Musicality World

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/interval-ear-training-tips-and-tricks/
So many ways to approach ear training! The Musical U team has compiled these 3 tricks to get you on your way to mastering intervals and other fundamentals of your musical ear. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/interval-ear-training-tips-and-tricks/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/open-your-ears-to-free-rhythm/
We all want to be free, right? But what is “freedom” in musical terms? Learn about the immense possibilities available in free rhythm. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/open-your-ears-to-free-rhythm/

Regardless of your level, it’s easy to get bogged down by the technicalities of your practice and fail to inject your own style and personality into the music.

This week at Musical U, we’re giving you three ways to avoid falling into this trap: not sweating the mistakes, learning to play by ear instead of relying on sheet music, and getting “off book” by putting the sheet music away once in a while.

Finally, we’re talking about the style of music that is all about feeling, groove, rhythm, and self-expression: ska.

Mistake to Masterpiece

We’ve all been there: performing a piece in front of an eager audience, sweaty hands moving over the suddenly-slippery keys or strings of your instrument, when suddenly… oops! Your hands slip, hitting a bum note and leaving you flustered and frozen.

Mistakes are an uncomfortable but unavoidable part of live performance. However, what may seem like a disaster in the moment is actually an opportunity to develop your improvisational skills and build your confidence as a musician, by recovering from your mistake!

In our podcast episode About Recovering from Mistakes, we go beyond the usual “just keep going!” advice, and give you four ways to gracefully bounce back from your musical mishap.

Bonus: mistakes often actually end up charming the audience, because they can see that you’re only human, too!

In this episode of the podcast, we shared a number of strategies that you can use when you make a mistake during a live performance. As musicians, we must accept that we will make mistakes, and learn ways to persevere through the performance and stay engaged with the music. For another approach to this, “The Power of 3” from The Curious Piano Teachers discusses a great way to build your musical acumen and overcome hesitation during performance.

Many times, the only person that will notice any type of mistake on stage is the performer. The audience may not be familiar with the piece of music, but also accept that live performances are inherently prone to wrong notes. Contrary to what we may think while performing, audiences are not sitting there just to judge us! Jen from Activate You describes the way many musicians see their performance as evaluation addiction – and describes how to overcome it.

Musicians are not only performing on stage, but frequently have to put on a different type of performance… interviewing with the media! While this is an exciting part of being an up-and-coming musician, it can be a bit disconcerting if you’ve had no experience doing so in the past. For some great tips to prepare for you media interviews, the folks at Wysidio have compiled a list of helpful tips.

Getting “Off Book”

Good music teachers know better than anybody else that mistakes play an important role in every musician’s development.

Great music teachers know that sometimes, the best performances aren’t about hitting all the right notes. They’re about making the listener feel. This is where getting “off book” comes in – it’s about beyond going simply the mechanics and technicalities of playing, and adding a human element to it.

So what does getting “off book” mean, specifically?

It’s a way of performing music, without needing all the notes right in front of you. Instead, the focus is on creating a musical, memorable, and moving performance. In Getting “Off Book”, with Melody Payne, she explains how she discovered this tool for musical freedom, and the ways in which she applies it to her teaching methods to give her students the ability to express themselves through their playing.

In her interview, Melody discusses how she had difficulty transitioning to performing in public, which is very common in musicians. Performance anxiety can be crippling to any musician, but there are steps that you can take to overcome it. Christy-Lyn has some great tips on getting through your stage fright.

Overcoming performance anxiety will allow you to express yourself musically in ways that you can only imagine! Taking deliberate steps to work through the fears that you may have requires hard work and dedication. The Liberated Performer discusses even more steps you can take that will transform you into the musician aspire to be.

Melody mentioned that she was terrified of making any mistakes during her first performances and as she moved into playing off lead sheets. Learning to let go and accept “mistakes” as part of musical performance is something that you can learn to do. And even come to really enjoy! One way of doing this is in Tip #1 from Piano in 21 days’ master list, in addition to other great suggestions to that will help you express yourself musically (no matter what instrument you are playing).

It was such a pleasure having Melody on The Musicality Podcast! If you haven’t heard the interview yet, make sure to listen here. After that interview, we can’t help but want to hear more advice that Melody has to offer. On her blog, she has recently published a piece on how to achieve a magical musical performance. Be sure to take a read.

Play It By Ear

Playing by ear is a challenge many will shy away from, often out of fear. On top of that, the amount of sheet music and tabs available online begs the question: why bother spending the time to learn to play by ear?

Because, simply put, it will make you a better musician. Finding the notes yourself is a major component of ear training, and will make you more confident and expressive with your instrument as you develop your ear and learn to recognize the melodies and progressions that work.

Ukulele Go!’s Dave Ellis discusses an excellent starting point for players in How To Play Ukulele By Ear, starting you off with the basics and taking you all the way to figuring out chord tones. Also included: valuable advice to deter you from “cheating” in the early stages of your playing-by-ear journey.

A practical method of tuning your new ukulele by ear is to use a reference pitch. Many musicians rely on reference pitches and use a variety of tools like tuning forks or pianos to do so. Another great way of always having reference pitches in your pocket is to keep a pitch pipe on hand. Cesar Blues Guitar demonstrates tuning his instrument using this handy little tool.

Using reference songs as a way to start playing by ear benefits many musicians. This helps to set you up for success as the melody is already well known in your mind and you just need to put it onto your instrument! For more great suggestions on further developing your musical ear, Piano Couture has the answers!

One common pitfall of ear training (referred to as the Ear Training Trap here at Musical U) is failing to apply your skills to your instrument. But once you learn a couple of tricks, you can put your musical ears to good use with any instrument. Tiffany Shaefer discusses how she applies ear training to the harp. Don’t let the instrument selection fool you, these are great tips that are useful to every musician!

Discovering Ska

Most people today know ska for its “skanking” dance, associated checkerboard fashions, and fusion with modern punk rock.

Few know that the same genre that rose to popularity in the 90’s thanks to bands such as Sublime, No Doubt, and Reel Big Fish actually had its beginnings in the streets of Jamaica, where radio waves carrying R&B from the United States were picked up by musicians who fused it with their own traditional music, creating an uptempo, highly danceable style of music that dominated Jamaica’s scene for much of the 60’s.

And of course, it’s impossible to talk about ska music without discussing the culture and instrumentation that are unique to the style. Combine the genre’s strong political statements with those irresistible, forward-driving horns, and it’s hard to imagine a more energetic, moving style of music.

This week at Musical U, we give you a history primer on the three waves of ska, and talk about the idiosyncratic culture that surrounds the genre and the instrumentation and rhythms you can expect to find in classic ska tunes. Get your skanking shoes on, pick it up, and head over to An Introduction to Ska Music to get schooled on ska!

A hallmark of ska music style is the walking bass line, which provides a foundation for the melody and harmonies. Learning how to “walk the bass” is a great exercise for any musician, regardless of their instrument. Music Protest kindly walks you through the fundamentals!

Much of ska music is played with the emphasis on the offbeat, or that tiny bit of silence between the main beats. Playing on the offbeat can be great fun! To master this part of your musicality, try to practice with a metronome to get your upstroke matched up with the offbeat, as recommended by I Will Teach You To Play Guitar.

Once More, With Feeling

Imperfections are not necessarily weaknesses.

Owning your mistakes and using them to connect with the audience is what a good performer does. Playing by ear requires a lot of work and some trial-and-error, but the freedom you gain in your playing is more than worth it. And of course, what better way to focus on style rather than nitpicky details than by putting your sheet music to the side? Nobody ever made a hard-hitting, unforgettable song by only worrying about the mechanics of the song; they felt the music.

The post Mistake to Masterpiece, Play It By Ear, Getting “Off Book”, and Discovering Ska appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/finding-tonic-major-keys/
Knowing the tonic is the key to understanding harmony and mastering your musical mastery. How can you find tonic in major keys? Find out in this lesson: https://www.musical-u.com/learn/finding-tonic-major-keys/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/10-easy-ways-to-become-more-musical/
Are you ready to unlock the musical potential inside you? Here are 10 easy ways you can get started and become more musical! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/10-easy-ways-to-become-more-musical/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/talent-vs-practice-in-music/
It’s easy to dismiss musical talent as something that one must be born with. This exploration of talent and hard work will dispel this myth and encourage you to continue diligence in the practice room! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/talent-vs-practice-in-music/

Though you may be tempted to panic or freeze up after playing a bad note during your performance, your mistake is not the end of the world – far from it! Learn four tips and tricks that will get you through those moments, with your audience being none the wiser.

Listen to the episode:

Links and Resources

• Interview with Melody Payne
• Get Confident module preview
• Making Music with Ease, with Gerald Klickstein

Transcript

In our recent episode with Dr. Melody Payne, she shared an early music experience of performing in church, making a tiny mistake in the piece she’d prepared and just freezing up. In reality the situation wasn’t really high-pressure, but to her in that moment she found herself utterly unprepared for the possibility of making a mistake – and so she just stopped playing.

That was a big painful moment for her in her musical journey and maybe you’ve had similar experiences yourself. Melody explained that now she tries to help her students avoid that pain in two ways: by understanding that a mistake is not the end of the world and it’s okay to make mistakes – and by equipping them with practical techniques they can use in the moment to help them recover when they do make a mistake.

That’s what we’re going to be talking about on today’s episode. I wanted to share four big strategies that can help you recover from a musical mistake, and some practical tips for each.

This topic of recovering from mistakes is such an important one for musicians because it ties deeply into how confident you feel and how comfortable you are to perform your music and share it with others.

We actually have a whole module inside Musical U called “Get Confident”, dedicated to helping you build up your confidence in music in a practical step-by-step way. As well as helping with anxiety and stage fright it tackles this side of things: knowing that you don’t need to be 100% perfect because you’re equipped with skills to let you handle mistakes gracefully if they arise. I’ll put a link to more information about that module in the shownotes and I’m going to be sharing some tips from it in this episode.

Strategy Number 1: Keep going

This is maybe the only strategy taught to most students in instrument lessons: if you make a mistake, just keep going. If you haven’t taken lessons recently you might have forgotten about this crucial musical rule, and although it sounds simple it does take practice.

Fundamental to any piece of music is the pulse, or beat. That steady progression of musical time that lets the listener tune in and follow what’s happening in the music.

Playing the wrong note isn’t such a big deal and many listeners won’t even notice – but mess with that steady beat and the listener is going to feel like something’s gone wrong.

So the number one strategy is to learn to keep to tempo even if you fumble. Don’t pause and start again – just keep your internal metronome going and try to pick up the beat and keep playing.

As the saying goes, “The show must go on”, and that’s certainly true when you make a musical mistake.

This does require practice. In our recent episode with Gerald Klickstein, author of The Musician’s Way, he recommended practicing performing. Even if you don’t have an audience, make sure that your practice sessions include giving a “performance” of each piece you’re working on. This is the perfect opportunity to practice keeping going if a mistake arises. In your normal practice time, by all means do stop and correct the mistake and maybe spend some time working to fix it. But when performing, or practicing performing, don’t let a mistake trip you up – keep the music going.

Strategy Number 2: Keep it musical

Building on the idea of keeping the beat going, you also want to keep the music going.

Suppose you’re halfway through a song and you forget how the next part is meant to go or lose your place in the sheet music. It’s hard to keep the beat going if you don’t know what to play!

Often the audience won’t even know if you play a wrong note or two – but if you start playing completely random notes at random times, they’ll notice that things suddenly don’t sound very musical…!

Keeping it musical can be simple – like knowing that it will probably work fine to loop back and play the last section again. Or it can be more advanced, drawing on your musicality to tell you what notes will work, musically.

When you study ear training for playing by ear and improvisation like we teach at Musical U you gain a real understanding of the notes you’re playing, even when playing from memory or sheet music. That means that if suddenly your memory or sheet music fail you, you aren’t left with a totally blank canvas. You understand which notes and rhythms will fit with the music you’ve just been playing and you’re able to make something up on the spot – which the audience might not even realise wasn’t the official right notes!

In our Get Confident module one member shared this experience. He said:

“At times, I’ve had “brain freeze” or forgetting the musical passage while playing in front of people. Instead of stopping or stumbling, I will shift to improvising until I can mentally reconnect with the memorized theme of the music.”

By equipping yourself with some play-by-ear or improvisation skills you can be prepared to patch over any mistakes or problem spots with something that sounds musical and keeps the music going in a way the audience will enjoy.

Strategy Number 3: Embrace your mistakes

If you’ve ever been to a concert and the performer makes a glaring error, you probably saw the audience perk up, smile, or even clap for them. That’s because in the moment, the audience felt like they were truly connecting on a human level with their favorite performer. They are now “insiders”! They are seeing the musician’s vulnerable side.

Confident musicians know that they are free to make mistakes when they perform and that it will probably even endear the audience to them. As a result, these musicians likely make fewer mistakes, which makes them more confident.

Try practicing what you will do if you make a mistake.

You can:

• Do nothing. Don’t draw attention to the error at all, just keep going and keep it musical
• Just give a little smile. Then, as Taylor Swift would put it: Shake it off.
• If things go more seriously off track you can:
• Make a joke, or laugh with the audience.
• Or even invite the audience to sing along to “help you”.

Inside the Get Confident module in Musical U we invited members to share how they’ve embraced mistakes in the past or decided to handle them in future. Here are a few things they said.

“I give a smile, being amused by the things that happen in performance even if they never happened in practice. If it is a practice performance, these slips are valuable hints for the next practice session.”

“Before we start a performance, I try to connect with someone in the audience and get a read on how the whole audience is feeling. Then based on the error and audience, I use one of the strategies.”

“I smile and play. If the song ends well no one really cares”

Strategy Number 4: Keep a positive attitude

We all know the power of a positive attitude in life but it’s particularly vital as a musician – and particularly vulnerable to the negative impact that mistakes can have.

We talked about keeping it going – that’s much harder to do if part of your brain is occupied with kicking yourself for the mistake for the next five minutes!

If you let your attitude be impacted it will come through on your face and in your playing. The audience will know whether you’re still in the moment, passionate and engaged – or you’re frustrated, disappointed and distracted.

The most valuable tip I can give you here is to remember this fact: Live music is meant to be imperfect – that’s what people are there for!

These days more than ever before we have immediate access to pretty much all music ever recorded – and great sound systems that can practically replicate the experience of hearing it live. So when people bother to go to a live performance they are there to support the musicians and to experience something different. Not the carefully-prepared studio-recorded perfection and not the record they’ve heard a thousand times before.

They are there for the unique experience of that concert. Mistakes and imperfections are part of that experience, even if they’re not part of the “official, perfect” version of the music.

As we talked about before, making a mistake can actually create a powerful moment of connection with the audience, enhancing the experience for them rather than being a negative.

Remembering that live music is about the experience more than it’s about the exact perfection of each note can make it much easier to keep a positive attitude when mistakes arise.

So far we’ve been talking about recovering about mistakes “in the moment” while you’re performing. But this last point really applies in the longer term too. It’s vital that once the performance is done you keep a positive attitude and don’t dwell on the mistake.

Yes, mistakes can be valuable opportunities to learn and improve – that’s one of the good things about mistakes! But once you’ve asked yourself what you could learn and made plans to avoid that kind of mistake or handle it better in future, move on. Don’t waste time and energy in regret and don’t let that one mistake or disappointing performance slow you down or throw you off course. Get back to practice, look towards the next performance and keep moving forwards.

I’ll leave you with one more quote from our Get Confident module inside Musical U where a member shared a story of one performance that seemed to have gone badly due to mistakes…

“Part way into our performance two of us realized we couldn’t hear many of the others and we were playing too fast compared to many of the others. We felt we were doing terrible but couldn’t hear well enough to get back on track. We persevered and finished the number expecting to hear silence or even some booing at the end … but were completely surprised at the thunderous applause. We later heard a video of what we did and could hear our mistakes – but they were far from obvious. That experience made us realize that the audience enjoys live performance and does not make the critical judgement that we do.”

The post About Recovering From Mistakes appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/start-ear-training/
So, you are ready to start ear training, but unsure of what is the best approach. Get a great jump start with these recommendations from the Musical U team! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/start-ear-training/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/vocal-control-and-how-to-improve-yours/
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