Learning to recognise notes by ear can seem overwhelmingly difficult. There’s one way to make it much simpler though: because most notes come from the scale the music was written with, learning to recognise the notes of the scale by ear lets you quickly narrow things down to the most likely right notes. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/scale-degree-recognition-piano-bass-guitar-singing
Inside Musical U we have modules dedicated to the solfa (a.k.a. solfege) approach to scale degree recognition, as well as intervals and extending the skill to full melodies.
In this month’s Instrument Packs our Resident Pros tackled this subject and made it easy for MU members to apply this powerful skill directly on guitar, piano, bass and singing.
It’s always fascinating to see how each of our Resident Pros tackles the same topic from different angles and this month was no exception!
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/3-sports-ideas-help-music/
There are a lot of parallels between training for a sport and training for music. Some of these are obvious: you need determination, a clear goal in mind, and careful, regular practice. We’re going to look at 3 ideas from the world of sports which musicians can use to boost their chances of successfully reaching their goals.https://www.musical-u.com/learn/3-sports-ideas-help-music/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/who-moved-the-tonic-part-1-hearing-key-changes/
The tonic gives you most of the information you need to play and/or transcribe a melody without written music. It tells you the key, the scale, the accidentals, the potential chord progressions and more. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/who-moved-the-tonic-part-1-hearing-key-changes/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-do-i-know-what-chord-comes-next/
Chord progressions are often thought about in terms of the chord roles in a particular key, rather than the exact chords played. There are music theory rules for what chords can or should follow each other, and these are helpful to know! 🎹🎼🎶 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-do-i-know-what-chord-comes-next/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/10-ways-to-find-more-time-for-music-this-year/
We all wish there were just a couple more hours in the day. Fortunately we have collected these 10 top tips to help you find more time for music un your life. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/10-ways-to-find-more-time-for-music-this-year/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/finding-tonic-in-minor-keys/
As we have seen, identifying the tonic note in minor keys consists of recognising the key is minor, and using the notes of the melody and harmony along with certain “clues” to identify the tonic note. It’s important to know about common minor-key cadences to help you tune your ear into the role of the tonic in these harmonies. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/finding-tonic-in-minor-keys/
How many thousands of times have you practiced that Locrian lick, or singing that one line over your break, that boss polyrhythm, or that one passage in that Bach invention? We keep thinking that if we practice it enough, somehow we will get better.
But the latest in learning research shows that too much repetition bores the brain and that learning is actually more effective when we try something new. The Learning Coach Gregg Goodhart encourages us to shake things up and “feel the blearn.” And Jennifer Foxx strategizes the most effective practice attitudes to maximize your musical growth.
Challenge yourself to write a new superhero song. Buy yourself a new ukulele. Learn a new scale.
And check out all the new happenings inside Musical U:
New Ways to Learn
As a Musical U team, we love what listening skills have done for us in our musicality. And so we are always listening to our members to find new and better ways to help them in their musical journeys.
We’ve found that although we have a wide-ranging selection of rhythm modules, some our members have difficulty connecting with the beat, the underlying pulse that measures all the other aspects of rhythm. So to close this gap, we’ve added a new rhythm practice module, “Connect with the Beat”, to build a rock-solid foundation to all your rhythmic studies.
As the rhythm of life seems to move faster and faster, it’s important to maximize efficiency in our music learning. Jennifer Foxx gave a fantastic masterclass in effective practicing to help us all get more out of those precious music times.
Hearing how pitches fit into the scale can greatly accelerate our abilities to play by ear, improvise, transcribe, and sight-read. Our Resident Pros have released the latest Resource Packs helping guitar players, bass players, singers, and pianists to apply their scale degree recognition skills to their instruments.
And if you haven’t heard by now, we are super-excited about our new upcoming podcast series of interviews and teaching with the greatest minds in modern musicality.
One of the biggest blocks to creative songwriting is taking yourself too seriously! Rather than freaking out if your first song isn’t the next top hit or classical masterpiece, songwriting skills much more easy to grow when you’re having fun.
Many top songwriters stress that “inspiration” is not the most important thing to being a successful songwriter. You can’t count on inspiration to take hold when you need to work through a song, but it can help to gather pieces of your song through different activities.
So many believe that inspiration has to come to them. But you can make conscious choices that open up this flow. Deborah Holland explains more about kick-starting inspiration.
Melodies are the most important element of your new song. A great melody can take the listener on a journey, inspiring them and reaching into the depths of human emotions and motivation in ways that very few things can. The element of a melody that captures the listener’s attention is often called the “hook”. Learn more about writing hooks with Production Music Live.
What about chord progressions? Are there standard chord progressions that we can find throughout music to inspire songwriting? The short answer is yes! Many chord progressions are very standard and appealing to the listener’s ear. Learning these progressions will certainly help jump start your songwriting or serve as a starting point for changing the progression. Sarah Spencer from Song Fancy explains more about 4 quick and dirty chord progressions for songwriters.
The ideas generated from the songwriting challenges may not lead to “The Song” that you desired to write. But, it is a valuable exercise to generate ideas and start gathering parts of songs for later. How? As much as we hear about songs that were written in one sitting, more songs are developed over time through the process of re-writing songs. Corey Stewart from All About Songwriting explains the joys of rewriting your songs.
New Music from Five Ancients
Sometimes something new is something very old indeed.
With all the emphasis in traditional music education on learning major and minor scales, we often lose sight of the fact that a huge percentage of all music can be performed with only five notes – and it’s been that way for at least 50,000 years!
Learning the patterns of the pentatonic scale is one thing, but where do you go from there? Guitarists have a specific challenge to link the various CAGED boxed patterns into a continuous flow up and down the fretboard. Master Guitar Academy has this video to get you started on practicing the minor pentatonic scale for guitar.
What limits does the pentatonic scale have? Well, you are really only limited by your imagination! To get the most out of this scale, you need to explore you to use it musically, and not just as a pattern. Discover eight different ways to use the pentatonic scale more musically in this podcast from Learn Jazz Standards.
As we learned, there is a difference in the major and minor pentatonic scale, even though both can be used for improvisation over the same chord progression. How does that work? Effective Music Practice explains this cool phenomenon of modal interchange.
The pentatonic scale is a great way to easily up your improvisation game. It works so well over many other chord progressions and phrases that you can’t ignore it! So, how have some of the musical masters employed this scale? 10 Minute Jazz Lesson talks about Herbie Hancock’s pentatonic pattern from his solo in “Tell Me A Bedtime Story”.
A New Ukulele
What if learning a new instrument was easy?
The recent astronomical surge in popularity of the once-humble ukulele proves that an instrument can sound good almost right out of the box – with just a little instruction.
So did you recently receive a uke for your birthday? Picked one up as an impulse buy? Walk past the racks of ukuleles at the music store, thinking, “What if…?”
It is so great to get started on a new instrument! Colleen reveals a few of the basic chords. And now you are ready to expand your knowledge and break out into the wide world of ukulele chords! To keep your path to Uku mastery going, learning the major, minor, and seventh chords is absolutely essential. Uku Guides teaches these basic ukulele chords to get you started.
Now that you have gotten the basics of your ukulele down, it’s time to break into playing a song! But don’t restrict yourself to songs that were written for ukulele. The instrument is versatile enough to play a whole range of music that will fit your musical interests. Katie from One Music School shows how to play “Before You Start Your Day” by twentyonepilots.
That song was a blast to learn! Are you ready to expand your knowledge of the ukulele into a wider array of songs? This guide to 37 easy ukulele songs for beginners from Acoustic Bridge is the perfect place to continue growing your repertoire of ukulele tunes.
When you become passionate about an instrument, there is no better way to dive deeper into the history and technique than through podcasts. So much information is conveyed in a short amount of time… and you can listen to them anywhere. For a great podcast that is focused on the ukulele, check out OokTown for some in-depth knowledge on this fascinating instrument!
New Attitude
Hey, isn’t music supposed to be fun? Launching into something new may not only be a blast, but also refresh your attitude towards the learning you were slogging through.
So click “buy now” on that new ukulele, learn some new pentatonic patterns, open a new flood of songwriting creativity, and open up to a new world of musicality with a Musical U module, masterclass, or podcast.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/developing-your-rhythmic-ears/
Rhythm is the gas in the music engine that makes your body move and your head nod. It makes you want to twerk, mosh, and all the other crazy things you do when you feel that backbeat nice and solid. As a musician, it’s crucial for you to have a firm understanding of the basics behind the concepts of rhythm. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/developing-your-rhythmic-ears/
Hi, this is Christopher Sutton, the Founder and Director of Musical U, and I’d love to share with you what’s new in Musical U this month. You can watch the video below or read on to learn more. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/whats-new-musical-u-august-2017/
We had three exciting new developments at Musical U this month. The first is a brand new module to help you connect with the beat in music. The second was our monthly masterclass this month with Jennifer Foxx talking about mindful practicing and how to kick those bad practice habits to the curve.
And, the third was new Resource Packs for guitar, bass, piano and singing on the topic of scale degree recognition and helping you to identify notes by ear and apply that directly on your instrument.
Let’s dive in!
WAIT! One more thing. We are launching a podcast in September. If you haven’t already heard about this, it’s going to be interviews and teaching, all on the topic of musicality.
I’m super excited about the new show, and we’ve been recording episodes in advance. We’ll be launching in just a couple of weeks now.
If you want the inside scoop and behind-the-scenes information, bonus content, all that good stuff – or if you just want to be notified as soon as it comes out, please head to musical-u.com/podcast-insiders and you can sign up for insider exclusives and all of the full information about this new show.
It’s going to be totally free, you can listen on your phone, tablet or on your computer, listen at your convenience and it’s going to be a fantastic way to dive deep into the world of musicality and how to develop your own skills to feel more like a natural musician.
Thanks for joining me for this look inside what’s new inside Musical U this month, and I hope to see you inside soon.
Hi, this is Christopher Sutton, the Founder and Director of Musical U, and I’d love to share with you what’s new in Musical U this month.
You can watch the video below or read on to learn more.
We had three exciting new developments at Musical U this month. The first is a brand new module to help you connect with the beat in music. The second was our monthly masterclass this month with Jennifer Foxx talking about mindful practicing and how to kick those bad practice habits to the curve.
And, the third was new Resource Packs for guitar, bass, piano and singing on the topic of scale degree recognition and helping you to identify notes by ear and apply that directly on your instrument.
Let’s dive in!
New Rhythm Module: Connect with the Beat
We already have several rhythm modules at Musical U, including ones to help you learn the basics of rhythm, learn how to use speaking methods to get rhythms right in music, practicing, getting rhythms correct on your instrument or when clapping and to read rhythmic notation, as well as applying it to real music.
So why a new rhythm module? Well, what we found was that some members were coming in and although the concepts were clear from what our What is Rhythm and Tempo and the Beat modules, they then found there was a step missing when they went onto our Rhythm Practice module. In particular, they had difficulty finding the beat reliably in music.
Everything we do with rhythm depends on having a sense of the beat or the pulse of music, and so we’ve created a brand new module called Connect with the Beat. This new module helps you to connect with that beat in music to relate it to different instruments and to do exercises to help you connect with the beat in real music.
For example, there’s a walkthrough for Eye of the Tiger, a song I’m sure you know and then I think we go onto Taylor Swift. This whole module is about making sure when you hear a song, you can tune into where the beat is, clap along and then use that as a foundation for all of your rhythm skills.
We’re really excited to add this new module to the rhythm section of Musical U because it’s going to fill in that gap and help our members who are a bit more unsure about rhythm to get a rock solid sense of the beat before they move onto the more advanced material.
New Masterclass: Mindful Practicing
Every month at Musical U, we run a live masterclass, and this month we were delighted to have Jennifer Foxx from musiceducatorresources.com come and present on the topic of mindful practicing.
Jennifer is a real expert on helping students to get more out of their practice time and whether you’re a 13-year-old learning piano for the first time or a 30-year-old hobbyist guitar player, whatever stage you’re at with music, making the most out of our practice time is one of the most important things if we want to really reach our goals. I was so happy to have Jennifer with us to present both the problems and the solutions. Let’s have a quick peek.
Clock watchers. Clock watchers pretend to practice with the wrong reason and that’s basically to pass the required time. I know this happens a lot with younger students and that’s why I tell my parents that when they ask how long I want students to practice, I typically tell them, “You know what? I would rather them set practice goals because practice goals are going to be more efficient than watching the clock”. You can waste a lot of time say in 30 minutes of practice and get absolutely nothing done if you’re not focused.
Musical U members now have access to the full recording of this masterclass, as well as the helpful handout Jennifer prepared with all of the resources and links mentioned.
Resource Packs: Scale Degree Recognition
The third big addition this month with new Resource Packs for all of our Instrument Packs in Musical U. This month the topic was scale degree recognition. We already have a training module on scale degree recognition to help you to spot different notes from the scale by ear. Inside Musical U, we use the solfa system which calls those notes do, re, mi and so on but it’s exactly the same if you want to call them 1, 2, 3 or Bob, Jeff and Freddy. It’s just about giving an identity to each note of the scale.
That module works great for helping people develop the core skill of recognizing the notes of the scale. But, this month we had our Resident Pros prepare tutorials to help you apply that directly on your instrument.
Let’s take a quick peek at the tutorial video Clare Wheeler put together for our singers.
This week’s subject is learning scale degrees which is a great topic to continue on from the audiation and pentatonic videos that I’ve already done. It uses a lot of the same ideas. Essentially, we’re just taking one step further. This is great for getting your starting note if you sing in a choir or you’re a soloist. There’s no magic to it. It’s not this mystical thing that some people can just do. It’s all about knowing your scale degrees.
It’s really imperative for sight-reading. I think that in your module for sight-reading you learned about key signatures and stuff and you can learn all the theory you want but it’s going to be no good to you if you can’t find the note that you’re looking for.
And of course, my favorite thing is always how to use these things in improvisation.
As always that tutorial video is accompanied by a Quick Reference guide with all the key information and exercises taught, and some practice MP3s to help you really drill these exercises and practice them until they’re second nature.
So those were the three big additions to Musical U this month:
Our new rhythm module to help you connect with the beat
Our monthly masterclass, the recording of that masterclass, which was on the topic of “mindful practicing”.
Our new Resource Packs for singing, piano, bass and guitar on the topic of Scale Degree Recognition.
WAIT! One more thing. We are launching a podcast in September. If you haven’t already heard about this, it’s going to be interviews and teaching, all on the topic of musicality.
I’m super excited about the new show, and we’ve been recording episodes in advance. We’ll be launching in just a couple of weeks now.
If you want the inside scoop and behind-the-scenes information, bonus content, all that good stuff – or if you just want to be notified as soon as it comes out, please head to musical-u.com/podcast-insiders and you can sign up for insider exclusives and all of the full information about this new show.
It’s going to be totally free, you can listen on your phone, tablet or on your computer, listen at your convenience and it’s going to be a fantastic way to dive deep into the world of musicality and how to develop your own skills to feel more like a natural musician.
Thanks for joining me for this look inside what’s new inside Musical U this month, and I hope to see you inside soon.
