Musicality World

We need your help! We are designing the cover of the new Musicality book and we’ve narrowed it down from over 450 designs (yes, really!) to just four.

Now we need your help to choose the best cover for this exciting new book.

You can go to musicalitybook.com to vote now, or stay tuned in a moment for more info.

So the most important thing to say is just go to musicalitybook.com/vote and vote. Give your comments, give your input.

But I wanted to share a little bit more just because I’m always conscious this could be the first episode from us you’ve ever watched.

So if this is your first ever episode, if this is your first time, joining us here on Musicality Now, I wanted to explain a little bit about the book and share a little bit of the behind-the-scenes of this cover design contest we’ve been running.

So this forthcoming book, entitled “Musicality”, simple enough, is designed to be the kind of “missing manual” that we feel every music learner should have been handed on day one.

It’s a hefty tome packed with basically everything, all the most valuable stuff we’ve developed over 15 years here at Musical U, based on decades and decades, I think over 100, if not 200 years of collective experience in the Musical U team. All focused on this topic of musicality, and how you can reach your true musical potential and start doing the things that most people think you need a gift or talent to do.

So this book has been in the works for almost two years now and has become an epic project. And fittingly, the cover design aspect of it has become similarly epic!

It’s been really tough. So just to share a little bit about why we’ve done it the way we’ve done it…

There’s a number of designers we work with on a regular basis who I love to go back to for particular projects, but there are certain types of design work where this idea of having a contest, I think is particularly valuable.

And it’s something we’ve done multiple times going back almost a decade now. I think the first time we did it was actually for the Musical U logo, that came out of a design contest. And I love it for things like logos, because you get so many different ideas, and for something like a logo or a book cover, the concept is so important, I think. And the execution obviously matters, but compared to something like “can you make me a graphic to go on Facebook”, really having a lot of ideas at that early stage is so powerful.

And so we’ve done it a number of times, and I will just say, I know it can be a slightly divisive issue! Some designers hate design contests, and they hate the idea of working on a design and then not winning a prize and not getting paid for the work. And other designers love it because it means they don’t need to do all of the overhead of finding clients and project management and making sure they have work coming in. They can just design all day, basically.

So there are definitely designers that absolutely love it, and we love working with them in this kind of setup for particular projects.

And so I knew when we were coming up with the cover for this book, I wanted to do it this way – and it was not an easy task!

So I won’t share my full description of what we needed the cover to be, but it was lengthy. Because it’s a really unusual book.

It couldn’t, for example, look like “just another music book”. It needed to stand out and clearly be about musicality.

It couldn’t show an instrument on the cover because it caters to all instruments, and so it couldn’t just have, like, a piano emblem or a bass guitar on the cover And that actually rules out a lot of potential design ideas.

It was also a challenge for me because I wasn’t yet quite decided what style of cover I wanted for the book. And our approach at Musical U has always been to try and combine, you know, authority and expertise and really knowing what we’re talking about with a very friendly, approachable attitude.

And I hope anyone in our membership community would agree, we do that pretty well. I think we balance, you know, speaking as the authority and teaching, we teach, but not doing it in kind of a dictatorial way and not being, you know, out of reach and the “guru on the mountain”, like I talked about on a previous episode.

And I wanted the cover to try and hit that, too, which isn’t the easiest thing to do. It’s fairly easy to dry design a fairly dry, textbook like cover, and it’s pretty easy to design a very kind of lightweight, work of fiction type cover, but to marry the two is not the easiest.

So I knew it was going to be a challenging project, and I was so pleased to see the amount of interest we had in this project. The designers really were, you know, they came out in droves.

We had over, I think the total was 470 design submissions! And over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been going through them and giving feedback and rating them and working with the designers to refine them, and we’ve whittled it down to just four.

And I want to invite you today to help us choose which we’re actually going to use.

So you can go now to musicalitybook.com/vote and there you’ll be able to see all four of these candidate designs.

Rate them, leave your comments, let us know what you like, what you don’t like, why you like the ones you do.

I really want you guys to help. And if I show you the page you’re going to land on, it’s going to look a little bit like this. And when you click that button, it’s going to show you the actual designs and you’ll have the chance to weigh in.

And I really carefully planned so that we could factor in your feedback. As you may know, we have a number of Pillar Beliefs at Musical U. One of them is “Better Together”. And anytime we’ve been able to work with our community, with our incredible members to make decisions about what we do next and how we do it, it always works out so much better.

And so I really want your input on this. Whether you are a member of Musical U, or you’re a YouTube subscriber, an Instagram or Facebook follower, an email subscriber, or you’ve just somehow stumbled upon this today.

If you’re tuned in to what we do at Musical U, this idea of musicality, bringing the music out from inside you, developing the instinct for music, getting deeply connected to music and finding ways to express it in a free-flowing, exciting way, then your opinion is invaluable to us on this.

Now, I can’t promise we’ll definitely pick the one that comes highest rated! There are lots of other factors to include, such as feedback from the team who’ve been voting this week and all of the specific comments you make and the reasons you’re voting certain ways will all be taken into account. But the more input we get, the better a decision we can make.

So please take a few minutes out of your day today. We’re aiming to make a decision fairly soon. So if you’re watching this, go ahead right now and vote!

Go to musicalitybook.com/vote . I’m so excited to hear from you and involve you in this decision and can’t wait to hear what you think of these four designs.

I’m very excited about all of them, so I hope you are too!

Go to that link now: musicalitybook.com/vote. Let me know what you think.

That’s it for this one. Cheers! And go make some music! But only after you’ve voted. Bye!

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Christopher: Today, I want to introduce you to the newest member of the Musical U team, Ms. Almut Spaeth, also known as @AlmutS, inside the members website – where she’s been amongst our most active and beloved members back since January of 2021, I believe. Say a quick hello, Almut!

Almut: Hello, it’s great to be here.

Christopher: So today we’re going to be diving into Almut’s perspective on musicality, some of her own backstory, and talking a bit about her role here on the Musical U team. All that and more on today’s episode!

So Almut, you’ve been with us for going on – I can’t do maths on the spot, but – three, three and a half years. And I’m so excited to share your story, just because it’s quite remarkable in the journey you’ve had with us at Musical U. You know, you came in, I think, on the Foundations course and then took some of our other courses, on to Musical U membership, and the Living Music program. You were among our first cohort of the Next Level program, which was super exciting. And now, to everyone’s surprise and delight, you are a member of the Musical U team yourself!

I can’t wait to discuss this more with you and share some of the behind-the-scenes goings-on of that journey with our audience today.

As you know, I love to open with the same question. It’s always the same question, but every answer is always very different, which is what makes it a fun one.

So let me ask you: what does “musicality” mean to you?

Almut: Oh, that’s a hard one to start with! To me, musicality means being able to connect, and for me, it means being able to connect to music. So listening to music, feeling emotions when you’re listening to music, and it also means being able to connect to others through music.

So, yeah, I would say musicality is being able to connect.

Christopher: Perfect. And I love that question because it reveals a little bit of someone’s musical personality, I think, their philosophy and their perspective and their attitude.

But it also, I think, immediately makes you want to know, where did that come from? Where did that perspective on musicality come from?

So if you wouldn’t mind, tell us a little bit about your own musical backstory, where you’ve come from as a musician.

Almut: I think my own musical backstory is quite different to many stories you’ve heard on this podcast before. I started off playing the recorder when I was a little girl, and I took recorder lessons for quite some time, and I never really got the hang of it, and I always had the feeling I couldn’t do it.

I was really bad at reading sheet music and I couldn’t remember things and I didn’t enjoy it particularly much. I’ve always been singing, so I’ve been in choirs all of my life, really. And that seemed to be different kind of musicality, that was something that came easy to me. But playing an instrument was really, really difficult.

And my parents wanted me to play the recorder, so they paid for the lessons, they wanted me to go and it was really difficult to tell them, no, I don’t really want to do it.

So after about more than five years, maybe, of playing the recorder, I decided to stop and I got a guitar and I started playing the guitar and I had to teach myself. There were no guitar teachers where I lived and there was no Internet at the time. And I really loved it and I couldn’t stop playing, so I played for days. And I also played in a band. I played bass in a band for some time. I think we were the worst band in the world! But we had fun.

Yeah. And then I hit a kind of plateau. I just couldn’t progress anymore with a guitar.

I tried to find a teacher. I couldn’t find one. I tried out different books and methods and I just had the feeling that I was just not musical and I couldn’t do it.

But I had this idea that I wanted to do music as a job. So I was dreaming of actually studying music at university and I was telling some people about it. But the reaction was very negative and the reaction was more like ”well, you should do something proper instead”, and “you don’t have the skills to do that”. And I thought, well, that’s true. I don’t have the skills and I’m not talented enough to get the skills, so that might not be something for me.

So I ended up going to medical school and then switched to occupational therapy. And, well, I have been an occupational therapist and have been teaching occupational therapy as well for nearly 20 years.

So, well, my musical story, I continued playing in singing in choirs, but I stopped playing the guitar because I thought, it’s something I’m not good at. And I stopped for about 15 years.

I had children at the time and there were other things in my life I needed to do and I sort of forgot about it.

And then all of a sudden I had the feeling I need to do something with music. And I picked up that guitar and I couldn’t let go and I just had to play a lot and explore things and learn a lot.

And, I mean, luckily for me, I had moved to a bigger city and there were music teachers, so I took guitar lessons, I took voice lessons, and luckily there was the internet. And after time, I came across Musical U. And that’s how the journey with Musical U started.

Christopher: Gotcha. Yeah, I knew some of that story, but not all of it. That’s really great to hear.

And it’s funny, I was reminded of something Zac shared on a Coaches Corner episode recently. He was talking about how how to know if you have music inside you. And as you know, many of our members would say, you know, I don’t have the talent or I’m not going to ever write music or compose or improvise, even though they’d love to.

And Zac was sharing how that urge to make music and that need to be involved in music is the evidence that you have music inside you. When you talked there about, you know, how you came back to the guitar and you couldn’t put it down, I love that as an illustration of how, you know, if you’ve got the bug for music, it’s not going to let you go. Even if the people around you are saying it’s not for you, even if you take your career in another direction, you always find your way back. And it’s definitely to everyone’s benefit that you did find your way back! Talk a little bit about your first experiences at Musical U, maybe. You mentioned it came across your radar. I think, I looked up this morning, you came to us via the Foundations of a Musical Mind course.

How was that for you? How did it factor into what you were doing in music at that time?

Almut: I was really surprised because I thought that music theory was so difficult to learn and that it wasn’t for everyone, that you had to go to university to study it. And suddenly so many things fell into place. I had been learning many different skills, but I couldn’t connect them.

I couldn’t understand how they were linked or how they fit together. And that’s why I couldn’t progress in my learning, because I couldn’t see the whole picture. And that was something that changed completely through the learning I did with Musical U, which was just a real “aha!” moment. One, I can do it, and the other, it’s quite simple, it’s learnable.

Christopher: Fantastic, yeah. And I think you very quickly became prominent as one of our most active and enthusiastic members. And as you’ll know now, as a member of the team, our team are very conscious of those people who are really giving it their all and supporting each other and contributing in the discussion boards and so on.

And you quickly stood out as one of those. And I know the team were just bowled-over delighted when you applied for the Next Level program back when we launched that. Talk a little bit about that, because I imagine even if you were enjoying things at Musical U, it must have felt like a bit of a leap to join that program in particular?

Almut: It was a great leap because when I started doing courses at Musical U, I didn’t like to share my music. I didn’t. I really had to make myself contribute in the discussion forums as well.

And after a while, I found that it was so helpful to share my progress with others and to help others along on their journey and to listen to others’ music. And so I think during that time, when I was a member of Musical U, I just opened up and just loved collaborating with others and doing things together.

And then this opportunity came up with a Next Level coaching. And I think it was like a turning point in my life because I had the feeling that I really had to immerse myself more into music and to give it the priority in my life that I hadn’t been giving to music for the past years. And, yeah, so I decided to really give it a go and to make the most of the year of this Next Level coaching and apply.

And when I applied, I was so worried that I might not be “good enough” to be accepted, that my skills wouldn’t be good enough and that my knowledge would be too basic to be able to profit from what I was learning.

And so there were lots of doubts as well. Yeah.

Christopher: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, we do our best to try and convey that there is an application process, but it’s not an “audition” process. Like, we’re not there to judge you. It’s really just about making sure there would be a good fit and that you would be set up to thrive in the program.

But at the same time, you know, it is a real commitment. And so I think everyone feels like it’s a bit of a leap and it is a bit anxiety-inducing for a lot of people, but it’s definitely a leap that can pay off in great dividends.

It’s funny, I often think of that Steve Jobs quote, that you can only join the dots looking backwards, and I feel that way about hiring from our community. I love nothing more than when we can add a new team member from someone who’s already in our Musical U community. And I think at least half the team, if not more, fit that mold.

And it’s funny because you look back and you’re like, well, obviously, they were going to join the Musical U team. I feel that way about Zac, for example, and certainly about yourself, where now we look back and you’re like, you know, we’ve Almut thriving as a member, thriving in Next Level, graduated Next Level, was making music more and more her life. Of course, she would end up on the Musical U team!

And, you know, when people stand out like you did, I definitely have that instinctive urge of, like, grab them, get them. They could be an amazing part of our team. They should be part of Musical U in a more, more formal, bigger way.

And so I was so excited that this opportunity opened up for you. Talk a little bit about your role at Musical U and what you’re up to on the team.

Almut: I’m doing mostly Member Success work. That means I read what the members are writing on the discussion boards and I answer and I encourage them and I just help them on their journey in the different courses. And, yeah, that’s my main role at the moment.

Christopher: And I’ll ask you the question, I’m sure people are curious to know if they are one of our members. To see someone like you go from being a member of the community to the other side of things and see kind of behind the scenes, what’s it been like to be on the Musical U team? And you can answer very honestly. If it’s been a nightmare, tell us!

Almut: It’s been a total nightmare! No. It’s been so inspiring to be part of the team because everyone on the team has their own skills and their own interests, and everyone is sharing what they are passionate about and helping each other, and yeah, it’s wonderful to be part of the team.

Christopher: That’s a relief. Good. That was a risky question to ask on a live broadcast! And what would be your favourite thing to do in your role at the moment?

Almut: I really love the interaction with the members, so whenever I can read about their progress or hear some of their recordings, or if I answer a question and then I get a message back saying “oh, this was really helpful, and it clicked”.

And that’s the nicest thing for me at the moment.

Christopher: Fantastic. And you’ve recently started co-hosting our drop-in calls, live calls as well, and that’s something you’ll be doing more of. And sneak peek exclusive, I don’t think we’ve officially announced this anywhere, but you’re also training up at the moment to become a Next Level coach yourself. Talk a little bit about that.

Christopher: That’s a quite exciting new step.

I mean, I’ve been coaching for a long time, but I’ve been coaching therapists. So combining this coaching with music is going to be really exciting. But I love to do that. And I’m really looking forward to being part of people’s musical journey for such a long time. I mean, being with them for a year and meeting them every week and just seeing what’s going to develop in this time. So I’m really looking forward to that.

Christopher: Absolutely. Yeah. And I know our coaching team are loving having you in that department and contributing to the discussions there already.

And we – I don’t think we put a date on it, but we’re hoping in the next few months you will be officially part of the roster. And I know that having said that, now on this episode, we’re going to have a whole host of applications being like, “I want to be on Next Level, I want Almut as my coach!” So it’s possible. It’s possible if it’s the right fit.

Wonderful. And Almut, I love to wrap up these conversations with an opportunity for you to share something a bit left field, a bit out of the mainstream, something that you found really valuable or effective that people might not be thinking about in their own musical training. What’s one tip or trick or technique you could share to help people?

Almut: I think what was most valuable for my own learning was that I had to realise that I don’t have to be perfect to make music, and that if you can let go of this desire to be perfect, and if you can instead focus on the music and really listen to the music and listen, what does the music need at this moment? Don’t think about technique, don’t think about theory, but just think about the music.

What does the music need? And that makes a great difference in playing.

Christopher: Fantastic. That’s a really great insight and one I think we can all do with being reminded of on a regular basis!

It’s definitely something we see people tripping up over in Musical U, isn’t it? That perfectionism and that intense self-consciousness that can actually hold you back from the free-flowing music making you could be enjoying. Thank you for sharing that. Wonderful.

Well, Almut, thank you so much for joining me for this brief Meet The Team interview. I know our whole community are going to love the chance to get to know you a little bit more and potentially even meet you in Next Level coaching in the future! If not on a live call or in the discussion boards before that. Thank you so much, Almut.

Almut: Thank you for having me, Christopher.

Christopher: On our next episode, I will be giving you a sneak peek of the candidate book covers for our forthcoming Musicality book. I’m super excited to be able to share those with you.

I’ll be back with that on our next episode. Until then, cheers! And go make some music!

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Christopher: Have you ever felt intimidated or overwhelmed by a big performance that you knew deep down you really wanted to do, but it just felt way out of reach?

In today’s episode of Coaches Corner, Andy shares a really inspiring story of one of his clients and how together they figured out a way to get around that.

So we have a great episode of Coaches Corner for you today. It’s actually one where Andrew is hosting, I was absent that week, I think I was traveling. And so Andrew thankfully stepped in to host the episode.

And in this one, like I said, you’re going to be hearing from Andy about one of his clients. Together, they found this really clever way to kind of lower the bar and stair-step towards the big performance so that it wasn’t this big, intimidating, overwhelming thing off in the distance. It became a very natural progression for them to work towards.

Camilo explains how one of his clients needed to work up a new song in just a couple of days, and instead of doing it painstakingly, note-by-note from notation the way they normally would, they actually took a more ear-based approach. And this ties in really nicely with what we talked about in a recent episode on “Becoming a Rock Solid Performer”, how you don’t just want to get your ability up to scratch, you also want to think about being resilient and being robust so that if anything doesn’t go quite as expected, you’re able to handle that. And Camilo’s approach here was a perfect example.

And Andrew shares how he took ideas from one of our recent guest experts, Jeremy Mossman, who specializes in Body-Based Voice. And he used that to help one of his clients tap into their body’s innate wisdom about music.

And last but not least, Zac unpacks all of these surprising benefits of focusing on rhythm, from musical memory to singing, to confidence, and even to physical health.

All that and more in today’s episode of Coaches Corner. Here we go!

———

Andrew: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Coaches Corner! I’m Andrew Bishko, Head Educator at Musical U, and I’m sitting in for our founder, Christopher Sutton. I’m also the Head Coach at the Next Level program, so I get to do a dual role today.

But anyway, this is the time where we get to hang out with our Next Level coaches and ask them to share some valuable nuggets from the recent coaching, things that can help you in your musical life.

I’m joined today by Andy Portas and Camilo Suárez, welcome.

Andy, do you have a nugget to share for us today?

Andy: I have indeed got a nugget. And I would like also to say what great fun it is to be working with our clients and a great honour in kind of helping them reach their goals.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about, one of my clients, today, who had the goal, a six months goal of playing at an open mic. Now, bearing in mind she’s never really played in public before, only in the Next Level open mic, the fear of the thoughts of doing this was really quite overwhelming for her.

So what we did was we kind of talked about how she could lower the bar and we brainstormed some ideas and she came up with, like, well, kind of videoing herself, making audio recordings, playing for a partner, close family and things like that.

So that being done, we kind of put that in the order of what’s going to be the easiest to do first, what’s going to be the most comfortable and kind of build up to this open mic she wanted to do, which is actually in her nearest city. So that was kind of upping the fear stakes a little bit for her as well.

So once we got that all in order, she decided to kind of put dates on the, on the various stages and got that planned up and ready. She then decided on three or four songs she was going to do for this.

And once we kind of got all this in place, it started feeling rather exciting for her, rather than something to be kind of feared, which was wonderful, to see that happening.

And now she’s started working through the plan and she’s done the first few stages and things are going wonderfully well. She’s using her practice space to kind of describe how the performance went, and she’s able to kind of self criticise the bits that needed kind of looking at and work on those bits and improve them.

So it’s been wonderful to kind of see that in action. She’s doing really well.

Andrew: That’s beautiful, Andy. I’m so happy you were there to guide her through that, and it’s wonderful that you, as an experienced performer and having been through so much of this yourself, could be there for her.

And it’s also awesome that she’s chosen this. A lot of our clients who come in, they have no idea that they even want to perform, but it’s amazing how many of them wind up being performers, because it’s really part of what it means to be a musician.

Andy: Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. With those that aren’t so keen on that, I tend to try and edge them towards something like that, because without the performance, you know…

Andrew: Absolutely, excellent. Beautiful. Alright, Camilo, what do you have to share with us today?

Camilo: I had a client this week who had this challenge that was learning a song on the fly, playing a performance in two or three days time.

So he said that in the past, when he learned a song, he felt very comfortable and secure if he learned the song note by note as it appears on the recording. Since we have only a couple of days, we discuss, how convenient would that be? Because many things can change.

If you learn a song that way, you might feel secure, but you also need other players in the group to play exactly the same as in the recording. Now, what happens if someone goes off and plays in a different key or decides to play different types of accompaniment? So sitting down and learning the bassline by singing or by simplifying first and then by singing long held notes would give you a strong framework.

So you will be that anchor in the band that would allow others to play with more freedom. So we worked on that, and the client is trying to experience both ways, learning note by note, that doesn’t really lead to a full comprehension and learning. And just the framework, the structure, in a more simplified way that leads to playing with more confidence and comprehension.

Andrew: That’s wonderful. You know, those basslines, they seem to open everything up, don’t they? And when you focus on the bassline, it’s like everything in between the bassline and the melody, suddenly comes into relief. I’ve seen that happen with our clients, too.

Wonderful. Really beautiful. Well, I’m going to switch sides here and go from host to coach!

And I had a wonderful experience this week with new information from our guest coach. We had as our guest coach, Jeremy Ryan Mossman, who is a vocal expert and part of, well, the founder of Body-Based Voice.

And he was talking about using the body’s intelligence, and I’ve been thinking about that and how that just opens up a huge amount of neurology for us to make music with when we’re seeing our bodies as not the things that we’re trying to control and direct, but as these complex adaptive systems that have the wisdom and that already know how to do some of the things that we want to do.

And so I tried this with one of my clients. He was talking about what a terrible ear he had. He was working in jazz, and he had to do all these half steps, and he was saying he was trying to sing them, and it was so difficult. He was having such a difficult time singing them, and he thought it was because of his ear, there was something wrong with his ear, and he would have to do all kinds of ear training.

So I said, you know, stop. You know, first of all, he was doing these chromatic exercises called enclosures, where you approach a note from half step above or a half step below, and then you zero in on a note.

And he was trying to assimilate this by singing them, and he’s finding a hard time singing them. So I asked him to sing it, and then I said, wait, now wait a second. Now, instead of just singing it, imagine it, audiate it, listen to it in your mind, okay? Which is something we’ve used a lot in Next Level, right? We talk about audiation.

And he did so, and he did a little better. And then I took a cue from Jeremy. I said, “let’s activate that body-based, self regulating, adaptive system. I don’t know the vocabulary precisely, but let’s activate all of that. And so I said “now imagine yourself singing it with a twang”, alright? So the twang added a bit of humor. He lightened up. And imagine yourself singing it with a twang. And so I said “no, don’t go right ahead and sing it”. And he took some time visualising himself, and by doing so, he was activating his body. His body was responding to his thoughts, saying “hmm, how do I make this sound?” And then we said “okay, now turn on the voice”.

And he did it, and he nailed it.

There’s nothing wrong with this guy’s ears! He’s hearing what he wants to play. It just was a difficulty in accessing his body’s wisdom in order to produce these sounds.

And he was, of course, thrilled about it and was really happy to see that.

So much of coaching, really is helping people access what they already have inside. And here was a really beautiful and direct way of doing that through singing and through the body-based wisdom.

Oh, and welcome to you, Zac! What was your nugget this week?

Zac: So recently in coaching I had a really, like, this was so cool, this breakthrough that happened, but from focusing on rhythm. It really unlocked the power when you just really just focus in on rhythm.

And my client, she’s a singer, and she likes to do sight-reading and read from scores, and she’s trying to memorise pieces. And she was also trying to work on her pitch, too.

But we had her focus on rhythm for, like, it was like three months. She was just doing rhythm syllables. She was doing rhythm walking. She was focused on doing rhythms with different expressions, just really focusing in on rhythm.

And she said that doing that has elevated her in all areas of her musicality.

And one really surprising one was her musical memory. So when she was trying to recall melodies, she found that if she focused on the rhythm and she could get the rhythm, then the pitches would also come.

She also found that her breath support for singing was improved because her brain was no longer worried about where the notes were falling, and she wasn’t rushing or dragging or pulling things around, trying to work her brain to figure out the rhythm. So her breath support was better, and her vocal expression.

Her confidence is better. She said she used to be in the choir, like, looking around at other people, trying to follow them for rhythms and movements. And now she’s really confident. Sometimes she’s the one that people look for.

And she said that rhythm has also helped – which I just love, I love this one, too – it’s improved her mobility.

She had some, some knee troubles, and so she’s been going to a physiotherapist and doing, like, walking. And so during her physiotherapy and her walking, she was also adding on rhythm exercises. And so she said that has helped her improve her walking.

Her actual, like, just normal day-to-day mobility has improved from focusing in on rhythm. I think that’s so cool.

Yeah, she says that she can look at sheet music now, and it “speaks to her”. And she can understand what’s happening in the sheet music, and then she says she can speak back to the sheet music, so cool.

And now she’s, her goals have expanded. When she first started Next Level, her goals were, you know, they kind of sound like some goals she might think someone else might want her to do. But the last time she talked about her goals, she wants to be Ella Fitzgerald and her, all combined into one person.

And she believes that she can work on this vocal improv. She didn’t think she could do vocal improv before, but now that she’s been focusing on rhythm and just doing kind of different expressions and playing around the rhythm, she’s like “oh, I can think I can do this vocal improv thing and maybe even do some of this high-level jazz scat singing vocal improv”.

So goals expanded, musical memory, increased pitching, breath support, confidence. It was crazy. All areas of musicality and even life were improved from her just focusing in on rhythm really deeply for about three months.

So it’s pretty awesome.

Andrew: Great. It’s so awesome to be with you guys for another Coaches Corner. I’m looking forward to the return of Christopher hosting the next episode, and we’ll see you next time!

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Christopher: Wasn’t that cool? As always, such a great grab bag of tips, and thank you to Andrew for hosting that one in my absence.

As always, I just really encourage you to latch onto something there, whatever snagged your brain or whatever connected with what you’re up to in your musical life.

Grab the idea, take it away, run with it and see the results you get.

That’s it for this one. Cheers! And I’ll see you on the next one. Go make some music!

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