Musicality World

We’ll be looking at what quirks and talents many pianists have in common with one another, how to craft amazing instrumentals when collaborating with a vocalist, and how to transcribe music in a way that suits your musical goals and learning style. Last but not least, one of the world’s leading jazz piano educators shares the course of his own musical journey.

Pianist Particularities

It’s the first instrument many of us ever learn, and for those of us that don’t abandon it in our childhood, it turns us into dedicated, incredibly versatile musicians.

Like any musician that loves their instrument, the piano players among us have developed our own idiosyncrasies and habits that allow us to excel at our instrument (and at others’ instruments, when called on to do so!), move audiences with our emotive performances, and harmonize with everything from the radio to the hum of the refrigerator.

Dying to know what other talents and quirks lie within? Head over to 10 Things Piano Players Do Differently to learn more about these musical jacks-of-all-trades!

What is it about piano players that makes them so unique? Our article featured several funny characteristics that pianists tend to exemplify, but is there also a physiological explanation for what makes piano players so amazing. Learning Mind explores this topic by discussing the unique brain of a pianist.

Piano players are skilled in so many different styles of music, you could almost say they are superhuman! So why not take a shot and get started on the instrument yourself? Become A Piano Superhuman gives a great guide to learning the piano as an adult.

In many performing ensembles, the piano player helps keep all the other instruments on the beat and in time. So much so that pianists have a difficult time not tapping along to the beat whenever they hear music. It’s almost like they are a living metronome! Uberchord shares some great tips on incorporating more metronome practice into your music, for instrumentalists looking to improve their sense of rhythm!

Crafting the Perfect Beat

What would your favourite rap or hip-hop track be without the punchy, catchy instrumentals? The vocals, would float, unsupported, and the song would lose most of its impact.

The instrumentals of a rap or hip-hop song, also known as the beat, is what holds the song together, supports the vocalist, and keeps the listener engaged by building and releasing tension.

So, what separates a boring, forgettable beat from something like the iconic opening bars of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”? Professional beatmaker Tim Koi is here to clue you in, giving you expert advice for crafting beats in The Basics of Beatmaking, with tips on everything from arranging and mixing to making that all-important verse-to-chorus transition!

Learning to read rhythm is an important part of developing your musicality, and the more you practice, the better you’ll get! Musika Lessons compiled the basic rhythm symbols that you will encounter as you begin perfecting your understanding of rhythmic notation.

While many artists choose to make their own beats, there is a huge market for you to buy beats that are already produced. Robin Wesley has some suggestions on strategically purchasing beats so that they can be mixed more effectively later.

Writing beats takes a certain understanding of basic music theory to create patterns and melodies that the listener will enjoy. This is especially true in the chorus, where the composer connects the most with the listener. Discmakers has talks about how applying music theory in your writing can go a long way to helping you compose a great chorus.

Tim talked about how the chorus of your song should be highlighted. This can be tricky when crafting beats, as you don’t want to overpower the lyrics that have the hook in the chorus. Ditto Music teaches you the art of writing a catchy hook while keeping the vocals front and centre.

Putting Notes to Paper

When people think of musical transcription, many imagine complex notation, and countless hours spent listening and re-listening to the same bar in a song trying to get all the notes down perfectly.

The truth is, you don’t need to create a perfect written copy of the music – it just needs to work for you. This means it can be informal, simplified, or even written in a musical notation you invented! It just needs to capture the essence of the music and aid you in remembering what you heard.

Tune in to The Musicality Podcast episode About Transcribing Music to learn more about this useful skill, how to develop it, and how you can use it to help you sharpen other musical skills like rhythm, audiation, and interval recognition.

A popular method to transcribing a solo is to slow the recording down. There are even devices and apps that will do this for you. But, don’t be so quick to take this shortcut! Janek Gwizdala explains why this diminishes one of real benefits to transcribing… training your ear!

When talking about transcribing music, it is often assumed that we are talking about chords and melodies. However, rhythm instruments need to be notated as well! Rob at Drums the Word shares his process for transcribing music for drums.

Jazz musicians will often cite transcribing music as a core element of learning to play jazz music. In this sample lesson, learn how Marshall McDonald of the Count Basie Orchestra approaches transcribing music, and the impact it has had on his musicality.

Wisdom for Your Musical Journey

What does a musical journey look like?

Those that are in it for the long haul are well aware that it’s rarely a straight line, and that your approach to learning is constantly changing and evolving as your musical goals change too.

This week on The Musicality Podcast, we interview a man whose incredible musical journey has been long, winding, and rewarding, taking him through learning piano as a child, to attending music school, to becoming a recognized musician and music educator specializing in the much-revered and often-feared genre of jazz music.

Head over to The Rhythm of Success, with Steve Nixon to hear all about his musical path, his take on musical talent vs. hard work, his secret to improvisation and getting rhythm, and his brainchild FreeJazzLessons.com, the world’s largest jazz piano education website!

Steve talked about his new course on playing Christmas music, which is very useful for this time of the year! Many tunes that you may encounter in the holiday genre are likely to be on lead sheets, which many musicians struggle with. On his website FreeJazzLessons.com, Steve shares his secrets to playing from a lead sheet.

One thing that really stuck out from Steve’s story was that his musical journey was not a straight line to success, but has had many challenges along the way. He was able to persevere and make it to where he is by consistently working at his craft. We frequently talk about this skill here at Musical U, as it’s incredibly important for your growth. J-Ro School of Music has a fantastic guide on practicing with consistency for the best results.

It was inspiring to hear how Steve approaches improvisation and music theory. It can be so easy to get caught up in the mechanics of playing our instrument that we lose focus of the objective to playing music… to express ourselves musically! On Music for People, one musician shares their experience in exploring improvisation, and what they learned along the way.

The Shared Experience of Music

Whether you’re a producer/beatmaker, pianist, free jazz guitarist, music educator, or are just starting out by learning how to sing, something we can agree on is that music is an incredible shared experience regardless of the angle we’re approaching it from. As we hope you’ve gathered from this week’s content, skills such as transcription, playing by ear, improvising, and rhythm will benefit you no matter what your musical aspirations are.

The post Pianist Particularities, Crafting the Perfect Beat, Putting Notes to Paper, and Wisdom For Your Musical Journey appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-importance-of-sleep-for-musicians/
Late nite practice sessions wearing you down? We all want to improve, but getting the right amount of sleep can be just as important for your musical growth. 😴
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-importance-of-sleep-for-musicians/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/audiation-to-be-a-better-musician-use-your-imagination/
What is audiation? Just a fantastic skill for all musicians! Learn more about how to internalize your musicality in this article from Musical U 🎶 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/audiation-to-be-a-better-musician-use-your-imagination/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/recover-musical-mistake/
Have you ever experienced that terrifying moment when performing? Everyone will make mistakes, but you can learn how to recover from them 👍

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/recover-musical-mistake/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/hearing-harmonies-active-listening/
When we listen to a song, our first instinct is to listen first to the melody and the lyrics. Have you ever tried focusing on the harmony of a song, instead? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/hearing-harmonies-active-listening/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/twelve-tips-for-learning-to-improvise-music/
Improvising music can be great fun! The team at Musical U put together this 12 tips to help you get started. 🎷🎸 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/twelve-tips-for-learning-to-improvise-music/

Transcribing music ensures that it can be replicated again and again by different musicians while still maintaining its melody, rhythm, and dynamics. It’s a beautiful thing, and picking up the skill of transcribing can do wonders for your musicianship! Here, we discuss how to tailor your transcription style to your instrument and your goals, and share some hidden benefits of learning to put music to paper!

Listen to the episode:

Links and Resources

• Steve Nixon interview episode
• FreeJazzLessons.com
• Learn transcription
• Tips for transcribing music

Transcript

In our recent episode with Steve Nixon of FreeJazzLessons.com he gave a few great tips for improving your sense of rhythm and one of them was to practice transcription: writing down the music you hear.

I wanted to unpack that a bit in this episode because it’s something that can seem overwhelming, intimidating – and, for a lot of musicians today, pointless.

But transcription, if you approach it right, can be a seriously powerful vehicle for improving your musicality.

We’re going to talk about what “transcribing music” means, why you might want to do it, and how to start learning to transcribe.

So let’s dive in.

What is transcribing music?

The word “transcribing” sounds quite technical but in this context it just means “writing down what you hear”.

Where musicians often get tripped up is that we tend to assume that means writing it down in traditional score notation, and that can be intimidating to people who don’t read music or can read it but have never tried to write notation themselves.

So first of all let’s clarify: transcribing does *not* have to mean using traditional music notation. There are great benefits to that system of writing music and it’s something you might want to work towards as you learn to transcribe. But certainly at the outset it’s not 100% required.

For example, if you were trying to transcribe a clarinet melody you might begin by just writing down the note names. In a minute we’ll talk about why to transcribe, and you’ll see that even a simple way of writing it down like this, even though it’s missing elements such as rhythm, can still be very valuable.

Or if you play guitar you might prefer tab notation, and it’s perfectly valid to transcribe music in tab. Or perhaps you’re just trying to specify the chords to a song you’ve heard or one you’re writing – in which case writing a simple chord chart using chord symbols – for example a capital C for C major, a capital A followed by a small “m” for A Minor, and so on – that would be just fine.

Transcribing just means you hear music and you produce some written representation of that music. It might be simplified, it might be informal – or it might be a very in-depth, technical, note-perfect representation. These are all valid forms of transcription.

There’s one other subtlety to mention before we move on to why you might transcribe. A moment ago I said “transcribing means you hear music and you produce some written representation”. In fact you might “hear” music only in your head. For example a song writer might want to write down their ideas for melodies, a chord progression, rhythm, or other song elements, and that process of writing down what they audiate (meaning hear in their head) is a form of transcription too.

Why transcribe music?

Okay, so if that’s what transcribing is, what’s the point of it?

The bottom line is that we transcribe music in order to capture it in a more permanent and versatile format.

If we hear music live or we imagine a new creation in our minds that’s very transient – it’s gone after we hear it. If we’re able to transcribe what we heard then we can capture that musical idea in a way that lets it live on.

In the case of hearing music in the real world you might be thinking “Yeah, but I could just record it instead”. And that’s fair enough. You could. And many song writers for example will start by just recording themselves singing a melody or in some way performing the idea they had.

But what about communicating that idea with other musicians so that they can play it immediately on their instrument? What about capturing not just what you played but how you played it – for example with an instrument like guitar where the same note pitch can be played in multiple ways, or where the recording would have so much going on it would be challenging for someone else to decipher what was happening? What about if you’re a songwriter who doesn’t sing very well and doesn’t have an instrument handy, or is imagining a chord progression that you know the chord names for but can’t easily perform to record it on the spot?

Transcription provides you with a clear way to capture musical ideas in a way that other musicians can understand, in as much or as little detail as you want.

That’s the practical reason to transcribe music. But actually there’s another huge reason to transcribe which is maybe even more valuable…

Transcribing music requires you to learn to transcribe music.

So let’s ask the different question:

Why learn to transcribe music?

Apart from the practical benefits just discussed, the process of learning to transcribe is huge for your musicality.

Transcribing music requires two distinct skills:

– The first is being able to write music notation. As we’ve talked about that doesn’t necessarily have to be traditional score notation, though it could be.

– The second is having the ear skills needed to translate what you hear (or imagine) into those written symbols.

I often say that one reason that all musicians should have a basic ability to sing in tune is that being able to sing back something you just heard is a real test of whether you heard it clearly or not. And that goes doubly for transcription.

To reach a good level of ability in transcribing music requires you to train your ears. While you can do ear training exercises and pass quizzes for interval recognition or identifying chord progressions, and so on, taking a real piece of music and challenging yourself to write down what you’re hearing is the real proof of what your ears are able to do.

All of the core ear training we do at Musical U is in the interest of these kinds of practical tasks. And whether you want to pick up your instrument and play what you just heard or imagined, or you want to write it down on a piece of paper and produce your transcription – the ear skills required are exactly the same.

Want better ears for rhythm? Use transcribing rhythms as your benchmark.

Want to recognise chords by ear? Challenge yourself to write down the chord progressions you hear in songs.

Wish you had a better understanding of song structure and compositional form? If you can transcribe it, then you’ve got it.

Now I’m not saying just jump in and start trying to transcribe complex music – that’s a recipe for frustration! You want to take advantage of the core ear training exercises, just like you want to take the time to understand how notation works. But the practical task of transcription can be the perfect vehicle for guiding that training and giving you very clear proof of how you’re improving.

How to learn to transcribe music

So that’s my main advice on the “How to learn to transcribe” front.

You want to address the two component skills: being able to understand and write notation and having a well-trained ear to translate what you hear into that written form.

Both of these are areas which benefit from dedicated exercises focusing just on those core skills. For example at Musical U we have training modules for notes and melodies, for chords, for rhythms, and so on.

Learning to write down notation also has a big side-benefit that it helps you better understand how to read notation and doing this for transcription provides you with a much more integrated sense of how the written symbols correspond to the musical sounds you hear. For example if you’re used to transcribing complex eighth-note rhythmic patterns you aren’t going to have any difficulty sight-reading them when they come along in new music you’re learning.

As well as working on the two component skills you want to also practice the task as a whole. Start trying to transcribe and remember that you absolutely do not have to write down every note and rhythm of every instrument you hear! Maybe start with a singer-songwriter you like and try just writing down the notes of their vocal melody. Or listen to the guitar or piano and try writing down the chord progression in Roman numerals (or chord names after figuring out the key). See if you can write down the rhythms being used.

Summary

So to sum up: Transcription does not mean writing down every aspect of complex music in traditional score notation. It is a totally versatile activity, both in terms of what you’re trying to write down and how you choose to notate it.

Transcription can be a valuable part of your musicality training at any time and provides a wonderful vehicle for developing your understanding of written notation as well as your ear skills, both of which then benefit you in myriad ways throughout your musical life.

The post About Transcribing Music appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-case-for-good-enough-the-8020-principle/
Want your hard work to pay off? Apply the 80/20 principle to your musical learning. Read more in this article from Musical U. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-case-for-good-enough-the-8020-principle/

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Do you find songwriting too complex to add to your musicality? We’ll break down some contemporary techniques that will simplify the process and have you writing in no time! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/songwriting-right-now-latest-tricks/