Musicality World

A few months ago, my four year-old and I were sitting the car waiting to pick up my kindergartener from school, and I decided to pop in some Dean Martin. Upon hearing the first few bars of the tune, my little guy announced in his tiny-but-loud voice, “This is Christmas music, Mommy! But it’s not Christmas yet! It’s Halloween!”

It’s happened to you, hasn’t it? Sometimes a song comes on the radio, on your Pandora station, or on YouTube and even though it’s not a Christmas song per se, it triggers an auditory memory – all of a sudden, you went from listening to Radiohead to picturing yourself in front of the fire with a cup of hot cocoa (or whiskey).

What makes a holiday feel like a holiday differs from one person to another – you could say “fireplace”, but that doesn’t play if you grew up in Australia or Hawaii. You could say “church services”, but not everybody attends. The same goes for what sounds like a holiday.

This begs the question: what makes something sound like a Christmas song?

Everyone from country artists to Irish tenors and pop princesses puts their own spin on classics like “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Blue Christmas”, so, clearly, there’s as much variety to Christmas music as there are types of Christmas cookies. You could get into different theories on chords or lyrics, but it all boils down to what the listener tends to associate with Christmas.

Since more than half of the most performed Christmas songs of all-time were recorded from 1935 – 1965, it makes sense that most of us might hear big band sounds and doowop harmonies and note a bit of Christmas (layers of strings or brass always seem to do the trick). Add in any lyrics about winter, hope, peace, merriment, or the birth of a king and there you have it: a song, unbeknownst to itself, suited for a Christmas playlist.

And so we begin with the tune that started it all:

1. “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head”

From the album Dino: The Essential Dean Martin by Dean Martin

Maybe the Christmas feel is a result of the of the swingin’ horn introduction – reminiscent of so many intros on any Harry Connick Jr. Christmas record. The big band sound, orchestral strings, and cheeky piano fills feel like they came straight down from Santa Claus lane (and every time my youngest child hears this song he insists it’s a Christmas song, so that needs to count for something):

2. “Snowed In With You”

From the album Snow Angels by Over The Rhine

Karin Bergquist’s voice summons the spirit of Billie Holiday on this tune when she sings these lines: “When you come home and all the world’s asleep / I’ll close my eyes and breathe with sweet relief / This world has had you long enough for now / And when I get you home I’ll show you how / I wanna get snowed in with you”. Every line captures the true essence and message of Christmas classic “Let It Snow,” but with a more direct romantic twist:

3. “I’m Gonna Be Warm This Winter”

From the album Christmas In My Heart by Connie Francis

This is a straight-up 1950s pop love song that others have covered over the years (notably Kylie Minogue), but there’s nothing like the original with the authentic girl group sound, rippin’ sax solo, and drama of string overlays. “It’s gonna snow outside / The weather will be cold / But I’m gonna be warm / This winter”. It’s a cute, feel-good song that would fit in perfectly with any tree-trimming setlist (or any Meghan Trainor album – you know you want to hear that girl cover this tune!):

4. “Warmer in the Winter”

From the album Warmer in the Winter by Lindsey Stirling

The intro sounds like it would be right at home in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade while the lyrics sound like a perfect Target or Old Navy commercial selling fuzzy sleep socks and other stocking stuffers. The song is sweet and sentimental without being sappy, and how often do you get to hear a trombone and violin duet? Only at Christmas (Check out Trombone Shorty on this track!):

5. “The Frim Fram Sauce”

From the album All For You by Diana Krall

Krall’s rendition of the Nat King Cole Trio’s classic song lists all the things she doesn’t want and insisting instead on what she does want. Isn’t this what every mall Santa experiences every December, or what parents of picky eaters deal with at every meal? Now think about all of the delicious foods mentioned in the song and you have the makings of a holiday dinner:

6. “For The Beauty of the Earth”

From The Little Women Soundtrack

There are other versions of the hymn out there, but this simple, sweet version appeared in the film adaptation of Little Women, a movie ripe with wintery Christmas scenes. One verse of this hymn contains the following lines: “For each perfect Gift of Thine / To our race so freely given / Graces human and Divine / Flowers of earth, and buds of heaven / Christ, our God, to Thee we raise / This our sacrifice of praise”. The idea of God’s perfect gifts is perfectly appropriate for the Christmas season:

7. “Canon in D”

From the album The Canadian Brass Plays Great Baroque Music by The Canadian Brass

There’s something regal about Pachelbel’s Canon, and Christmas certainly celebrates the royal, with baby Jesus known as the king of kings! Add a fine brass quintet to the mix and you have the perfect recipe for a royal Christmas song:

8. “The Prayer”

From You’re The Inspiration: The Music of David Foster and Friends

This live track, featuring Andrea Bocelli and Katharine McPhee, is light classical pop at its best. It’s just easy to imagine the three wise men and the shepherds following the star with lyrics like these: “Lead us to a place / Guide us with your grace / To a place where we’ll be safe”:

9. “It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way”

From the album Life and Times by Jim Croce

The song begins with a guitar lick that sounds like “Deck The Halls” and then Croce launches into a sentimental ballad about “Snowy nights and Christmas lights / Icy window panes / Make me wish that we could be / Together again”. This song amplifies that shred of hope for reconciliation that we tend to hold on to, and since Christmas celebrates the hope of what could be and what is to come, this tune is perfectly Christmas-y:

10. “Switzerland”

From the album Quill by The Last Bison

The Last Bison refers to their sound as “mountain-top chamber music”. Whether you agree with this description or not, you’ll certainly hear that the guitar, mandolin, and bell sounds, along with the repetition of “Oh, call home” work together to evoke the feeling of Christmas. Plus, the song is about the snowy, peaceful country of Switzerland. Snow plus peace equals the stuff Christmas carols are made of:

Beyond the Christmas Carol

As you can see, what makes something sound like Christmas can range from a jazz standard to a brand new tune by an up-and-coming indie band. Whether you’re a budding songwriter or a professional musician, use this list to challenge yourself: what instrumentation can you add to a tune to make it festive? What lyrics can you develop to convey a subtle sense of holiday celebration?

The post 10 Songs That Sound Like Christmas (But Aren’t) appeared first on Musical U.

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As we get ready to say goodbye to 2017, have you thought about your goals for next year? Get a jump start with 5 steps to setting great goals for the new year. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-steps-setting-reaching-music-goals/

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Playing chords by ear can really speed up your ability to quickly learn a new song. That’s why we have developed a roadmap to help you develop this fantastic skill. Learn more inside this article. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-play-chords-by-ear-roadmap/

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What exactly is perfect pitch? And is there way that you can learn it? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/perfect-pitch/

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Backing tracks are the perfect accompaniment: they’re present enough to keep you on track, but are not so overpowering that you can’t focus on your own playing. They are invaluable to soloists, songwriters, and vocalists alike.

Today, I’m going to be showing you how to make a backing track using PG Music’s Band-in-a-Box product. Using this backing track, you can do all sorts of things like play along and sing along and improvise over it, but before I get into the video tutorial, I just want to mention our video course that I’ve just finished making called, “First Song with Band-in-a-Box,” where I take you through the whole process of writing, recording, mixing, mastering and producing and also releasing your own song using Band-in-a-Box from PG Music.

You can access the course directly from my website.

Now, I’m going to demonstrate to you how I can very quickly and easily make a backing track for a popular song or for a song that you have composed yourself so that you can practice and sing over it. I’ll show you how to change the key, how to change the tempo, how to change the groove, and how to change the instrumentation of the backing track. For this tutorial, we’ll assume that you’ve all already purchased and installed Band-in-a-Box from PG Music, but if you haven’t, here are links to purchase the program on Windows and on Mac!

Without further ado, here’s your introduction to using Band-in-a-Box to create backing tracks that will give you incredible practice opportunities:

Pick A Song, Any Song

First, choose the song that you want to use. For this tutorial, I have chosen “Amazing Grace,” purely because I don’t want to get into trouble over copyrighted material and this song is public domain. So, I’m going to be walking you through how I make a backing track for “Amazing Grace,” but you’re welcome to choose any song or a song of your own composing. I just recommend that when you’re starting out with Band-in-a-Box that you choose something fairly easy until you become familiar with the process.

Learning the Backbone

Step number two is to get the basic chords for the song. If you don’t already have them, I use a site called Ultimate Guitar. So let’s just go to that site and type in the name of the song that I’m trying to make a backing track for, “Amazing Grace”. If you do this, you’ll see two versions: there’s Daniel Thomas’s version and then there’s a miscellaneous traditional version. I normally just select the one with the most stars and the most reviews.

The site will show me the chords that I can use for this song. I wouldn’t worry too much at this stage what key the song is going to be in because I will show you a little bit later how to change the key and for you to practice in different keys.

Getting Started with Band-in-a-Box

Open up Band-in-a-Box on your computer, and it will open up a blank song. Change the end number of bars to something arbitrary, like 100, as that’ll give you enough space to work with. Next, change the number of choruses to one.

Have a look and see if you can find a style that you can use for your songs. If you open the star picker, you can see on the right hand side, you can type in the name of a familiar song title and it’ll give you star filters. Obviously, not all of the songs are in there, but many of the well-known songs and performances will be.

I’m just going to type in “Amazing Grace” here. Two versions exist in Band-in-a-Box: I’ve got an American traditional, which has got a folk backing. It’s a waltz and has a tempo of 85 BPM. So if I double-click that, it’ll bring up styles that will suit that song and I can audition them, and pick one that I like.

I’m going to start with my “Lilly All-time Autoharp Waltz,” so I select that style and press “enter”. You can see that the program has input the style and set the tempo at 85, and it’s giving you all the real tracks that make up that style.

In this particular style that I’ve chosen, which is my “Lilly-Style All-time Autoharp Waltz,” there’s a bass, a guitar, drums, another guitar, and there’s an autoharp. Those are the real tracks that are making up that style. Now, real tracks are actual samples of real musicians that have recorded these instruments and Band-in-a-Box is clever enough to adjust these real tracks to the chord progression key and tempo that you choose for your song!

Keys

The next thing I’m going to do is figure out the key of the song that I’m trying to make a backing track for. I can see that “Amazing Grace” is in G. Quite often, it’s the first chord or the last chord in the song. Often you can tell the key by the chord progression. You can also look for the sheet music for “Amazing Grace” and it’ll tell you what key it’s in.

This particular song I know is in G, so I’m going to select the key of G.

You need to figure out what tempo you want the song in. As a starting point, I’m going to leave “Amazing Grace” at 85 and see how that works!

Putting it Together

So the next step is to type in the actual chords that you see here on Ultimate Guitar. I usually make an introduction of either two or four bars. For this particular song, I’m just going to leave it at two bars, so I’ve got a two-bar introduction in G and I can just start typing in the chords. I think I’ve got “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me / I once was lost but now I’m found / Was blind but now I see.”

Now, I’m going to listen back to that and make sure that I’ve got everything in the right place and sing along with it.

After making sure that sounds good, I’ll carry on typing in the chords. In this particular song, it’s very, very easy, because all the chords are exactly the same for the refrains and for the verses.

Therefore, all I’m going to do is copy this down however many times is necessary. This particular version has four verses, and I see the end bar to be 66.

Setting Verses/Choruses

If I want to get fancy, what I sometimes do is I change the part markers. The blue part markers play a more simple arrangement, specifically on the drums (but sometimes on other instruments), and the green part markers play a little bit of a busier arrangement. I’ll sometimes use the green marker for the choruses and the blue marker for the verses, and the interchange is the drum pattern.

So now you’ve got your basic backing track in the key of G, and I can play the backing track and sing and play along with it.

Tweaking Your Track

So now you have a basic backing track in the key of G for “Amazing Grace”. I’m going to show you some of the things that you can do with this track.

1. You can change the key. Pull down the key indicator. I’m going to try and play it in the key of D. It’s a good idea to try and play it in all the keys that you can, and take notice of how the chord progression changes with the keys.
2. Another trick is to change the tempo. I’m going to take “Amazing Grace” up to 120 BPM and see if I can play along with it.
3. A third trick – you can change the groove completely! This particular song was a waltz, so I can change it to another style that’s not a waltz. I can select the folk category and sort by tempo to get the slowest ones up at the top of the search. I can then select something that’s not a waltz, but something in another style completely, such as a rock ballad!

Some Additional Tips & Tricks

It doesn’t end there! There are countless ways in which Band-in-a-Box can improve your ear and your playing. I’ll share some of them:

I can isolate a specific instrument and try and copy how that instrument is playing. For example, I can strum along in the style that an acoustic guitar is playing in.

I can learn how to play with a capo. In this example, the key of the back track is in A, but I can play the chords with my capo on capo two as if it’s in G!

Lastly, I can improvise over the Band-in-the-Box backing tracks. Select your favorite key to improvise over (say, C), hit play, and get improvising. Once you’ve done that for the key of C, change it to the key of G and improvise over that for a while. You can carry on doing that until you’ve covered all twelve keys, by which stage you’ll be pretty good at all your scales!

A Pandora’s Box of Musicality Training

As you can see, there’s endless possibilities for this marvelous tool for you to improvise over and improve your overall musicality.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this very short tutorial and that if you have got Band-in-a-Box already you will try some of these things with making backing tracks. Check out my “First Song with Band-in-a-Box” course on my website!

Joanne Cooper is a performing singer-songwriter from South Africa. She has been writing her own music since 2013 and has been performing and recording these songs, as well as her own unique interpretations of cover songs, in her tiny home studio in Johannesburg. She has produced and released 10 albums in collaboration with other artists and has recently had 8 songs placed in synch music libraries including this one co-written with Liz Petty called “Enough (Cement Shoes)”. Joanne writes a monthly blog post about her musical journey. She has recently created her first online course on how to record and produce your very first song using Band-in-a-Box for Windows.

The post How To Make A Backing Track, with Joanne Cooper appeared first on Musical U.

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Not sure about online music education vs. traditional lessons?

While traditional music education has its place, it unfortunately fails musicians in many ways. It tends to teach theory in ways that appear inapplicable to desired music skills (such as playing by ear, improvising, and sight reading), it limits a student’s repertoire to classical music, and there is often little room for creativity or mistakes.

No one knows this better than Musical U member CarlyA2Z, who joined Musical U to take her musical journey into her own hands and make a long-term plan with us to meet her goals of being a “practical musician”. We talked to Carly about her inspirations, her favourite part of Musical U, her secret to tracking her musical progress, and how she’s doing music her way.

I have an undergraduate music degree with a voice concentration. The environment was much like a conservatory, however, and I never felt like I fit in there. In fact, I had such a terrible experience that I vowed to quit music and did for the next six years. Before college, I enjoyed a broad range of musical activities from choir competitions (both traditional and pop choirs), musical theatre, casual guitar playing, songwriting, church music, and more. I have since narrowed that focus to more professional guitar playing and singing and writing my own songs.

I’ve been really into Kendrick Lamar lately. His creativity and artistry, especially in his thematic and lyrical content and the way he channels other artists, give me a standard to which to aspire. This performance/track is especially great given that self-love seems to currently be a radical act:

Musically, I’m working on technical guitar skills, ear training, and songwriting. But all of those things also depend on my emotional work, which right now is dealing with my fear of success and assessments of my sense of worth and capability. I’ve learned that I can’t get very far in my musical progress without addressing these things often.

Really, I was at the beginning of my new musical journey, so I had the will but was so far removed from all the skills I’d been taught. I didn’t know how to synthesize the bits of information I did know into my new musical goals that don’t have anything to do with my classical training. I had to work on a lot of self-worth and purpose issues to even get to the point of starting music again.

I googled something like “ear training for musicians” and Musical U was one of the first results. Christopher’s story seemed similar to mine, and I liked that he saw something wrong with how music is classically taught and made a new process that focuses on ear training. I didn’t know how to bridge my classical training with a practical music pursuit, so this seemed perfect for me.

I didn’t realize how quickly I could grasp the basics of ear training and begin to recognize chord inversions, intervals, etc., perhaps due to my previous music training. It is encouraging that I really do have the capability to do music in a practical way.

I also really like the interaction facilitated by Musical U staff. I’m not usually someone who gets into the “community” aspects online but I feel like I’m having genuine and helpful conversations with people on Musical U instead of talking with a robot or being patronized.

My ear training has very much improved, which is important to me because I want to be a practical musician instead of relying so much on theoretical knowledge, which doesn’t motivate me and which I find difficult to implement. It will allow me eventually to play songs that I hear and collaborate more effectively.

As I progress, I’m almost constantly adjusting. For instance, all the training in goal-setting and planning on Musical U inspired me to make an overall vision plan for my musical journey. After a while though, I realized I was progressing very slowly, and I found myself playing the same songs over and over and trying to “solidify” aural skills I already had. It made me realize that I have a fear of success, a concern that I won’t be able to handle any higher order music skills, and that I can change my vision plan for more rapid success.

I mainly keep a general journal, in which I try to write a few pages everyday. It helps align my musical and emotional work in one place so I can realize how those elements are working together in my musical progression. It’s hard to describe why writing about your progress is so effective; I just know that the difference has been night and day for me. Writing everything down organizes my thoughts and allows me to see and celebrate my accomplishments.

The post Musical U Member Spotlight: CarlyA2Z appeared first on Musical U.