I do is just go in step-wise motion moving around the scale, and I would be pointing to a chart that has the solfege written on it. Do, re, mi, re, mi, fa, mi, re, mi, re, do, so we’re staying in step-wise motion. Then the next step once they get that is to start doing some jumping around and stuff like that. On HowToSingSmarter, I basically have, for each interval, I have a little exercise that’s worked out that you can practice in all 12 keys so you can hear how to jump from do to that particular note, fa, ti, re, whatever. It’s really helpful, because usually once we get through all those 12 keys, that student starts to hear that distance a little bit better. It’s all about context.

When I was confused about ear training in high school and college, I thought that you had to just pull those notes randomly out of the air. I didn’t think about it context of the scale itself. It’s one of the best tools I’ve ever used for helping someone improve pitch, even someone who has excellent pitch, then we’ll go on to a chromatic solfege scale, to something that’s quite a bit more difficult. It’s kind of like endless resource in ear training.

Christopher: It definitely can be and I love that you see it as the building blocks to get them through the various stages of understanding the singing and the notes they’re singing. I think what trips a lot of people up, we have a lot of people who come to our website who have been looking around at YouTube tutorials and they’ve been doing karaoke and they’ve been told that their pitch or tuning is a bit off, but they have no idea how to tackle that except to keep singing songs. If you start singing lessons with a trained teacher like yourself, they’re going to start you more from the beginning, but I think online, there’s a real danger that people just don’t understand there are building blocks. Start out just singing one note and getting that right, and then introduce a few notes from the scale. From there, some teachers will just go straight to songs, but I love that you actually continue on that kind of methodical path of let’s assemble a framework for relative pitch, something that you can apply in any key and to any song.

Meghan: Yes, exactly. Song study is definitely a big part of vocal study as well, learning vocal technique, how to breathe, making sure your tone is beautiful, those things. Nobody cares about any of that if you’re singing out of tune.

Christopher: That’s a great way of putting it, yeah.

Meghan: It’s interesting. Different people have different strengths and weaknesses. I’ve had students come in with beautiful tone who have a really hard time with pitch. They’re not all things that go together, it’s different strengths and weaknesses, or I can have a student with great tone whose pitch is not very good. It’s all of those things put together that create something that’s appealing to listen to.

Christopher: If we imagine a singer who has got the basics of singing in tune, and then we imagine them on two parts, one of which is built on solfege and understanding these notes and their relationships, and the other is on maybe a more traditional song-by-song repertoire based path. What difference does solfege make? Why is that such a cool part of the way you teach?

Meghan: That’s a good question. Song study like I said is very important, because it builds pitch association and all of those things that solfege study does as well. It’s just a better way to break things down and focus on one little thing at a time, and then you get better and better and better. It’s supplemental, it’s something that goes with the song study to me. No one would want to come into voice lessons for years and just sing solfege. That’d be incredibly boring, right? In my, like a typical lesson for me, we’re doing that for 15 minutes and then we’re singing for 45. There’s always, you know, that interval that you’re having a hard time with is a perfect fit, it’s do to so, and that connection can help the student sing that in tune because now they recognize it.

Christopher: Great. I think for me as a singer in school years, I came across intervals and ear training only in the context of sight singing and this was how you did it. They didn’t actually teach us the ear training, they just kind of said, “This interval, therefore, sing the note.” I was kind of left stranded like you were describing earlier. People could pluck it from thin air and telling me it was a major third didn’t do anything to help me sing it.

Meghan: Yeah. That’s an excellent point and I think about that a lot and I talk to my students about that, because there’s a lot of people who want to be good at sight singing and it’s a really great skill as a singer who wants to be in a choir or who wants to be in a band or whatever or just someone who wants to be able to read music. Just like you said, if you’re looking at a piece of music and you intellectually know that you’re supposed to jump up a major sixth but you have no idea what a major sixth sounds like, it doesn’t matter. You can have all the information intellectually and if you don’t have the ear behind it, you can’t sing it. Ear training is first and then sight singing, or they can go together, but it has to be at the same time. You can’t start with sight singing.

Christopher: Agreed. I think you touched on something else interesting earlier, which was that for you, ear training and improvisation as a singer went closely together. Can you tell us more about that?

Meghan: Yeah. I think a lot of people think this and I probably was one of those when I first started. I was always classically trained, so from when I was eight and then I got into college with a classical scholarship and it wasn’t until my, I think my sophomore year where we actually got a jazz department at MSU and I switched over. All of my practice, all of my study before that point had been classical music. There’s very little room for improvisation in classical music. When I was put in a scenario when I had to just pull it out of nowhere and improvise, I was terrified.

We did this thing on the first day when I switched from classical to jazz where we sat in a circle with all these other kids that I just met at 19, and we had to go trading fours. Everybody sings, there’s a piano player, and everybody sings four bars and then you pass the musical baton to the next person and they sing something in response. No one was great at it, but I could not even, I froze. I could not even get it to come out of my mouth. It was a terrifying proposition, that I was potentially about to sound terrible. I was practiced, I always sounded good, I was always on top of things classically but then when I had to create something on the spot, it was terrifying. It didn’t have anything to do with ears in that way, it just was my own fear of wrong notes. I think it’s Miles Davis who said something like, “There are no wrong notes, just poor choices,” something like that. I might be misquoting it, but that’s the idea.

I realized again after I had graduated that improvisation is not someone pulling random stuff out of the air, it’s somebody hearing the notes specifically in each chord, being able to take those notes and create a melody with it. You’re not singing, if you have a chord that’s happening, you’re not just singing anything, you’re singing those chord tones. Something that was really helpful to me as far as improvisation is that, and actually, I did learn this in college, my vocal teacher had us do this. Let’s say we have a piece, she would give us eight bars, we have to play the chords and sing up the chords, and then take it piece by piece, try to sing a pattern on that chord, maybe the same pattern even on each chord, so you’re starting to hear through those chords.

Then I realized, this is not just something that people are randomly hearing, this again can be taught, studied, perfected. There’s definitely a part of improvisation that’s on the spot, and that is really fun and it’s about the performance, but if you don’t hit the language underneath it, you’re not going to sing anything that sounds good. You know what I mean by that? There’s fundamental musical things that you can practice and learn that make you a good improviser.

Christopher: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think that sounds like a great exercise and it’s similar to what we teach for instrumentalists at Musical U, is how to find those chord tones and use them as the basis for improv.

Could you give us an example of what that would sound like if a singer was improvising based on the chord tones?

Meghan: Sure. First, let’s say that, just starting on the most simple thing, I’m playing a C major seven chord. You would just start with … And maybe then you’d, if you don’t have a lot of ideas in what you’d want to do, you’d just maybe take those four chord tones and put them in a different order. Then you’d just try to see what comes out of your mouth and then you can test it back and see if you’re hitting the right notes. There’s the nine that I couldn’t hear before. Just actually sitting on one chord like that can be helpful. I do have an exercise that I do with singers that I think is helpful and also helpful to instrumentalists, which is just going through each of the five types of seventh chords and moving one note each time, because they’re only a half step away. For instance, you go … Then the dominant, then the minor, then the half diminished, then the fully diminished, just kind of as a starting point for jazz specifically, it’s a little more complicated. Just sitting in one chord and hanging out there and trying to create melodies using even just the four chord tones or then starting with the whole scale or trying to land on a nine or land on an 11 or whatever, but to do that as a singer, you have to know how to play the piano.

Christopher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Meghan: Or you have to have somebody do it for you, that or you can do it yourself. I wouldn’t have been able to figure out any of that stuff if I could not play the piano.

Christopher: That’s a great tip for people. I think a lot of singers shy away from the piano because it can be a bit intimidating as an instrument to fully learn and play. As you point out, just picking out some notes can provide you with a great basis for doing these kinds of exercises.

Meghan: Yeah. It could be simple. It could just, I have sung with some really excellent singers who I was absolutely surprised and amazed and they’d be like, “That music theory stuff, I’ll leave that to you.” I’m like, what? All I’m doing is figuring out our starting pitches by the chord that’s being played or whatever. It’s just so important and particularly to communicate with other musicians.

Christopher: It can be empowering too, I think. The chord exercise you just demonstrated is another great example of how having a framework in your head as a singer makes such a difference. You’re not picking notes at random, you’re not just following the notes on the page, you actually understand the meaning of those notes musically and they fit into a certain pattern in your head that you’ve practiced and learned.

Meghan: Yeah. I think of it like when you first are trying improvisation or let’s just talk about it’s a specific song, it’s like a field full of snow. Then you start making pathways through that field of snow and it starts getting easier and it starts making more sense and you can traverse that land more easily, because you’re trying things, you’re hearing things. Suddenly, there are all these pathways and all these choices, and you can go in this direction or this direction or this direction, because you trained your ear to do that. That’s when the creativity starts. Once you know the language, then you can be expressive.

I remember one of my first vocal attempts at improvisation, I thought it sounded awesome, but it did not. I think it was not so awesome, and what it was, I was just trying to make it fancy, I was just in my head Ella Fitzgerald and just try to go for the sounds that I thought were good, but I wasn’t listening at all. I was listening to me, but I wasn’t listening to the chords. Of course, Ella Fitzgerald had a monster ear, so really it was nothing like what she would’ve sang. It’s just, all of it can be broken down, skills that can be improved. I think that builds confidence. Obviously being better at something makes you more confident at it, but if you don’t know how to get better, then you’re just kind of stuck somewhere.

Christopher: Absolutely. I think there’s such power in understanding how you do what you do. It’s not enough just to be able to do it. If you can understand it, you can talk to other people about it, you know how to improve it. You can stand up on stage and do it knowing that you will do it correctly, because you understand the process. It makes such a difference.

Meghan: Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher: Fantastic. You have such useful and practical and unusual I think approach to teaching singing, and I love that the name of your website is HowToSingSmarter.com, because I think it is a smarter approach. It’s not just, let’s do a bunch of songs, let’s go to karaoke every week and hope we get better as a singer. It’s a very thought through and step-by-step approach to actually honing your craft and it’s developing your instrument as a singer.

Meghan: Yeah, thank you. That was my goal. That’s what I’m trying to do.

Christopher: Tell us a bit more about what people can find on your website?

Meghan: There’s a good amount of stuff that I’m adding. It’s not, I haven’t been doing it for a super long time, so there’s a good, I mean, it would take you a few months to get through what’s on there and I keep adding to it. Basically, there’s kind of two main parts that I focus on on HowToSingSmarter. One is healthy singing technique which is very important, first of all just to sound better, but also so people do not hurt their voices. I have so many people who, usually it’s younger people, honestly teenagers, who are singing too loud, singing too hard, trying to sing songs that are out of their register. It’s just really important to treat your voice as kindly as possible so there’s lots of how to breathe properly, lots of breathing instruction in there, tone quality, how not to strain, things like that. Some really fundamental things that are just important to understand as a singer. Then the other side is the musicianship side, which is ear training and sight singing and even piano. Like I said, I really think, the piano is such a beautiful map of music, of music theory. It’s really easy to understand when you look at it like that.

There’s lots of warm up exercises, there’s videos, tutorials. There’s lots of, like what I was explaining earlier, lots of solfege practice where we, I teach you how to hear mi and so and ti and re, not just from do but from anywhere in the scale with specific exercises that you can practice in all 12 keys that I actually play on the piano for you, so if they don’t play, it’s okay. They can just follow along. Then more complicated things that are similar where we’re hearing minor intervals and things like that. There’s a lot of ear training. I would say it’s heavy on ear training and technique.

Christopher: Fantastic. I think you were being quite humble when you said there’s not much on there yet. It sounds like there’s a wealth of useful resources for people.

Meghan: There’s some stuff, yeah. There’s some stuff on there.

Christopher: I would highly recommend if you’ve been listening to this and thinking that you’ve always worried you can sing or maybe you’ve dabbled and your tuning was off or you’re intrigued by this idea of solfege as a kind of framework for understanding the notes you’re singing, I highly recommend heading over to HowToSingSmarter.com and taking a look at everything that Meghan has created there. 

Thank you again, Meghan, for coming on the show.

Meghan: Thank you so much, Christopher. This was so much fun. I really appreciate having a chance to talk to your audience and hopefully helping some people sing better.

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The post How to Sing Smarter, with Meghan Nixon appeared first on Musical U.

What is a songwriting challenge?

Well, in a nutshell, it is a composition exercise with very specific parameters meant to challenge your creativity. This can be anything from limiting lyrical content, time frame, instrumentation, or trying to create a certain amount of songs within a day. Some songwriters like Jonathan Mann have become famous for their ability to come up with new songs on a daily basis!

Why should you even bother with a songwriting challenge?

Songwriting challenges have many hidden benefits. They will help you:

• Create music outside the box
• Develop new skills
• Produce a large amount of content
• Generate good musical ideas that can be fleshed out into full songs at a later date
• Earn exposure
• Expand your song library
• Unearth talents you didn’t know that you had
• Connect you to other songwriters

Think Outside the Box

There are many different types of songwriting challenges, but the most effective ones will limit you musically.

And this is a good thing.

These types of songwriting challenges will actually help you think outside the box and exercise your creative muscles. For example, a challenge might be writing for a particular unfamiliar instrument like a banjo, in a style like the blues, writing lyrics about something you find in your fridge, or writing a song using only a specific scale.

You might find that you have a knack for writing bluegrass and country songs, are really good at writing silly lyrics for kids’ tunes, can write twenty songs in a week, or are a master at non-Western harmony. But you won’t know until you challenge yourself with something outside of your usual realm of experience. You quickly develop new skills as you force yourself to work within these parameters that have been set for you.

“The Twitter Song” by Ben Walker was created for the 50/90 Song Challenge:

Conquer Writer’s Block

When you force yourself to write music with certain constraints and under heavy pressure, you learn how you can conquer writer’s block, that bane of the creative professional’s existence.

You know it well –  when you stare at a blank page for hours, unable to jot down a single note. Learning how to conquer writer’s block not only helps you develop as a musician, it makes you much more marketable if you write music as a jingle writer, for TV/film, business clients, or other less inspiring (but paid) work.

A Personal Note: I developed incredible writing skills after creating dozens of tunes in a short amount of time for a music publisher. By forcing myself to write high quality work quickly I was able to conquer writer’s block by pushing myself through the dead times. Those skills have stayed with me throughout my career, and years later, I can pretty much write any tune in a few hours’ time.

Where to Find Songwriting Challenges

Spend some time on Google and you will find that there are hundreds of songwriting challenges available. Some are just individual challenges posted up on message boards and others are more collaborative challenges, where an online community shares and critiques songwriting based on the challenges.

An individual might post up a personal song challenge to share with the world. Some folks like to post their band’s song challenges on Facebook as a means of support and marketing. These can be challenges based on time, subject matter, instrumentation, a holiday, images, cover songs, and just about anything you can think of. Most are free, and all will help you hone your sweet songwriting chops.

Never checked out a song challenge before? Let’s look at some of the more common types of challenges…

Timed Challenges

Songwriting challenges that require you to write within a specific time frame suddenly force you to abandon your usual songwriting routine (and lots of writer’s block). You may have to write a song or a set of lyrics each day or a certain number within a week.

Some challenges have you produce the entire song, just post up the lyrics on a website, or create a super quick rough recording of the song. You might write music for one hour every day or even try to write 100 songs in 100 days. Some of these challenges can be quite difficult, but even if you don’t hit 100 songs in 100 days, you will most likely end up with some pretty great material to rework later on into more finished songs.

The 50/90 Challenge

A great example of a timed challenge is the 50/90 challenge.

In a nutshell, the 50/90 challenge occurs between July 4th to October 1st each year. Participants write songs at rapid speed; at the end of 90 days, they need to have written 50 songs! Some songwriters go with fully produced songs, others only write lyrics or charts. As you write, you share your music with the community for helpful feedback.

The 50/90 challenge is a free challenge. You sign up on the website. A countdown clock is available. Challenges are given every day. Set up an account on the website, upload your tunes and lyrics, then wait for the comments to start. In general, the comments are encouraging, with helpful critiques on your work. Sometimes a song becomes popular, winning some notoriety for the songwriter.

For example, this song was created for the 2015 50/90 “More Cowbell” challenge, where musicians needed to create a tune about, yep, a cowbell! Is this a great song? Probably not, but the catchy song received positive feedback from fellow songwriters for its humor.

Here’s “The More Cowbell Song”:

The Song-A-Week Challenge

This Reddit Song-A-Week challenge is pretty straightforward, with the following challenge:

“52 Songs, 52 weeks, 71 sleepless nights…”

Unlike the 50/90 challenge, the Song-A-Week challenge gives musicians enough time to come up with a good sketch and develop their musical ideas. Songs can be centered on themes like “minimalism” or “colour”, and any musician can participate in this freeform international forum.

Listen to Dallas Dwayne’s composition “Time” from the 50/90 Challenge:

Musicians are encouraged to write songs, submit original themes (regardless of musical genre) and listen to fellow songwriter tunes. To become a part of the challenge, you simply need to set up a Reddit account, then jump in. Musicians post links to the music, sometimes hosting their music on sites like Bandcamp (which allows musicians to set up albums for free or sale without a charge).

Here’s a tune from the album I wrote for the 50/90 Challenge:

Song Challenges Based on a Theme

Besides timed challenges, a common song challenge type is based on themes. The theme could be anything from romance to holidays to nondescript items. For example, one challenge I encountered in college involved picking up a science textbook and writing a song based on the first paragraph that I found. This resulted in the very strange avant-garde work called “Rellerisms”, dedicated to composer Paul Reller, that detailed the radioactive damage caused by atomic power:

These theme-based songwriting challenges are sometimes created within the context of a time-based challenge. They can be seen as a creative prompt to help songwriters overcome writer’s block and develop an original musical idea around an idea they wouldn’t otherwise think to write about.

Thing-A-Week Challenge

Musician Jonathan Coulton developed the Thing-A-Week Song Challenge after ditching his job to pursue a musical career. Over the course of a year, he developed 52 original songs on a very unique variety of topics, from brains to a blue raincoat to pizza. Check out the complete list of songs!

Here’s Jonathan singing “Today with Your Wife” from his Thing-A-Week Challenge:

Your Own Thing-A-Week Challenge

You can develop your own Thing-A-Week challenge by using sites like the Random Word Generator or a Title Generator to give you creative prompts to write a new tune. There are hundreds of these sites online – some based on genres like fantasy and science fiction, others based on musical styles or pure randomness.

A particularly fun title generator is the Heavy Metal Name Generator, which will provide you with dark, heavy-hitting song titles like “Malicious Chapel” and “Alchemist of the Beyond”.

Here’s how to create and complete your own unique songwriting challenge, whether it is a song per week or month:

1. Go to a random word or title generator
2. Use the generator to come up with at least three different themes/titles
3. Set a goal to finish at least one complete song based on a generated theme
4. For an additional challenge, add a time-based goal of one song per day or week
5. Write your lyrics and melody
6. Record it
7. If you feel really creative, use the generator to make an entire album of songs
8. Share your songs online using a site like Bandcamp or YouTube
9. Challenge your friends to do the same!

Take Some Cues From the Master…

A musician who has mastered the songwriting challenge is Jonathan Mann. He boasts on his official website that:

“My superpower is that I can take any idea, no matter how complex, and distill it down into a short, catchy memorable song.”

Jonathan Mann is most famous for writing a song each day! His talent for creating catchy tunes has translated into international fame and real work writing songs for clients, with accolades from everyone from Steve Jobs to Anderson Cooper.

To date, Jonathan Mann has continued this song-a-day challenge for over 3,100 days! That’s over eight years of coming up with original tunes.

Feast your ears on his cosmic hit, “Kittens in Space”:

While most of us don’t have the time and creative energy to churn out thousands of tunes consecutively like a hyperactive songwriting machine, musicians like Jonathan Mann can provide inspiration, encouraging each of us to push ourselves to our maximum musical limits.

Start a Challenge Today!

Hundreds of songwriting challenges populate the Internet. If you have some time, challenge yourself to create music. You will be amazed at how a songwriting challenge can improve your overall musicality, make you a much more experienced musician, expand your song catalog, and even gain you a little musical marketing gold.

Here is a shortlist of other songwriting challenges, besides the ones mentioned already in this article:

• 10 Mini Songwriting Challenges to Sharpen Your Writing Skills: Here you’ll find everything from challenges asking you to write about that special loved one in your life, to 15-minute time crunchers that test your ability to write a melody under pressure!
• Speed Songwriting’s Story Hook Challenge: 176 Popular Hooks for Songwriting: For this speed songwriting challenge, use the periodic table of storytelling to write original lyrics with a strong hook.
• The Google Image Challenge: Input any word into Google Images. Use the resulting images as a prompt to write a new song. Be creative. For example, typing “ear butterfly elephant ballet shoe” might have more interesting results than “dog”, like an African elephant with blue butterflies for ears or unique tattoos.
• Reddit Writing Prompts: The Reddit community is rife with writers and musicians sharing creative ideas. Here is a very long, and sometimes quite bonkers, list of writing prompts for both songs and stories.

Songwriting Inside the Box

Whether you’re in a songwriting rut, or just looking to expand your palette of lyrical themes and genres, it’s incredibly liberating and refreshing to dip your feet into a whole new way of writing tunes. You might discover a penchant for polka, or a fondness for writing about fresh fruit you never knew existed!

The post Songwriting Challenges to Cure Your Writer’s Block appeared first on Musical U.