Preview of The Musicality Podcast with George Bevan

New musicality video:

Don’t miss the upcoming episode of the The Musicality Podcast with special guest George Bevan from https://musicatmonkton.com/
Subscribe here! musicalitypodcast.com

Let us know what you think! Email: hello@musicalitypodcast.com

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Preview of The Musicality Podcast with George Bevan

Singing: I IV V Progressions Resource Pack Preview

New musicality video:

This month we’re joined by a guest Pro, the wonderful Fini Bearman, a professional jazz singer who also teaches at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the United Kingdom. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/i-iv-v-chord-progressions-resource-pack-preview/

Did you know that ten of thousands of pop, rock, folk, country songs and more use “one four five” chord progressions? That makes it easy to learn to play them by ear – you just need to understand how those progressions work, how to recognise them and how to play them on your instrument.

In this month’s Instrument Packs our Resident Pros for guitar, bass, piano and singing took on the topic of “creative ways to get to know I-IV-V progressions”. As always, each pro found a unique angle and taught fun and effective ways to really apply the core skills members learn with Musical U’s training modules directly on their instrument.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/i-iv-v-chord-progressions-resource-pack-preview/

Musical U Piano Resident Pro Fini Bearman:
http://www.finibearman.com

===============================================

Learn more about Musical U!

Website:
https://www.musical-u.com/

Podcast:
http://musicalitypodcast.com

Tone Deaf Test:
http://tonedeaftest.com/

Musicality Checklist:
https://www.musical-u.com/mcl-musicality-checklist

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MusicalU

Twitter:

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/MusicalU

Subscribe for more videos from Musical U!

Singing: I IV V Progressions Resource Pack Preview

About Learning Faster by Recording Yourself

You’ve probably heard the advice that recording yourself during music practice can help you learn and improve faster. There are three big reasons to do it but recording your playing or singing can be scary! Fortunately you can make it easy. Learn how in this episode.

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Rate and Review!

Transcript

Today we’re going to be talking about why to record yourself during practice – and how to make it easy and enjoyable.

In my recent interview with Gerald Klickstein we talked about overcoming performance anxiety and making your playing more musical – and one technique he strongly recommended was to record yourself.

We talked briefly about how to make this easy, since so many musicians hate the idea of recording themselves playing or singing. But I wanted to unpack it in a bit more detail today because it’s one of those techniques that can really accelerate your progress – but is easy to overlook or shy away from.

So we’re going to talk a bit about why you might want to record yourself, then how to do it in terms of technology, and then what you can do to actually make it easy and not get caught up in mental negativity or anxiety when it comes to recording or listening back.

Let’s start with the “Why”

Why record yourself

There are three major reasons to record yourself as a musician. And to be clear, we’re not talking about going into a recording studio or a sound booth and doing a serious production-quality recording. We’re talking about day-to-day recordings as part of how you practice and learn music.

The first reason is: It lets you improve faster.

You’ve probably had the experience of being in a lesson with a teacher, and you play through something, and they point out mistakes or opportunities to improve which you had been totally oblivious to while practicing it at home.

This is partly because they have more experience, but it’s also a lot because they have objectivity to really hear you as you play.

In fact, you’ll find you can generally hear your own mistakes and figure out how to fix them – but you never have the opportunity because your brain is mostly occupied with playing and so you can’t pay careful enough attention to listening too.

It is really important to listen as you play, but that takes practice and even once you’re relaxed with the piece and you’ve practiced active listening, there are going to be things you overlook while in the moment of actually playing.

Recording yourself allows you to stand in the teacher’s position. And although you may not have their experience or their well-trained ears, I guarantee you’ll be surprised by just how much you are able to hear and evaluate and correct by yourself.

That means you aren’t dependent on an occasional in-person lesson with a teacher to get the benefits of this evaluation. You can do it yourself, every day, and that means much faster progress.

The second reason to record yourself is one which Gerald shared in our interview.
He talked about how to overcome performance anxiety it’s a good idea to gradually build up the pressure of performance rather than diving in at the deep end.

Recording offers you a way to practice performing. You can set everything up as if you are actually performing for an audience, play through your pieces as carefully as possible, with as much musicality as possible – but the only person listening will be yourself, afterwards, with the recording.

As I’m sure you know, it’s a very different thing to play music with the intention of practicing versus with the intention of it being a performance. And so whether you ever intend to take the stage or not, practicing performing is a valuable way to increase your musicality.

Having only the recorder as your audience takes an awful lot of pressure off! But it still gives you a valuable step forwards towards performing in a confident and truly musical way.

The third reason is: It lets you actually hear your progress.

Don’t just record yourself and discard the recordings – keep them!

While at the time you might think you never want to hear them again (and I’ll talk more on that experience of disliking your own recordings in a minute!) actually if you keep the recordings they become an enormously powerful way to track your progress and enjoy the improvements you make.

When you listen back after a few days you have a bit more objectivity and perspective. But when you listen back after a few months you’ll probably realise that:
A. You didn’t sound as bad as you thought, but also:
B. You sound way better now!

That’s a really good feeling – but it’s one you miss out on if you don’t have the recordings and you’re relying on just your own fuzzy memory of how good you used to be.

One of my coaching clients on the Musical U Platinum program recently experienced just this.

He’d been reluctant to record himself because he’s very self critical and knew he’d be dissatisfied with the result

But I gradually persuaded him to, for our ears only.

And he was telling me last week how he sat down and recorded a performance of one of the songs we’ve been working on, and immediately after he thought it was rubbish. He was really not satisfied and thought he probably wouldn’t even send it over to me.

But he went out to do some errands and when he got home a few hours later and listened back to the recording – he decided it wasn’t half bad!

Just that bit of time passing, and the ability to listen to himself not in-the-moment, but with his full relaxed attention let him hear the performance for what it really was.

Now if he hadn’t recorded himself he would have played through the piece, been dissatisfied, and spent the rest of the day a bit disappointed about his music playing. Because he did record himself he actually finished up the day being pleasantly surprised at the progress he’s made. And that was actually the more true and accurate judgement of his playing!

So those are the three reasons to record yourself:

  • You make faster progress
  • You become more confident and musical in your performing
  • You get to see clearly how much progress you’ve made over time

Are you convinced it’s worth giving it a try? I hope so!

So let’s talk about how to do it, and how to make it easy.

How to record yourself

The most important thing I can tell you about how to record yourself practicing is: it doesn’t much matter!

Many musicians get hung up on this, worrying about having the right microphone, or a quiet enough environment, or what software to use.

The reality is: it doesn’t matter. As I said before, we’re not aiming for studio-quality sound here!

You’re recording for the sake of capturing a performance and allowing yourself to listen back. That means it just needs to be good enough to serve the three purposes we talked about: Helping you analyse and improve your playing, giving you practice at performing, and showing you your progress over time. That doesn’t require super great audio quality!

You can go old school with a tape recorder or video camera if you have one lying around.

Most people these days will just use their smartphone or tablet – they all have some kind of video camera and audio recorder app built in. It might be called “voice memos” or “voice recordings”. Keep in mind that the camera doesn’t have to be aimed at you! Even if all you have is the video recording app, that will do to get you started, whether you want to be shown on video or not.

You can also record yourself on a computer. Most laptops have a built in microphone, or you can use a webcam’s microphone or a plug-in mic if you have one.

There’s a great free piece of software called Audacity that I would recommend, or again you can use the built in apps. On Windows it’s normally called Sound Recorder, and on Mac you can use Garageband or Quicktime Player.

Remember: most of what you’ll be listening for would be perfectly audible on an old 1920s vinyl record recording – so your smartphone is more than good enough!

It is worth taking a couple of minutes to figure out where to best position your recording device so that the sound isn’t too loud or too quiet on the recording, and you might want to listen back on headphones to hear a bit more detail than a phone speaker will provide. But that’s about all you need to worry about.

Making it easy

Okay, so that’s the technology side of how to record yourself.

How do we make the emotional experience of recording yourself easy too?

Well there were two big tips which Gerald Klickstein shared in his interview:

The first was: Play something easy! Yes, recording can be a tool for improving the pieces you’re working hardest on, at the limits of your ability. But remember that being comfortable recording yourself is a skill in itself: so start small. Record yourself playing things you’re confident playing, and then build up to the more challenging pieces.

The second tip was really powerful: it was to not focus on the whole performance and judge how good or bad it was – but to instead pick one particular aspect that you are evaluating when you listen. For example, just focusing on rhythmic accuracy, or pitching, or how well you’re shaping each phrase. Isolating one aspect like that makes it far easier to stay objective and avoid the mind trash of worrying about being good enough.

I think those two tips alone will transform your experience of recording yourself and listening back, from something overwhelming and difficult into something quite relaxed and useful.

One thing I would add is a reminder that you are under no obligation to let anybody else hear your recording!

You might well decide you want to share it – but when you decide to record, it’s good to assume that you will be the only one hearing it. That takes a bit of the pressure off.

I’d also like to just mention that singers have a particular challenge when it comes to recording themselves – but I think we’ll save that for a future episode.

So let’s recap.

How to Learn Faster by Recording Yourself

Recording yourself as part of your practice has three major benefits:

  1. You improve faster
  2. You gain confidence and musicality in your performing
  3. You can hear clearly the progress you make over time

The how-to of recording yourself is quite simple: whatever works! Tape recorder, smartphone, laptop or desktop – there will be a way to capture sound, save it and listen back. That’s all you need.

It’s easy to get caught up in emotional anxiety when recording yourself and listening back. Remember that you don’t need to let anyone else hear the recording. Start out with music you can play easily. And listen with a particular objective in mind, one single aspect that you’re trying to evaluate and improve.

I hope this episode inspires you to give recording a try! I won’t ask you to send your recordings in to me, but I would love to hear how you get on! Let me know by email to hello at musicalitypodcast.com.

Or, if you want a super easy way to make your first recording, why not send in an audio question or comment. If you head here you can record a little clip that we might feature in a future episode.

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The post About Learning Faster by Recording Yourself appeared first on Musical U.

Singing, Songwriting, and Success as an Independent Artist, with Kendra McKinley

If you want to make it as an independent musician in this day and age, versatility is your best friend. Having a wide range of influences and musical interests was the key to one indie artist’s success…

Kendra McKinley is a singer, songwriter, and cover artist whose voice fits beautifully with everything from psychedelic rock jams to raw love ballads.

She first showed up on our radar with her cover of Father John Misty’s “When You’re Smiling and Astride Me”, in which she took a song with complicated orchestration and stripped it down to a simple guitar-and-vocals arrangement while managing to retain the tune’s incredible impact and beauty.

Musical U invited Kendra to sit down with us to talk about her influences, her songwriting style, her career as an independent artist, and the vocal coach who helped her make it all possible.

Q: Greetings Kendra, and welcome to Musical U. We discovered you for ourselves when writing a cover comparison about your Father John Misty cover. Since then we’ve been amazed by your rainbow of musical expression. Please, tell us how you started in music and how you grew to where you are now.

Hello to all those at Musical U and beyond! Thank you for the feature!

Music was always a big deal in my family. Records were spinning, guitars and pianos were played, and I was constantly singing. Though I always knew music was important to me, I didn’t pursue it seriously until I declared a major in music at University of CA, Santa Cruz.

Learn to play and sing as many songs as you can.

During college I studied music theory, ear training, and classical guitar while concurrently writing songs and performing at local venues. After graduation, I time spent some time abroad, performing on a riverboat tour in Portugal, studying jazz in Amsterdam, and traveling around continental Europe playing shows everywhere I landed. I wrote songs based on personal experiences and was determined to collect as many experiences as possible.

In 2014 I moved to San Francisco, where I am still living and working today, and started my first electric band which lead to the release of my record TREAT.

Q: So music has been a lifelong endeavour for you! Who were/are your heroes and mentors?

My list of musical heroes is long and ever-expanding, so instead I’d like to focus on my beloved vocal coach, Raz Kennedy.

Raz Kennedy is a vocal wizard whose holistic and philosophical approach to singing has transformed vocalists across the Bay Area and beyond. In fact, he made such a profound impact on the Bay Area music scene that the City of Berkeley proclaimed July 19th as Raz Kennedy Day!

I sought his instruction after experiencing recurring vocal strain and within minutes of our session he was able to pinpoint the source of my strain and teach me the technique to overcome it. Because of Raz I’ve learned to sing sustainably, I’ve broadened my range, and I have been challenged to further explore my vocal expression.

Persist

Speaking of covers, Raz Kennedy and I were involved in a Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band tribute concert in Berkeley, CA, this past June (2017) wherein we were asked to cover a song from the classic record.

He covered “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and I covered “Lovely Rita”. Check out the album here, featuring 12 killer Bay Area acts!

Q: How did you discover the wide variety of genres – from bossa nova to psychedelic rock – that influence you and feed your musical imagination?

My big brother A.J. had a large influence on my music library, but I also attribute my musical tastes and curiosities to the Beatles’ vast and dynamic catalogue. Both A.J. and the Fab Four presented music as a limitless medium and that really inspired me.

Q: Many of our readers are curious about songwriting. Please share your own process with us.

Songwriting certainly is a mysterious endeavor and the process will be unique to each songwriter. For the most part, my songs start with a melody popping into my head. There’s a sort of “lather, rinse, repeat” approach where I record myself playing whatever evolution of the song exists, listen back, and then make a new recording until the song fully develops.

Sometimes these melodies come in bursts and I’ll complete a handful of songs at once, other times I’ll live with a melody for months, maybe years, waiting for the song to present itself when it’s ready. In my experience, allowing a song to develop at its own pace usually yields more interesting results.

Q: Letting a song develop naturally is often the best route indeed!

Speaking of natural – Musical U is dedicated to helping more aspiring musicians become “natural” musicians through inner musicality skills like ear training, music theory, and confidence. How do these skills play into your own development?

I always equated songwriting with writing poetry (lyrics aside!). One doesn’t necessarily need technical training to be an effective poet, but having a grasp of language, spelling, and reading allows for a greater command of your craft. Knowing music theory doesn’t make me a better songwriter, but developing my ear and vocabulary has helped me understand the music I love, as well as allowing me to communicate musical ideas to my collaborators.

Q: Lately, you’ve been working more with children. What have you learned from your coaching experiences?

Teaching music, particularly songwriting, to younger people has been an interesting challenge in balancing the intellectualization of the subject whilst simultaneously seeking to nurture the development of their personal processes.

Finish more songs.

I often tell my students that the most challenging aspect of songwriting is just finishing the song, so I encourage them to focus more on the process and not be too precious with the final product.

I don’t mean to suggest that they be indifferent to what they create, but I’ve observed that when one becomes consumed in the minutiae of the song, they will struggle to see their ideas to completion. By finishing a song, you gain a new perspective that will ultimately teach you a lot more about songwriting.

Q: You seem equally at home with stripped-down covers (I especially love your cover of “I’ll Be Seeing You”) and high-production music videos. How do you manage to be authentically yourself across this wide spectrum?

My musical interests are varied and I only cover songs/artists I love, so I suppose that underlying enthusiasm makes the performances seem consistent though the instrumentation and influences are varied.

Q: While most songwriters seem to focus on their own material, you do not shy away from covers. How do you find the balance between your own music and others’?

I have always considered discovering and learning to play new music to be enjoyable, so I’ve never really thought about it in terms of finding a balance.

Q: You come across as very confident. What advice do you have for musicians that struggle with their confidence?

I think the core of a musician’s confidence is their passion for music. If they are clear in their devotion to their craft everything else will fall into place. Cliché? Yes. True? Absolutely!

Q: You’ve forged a career as an independent artist. Please tell us more about that path and the various skills needed to make it happen.

Welcome others into your process.

In my experience, I’ve learned the value of building a team and that the music itself has to be the main focus. To be an independent artist in this day and age means you’re expected to wear all of the hats (performer, songwriter, manager, accountant, publicist, etc.) and the reality is that you just can’t do all of it without it having a negative impact on your art. So continuing my music education and asking lots of questions to fellow professionals has proved helpful.

Q: And you wear those hats well! Do you have any upcoming projects that you would like to share with readers?

My next project is an artist residency at The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur! I’ll be spending the next five weeks focusing on songwriting!

Q: Amazing – we’ll be keeping an eye out for that! Last but not least, what advice do you have for aspiring songwriters and musicians?

Finish more songs.

Welcome others into your process.

Persist.

Learn to play and sing as many songs as you can.

What beautiful, simple words of wisdom for any songwriter. Thank you so much, Kendra – it’s been such a pleasure and inspiration talking with you today! We wish you all the best on your residency at Henry Miller Library, and all your creative projects. Please stay in touch!

Abundant Identity

Just when you think you’ve got to know Kendra, take few clicks through her YouTube output and you’ll find surprise after surprise from this prolifically creative, tenaciously individualistic singer-songwriter. Though many successful artists talk about how important it is to “be yourself”, in Kendra’s case it’s more appropriate to say, “Be yourselves – all of them.”

Want to find out more about what makes Kendra tick – and witness her songwriting process firsthand? Head on down to Big Sur this month and sit with her under the persimmon tree – and bring the rest of yourselves with you!

The post Singing, Songwriting, and Success as an Independent Artist, with Kendra McKinley appeared first on Musical U.

Making Music with Ease, with Gerald Klickstein

Have you ever wondered if professional musicians have some special ability or received special teaching that helps them be creative, improve faster and be somehow immune to performance anxiety? It turns out there are “under the hood” techniques which any musician can use to gain these same abilities, and transform the experience of learning music into one of joy and ease.

Today on the podcast we’re joined by Gerald Klickstein, author of a ground-breaking book which is widely respected in the world of music education: The Musician’s Way.

Written as a handbook for the aspiring professional musician it’s packed with insights and strategies that can actually empower any musician. It tackles some of the most confusing and frustrating problems that musicians face, regardless of their instrument, musical style or career aspirations.

Topics like: how to design your practice to actually achieve results quickly and consistently. How to gain confidence to perform, even if it terrifies you. And how to nurture your creativity and collaborate well with other musicians.

The book reveals the hidden areas which professional musicians benefit from for learning, playing and performing – but which are generally left out of traditional instrument lessons.

Gerald has extensive experience as a teacher including on the faculty of several US universities – but the book isn’t based only on his own ideas and opinions. It’s evidence-based, meaning he’s drawing on a wide body of research and sharing what has been proven to work.

In this conversation Gerald shares:

  • One unorthodox but incredibly valuable piece of advice on how to choose the exercises and pieces you work on.
  • A simple but effective way for anybody to overcome performance anxiety using a practical process, as well as a really useful framework for thinking about what’s causing your anxiety when it arises.
  • A great tip for anyone who’s wanted to record themselves playing but found it a really intimidating and stressful experience.
  • Plus how the experts take full advantage of their “musical autopilot” – but without leaving themselves prone to performance freeze-ups due to relying on it.

If you’ve ever struggled to make your practice time deliver real results, or you’ve had any anxiety around performing music then you’re going to love this episode and how it opens your mind in new and useful ways.

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Rate and Review!

Transcript

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

Gerald: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Christopher: So, I’d love to start at the beginning, if we may, with a little bit about how you first learned music, and what that experience was like for you.

Gerald: I think like many people who ended up having a life in music, I started my musical journey as a child and I was always attracted to music. My parents were very musical, and at nine years old, I got my first guitar and I was fortunate to live near a place where I could take music lessons. So I could walk from my home, and five days a week after school, I had a 20-minute lesson, and I studied folk guitar and I sang and I played classical guitar, too. So I learned music reading and I learned playing by ear and improvising all at once.

Over time, I specialized more in classical guitar, and I ended up going to a music school for that. I earned a couple of degrees. At the same time, I was always fascinated by teaching and learning, so I had a strong interest in that and eventually took a position teaching at a university music school and kept refining what I was doing as an educator. And that led to me creating teaching materials and eventually creating the text, “The Musician’s Way,” which was published in 2009 by Oxford University Press and has had quite a presence around the world now in its 12th or 13th printing.

Christopher: It’s certainly a text that is referred to throughout the music education world and it’s had a huge impact. What was the opportunity or the lack you saw in the traditional music education model that brought you to write that book? Where did that inspiration come from?

Gerald: I would say that I was looking to fill a gap and I would say any author, any creative person, is not just expressing themselves, but they’re seeing something to contribute. And what I viewed is that much of the musical learning that was going on was ignoring the kind of things that go on under the hood. The internal kind of learning. And other things that were happening were very — say, if a student wanted to memorize effectively, or learn to perform confidently, they were all separated out, kind of siloed. And I was interested in a holistic type of learning that emphasized creativity, positive energy, accuracy, and competence all at once so that students would have a foundation that would allow them to grow in unlimited, diverse ways.

Christopher: And so, for our listeners who aren’t familiar with that term, can you just contrast what a holistic approach versus a non-holistic approach might look like?

Gerald: Sure. Great question. A holistic approach would take into account the person’s individual interests, the way they learn, the current research that tells us how music humans best learn, and bring in concepts of technical precision and artistic expression all at once while also considering healthy ways of playing or singing so we don’t incur injury, ways of learning about collaboration, and, particularly, introducing concepts of performance right at the beginning, so students learn in a way that they can feel confident and joyful about their music making and not feel like, “Well, I’m doing this now, and I’ll do that later.” Rather, we can do all these things at once in an interconnected way, provided that the material we work on is accessible to us and we don’t overwhelm our resources.

Christopher: That’s fascinating. I think a lot of what we do at Musical U is aiming at tackling the very limited way in which a lot of people learn music, you know, I think particularly if you are an adult amateur, you take lessons with a teacher and your worldview is kind of, “I will learn guitar,” or “I will learn piano,” and you think in terms of scales and repertoire and just getting the notes right, and often we find it’s really exciting and illuminating when people discover actually there’s this whole world of other things you can work on that kind of broaden your worldview as a musician. And what I love about your book is, it’s doing that same kind of thing in a very empowering way. It’s showing the individual learner, “If you want to be the kind of confident, creative, capable musician you’ve dreamt of, here are the areas you can work on, and here is what you can do in addition to that core instrument practice.”

Gerald: Certainly. And also, there are ways to practice that bring about the results we seek, and those results we seek are accurate, expressive, peaceful playing, singing and performing, and in The Musician’s Way, I cover these habits of excellence and strategies for organizing practice and if I were to pinpoint one thing that was the most important — you mentioned a lot of people that really focus. “I want to get the notes and then I can deal with other things later.” I focus on getting the expressive idea first, so that then, once we’re dealing with technical accuracy, we’re doing that in the context of saying something and making something meaningful. And I would say, if I were to point to one goof, one misstep that adults students make more often than any other misstep, it’s that they tackle things that are too technically challenging rather than starting with very accessible, attractive, high-quality music, and learning the holistic process of going from, “I don’t know how to play this, at all,” or “I don’t know how to sing this song, at all,” to where we’re then playing or singing confidently, joyfully, with no worries about anything going wrong.

That’s the process of where practice takes us. We start from this place of complete unfamiliarity and we get to the place of mastery, and with very accessible music we can learn that process again and again and refine it. And that is the path to musical success. It’s not taking maybe a great master work that we truly love and that is one of the pinnacles of our art form and working on that for months and months. That usually leads to all kinds of problems like tension that can produce injury, struggle that leads to anxiety.

Christopher: That’s so interesting and I love that you put the expressiveness first, because I think so many people, as you say, they just want to get the notes right, and afterwards they’ll worry about the dynamics or phrasing or making it sound musical. But I’m sure our listener is wondering, “How do you do that?” You know, if you sit down to practice a piece and you can’t yet nail every note, how do you start thinking about the musicality of it and the expressiveness?

Gerald: Sure. Well, in the text I actually describe that. And it depends on how you are learning. For example, if you’re a person who is not using printed music, you’re playing by ear, you would have certain strategies, and people who are using printed music might have some of the same strategies and some other ones. But I would say, it all starts with — especially if you’re not that advanced, you’re playing for fun — you’re just looking to have a kind of experience with music that’s soulful and genuine and you’re not too concerned about where it’s going. You’re just looking to have something meaningful in your life with music.

Then the best place to start is with an aural model — by listening. And then when you have an aural model you don’t want to copy it, you want to make it your own, so you might listen to several. And then the next step might be to figure out what is a — some structural elements. How would I section this off into digestible portions? And then within that digestible portion, to be able to say, “Okay, here’s a gesture that goes from here to here, and here’s another gesture that goes from there to there. And in those gestures, I hear these qualities.” Maybe they’re dynamic qualities, maybe they’re senses of rhythmic emphasis, and maybe they’re melodic qualities of connection, and then, to be listening for those as you then take on the task at a maybe slower tempo putting things together.

So if it’s a song and you’re a singer, maybe you would then start by — if you’re using printed music — start by counting the rhythm or saying the text in rhythm. That might be one strategy that works for one person. For another person, it might be, no, it’s better to just start with the melody and sing the melody without the text. Other people might find, “No, it’s better if I do all those things together, melody, text, rhythm.” And the idea is, whatever strategy works for you, starting with an aural model, with an idea of, what did you want it to sound like, and when you go in and you’re trying to solve technical problems.

Let’s take an instrumentalist and you’re a string player and you’re trying to shift or you’re trying to do something — string crossing — and it’s not coming out. Then when you zero in and you practice this little, few-note passage, you still are working on it with the context of how you want it so sound. This note’s stronger than that one, this note’s connected to that one, and you’re never separating the technical aspects from the expressive intent.

Christopher: That’s fascinating. And it’s such a different way of thinking about things, you know, to really start with that active listening and understanding the expressiveness in recordings or in your imagined version of your piece of music before thinking about key signatures and the particular time signature and rhythms in the sheet music. So many musicians do it exactly backwards, don’t they? They feel they need to play a basic rendition before they go and expose themselves to the amazing recordings that will inspire them to figure out the phrasing and dynamics.

Gerald: I would think, you know, for some people, that seems like, you know, that’s part of an eagerness. “Well, I really want to get started. What’s going on here?” And I would say it doesn’t take very long to — if you’re using a printed music, as you mentioned, a key signature one — to be looking at that score while you’re listening to something and then listening to a smaller portion. And I would say one of the challenges, too, for all learners is when you’re starting something and you have this aural model, your model in your head is going at full tempo. So if it’s a fast piece of music, your first action with it as a practicer is going to be at a slow tempo. So we have to be able to translate that full-tempo version down to something that’s slower — and that can give people trouble, too, where their first interaction with the music is at such a fast tempo they struggle.

So it’s very crucial to slow down, but, of course, that leads to some other issues where doing things slowly may involve physical actions that are somewhat different than the action of playing faster. So another master strategy of masterful practicers is to be able to practice slowly and infer what it will feel like faster so that the actions they do slow match the actions they will do faster. Not easy to do, and this is where having instructors is very helpful.

Christopher: Sure. So, you said something there that’s maybe quite surprising to our listeners, given that you are someone who is, you know, steeped in the traditional conservatory model. You’ve reached the highest echelons of that kind of training, but you said the way to great musicianship is to select pieces that aren’t ridiculously challenging, and I think a lot of our listeners would assume, you know, the great virtuosos they see performing on stage are always pushing themselves in terms of the technique and always going to the most complex music possible.

Gerald: Right.

Christopher: How much is that true? Is the approach you just described really focusing on the expressiveness first, something that is applied in that traditional music education system?

Gerald: It is with the finest teachers, I would say. But I think you bring up a great point. We want to push ourselves to advance in various ways, and so when we want to advance our technical skills, etudes and exercises are the place we can really push the envelope and be at the very front edge of our abilities. And that’s where we’re working on something like, scales, let’s say, to be able to play more in tune at certain registers.

If you’re a brass player, for example, you’ll find certain registers are easier for you than others, and you don’t want to be neglecting the registers that are hard for you. At the same time, when we’re learning music repertoire to share, to enjoy playing and to record, that is another kind of envelope, and there, people often view the challenges of making music as the challenge to do something quote-end-quote, harder, more virtuosic.

But the true place where musical artistry grows is when we’re able to master the technical challenges of just getting the pitches to be produced on our instrument, and what we’re doing is looking to create a really artistic work by shaping the music, by making it convincing, and by being able to do all of those things easily and authentically. That is the place where true musical art is made, and it’s not made by being on the outer edge of our technical abilities. What we want to do is push those technical abilities through exercises and etudes and then choose repertoire that — let’s say, if our technical ability — if you could quantify it, I’ll do it in a silly way, just on one to a hundred. If you could say your technical ability is right now at an 18, then your repertoire that you’d want to be choosing to perform would not, of course, be above that, but it would neither be close to that, either. It would be more like 12, might even be below, but the key thing is the repertoire is meaningful to the musician and high in quality so the person can play it, sing it for a long time, and incorporate it into their life, so they can build the repertoire and then over time have a large repertoire of high-quality, accessible music that they don’t have to practice much. Then they can get out and share it with people and not just have one piece they can perform and nothing else.

Christopher: I think that’s such a powerful piece of advice. I think that alone could transform the joy and success someone had in learning music just to select repertoire, not as a way to push your technical ability, but as a way to leverage the technical ability you’ve developed through exercises and etudes. That’s great advice.

Gerald: Well, thank you for that. To leverage that to make art, because I would say, you know, although we have various goals when we learn music I would say, ultimately we all want to share it. We want to share it with someone else, because we love it so much. We do that with music we hear. We hear a new artist and we’re really moved. We want to share it with a friend or a family member. So, to be able to share music, to create that artistic experience with someone else is the goal that pretty much everybody would have whether it’s overtly stated or felt inwardly, and the funny thing about that — or maybe not funny — the extraordinary thing about that kind of musical experience is when we make music together, we share music that we play or we listen, and we do that in a live setting. We have an experience that’s kind of like no other. We just — we no longer are male, female, old, young, from one ethnic group or another. We just experience the music and we become one together through that music. That is the loftiest goal of making music, to be able to do that, and that doesn’t involve how hard something is, it involves how beautiful and how fluent and how authentic it is.

Christopher: So, we talked a little bit there about how to bring out this artistic expressiveness and one aspect of that is to listen and get that aural model of what you’re aiming for. One thing that really jumped out at me in The Musician’s Way was, kind of, a solution to a problem I know a lot of our listeners will have faced, which is, a part from that kind of instinctive feel for how to make something musical, how can you actually sit down and think about what to think about, really, you know?

Gerald: Surely.

Christopher: When you sit down, what are the dimensions to think about, or the controls you have to make something sound more musical? And I love that you have in the book an “Essentials of Artistic Interpretation” list. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Gerald: Sure. I talk about seven essentials, there, and your listeners can go and check those out and do you know, I have a companion website I run from the book with lots and lots of resources so they can get summaries of those things on the blog and find many other things. That’s MusiciansWay.com and a vast amount of free resources there. So, on those seven essentials, we don’t need to go through them all, here, but what I was looking to do was to parse the tools we have and point to them. So one of them I kind of mentioned earlier about understanding the mood and the style and what the tempo would be, and starting from that point, what is — it may seem obvious to somebody who’s working with an aural model. They’re not using music, they’re playing by ear.

But for someone who’s working from a score — making sure we know that — what’s the mood? What’s the style? What’s the tempo? So then, what the final tempo is. So then you slow it down, you’re still staying in that place where you feel that connection to the mood and the style. Other things we can — I’ve talked about — we can shape the dynamics, things like louder and softer and how. We can change tone colors. We can make things long, short, separate them. We can play with articulation and a few other things, there. But those also become things to listen for when we self-record, and I’m a big advocate of self-recording in which people can do very early in the learning process. So if, for example, someone’s challenged to keep things at a slow, steady tempo, they can record a portion, listen back and see. They’re okay if they’re slow, but is their tempo steady? Listen back to see, “Am I really shaping the phrase the way I want, or do I just think I am? So, self-recording gives us that ability to be objective and the essentials of interpretation give us tools to evaluate the way we’re being expressive and whether we think it’s effective.

Christopher: So maybe this is something to come back to shortly when we talk about performance anxiety and the kind of performer’s mind set, but I know a lot of people to whom we recommend recording themselves come back and tell us, “I’m too nervous,” or “I tried it, and I sounded terrible. I’m not going to do it again. ” What advice would you have for people who want to use this powerful tool of recording and self-assessment, but feel that kind of self-conscious, even when it’s only a recording device listening?

Gerald: Sure. Well, you know, the thing about recording is it’s kind of like — people can see it’s kind of like a judgment. They’re going to record, listen back, and then all of our self-critic negative traits can come out through that. And so I would go back again. Let’s make sure it’s something very simple and start with something that’s so simple it might seem like level you might not have played for years. Playing that or singing that just beautifully and doing a small excerpt and deciding what you’re going to listen back for, not to decide good/bad, but just to say, “How was my timing?” Just listen to the timing in a small excerpt. “How was the steadiness of my tempo? Oh, good.” I’m just listening for that, I’m not listening for some overall judgment quality. And then, over time, people will then feel more and more comfortable about recording larger segments and I would say, one thing I can share here is something I learned from Nelson Mandela. And I’ll paraphrase. He didn’t use these exact words, but, you know, he’s a hero of mine and many people, and he said, “I never fail. I either succeed, or learn.”

So, in the music education literature, there’s a thing called, “mastery orientation,” and this type of orientation is about looking to improve. And people who are seeking to improve at whatever they’re doing, whether it’s gardening, running, or playing music, if our goal is to keep improving our skills, such people have the lowest levels of anxiety, versus the type of people who are looking to compare themselves to others. Those people tend to have higher levels of anxiety.

Another researcher named Carol Dweck, that’s D-W-E-C-K, did a lot of research about mindsets and she found that people who have a growth mindset — this is a very similar kind of thing — who are always looking at mistakes and failures as opportunities to learn, they tend to have a different attitude and they tend to be more successful than people with fixed mindsets who feel that success is the result of some talent or inborn trait. What she’s shown is that — and you can — I wrote a blog about it called, “The Growth Mindset,” and she has a wonderful book by the same name — is that people can learn to have a growth mindset, that’s the main thing. And then for adult musicians or anyone looking to start a musical journey or to improve their music, it’s about a journey improving, finding the places where you need more improvement or less, and then exploring those things and getting on a path where you move forward. Sometimes you have some struggle and sometimes you don’t, but you see it all as part of this journey and we’re very fortunate people if we can be on that journey, because music is a glorious art form. Not many people get the privilege of making music, so I personally feel thankful every day — and I hope your listeners will be, too — that we are able to devote some of our lives to making music.

Christopher: Mm-hm. I can definitely see that taking that growth mindset and, you know, mistakes- are-just-opportunities-to-learn idea to recording yourself and self-assessment would totally transform the experience and the usefulness of it. That’s definitely something for our listeners to explore more and we’ll put a link to that blog post in the show notes for this episode.

Gerald: Thank you for that.

Christopher: I mentioned before, one thing I love about your book is that it equips people with mental frameworks for thinking about things, you know, these areas of music learning that are generally fuzzy and, you know, “I’ve either got it or I don’t,” or “I just need to put in the practice hours and I’ll eventually get there.” Your book really lays it out in a very clear and logical way and gives people strategies and tools they can use to develop in each of these areas. And one of those that is maybe the epitome of this is performance anxiety, as I mentioned before.

You have a whole section in the book about overcoming performance anxiety including how it manifests itself and how to tackle each of those issues. I’d love if we could just talk a little bit about that, because it’s such a challenge for a lot of our listeners and I think you’re one of the few people that doesn’t just offer a tip or two, but actually gives people a powerful way to think about it and to gradually improve their abilities there.

Gerald: Well, thank you for those kind words. I would say that your listeners should know too that the content of The Musician’s Way is evidence-based. I built it up, not just from personal experience, but from research on what we know about how people learn, what causes performance anxiety and how to overcome those things. So in there, I use the framework that I picked up from Glenn Wilson, who is a British psychologist who studies the psychology of performance, and it’s a fairly common framework used in that community of researchers, and that is, whether we’re going to be confident or whether we’re going to be nervous is built on three things, and those are the person involved, the task we have to do, and the situation in which we do it.

So for a person competing in the Olympics, the situation is very high-pressure compared to just, let’s say, shooting a — if they’re competing in archery — shooting at a target in the backyard, for fun. The situation’s very different, so if people wish to learn to perform, the initial situations they put themselves in should be very friendly, no pressure, and I’ll talk about how to do that in a minute.

And then when it comes to the task, the physical task should be simple if we’re to acquire the kinds of performance skills and mental skills, and not just physical playing skills that are involved in being successful and confident.

And then lastly, the person. We are all different. Some of us have backgrounds where we’re very extroverted, we love being around other people, and we’re, like, at our best around other people. Others of us are more introverted. We have very rich internal lives and we might feel less comfortable sharing overtly than some others. Some of us have other things about our backgrounds where we may have experienced great success performing. Others would have experienced lots of difficulties and challenges. So depending on one’s personal background and one’s personality, one would need to do certain things more or less.

So, the key to doing this is to understand what the performance skills are, which I talk about in the book, and which are built on how we practice, and then creating opportunities to practice those skills. And so that’s what I call, “practice performing,” and I outline three ways to do that, and one is in a simulated setting, just by ourselves. It might be for our recorder. It could be for the cat, whatever, and, but whatever the case may be, we set a certain time, let’s say, on a certain day, that we know at that time we’re going to warm up and maybe in our home studio, maybe we could turn our chair or stand in a different place in the room, face a different way to change, turn on the recorder and we know we’re going to go all the way from the beginning to end and we’re going to be thinking ahead, feeling ahead, sensing where we’re going, and we might perform at a slow, easy tempo. We might perform up to final tempo, whatever. And then we evaluate it. We practice skills doing that, and at that point, then we can do a performance development group, that is, we have another person or group of people. They could be friends that support us, family members, or they could be fellow musicians. We agree to that if we’re fellow musicians, we’re going to get together, say, once a month, in a safe environment and play or sing for each other, talking about what we’re trying to do, and I talk about how to form a group, how to comment on each other’s performance.

And then the third way to practice performing would be very low-pressure public settings. Open mics at a church, let’s say, where, if you’re a singer, you could sing a solo, let’s say, during communion, where people aren’t looking at you, you’re just getting used to singing all the way through. Other opportunities to perform might involve a family event. There are lots of opportunities, so I describe how to build that up so the situations start very friendly and gradually increase in the amount of exposure one might have and the amount of stress it might bring.

The key thing is that the task we take on, the repertoire we choose, must be very accessible, but also very beautiful to us, so we feel authentic performing.

Christopher: That’s such a constructive way to approach learning to perform, to treat it as something to be learned, not just the final test on what you have been learning, which is, I think, unfortunately how a lot of musicians experience it.

Gerald: I think what you’re pointing to is actually something of the infectious element, not a positive one, in some traditional music education. I actually point to it in the book that, commonly, a piano student might go to lessons and the teachers will work on score reading and hand position for months and months, and not give them any exposure of performance, whereas, a more performance-oriented teacher can have students perform, if they, say, take piano, for their very first lesson, because any child or adult can go into a lesson and learn a tune, let’s say, a four-measure tune that has three different notes and they can learn that by ear, and then with their teacher as the audience, they can perform the tune, starting from silence, being focused, playing all the way through, coming to the end with a nice closure, having some silence, and then the teacher applauding. They can learn how to direct themselves through performance from the very start.

If you play trumpet, it’s a little harder to make sounds, so it might take a little longer, but a person can still have that performance orientation, and therefore performance skills integrated from the start. When teachers don’t integrate those skills, they don’t just deprive a student of some education, they can actually instill anxiety because the student will feel like, “Well, I should be able to perform this, but I can’t. I get all jittery, I can’t think straight, my hands shake.” And the student will think, “Well, there must be something wrong with me, because everybody seems to think I should be able to perform.” But, almost invariably, with the exception of maybe a small percentage of people who have bigger personal issues with anxiety in general, almost everybody can learn to perform confidently.

It’s a matter of skills. It’s not talent. We all have certain levels of talent that may limit, let’s say, how fast we can run. We can’t all be Usain Bolt and we know that, and we all can’t, maybe play the hardest concierto for our instrument or the fastest bebop lick on the saxophone, let’s say. But we can all play music beautifully, authentically, and perform beautifully and authentically. That is a matter of acquiring skill and if we choose appropriate tasks we are pushing to the limit of whatever our — if we have a nervous system limit on the speed at which we can execute, we don’t approach that.

Christopher: So, taking a gradual approach with the task and the situation makes a lot of sense, and I can see how if you have that given to you, you have that opportunity to learn the performance skills from the outset, maybe the person aspect never really becomes an issue. For one of our listeners who is saying to themselves, “That’s great, but I just know I can’t perform,” do you have any examples you can give of people overcoming that feeling that they just don’t have what it takes, or they have a couple of experiences and now they’re sure they can’t do it?

Gerald: Well, that’s a great question. I can think of many. Let’s take one — you know, one thing to know is that manifestations of performance anxiety, like, the symptoms — are pretty conventional and standard across the board. People have different ones, but, you know, things like shaking and butterflies and confusion and crazy thoughts, although those manifestations are pretty standard. The causes of them for the individual person are very personal and distinct. We’re all very different. So, one person, for example, that I worked with had tremendous tremor. The person was a wonderful musician and had played music from a very young age. The parents were professional musicians. This person had a tremor. They would bring — I’m a guitarist, so I was teaching guitar, and the person would bring — under a performance situation, bring hands to the strings and then they would just start to shake and the tremor would be wide, so the person just really couldn’t play, under that circumstance.

And so, what we did is, in a performance development group, just did some very simple tasks where the task would be, “You are going to walk up on stage, bow, and then you’re going to bring your hands to the string and play one note with your thumb. Then you’re going to take your hand away, breathing, releasing the tension, lengthening your spine, bringing the hand to the string, play a couple of notes with your thumb and doing a few more things and a couple of chords. That’s it. You’re done.” And then the performance development group would meet twice a week and the person just started doing this and doing very simple tasks. Then it became a little more than just playing a few notes and a few chords. It would be an opening phrase. Long story short, that person’s a professional performer, now.

Christopher: Wow.

Gerald: The idea was, we can overcome all of these things, and I’m telling you, you may never — none of your listeners and very few musicians would have ever seen such a huge tremor.

Christopher: Hm.

Gerald: And it was totally, a person was able to overcome it. It was coming from some place that had been somehow vetted long ago, and that those impulses had to be replaced with new ones. And we were able to do that.

I can think of another situation where somebody really wanted to play from memory, but just felt like they could not play or sing from memory and this person took a more deliberate approach to memorization and could play lots of really elaborate things from music, but none from memory. So what we did is, we simplified, took some very simple things to memorize, and in kind of of a similar approach.

In a performance development group, the goal would be to play from memory this fifteen-second excerpt. You’re done. That’s it. Or, do it again, and then a few days later, do it again. The idea is that frequent exposure to pressure-free performance situations allowed the person to acclimate to performance situations and gradually have them seem less threatening, or whatever unconscious things were causing them to feel threatened.

So, those are just two examples, but the key thing I’m pointing to is what they call in the psychological world, “stress conditioning,” where the person actually puts themselves in the stressful situation, the thing that provokes the stress, and does it repeatedly so they — it’s no longer rare, it no longer feels as threatening or as odd. The key thing is to do it in small doses, frequently, and that’s where performance development groups become so helpful, and, let me say also, because we’re now in the 21st century, people can have performance development groups over the web. They don’t have to get together in person. The key thing is that everybody’s supportive of each other, and people actually verbalize what they’re working on. “I have a tremor,” or, “I tend to have trouble for memory, so I heard this podcast,” or, “I read something online,” or, “I read this book. It said I should try this, so would it be okay if I just try this? I just want to do this fifteen-second excerpt from memory and feel myself go through it, or a thirty-second excerpt and then I want to finish it, think about how it goes, and I want to do it again. ” And that’s your job, that’s your goal for the performance development group.

Of course your friends or your fellow musicians will support you, because when we hide these issues or we think, “Oh, my God, if I say I have a tremor or that my memory’s bad, then it says there’s something faulty about me.” People hide because they mistake — they get a fixed mindset rather than a growth mindset. So those are just a couple of examples of how we can apply them in our own lives.

Christopher: Mm-hm. I think it’s so exciting and inspiring to hear you talk about these things, because your advice to go a bit easier on yourself and take it step by step, I think that’s something that would strike a lot of our audience as kind of a cop-out and they’d feel a bit embarrassed and think, “Well, the serious musicians don’t have to do it that way.” But you’re speaking from experience with the highest level musicians and research-based methodology that says, ” This isn’t just a cop-out for the amateur. This is actually the way to reach the highest levels.”

Gerald: I would say that’s an excellent point. In fact, in many domains where scientists have studied expert performance, whether it’s chess, or a sport, or music, they define that the difference between those who, I will just say, perform at a level that’s rewarding to them — it’s satisfactory to them.

Their difference is their deliberate practice, the amount of deliberate practice. And when I talk about practice in performance, it’s a form of deliberate practice that we simply say, “Oh. Here’s a challenge in front of me. How can I overcome this challenge?” And we break it apart, and we work on its components, and we tackle it step by step. So, I would say, what analogy one could take is, if you wish to build a brick wall, we don’t all have to be masons — I’m certainly not a mason — to know that if you lay mortar and brick and you have too much, too soon, the wet mortar on the bottom of the wall will ooze out and the wall will fail. It won’t be level. To build a wall, you don’t go up; you go across and you build multiple bricks on the first level, add mortar, and you go and a little bit more and you wait for it to set, and learning is kind of like that, too. When people jump ahead and say, “Oh, I really don’t feel comfortable performing, but I want to try,” and then they try the hardest thing they could possibly choose or the hardest piece in their repertoire, the longest one, then they have a bunch of challenges. Things don’t often go well.

The other thing about learning is, if we don’t tackle easy things, our brain takes shortcuts to help us get through it, and those shortcuts involve a kind of learning that’s termed, “automated learning.” Automated learning is based on a kind of reflex type of response where — we all know about, you know, late at night playing something and it’s — we’ve played it so many times it just starts to come out, and that type of learning, if people just play over and over until it comes out, it’s kind of an automated feel, fully automated. And so, if we get under pressure and that’s what we’re relying on, automated recall, which is necessary for automated learning to work, automated recall, doesn’t work well under pressure. In other words, that’s the executive part I’m talking about, the way we direct what we’re going to play or sing.

So, we get under pressure and we don’t feel good, we’re a little shaky, maybe mouth’s dry, maybe hands are sweating, and so, things don’t feel normal like they do in the practice room. So we try and get through it, and then our brains will try and latch on to things to think about, like, “How do I play this phrase?”ut there won’t be anything for the brain to latch on to, because the passage was encoded in a way that’s automated, that’s not available to the conscious mind. The solution is, we let the automation work for us when it comes to how to move, so if you’re playing a guitar and you need to go from open position to seventh fret, you don’t have to think. You don’t want to think about how to move your arm, but you need to be knowing, “I go to the seventh fret here, for this note, at this time,” and you direct it with awareness, but you allow the body to move freely.

This is one of the biggest differences between professionals and amateurs. Professionals direct with awareness, and allow the music to flow and allow their body to move, but they have a scaffolding of awareness around everything, so they can direct everything with very little effort. Amateurs will tend to sometimes think, “Well, if I think too much, I’m not being artistic,” but the way the expert musician thinks is this very light directing that opens them up to a kind of artistic freedom and makes them feel very secure so they can execute securely and artistically under any circumstances.

Christopher: Wonderful. I think that’s such a great concept for our listeners to have in mind of what they’re aiming for with practice in terms of taking full advantage of the brain’s ability to automate the learning while still retaining control and a very, a real ease with their performance.

Gerald: I would say that one of the things that Musician’s Way does and one of the motivations I had for creating it was that so many of the processes that allow musicians to create amazing art are actually taking place under the hood. They are covert. They are about how we’re thinking and feeling and directing ourselves, and those things are often ignored in traditional music instruction that focuses more on product rather than process, in other words, product. Did you play all of the correct notes at the correct times, and in tune — which to me, I never use the word, “correct” — rather than the processes that lead to accuracy in expression. Those are the things we must emphasize in our practice and then the product will be taken care of inevitably through the process that we use.

Christopher: Amazing, and there was one other topic I was keen to pick your brains on today, but I want to be respectful of your time. Maybe we can have you back on for a part two on boosting creativity in the future.

Gerald: Sure. That would be a delight.

Christopher: For our listeners, if you want to learn more about all of the conceptual frameworks and techniques we’ve discussed today, do head on over to MusiciansWay.com and check out the book. I highly recommend the book as a box of tools, really, to accelerate your music learning and make it all a lot more joyful. We’ll have links to that in the show notes for this episode.

Thank you again, Gerald, for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Gerald: It’s been a pleasure to speak with you, and to share some ideas with the Musical U audience.

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The post Making Music with Ease, with Gerald Klickstein appeared first on Musical U.

Discovering Minor Chord Progressions

Many of us are familiar with popular major chord progressions like I–IV–V–I. Now it’s time to delve into the exciting world of minor chords. Minor scales give flavor and emotion to a song, adding a level of musical depth that can make a mediocre song moving and distinct from others.

Because so many of our favorite songs are in major keys, those that are in minor keys can stand out, and some musical styles like rock or jazz thrive on complex minor scales and harmonic wizardry.

Minor chord progressions generally contain richer harmonic possibilities than the typical major progressions. Minor key songs frequently modulate to major and back to minor. Sometimes the same chord can appear as major and minor in the very same song!

But this heady harmonic mix is nothing to be afraid of.

By the end of this article, you’ll not only understand how minor chords are made, but you’ll know some common minor chord progressions, how to write them, and how to use them in your own music. With enough listening practice, you’ll be able to recognize minor chord progressions in songs almost instantly!

Table of Contents:

1. A Tale of Two Tonalities

2. Major or Minor?

3. Chords in Minor Scales

4. The Top 3 Chords in Minor Progressions

5. Exercises in Minor

6. Writing Your Own Minor Chord Progressions

7. Your Minor Journey

A Tale of Two Tonalities

Western music is dominated by two tonalities: major and minor. While music written in major keys sounds bright and cheery, minor music tends to be darker and sadder, with chords to match.

Though it may be tempting for the beginner musician to stick to major keys only, the world of minor isn’t as sad as it seems – quite the contrary! Minor chords add a depth and richness to your music that major chords alone will not give you. Everlasting, perpetual happiness in music gets boring. And no, learning minor chords isn’t just for songwriters – they’re also a must for anyone who wants to improve their ear, cover others’ songs, and understand music theory.

Before we dive into how to build these melancholy minor chords, let’s compare major vs. minor chord progressions. Just take a listen to this famous R.E.M. tune “Losing My Religion” transposed to a major key. Characteristic of major chords, the song sounds unusually chipper and almost happy, regardless of the lyrics and meaning behind the song. Notice how the change from minor chords to major chords nearly changes the overall style to something that might fit better on a country radio station.

R.E.M. seems pretty chipper in this version of “Losing My Religion” in a major key:

Now compare to the original song, and you can hear how the minor chord progressions add a distinctly morose moodiness that is not evident in the major version. The original R.E.M. tune’s use of minor chord progressions for guitar gives it a particularly brooding quality:

What about the reverse?

Sure enough, transposing a song from a major key to a minor key lends a more brooding, melancholy feel to the song. Check out Chase Holfelder’s minor rendition of “How Far I’ll Go” from Disney’s Moana:

Exercise: Major or Minor?

When learning how to play minor chord progressions, you need to be able hear the difference between different chord qualities. While there are many chord qualities, including diminished and augmented, right now we are going to focus on the difference between minor and major chords.

In the following six examples you are going to hear a chord. Is it major or minor? Can you grab an instrument and work out exactly which chord it is? Write down your answers and then check with the answers below.

Show answers

  • Example 1: C Major
  • Example 2: F Major
  • Example 3: G Minor
  • Example 4: E Minor
  • Example 5: B Minor
  • Example 6: E Major

How did you do? Were you able to tell which ones were major or minor? Bonus points if you could identify which chord you heard. If you answered all of the answers correctly, you can tell major chords from minor chords and you are ready to move on to chord progressions.

Need a Little More Practice?

What if you need a little more practice? That’s okay! It just takes some time and practice to learn a new skill like hearing chord qualities.

Here are more great exercises and information on chords:

Chords in Minor Scales

Before you can play with chord progressions, let’s talk about the different chords available in minor. Because there are three distinct minor scales – natural, harmonic, and melodic – some of these chords are altered based on which scale you choose.

While we are going to discuss these different scale variations here a little bit, it’s best not to get caught up in them: in the real world, minor melodies, and the chords supporting them, can vary between the different minor scales in the same piece of music.

Because of the way that we traditionally write a chord progression, where specific tones move towards the tonic or dominant for resolution, we often use the chords found in the melodic or harmonic minor scale rather than the natural minor scale. Without the G# leading tone, the natural minor scale can be ambiguous and lack movement, and can kill a tune by stripping it of musical motion.

Natural Minor Chords

Melodic Minor Chords
This doesn’t mean that you will never use the natural minor scale—depending on your musical style, you may run into it a lot. But for most commercial purposes, you will avoid building a chord progression using the natural minor scale.

Building Minor Chords On Each Scale Degree

To build a basic chord, remember you need to build up triads in the key. In A Major, the I major chord is A–C#–E, but in A Minor, the I minor chord is A–C–E. You have the tonic, the minor third, and the fifth. You can build up this minor chord on the starting note, or the tonic, of any minor scale. On guitar, you have multiple ways of building up any given minor chord, and you even have the option of adding more notes within the chord (for example, adding a high A on top of an existing A minor chord!).

Because A Minor, the relative minor of C Major, has a simple key signature with no sharps or flats, we will use this key for the examples. You can apply what you learn with A Minor to other keys.

Let’s look at the chords in the key of A harmonic minor, starting on each scale degree:

Harmonic Minor Chords

Listen to the A minor chords several times. Notice the quality of the different chords available in the minor scale. Different chords in the scale have different tonal personalities and suit different purposes.

Because the leading tone (or G#) wants to move to the tonic A, you may even find the diminished chord built on the seventh degree of the harmonic minor scale.

Just like the popular major chord progressions, the minor scale chord progressions want to resolve and move to the tonic or the dominant of the key. What is different is the quality of the chords.

When spelling out the minor chords, keep the key in mind. Listen for resolutions and progressions that bring movement to your song.

The Top 3 Chords in Minor Progressions

You will find out quickly that many of the favorite major chord progressions are mirrored by popular minor chord progressions. Just like progressions in major scales, those in minor scales focus primarily on moving between three chords: the 1, 4 and 5.

As we learned in the first part of this tutorial on Minor Scale Basics, the 5 (a.k.a. “dominant”) chord in a minor key can be the major version (V) or minor (v).

Listen to the audio example below. In the first audio sample, the progression includes the minor 5 chord, or an E minor chord (v).

Minor Chord Progressions - 145 E MINOR

 

Now, listen to the second audio sample. The third chord in the following clip takes the raised 7th from the harmonic minor scale, making the V chord an E major chord. Listen for the differences in the quality between the V chords from the first clip and the second:

Minor Chord Progressions - 145 E MAJOR

 

When Resolution is Not Resolved

Remember that in most forms of Western music, you will be moving to resolve to the dominant or tonic. For example, in the key of A minor, you will be trying to resolve back to the A or the E. In the key of D minor, you will want to resolve back to the D or the A. In most cases, you will be resolving back to the tonic (the first note of the scale), but ending with the dominant is common in melodies meant to end on a suspenseful note – keep that in mind as you play around with common chord progressions.

1. The i–iv–v Chord Progression

While you may write other chords in, like the ii chord (or submediant chord), you will most likely be moving around the i, iv and v (or V) chords of the minor scales.

Here’s a little cheat sheet for the common minor i–iv–v progression in each minor key:

  • A minor: Am–Dm–Em
  • B♭ minor: B♭m–E♭m–Fm
  • B minor: Bm–Em–F♯m
  • C minor: Cm–Fm–Gm
  • C♯ minor: C♯m–F♯m–G♯m
  • D minor: Dm–Gm–Am
  • E♭ minor: E♭m–A♭m–B♭m
  • E minor: Em–Am–Bm
  • F minor: Fm–B♭m–Cm
  • F♯ minor: F♯m–Bm–C♯m
  • G minor: Gm–Cm–Dm
  • A♭ minor: A♭m–D♭m–E♭m

2. The i–ii dim–V–i Chord Progression

Just like many major chord progressions, you will find that in minor tonality chord progressions the ii chord and the V chord are paired together. In this example, you will hear a simple chord progression: Am–Bdim–E–Am.

  1. Look at the sheet music.
  2. Listen to the example.
  3. Play along with the chords.

Minor Chord Progression example i-ii dim-V-i

Here’s a cheat sheet for the i–ii dim–V–i progression in each minor key:

  • A minor: Am–Bdim–E–Am
  • B♭ minor: B♭m–Cdim–F–B♭m
  • B minor: Bm–C♯dim–F♯–Bm
  • C minor: Cm–Ddim–G–Cm
  • C♯ minor: C♯m–D♯dim–G♯–C♯m
  • D minor: Dm–Edim–A–Dm
  • E♭ minor: E♭m–Fdim–B♭–E♭m
  • E minor: Em–F♯dim–B–Em
  • F minor: Fm–Gdim–C–Fm
  • F♯ minor: F♯m–G♯dim–C♯–F♯m
  • G minor: Gm–Adim–D–Gm
  • A♭ minor: A♭m–B♭dim–E♭–A♭m

3. The i–VI–III–VII Chord Progression

This is another simple minor chord progression found in numerous famous songs, especially ballads.

Minor chord progression example i-VI-III-VII

Here’s a little cheat sheet for the i–VI–III–VII progression in each minor key:

  • A minor: Am–F–C–G
  • B♭ minor: B♭m–G♭–D♭–A♭
  • B minor: Bm–G–D–A
  • C minor: Cm–A♭–E♭–B♭
  • C♯ minor: C♯m–A–E–B
  • D minor: Dm–B♭–F–C
  • E♭ minor: E♭m–B–G♭–D♭
  • E minor: Em–C–G–D
  • F minor: Fm–D♭–A♭–E♭
  • F♯ minor: F♯m–D–A–E
  • G minor: Gm–E♭–B♭–F
  • A♭ minor: A♭m–E–B–G♭

And Many More…

Beyond these basic progressions, there are many more that suit specific musical purposes. For example, we have the classic iiVi, a popular jazz chord progression.

There’s also the somewhat-misnamed Andalusian Cadence, a i–VII–VI–V progression that is popular in an astonishing array of musical styles, from Flamenco to metal to baroque.

The i–VII–VI progression is similar to the above, popularized by famous tunes such as Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower.

We could go on, but that’s enough theory for now. Let’s put your newfound knowledge to the test with some exercises in minor chord progressions.

Exercises in Minor

We’ll start you off nice and easy with some playalong exercises, then give you something a little more challenging and creative to try…

Exercise 1: i–iv–V–i Chord Progression

In this exercise you are going to practice playing along with chords following a simple minor chord progression: Am–Dm–E–Am.

  1. Listen to the example.
  2. Look over the sheet music.
  3. Play the chords along with the track on your instrument.
  4. Improvise over the chord progression.

Minor chord progression practice i-iv-V-i

Remember that many chord progressions are built around these chords, using the i, iv, or V chord as a means to move the harmonic progression forward.

Exercise 2: i–ii dim–V–i Chord Progression

In this exercise you are going to practice playing along with chords following the simple chord progression: Am–B dim–E–Am.

  1. Listen to the example.
  2. Look over the sheet music.
  3. Play the chords along with the track on your instrument.
  4. Improvise over the chord progression.

Minor Chord Progression example practice i-ii dim-V-i

Exercise 3: Chord Progression Playalong

In this simple backing track to George Gershwin’s “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess, you can practice playing along with a longer minor chord progression in A Minor. While there are plenty of 7th chords in this track, you can easily drop the 7th and just play the basic triads like this instead:

Minor Chord Progressions - Summertime Chords modified

In this song you can hear how the chord progressions move towards the A minor chord and the E major chord. Remember than in most songs, the harmonic progression wants to resolve to the tonic (A) or the dominant (E).

  1. Review the modified chord progressions from “Summertime” above.
  2. Listen to the modified chords audio.
  3. Practice improvising and playing the chords in the modified version.
  4. Once you are comfortable with these chord progressions, then play the YouTube video below.
  5. Play the chords with the playalong track.
  6. Once you are comfortable with the modified chords, start to play the 7th chords in the YouTube video.
  7. Improvise over the playalong track.

 

If you find that playing along with the YouTube track is too difficult, then work with the modified chord audio. It always helps to use your ears to really hear for chord changes. Sometimes it can be difficult. Memorizing the sound and quality of the chords will help you as you learn these chords.

As you become more comfortable with playing the basic chord progression, you may find that some melodies for improvising over the progression pop into your head! Check out some tips for improvising over minor chord progressions on piano for some excellent ideas on where to start!

Notice that several minor key chord progressions can be extracted from this example.

  • Measure 11: i–iv–VII–III–i
  • Measure 13: i–ii dim–V–i
  • Measure 15: i–ii dim–V

By starting with shorter chord progressions and learning how to combine them with other chord progressions, you will expand your harmonic skills.

Exercise 4: Build-Your-Own

In this article we talked about several different minor chord progressions. For this exercise you will need a piece of paper and a pencil, and your instrument. Choose a key to use for this exercise (you might like to start with A minor).

If you can’t play chords on your instrument, try playing broken chords or arpeggios instead.

  1. Choose up to 4 chords from a minor key of your choice, and write a progression of 4 bars using these chords on a piece of paper. Start by using just the i, iv and v chords.
  2. Practice playing through your chord progression several times.
  3. Now choose another set of chords and write a new progression underneath your first one.
  4. Practice playing that new chord progression several times.
  5. Combine the two chord progressions into one long chord progression and play through all of the chords.
  6. Create a third chord progression from the same key and write it under the second one.
  7. Practice playing the third chord progression.
  8. Play through all three chord progressions without stopping.
  9. Continue adding chord progressions until you are playing through at least eight different chord progressions.
  10. Practice this same exercises with other keys.

Writing Your Own Minor Chord Progressions

When you’ve grown comfortable with the minor chord progressions we’ve introduced you to above, try writing your own! Don’t be afraid to use a minor chord progression chart or cheat sheet to quickly find the chords you’re looking for.

Building Minor Chord Progressions with the Circle of Fifths

The Circle of Fifths is just as useful for writing minor progressions as major ones. A refresher: adjacent minor keys on the circle are always a fifth apart. Experiment with playing chord progressions that travel stepwise and clockwise around the circle – you’ll find some instant classics!

Circle of fifths with relative minors

Match Chords to Moods to Lyrics

A sad song calls for sad minor chord progressions. But you can also throw some foreboding, tense, or even uplifting progressions in there to mix it up! Experiment with marrying specific progressions with certain moods in your song. Which ones fit best with certain parts of the song?

Use A Chord Progression Generator

If your fountain of creativity has run dry (and we doubt it ever will, considering the infinite possibilities of chord progressions!), try this Chord Progression Generator. Simply plug in the genre, feel (happy or sad?), and key that you want, and the generator will spit a readymade progression right back at you!

Your Minor Journey

There are many, many popular minor chord progressions. You have learned a few in this article and can use the practice tracks to continue to work on your musical skills. Continue to learn new progressions, and combine progressions together to make longer songs.

Experiment with chords and scales, combining both major and minor keys in your songs and training your ears for more kinds of minor chord progression. As you continue to expand your harmonic palette, you will be amazed at what you will create!

 

The post Discovering Minor Chord Progressions appeared first on Musical U.

Podcasts and Punchy Progressions, Training with Theta, Majoring in Music, and the Pitfalls of Perfect Pitch

The effectiveness of music education often hinges on turning material that is traditionally dry, uninspiring, and frustrating into something relevant, intuitive, and exciting.

This week at Musical U, we are celebrating and recapping the new content brought to you in September, releasing two new podcasts on fun and effective ear training, and sharing an expert’s tips on how to get the most out of your music school experience.

Podcasts and Punchy Progressions

September has seen us introducing the Musicality Podcast, a twice-weekly radio show that can help you nurture your inner musician while riding the subway, walking the dog, or waiting for that chronically-late band member to show up for practice. Covering diverse aspects of ear training through both tutorials and interviews with music education experts, this is your answer to acquiring aural skills while on-the-go.

Meanwhile, this month’s Resource Packs saw our resident pros for bass, guitar, and piano focussing on breaking down perhaps the most ubiquitous, useful, and impactful chord progression in Western music. Not only did our pros explain the mechanics of the progression and how to play it on your instrument, but they gave away some trade secrets on tweaking and embellishing the bare-bones chords to create grooves that are entirely your own.

Discover this chord progression and get an overview of our podcasts so far at What’s New in Musical U: September 2017, and be sure to subscribe to the Musicality Podcast so you don’t miss a beat!

Training with Theta

A common hurdle for musicians new to ear training is making this learning engaging, relevant, and – dare we say it – fun. Acquiring those much sought-after aural skills doesn’t have to involve dull, repetitive what’s-that-interval-type exercises.

With Theta Music Trainer, it’s just you, your electronic device, and 50 engaging ear training games designed to cement your aural skills and keep you entertained.

In our 8th podcast Making Ear Training a Game, with Steve Myers, Musical U sits down with Theta Music founder Steve to understand his ear training journey and how he created an app that would make others’ ear training journey pleasurable and engaging.

Steve was always amazed to witness other musicians’ improvisational skills, something that seemed to come very naturally to them and require little thought.

After several frustrating attempts to develop this elusive musicality and almost giving up, Steve finally came across an ear training course. Something clicked. Though the course was tedious and requiring immense self-discipline, he stuck with it, realizing the power of concepts like relative pitch and pattern recognition.

The second “lightbulb moment” came when Steve realized the benefits of injecting fun into the learning process. With his decision to apply the game-based application to the world of ear training, Theta Music Trainer was born.

When Theta Music Trainer originally launched their online ear training games, Musical U was there to capture the moment! For a little throwback and reminiscing about that time in music education history, listen to our interview with Steve!

Steve explored the struggles that he had beginning to improvise or jam over chord changes. He felt as though something must have been wrong with him that he couldn’t improvise freely like his colleagues. This is a struggle that many musicians face, which can be overcome with some practice and a few simple to tips to start you off.

Developing your musical ear in general is such an important part of being both a musician and songwriter. As with improvisation, getting started can be difficult. Turn to the experts for some tips for beginners on developing your musical ear.

The cassette series that Steve talked about was unique in that it was full of very accessible lessons that he could immediately apply to his instrument practice. He later recounted that it gave him the original idea to make his now-famous program, which is one of many great examples of fun exercises and drills for developing your sense of pitch.

After moving to Japan, Steve noticed that his students were not always young learners, but also adults that had free time on their hands after retirement. The benefits of learning a musical instrument later in life have been well-documented in many scientific articles. But even beyond science, there are several reasons to dust off that piano you had as a child and give it a go.

Majoring in Music

So, you’ve decided to pursue a music degree! Though rigorous and demanding, music schools are excellent for boosting your proficiency as a musician and keeping you on track with your musical goals.

There’s no such thing as “the best music school”. There’s only the best music school for you. Thankfully, MajoringInMusic.com co-founder and director Barbra Weidlein has compiled an excellent list of criteria to consider before you make one of the most important decisions of your musical career.

In Majoring in Music: Choosing A School That’s Right For You, Barbra covers both practical aspects and factors you may not have thought about, giving invaluable advice on how to ensure that you wind up at a school that suits your learning style, musical goals, and lifestyle.

Everyone knows the importance of picking the right school for your studies, but what about the right teacher? Selecting the right teacher is incredibly important, as they will be with you for the entirety of your studies, and act as an instructor and mentor in equal parts. Thankfully, much like choosing a school, choosing a teacher can be boiled down to something of a science!

A major step in considering music school is to prepare your audition. After all, that is your one chance to showcase your hard work to become the musician you are! Getting ready for your audition is a multi-step process, with many possible outcomes that you should be prepared for. As Music Think Tank outlines, passing the audition itself requires consideration of the requirements and the environment you will be playing in.

Finally, Barbra discussed the importance of becoming a proficient sight reader when preparing to enter university. Sight reading is a major part of music school, but it is a skill that you can develop! And it doesn’t have to be dry and dull:using an app is an excellent and engaging way to improve your sight reading skills. Check out Music Maker Apps’ Rhythm Sight Reading app for a fun way to improve your rhythm and musicality!

The Pitfalls of Perfect Pitch

If asked which skill they would kill to have, many musicians wouldn’t hesitate to say that they’d want perfect pitch.

But what is perfect pitch?

In a nutshell, it’s the ability to name a note you hear without any reference to a known note. If someone plays the highest D key on a piano, you’d be able to name it. If someone honks at you in traffic because you’re making a poorly thought-out left turn, you’d be able to determine the exact pitch of their car horn.

The bad news: scientific studies have shown that you pretty much need to be born with perfect pitch or have had it from a very young age. As an adult, it’s very difficult to “learn” perfect pitch, and even then, it won’t be perfect.

In our 9th podcast, About Perfect Pitch, Musical U founder Christopher Sutton delivers you the good news: you do not need perfect pitch to play by ear, sight-sing, or improvise. You don’t need it to be an incredible musician.

This podcast focuses on debunking the myths surrounding perfect pitch, and introducing you to a different path to natural musicianship.

Learning perfect pitch is not necessary to develop your musical ear, and not the only way to really do ear training. In fact, consistent work and exposure to certain melodies, scales, and intervals can greatly help to nurture your ear training.

One important method of ear training that Christopher explored was specifically for audio engineers. Home Music Studio 1 offers some great beginner tips on how our ears use reference sounds to impact our perception on what sounds “good”.

Many musicians (and non-musicians) can instinctively sing a song that they are familiar with in the proper key. This is due to the memory that our ears develop to a song after a number of listens. But that is not always the same thing as being “on pitch”. Check out this exploration into the differences between singing in key versus on pitch!

So, we have learned that while perfect pitch is often what musicians think they need, having a good sense of relative pitch is a much preferred route to having musical freedom. Your next steps? Applying your new sense of musical expression to your instrument!

Debunking Musical Myths

With this week’s information, we hope we’ve debunked two pervasive but false beliefs:

Myth #1: Perfect pitch is necessary to be a great musician.

Fact: Relative pitch is a much better avenue to follow for improvisation, composition, and playing and singing by ear.

Myth #2: Ear training is tedious, dry, and practically irrelevant to modern musicians.

Fact: With the multitude of apps and learning systems available to musicians today, you can tailor your ear training journey to fit what you find relevant and fun.

With this new knowledge, go forth and dive into the world of ear training (and, no, you don’t need to be a music major to do this!). And don’t worry about being able to recall the exact pitch of that car horn.

The post Podcasts and Punchy Progressions, Training with Theta, Majoring in Music, and the Pitfalls of Perfect Pitch appeared first on Musical U.

Seriously Enjoyable Music Learning with Shelle Soelberg: The Musicality Podcast

New musicality video:

What if music theory wasn’t difficult or boring? What if it was a mind-blowing and immediately-useful tool for your musical creativity? And what if there were a few simple insights and skills you could learn that would transform the way you experience being a musician? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/seriously-enjoyable-music-learning-shelle-soelberg/

Today on the show we’re joined by Shelle Soelberg, the founder of Let’s Play Music: an early music education program popular across the United States. But as you’ll learn in this episode, the tools they’re teaching to young children can be just as powerful and transformative for adult learners. In fact Shelle herself discovered them only after reaching college.

Shelle started teaching in this way in 1998 and in 2002 she started Let’s Play Music to share her method with other teachers. There have since been over 400 teachers trained in this approach impacting the early music education of over 20,000 students.

At a glance, Let’s Play Music may seem like just a fun way for children to experience music. But don’t let the upbeat spirit and joy of Let’s Play Music fool you: there is seriously impressive training going on, and the young graduates of this method are able to do some things in music that many adult musicians only dream of.

In this conversation Shelle talks about her own experience of learning music and the late discovery of two tools that transformed how capable and confident she felt as a musician.

Shelle shares how learning music theory – which was such a dull slog for many of the music students around her – was actually the gateway to truly understanding the music she was playing – and she reveals the one thing you can do that actually makes learning theory fun and useful.

She also talks us through some clear and simple examples of how learning these two tools can benefit you immediately in music.

If you’ve ever felt bored or overwhelmed by music theory – or you’ve wondered where to start in order to actually comprehend music by ear – this conversation is going to inspire you and give you some really valuable pointers for your own musicality training.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/seriously-enjoyable-music-learning-shelle-soelberg/

Let’s Play Music http://www.letsplaymusicsite.com/

The Let’s Play Music Blog http://makingmusicianslpm.blogspot.com/

Shelle’s guest post on the topic of solfege https://www.musical-u.com/learn/guest-post-solfeggio-and-ear-training-shelle-soelberg/

Our recent interview with Gina Weibel from the Let’s Play Music team https://www.musical-u.com/learn/interview-with-gina-weibel-from-lets-play-music/

If you enjoy the show please rate and review it! http://musicalitypodcast.com/review

Join Musical U with the Special offer for podcast listeners http://musicalitypodcast.com/join

Let us know what you think! Email: hello@musicalitypodcast.com

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Seriously Enjoyable Music Learning with Shelle Soelberg: The Musicality Podcast

The Musicality Podcast: Episode 10 with Gerald Klickstein Preview

New musicality video:

Thanks for checking out this preview for the upcoming Musicality Podcast from Musical U. To subscribe to the podcast, please visit us at musicalitypodcast.com

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Learn more about Musical U!

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https://www.musical-u.com/

Podcast:
https://www.musical-u.com/podcast-insiders/

Tone Deaf Test:
http://tonedeaftest.com/

Musicality Checklist:
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About Perfect Pitch

Being able to name notes you hear can seem like a magical ability, and when you meet someone with “perfect pitch” it can be impressive and inspiring. But perfect pitch is not necessarily the road to take, if you want to learn those skills yourself…

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Transcript

Today we’re going to be talking about perfect pitch. This is something that came up in my recent interview with Steve Myers from Theta Music Trainer, when we were talking about how he got started with ear training and learned to play by ear and improvise.

We didn’t talk much about it but there was one huge and important point: Although he studied some perfect pitch training, it was not the way he actually found success in his ear training. So I wanted to unpack that a bit because it’s a road a lot of musicians go down and, as I’ll explain in this episode, it’s a very misguided one due to some big common misunderstandings about perfect pitch.

Okay, this is a bit of a hot topic, and it can be quite a contentious one.
So I’m just going to lay it out.
Here’s the two-line summary of this episode:
Can you learn perfect pitch? Yes.
Should you try to learn perfect pitch? NO!

Here’s the slightly longer version:
Can you learn perfect pitch? Yes, but it’s incredibly slow and even if you work hard at it, it’s seriously unlikely you’ll actually get good enough for it to be useful to you.
And there is a much easier way to get all the wonderful skills you’re hoping perfect pitch would bring you.

This show, The Musicality Podcast, is a lot about trying to demystify the process of becoming more musical.
To help you to see that even really inspiring and impressive musicians weren’t blessed with an effortless gift.
They worked hard to learn those skills – and that means you can too.

Perfect pitch is a great case in point, because the idea that you need perfect pitch to be an amazing musician, or that you need to be born with it to stand a chance – and also the idea that learning this magical talent is the only way to become a great musician. These are myths and delusions that hold musicians back from achieving all they could.

So if you’ve ever wondered about perfect pitch yourself, I hope that this episode will help to show you a better way.

We’re going to talk about:
– What exactly is perfect pitch
– Why people want perfect pitch
– Can you learn perfect pitch
– What is the alternative to perfect pitch
– And why that alternative is so much better.

Now I might get a bit rant-y in this episode. And I apologise in advance for that. But to be clear: I am not bashing on perfect pitch. If you have perfect pitch, great! Use it, enjoy it, more power to you. What I am bashing on is musicians who don’t have perfect pitch thinking they need it to be great, or thinking that learning it is the best way to get an instinctive freedom and power in music.

So let’s dive in.

What exactly is perfect pitch?

Simply put, it’s the ability to name a note you hear without any reference to a known note.

So if you haven’t heard any other music, and someone plays a single note on a piano and you can name that note just by hearing it, for example “That was an E flat” – that is perfect pitch.

Now before we continue we need to clear up a couple of things that are not perfect pitch.

Perfect pitch does not have anything to do with singing. Singers often talk about being “pitch perfect”, and yes it’s true that having perfect pitch can help you as a singer, for example to sight-sing or to find the right pitch for your starting note. But always being in tune when you sing is something quite separate from perfect pitch.

The other thing which is not perfect pitch is if you already know a note’s name, or the key of the song, and then you’re able to name other notes. To give a simple example, if someone plays a C on piano and tells you that it’s a C, and then they play another note at random and you can name that note – that is not perfect pitch. You could use perfect pitch to do that, clearly, but if your brain is making use of knowing the name of another note you heard, that’s actually relative pitch. You’re comparing the two pitches and making a relative judgement.

So I actually prefer the term “absolute pitch” to mean “perfect pitch” because it makes clearer that this isn’t about always being perfectly in-tune. And it is about judging pitch in absolute terms, not relative to any other known pitch.

I’ll continue using the phrase “perfect pitch” for the sake of this episode and because it’s the term most people are familiar with, but normally I would call it “absolute pitch”.

Alright, so with that cleared up:

Why do people want perfect pitch?

Well, if we go back to the simple example of naming a single note out of nowhere – that’s kind of cool. It’s a neat party trick. I knew a musician, I’ll just call him THJ to respect his privacy, who used to have fun by announcing the notes of car horns and other random beeping sounds when we were out and about. That was pretty funny, and it is a beautiful demonstration of how music can be such a core part of somebody that even random sounds have a musical meaning.

But beyond that kind of party trick, what is perfect pitch useful for?

It’s basically a shortcut. If we think about the skills of musicality, a lot of them are related to pitch:
– Playing melodies by ear
– Recognising chord progressions
– Composing music
– Transcribing music
– Improvising

Naturally, being able to directly name the notes you hear or imagine in your mind is a really useful thing! You can directly play them on an instrument or write them down.

So clearly, perfect pitch is really useful. And when you meet a musician with perfect pitch who can essentially effortlessly do all these things, it’s impressive and inspiring.

But here’s where people get misled. Perfect pitch is absolutely not the only way to do these things!

We’ll talk more about that in a minute. But first, you’re probably wondering: if perfect pitch is such a cool shortcut and is so useful to the musicians who have it – can you learn it yourself?

The answer to “Can you learn perfect pitch?” is “Yes” – but only barely.

The scientific research on the subject shows that in general you need to be born with perfect pitch, or at least have it from a very young age. It’s not understood what causes that, though there is a higher prevalence in countries where the spoken language is tonal, for example Mandarin. It’s not clear how much it’s nature versus nurture but anecdotal evidence suggests both have a role.

Based on that you might think “Okay, well I wasn’t born with it so never mind”. But unfortunately it’s not quite that simple, and this is where musicians get misled.

It is possible to develop some degree of perfect pitch as an adult.

The way I like to explain it is that actually we are all biologically capable of perfect pitch – it’s just that our brains didn’t think it mattered, so we don’t interpret sound in that way. But there are clear examples that you can re-train your brain to care about perfect pitch.

One example is audio engineers. It’s normal for them to do ear training to recognise different frequency bands, for example to adjust the EQ on a recording or live sound and fix problems or enhance the overall mix. That is using a form of perfect pitch where they need to go directly to a certain frequency band. Experienced engineers can spot things down to a band that’s a third of an octave wide – which is four semitones, corresponding to just a few notes. They’re not going to one specific note name, but they’re getting pretty close.

A second example is that if you ask someone to sing a song they know well, often they will actually sing it in the correct key. Their memory for that music has stored the absolute pitches, and they are exhibiting a kind of perfect pitch when they sing the right notes.

That leads on to a third example, which is the one form of perfect pitch ear training which I do recommend, and that is memorising a single “reference pitch”. Some musicians choose A440 that orchestras tune to, guitarists sometimes choose the low E string, pianists often middle C. The idea is just to pick one pitch and regularly practice trying to remember it and sing it, then check your answer. This can gradually reinforce your memory for this pitch and give you a simple way to do perfect pitch-like tasks. More on that later.

So clearly there is evidence that our adult brains are capable of learning perfect pitch.

But here’s the catch: to get to the level of instantly recognising any note, and to do it even when there are multiple notes played at once like in an actual piece of music – is incredibly hard and slow-going. I’ve been working in ear training for almost a decade and I have yet to meet or hear from a single person who has reached this level as an adult.

What I have heard from is hundreds of musicians who have spent months or even years chasing this goal and getting to only a rudimentary level, where they can recognise a handful of notes, reasonably reliably. And generally still can’t apply that to more than the most basic musical tasks.

There are a few common methods for learning perfect pitch. One is the simple “guess and check on a regular basis” that I mentioned before. A second is to really listen deeply and try to hear the “pitch colour” characteristic of each note. This is popularised by a very well-known ear training course. I don’t want to be sued so I won’t name names, but if you search online for “learn perfect pitch” you’ll find it. And the third method is analogous to the “reference songs” way of learning interval recognition, where you try to memorise certain melodies which start from each note, and rely on your musical brain’s desire to autocomplete to let you recognise a note you hear based on what melody it sounds like it’s starting.

I could go into depth about each of these. I’ve tried them myself, I’ve had students try them. And I think all that’s worth saying is that they all sound reasonable and they all deliver some encouraging early results after a week or two which might make you think it’s worth persisting. But as I said before I have yet to meet a single person who has developed anything close to full perfect pitch who didn’t have it from childhood.

Okay, so enough doom and gloom. Time for the good news.

Let’s recap why we might want to learn perfect pitch. We said it could help you:
– Playing melodies by ear
– Recognising chord progressions
– Composing music
– Transcribing music
– Improvising, and
– Party tricks

The good news is there is just one of those where perfect pitch is the only way to do it. Can you guess which?

There is an alternative to perfect pitch, which can help you do all the others. Play by ear, improvise, transcribe, compose…

And that’s: relative pitch. Recognising notes not in absolute terms, but relative to the other notes around them. This is how our ears naturally interpret music, something I talked more about in our recent episode on solfa.

Relative pitch is the kind of ear training which Steve Myers succeeded with and which led him to develop the highly-successful Theta Music Trainer. It’s the kind of ear training we focus on exclusively at Musical U. Because it’s the kind of ear training which lets you quickly and reliably learn to do these amazing musical skills.

So the one thing relative pitch can’t do for you? Yes, it’s the party tricks, like declaring that a car horn is a B-flat. And actually even those are within reach if you use the “reference pitch” method and a well-developed sense of relative pitch. I’ll put a link to more about that in the shownotes.

With relative pitch ear training it doesn’t matter what musical abilities you were born with. It doesn’t matter if you’re young, middle-aged or retired. It just works. It can be adapted to suit any instrument and it can be used for any pitch-related tasks in your real musical life. With the right kind of training it can be a matter of months before you’re freely and confidently playing by ear or improvising – and it can absolutely get you to the level where other people see what you can do and assume that you must have perfect pitch.

I’m not going to talk more about relative pitch for now – this episode’s already running long, and it’s something we’ll be covering in depth in many more episodes of the podcast. And I’ll have links in the shownotes so you can learn more about it.

I hope this discussion has been useful for you if you’ve ever wondered about perfect pitch, thought about trying to learn it yourself – or if you’re already a few months into trying and starting to wonder if it’s ever going to work out… The good news is that all the skills you’ve been craving are learnable – but perfect pitch is not the solution.

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