Be Yourself And Discover Your Own Music (with David Reed, Improvise For Real)

Christopher: Ever feel like you’re trying to be someone else in music? You’re playing what other people wrote. You’re trying to be as good as the musical heroes you admire.

That’s all good stuff. But when do you finally get to be yourself?

That’s just one thing I discuss in this conversation I want to share with you, something from a little while back, I got together with David Reed from Improvise For Real, one of my favourite people in music education, to talk through some really punchy quotes they had published on Instagram.

You’ll hear me introduce things a little bit more in a moment, so I won’t say more for now, but just so that you know, today’s episode is going to be part one of that longer conversation, with more to follow soon!

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Christopher: I’m excited to have David Reed with me today. David’s the founder of Improvise For Real, and has been a guest on the show before, as well as having come in and presented a masterclass for our members inside Musical U. Welcome back, David!

David: Thank you very much. I’m really happy to be here with you.

Christopher: So we’ve known each other for a number of years now, and I’ve always loved the Improvise For Real approach because it kind of, it shares the same spirit, the same philosophy about music and music learning as we have at Musical U. But at the same time, I feel like we each do things in a slightly different distinct way, which makes it a lot of fun to compare and contrast and get together to talk about these things.

And a lot of our members at Musical U end up using the Improvise For Real materials as well and vice versa because it all just kind of goes well together. I invited David back onto the show today because I saw some really fantastic posts over on their Instagram where David was sharing these little insights into their philosophy and their approach, kind of advice or tips for musicians who were wanting greater freedom and fulfillment in their music making.

And I really wanted to get together with him and chat about them because so many of them really resonated with me and with what we do at Musical U and I thought, why not just record the conversation?

So that’s what this is today, we’re gonna be looking at some of those little nuggets they were sharing on their Instagram, and just unpacking each one a little bit to see what we can learn.

Before we do, I’d love to open with a question, which I particularly love to ask musicians and music educators, and I’m not sure I’ve ever asked you before David, in quite this way, but: What does musicality mean to you?

David: Yeah, that’s such a great question and it is funny that we haven’t talked about it, given that, you know, it’s part of your mission statement and it’s part of your name.

But okay, so What musicality means to me is that it’s really a connection. I think it’s a connection between a person’s ear and a person’s imagination and the person’s instrument. And it can, and it, and you know, it’s regardless of the style of music, it doesn’t even have to be very advanced. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of listening to somebody playing music that could be quite simple, but there’s something magical happening there. There’s a groove there. There’s a naturalness to it that makes us all instantly say, okay, that person’s musical. That person has musical talent.

But I don’t think it’s talent at all. I think it’s a connection. I think it’s like a surfer trying to catch a wave.

And I think that when you’re playing music in a musical way, it feels very much like surfing a wave. And I think that in music, we sometimes prevent ourselves from catching that wave, you know, for a lot of reasons. But one of them is just playing music that’s just simply too hard for us.

You know, we can’t groove with the music and really enjoy it and express ourselves unless the music is easy and natural for us. And so, you know, instead of thinking of musicality as something out there, like a goal, like I wanna be more musical. I think musicality is a choice. I think it’s something that we choose and that choice starts with the song we’re gonna play in the first place.

And that’s a test of our sincerity as well, right there. I mean, are we doing this to impress people or are we doing this to touch people’s hearts? Or are we doing this just for the sheer enjoyment of it? And I think that if you can answer that question and if you can allow yourself to play music, that you truly understand and feel, and you can be relaxed with it, and you can just purely enjoy it.

I think what that translates to for the listener, you know, are all these things that we call musicality.

Christopher: Wow. I love that answer. And already, I feel myself having to hold back from picking up on all kinds of things you mentioned there, each of which could be a three hour conversation. And I’m sure some of the themes will be coming up again as we continue talking today.

But I do just wanna really highlight what you said there about simplicity, and I think that’s something that’s so often overlooked, isn’t it? The idea that actually, you may be trying to run before you can walk or you may be trying so hard to play more and more advanced stuff that you are kind of missing out on the point of it a lot of the time.

David: Yeah. Not only are you trying to run before you walk, but maybe you don’t even need to run! Maybe walking is exactly where the groove is and the magic.

Christopher: Love it. So share with us the first of these quotes we’re gonna be talking about today.

David: So if we just go through them in order. The very first one that we published on our Instagram is a quote directly from the book, Improvise For Real, it’s on the very first page of the book and it kind of ends the first page chapter, which is, “life is too short to waste time imitating others. Be yourself and discover your own music.”.

And what that’s about, and what that means to me is that, you know, in music, for a lot of reasons, a lot of us find kind of a learning model, which is based on taking apart existing music. And that makes sense. You know, if we’re fascinated by that music, we find it beautiful, it’s natural to want to understand it.

I mean, first just to understand it, just for the simple joy of understanding what those beautiful sounds are. But then also we have this idea that I could grow from that and I’ll become a more capable musician if I understand what all those people have done. But what happens is as you learn about that existing music, whether it’s a song or maybe a solo that somebody has transcribed note for note, you know, who’s teaching that to you?

If you really, you know, if you think about it, when you’re looking for information on this beautiful music that’s been made, whether you’re on YouTube or whatever, the person who’s gonna be teaching it to you is gonna be somebody who’s passionate about that music. And so there’s all this talking around it, which is also about how great it is and how brilliant the composer is and how clever it was that they did this thing in their solo, and why it’s so special and why it’s so unique.

And so something starts to happen, which is as you’re gaining these experiences, there’s also this growing kind of unconscious belief, that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do music. And it’s almost like, you know, those traps where like a fly can get in, but it’s very, very hard to get out and it’s insidious because you don’t notice it happening.

But this is why you can go through years of that kind of learning and find yourself less able to make music, than a child on day one who’s just given an instrument with no instruction whatsoever. All children start out as just infinite creativity. And we are all unique. We’re all original cause we don’t know what else to do, right?

And so I think, you know, that’s one of the challenges, if we wanna make music with some of the sounds that we hear on the radio. And so we wanna learn about harmony, we wanna use notes and chords. I think the mission is, how do we put those raw materials in the hands of the student without putting that box around them or destroying their creativity?

And I think you do have to understand it as a trade off. That all the learning, in some way, damages or interferes with, the infinite creativity that the child would bring to this activity, in the very first moment. And so, you know, those are some of the ideas around that quote.

Christopher: Fantastic. Yeah, and when I read it I was immediately reminded of one of our Pillar Beliefs at Musical U, we have four, and one is Universal Potential. And we really put it there, front and center, to remind people that they have what it takes and that everybody has what it takes to be an incredible musician because like you say, so much of the

establishment or tradition or norms around how do you learn music is about reproducing other people’s music to a large extent. And revering those who have gone before you and accomplished great things. And I think you’re right to highlight that trade off or that balance it’s not as simple as just make your own music, ignore everything else, right?

Because what gets us into music in the first place is often the music we know and love, you know, it is that artist or that album or that song that inspires us to pick up an instrument for the first time and we can’t be blind to that. And of course, we also have this absorbed heritage of musical awareness.

This is something we talk about a lot in some of our material at Musical U, around improv, but also around active listening and music appreciation, that whether you realize it or not, you’ve spent years, decades, [00:09:00] your whole life absorbing all of this amazing musical material. And it’s in there. And we want to leverage that.

We want to respect it and acknowledge it and make use of it. And at the same time, we don’t want it to box us in as it so often does, to thinking if I can’t do it exactly like that recording or exactly like that composer intended it, then I’m getting it wrong.

David: Right, exactly. That’s so important, what you mentioned about our subconscious musical mind and all the musical learning that is already inside of us, just from listening to music and what that, you know, to me, the way I see that is that our job is to illuminate the raw materials.

So okay, you want the one chord? I’ll give you the one chord. You want the two chord? I’ll give you the two chord. You know, you want the notes? I’ll give you the notes. But then I have to just walk away. My next role, the next best thing I can do for you is to get out of your way. Nobody needs to tell you how to make music with those sounds.

Everybody needs a little bit of help getting into the activity, right? But as soon as you’ve caught that wave, as soon as you’ve found your groove, then any other comments or judgments about the quality of your music I think are harmful. I think it’s violence. I think it destroys the magic and the creative freedom.

And I think it’s up to students to decide for themselves what it is they would like to express, and to move closer to that in whatever way feels right to them. But I just don’t even think it’s within our competence to judge their music. Because if you think about it, they’re an awful lot of opera singers trained, you know, lyrical singers in the world, who would say that Billy Holiday was not a proper singer.

And there are an awful lot of guitar players who would say that John Lennon wasn’t much of a guitar player. And I don’t know, I mean, I think they did pretty well, and I think they touched a lot of hearts. And so I think that it’s kind of like, you know, like I live in a city, right? And there are places you want to go that are interesting, but you gotta walk past a whole bunch of like junk food and dangerous things and all kinds of things you’re not interested in, right?

So it’s fine to walk towards the music teaching and get the raw materials from it, get the notes, get the chords. But there’s just a lot of attitudes and values that you need to shield yourself from. And you know, namely this idea of judging music and that some people’s music is better than other people’s music, because I think that is what kills the infinite creativity that all children bring to an activity for the first time.

Christopher: Perfect. Yeah, and I had in mind to ask you a question about this one, which is, you know, what would you say to someone who reads, “Be Yourself And Discover Your Own Music” there and thinks, I’m not sure I have my own music. What do you mean my own music? But I think you really eloquently unpacked that. You know it is so intrinsic to us, and yes, society might give us that false impression that it’s something to aspire to or that only the greats can do. But of course it is fundamentally so simple and so natural. Anyone who enjoys music is capable of creating their own.

David: Yeah, and I think you bring up the other part of that which really completes it and makes it possible for the student. Which is, that we’re not saying that we’re just gonna lock you into a room and expect you to come out with your whole set, you know, worked out for your band and your first concert. Although many people do that, and that would be just fine, and that would probably be better and more interesting than what you’re going to produce with all the stuff we’re gonna give you.

And so that’s the point, is that we’ll give you as much stuff as you want. We’ll give you the raw materials. So it’s not, when I say be yourself and discover your own music. That is not a challenge to not expose yourself to anything, to not ever learn anything, or think deeply about other people’s music.

It’s a reminder of an attitude. Okay? So it’s not an action plan, it’s an attitude, and the attitude is based in the understanding that inside you is already all the musical instinct, all of the taste, all of the sensitivity, and really all of the musical ideas that you need for a lifetime. And so what we wanna do is just put some raw materials in your hands, but then we’re asking you to trust in the process of being playful with those resources and combining them together in whatever way is pleasing to you, and trust that that is interesting and valuable and beautiful to other people as well.

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Christopher: I hope you enjoyed that “part one” clip! There is so much more we covered, and it was one of my favourite conversations of the last three to five years, for sure.

There is a lot more to share, I’m excited to share those other parts with you soon.

For now, be sure to head over to improviseforreal.com and look up “Improvise For Real” on Instagram and on Facebook. We’ll have links, of course, in the shownotes to all of those.

If you like what we do here at Musical U then Improvise For Real should absolutely be on your radar. Like you heard me say there, so many of our members make great use of their materials alongside ours, so definitely do check them out if you haven’t already.

That’s it for this one. I’ll be back tomorrow with our next Coaches Corner episode to wrap up the week.

Until then, cheers! And go make some music!

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