Musicality World

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/improve-your-musicality-with-audiation/
Being able to analyze music aurally and process everything you hear at once is a very important skill for a musician. Learning to hear more parts at once and comprehend what is happening in each of those parts simultaneously can be done with what’s called “audiation”. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/improve-your-musicality-with-audiation/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/children-music-lessons/
As a parent, you want your child to develop to the best of his or her abilities. So when it comes to enrolling your little one in sports or music classes, you may find yourself a little torn. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/children-music-lessons/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-love-your-own-singing-voice/
Learning how to sing is still a concept that crosses a lot of people’s minds, in a similar way to keeping fit or taking up a new hobby: we all want to do it as we know somehow it will benefit us. However, learning how to sing is often ruled out because it seems intimidating or just too challenging. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-love-your-own-singing-voice/

Open Your Ears to Musical U

At Musical U we are passionate about helping you express yourself in music. What appears as “natural” musicality is actually a combination of learnable skills – skills that are rarely taught in traditional music education.

We began with apps, moved on to publishing 1000 + and counting free articles in our blog, and over 40 Musical U learning modules on all aspects of musicality, ranging from ear training to getting confident.

But now we’re taking the next step.

Musicality training does take some time, and we know that you’re busy. But there are so many times during the day – commuting to work, waiting in line, even exercising at the gym – that could be put to effective use and move you forward in your drive to become a natural musician.

So we’ve pooled together the best minds in modern musicality to produce a fascinating series of audio episodes – a mix of interviews and teaching – so you can continue to receive inspiration and training, anytime, anywhere. Read more about this next step in your becoming more musical in Announcing: The Musical U Podcast!

A podcast is like an online radio show that you can listen to on-demand, whenever you want. And, as always, we keep putting the “U” in Musical U by reaching out to our email subscribers to give us their input, and with podcast previews and behind-the-scenes exclusives. Enhance your listening experience and sign up for Podcast Insiders for free.

Caroline Pennell Turns Yellow

Covers have been around forever, but YouTube has brought the art of the cover to new heights (and sometimes depths!). Popular “Voice” alum Caroline Pennell transforms Coldplay’s searing indie ballad “Yellow” into a haunting embrace, pulsating with hand drums and rolling acoustic guitars. Compare them, and you’ll learn much about musical form, instrumentation, and the process of producing in Before and After: Covering Coldplay.

Recording a new song requires a lot of decisions before committing any sounds to tape. With so many creative decisions, how can you possibly think about all the other aspects of recording? Who has that much time? Fortunately, websites like The Recording Revolution can show you how to record a song from scratch.

There are so many different options available once you decide that you are ready to finally record your new single or album. As we saw in this article, Caroline Pennell was able to make her mark through a single rather than a full album. Sonic Scoop talks more about the advantages of recording singles rather than full albums.

Caroline was able to get her start by being a competitor on The Voice. Competitions have also become a high-hype launch vehicle for classical musicians. But most of us will never get that big of a stage to showcase our talents. Without such a large platform, how can you make a name for yourself to start making a living with your music? Bach Tracks shares 10 Tips to making a living in music… without winning a competition.

Whenever we talk about cover songs, we spend a bit of time talking about how the structure of the song is often changed. This greatly changes the dynamics of a song and can bring in a listener’s attention… or cause them to change the station. Robin Wesley will reveal the secret to capturing the attention of the audience in less than 30 seconds.

Rhythm-me-this

Read this sentence in the stuffiest hoity-toity attitude you can muster: “Rhythmic regularity is firmly established by accenting certain pre-determined beats in the measure.”

Now once that is established, what happens when you throw the accent onto those other beats? Or even off the beat?

Now this: “RhythMIC reGUlarITy is firmLY estabLISHED by acCENTing cerTAIN pre-DEtermined beats IN the meaSURE.” Voilà, syncopation:

Syncopation brings rhythm to life. Even though it is everywhere, sometimes it’s hard to break it all down and dig into rhythmic goldmine in a way that’s useful. Take this fun approach in Playing Around the Beat: Syncopation.

And for a more indepth look, Get Rhythm: Syncopation.

Are you ready to practice syncopation on your instrument? It can often be difficult to translate music theory into your practice, especially with new concepts. But practicing your newfound knowledge will help to internalize the lessons and make it a part of your musical mastery! Jeff Rolka has great tips on how to practice syncopation:

Syncopation can be incorporated into music in many different fashions. A unique way of using syncopation on a stringed instrument is to mute the strings to create that “space” between the notes and get off the main beat. Learn more about this method with this muted strums tutorial from Ukulele Hunt.

How else can the stringed instrument player use syncopation in their music? How about through their strumming patterns? By varying your strum, the rhythm will naturally become syncopated and add interest to the music. To see how the experts have incorporated this, The Guitar Lesson has a tutorial showing how the guitar added syncopation to the Oasis song “Whatever”.

Where else can your new understanding of rhythm take you? How about into the world of composition? While standard classical music is typically fairly tame in the syncopation department, it can be quite flagrant in nearly every other form of music. This is especially true in pop, rock, jazz, and many other popular forms.

If you’re looking for a good start in the composition department, Oliver Lugg takes us through his guide to music composition.

Loopy

Looping has now been around now for a while, and many artists wow us with their ability to layer and control vast sound resources with nary a whine from the “band”.

However, did you know that beyond the effect, looping can be an amazing tool for learning and improving your musicianship on several fronts. Our guest author Noah Peterson (from Looping Live) demonstrates Learning by Repetition: How Musicians Can Improve with Looping.

”Nothing gets you better faster than listening to yourself.” We learned this in our article on looping. Becoming comfortable with hearing yourself play is difficult for many musicians, and can be hard to overcome. But recording your playing is so beneficial to your overall growth as a musician. Wired Guitarist explains why recording yourself leads to success.

Looping can be a very effective way of enhancing your practice sessions and become inspired once again. Musicians can often plateau, just like athletes, and can have a hard time progressing to the next stage in their growth.

What else can you do to break out of your routines and inspire new growth? Anne from Harp Mastery has some suggestions on creative music practice to help you grow.

A looping pedal isn’t the only pedal that can greatly enhance your creative juices. Piano players have three pedals at their disposal that make fantastic additions to their music. If you haven’t yet picked up the piano, it makes a fantastic second instrument! Here is PianoCub to talk about three pedal techniques that pianists need to know.

Are you ready to get started looping in your musical practice, but unsure of where to begin and how to use this new technology? Marty Music has some useful practice tips on looping pedals for guitarists:

Round and Round We Go

Looping your way into musical mastery? Helping an old song turn over a new leaf? Ready to “Turn the Beat Around” with syncopation?

The post Looping, Syncopation, Covering Coldplay, and MU Podcast appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/transcribe-like-music-pro-part-two-drums/
Music can be complex and that can make the task of transcribing it seem overwhelming! Fortunately learning to transcribe music can be broken down into several key components. It’s normally best to transcribe the drum part before anything else. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/transcribe-like-music-pro-part-two-drums/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/performing-live-show/
So you did all this crazy and amazing work setting up your show. There are now just a few things left to look out for in order to get the most out of your show—besides just being completely fierce on stage of course! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/performing-live-show/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learning-to-listen-lyrics-and-melodies/
When you listen to a song, what exactly are you listening to? What do you appreciate about that song? While songs range in complexity and there is usually more than one part to the songs we listen to, the part everyone hears and tends to focus on is the melody. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learning-to-listen-lyrics-and-melodies/

Here at Musical U we’re always looking for new and better ways to help you become more musical. Many of us spend hours a day with earbuds in, listening to our favourite music, maybe some ear training exercises to help you improve your skills as you listen, or maybe even an educational and entertaining podcast. This September we’re going to help you combine all three, with a new podcast from Musical U dedicated to helping you improve your skills to better play and enjoy the music you love.

Not sure what a podcast is? See “What is a Podcast?” section below.

For years I’ve been an avid podcast listener and always thought that a podcast could be a great way to help musicians with ear training and developing their musicality. But to do a podcast well takes a huge amount of work, and it wasn’t until now that the time felt right…

Finally we’re ready to do it, and I’ve been contacting all the top names and people I admire most to help us make the show as interesting, entertaining and valuable as possible.

Listen and Learn

The show will be a mix of interviews and teaching.

I’ll be interviewing some of the top names in modern musicality. The people behind the biggest websites and coolest products that help you feel more like a natural in music. We’ll be talking about their own musical breakthroughs and the ways they now help others succeed in their music training.

We’ll also be doing teaching episodes where we tackle a particular problem, such as “how do you know which chords go together?”, “what’s the best way to master syncopation?” or “what’s the point of the circle of fifths?”.

Of course we’ll be keen to hear from you, the listener, about what topics you’d like to hear us cover and who you’d like us to interview.

In fact, we’ve already been asking our email subscribers to give us their input, and providing them with sneak-peek behind-the-scenes info and exclusives. Want in? You can sign up for Podcast Insiders for free here.

Why a podcast?

From our original mobile apps, to downloadable training MP3s, to making sure Musical U works great for our members on mobile, we’ve always been dedicated to providing musicality training that’s flexible and which you can do in short sessions at your convenience.

Podcasts offer us a way to provide you with useful education in moments that are otherwise wasted. Maybe it’s a long drive, a gym session, or an unexpected delay. Any time your ears are free and you have your mobile device and earphones handy, you can listen, learn, and expand your own musicality.

I’m not naturally someone who puts himself out there, so initially, I wasn’t keen to be the voice of our podcast. Not least because I have mental hangups around the way I pronounce my “S”s! After doing monthly live Q&A sessions for Musical U members for two years I feel a bit more comfortable, and as we’re always telling our members, you shouldn’t let your fears of performance hold you back from your true potential. I’m using many of the tactics we teach in our Get Confident module to help me be comfortable and confident hosting the show. We’ll see what feedback we get, but so far I’m absolutely enjoying the chance to talk to amazing people on our interview episodes and hopefully my voice won’t be too off-putting to the listeners…

Why Listen?

As I said above, the show is going to be a mix of interviews and teaching. The interviews will let you peek inside the lives of successful musicians and music educators, see that they suffered from many of the same insecurities and limitations that you might feel, and learn from the insights that let them overcome them. They’ll also introduce you to new ideas, methodologies and resources to apply in your own musicality training.

The teaching episodes will bring the same kind of high quality tutorials and guides that we regularly publish here on the website to your earbuds in a denser and more convenient form. We might even sneak in a bit of ear training!

The most passionate musicians are always seeking new ways to improve their skills, and we’re hoping that our new podcast will find a valuable slot in your own life, to help you become more musical faster.

How to get the new podcast

The new podcast will be launching at the start of September. If you want to be notified when it launches just sign up for Podcast Insiders:

→ Sign up for Podcast Insiders

Once it’s live we’ll also be adding easy subscribe links to the site here so you can download it in iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Here at Musical U we’re super excited about this new podcast and the chance to bring you some of the brightest minds and most interesting ideas in modern musicality. We hope you’ll join us when we launch the show in just a few weeks!

The post Announcing: The Musical U Podcast! appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/retired-shouldnt-slow-3-reasons-practicing/
Retirement is an interesting time in life. Much like starting high school or heading off to college, it’s a new road that is paved with numerous possibilities. Here are 3 reasons why you consider them learning an instrument! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/retired-shouldnt-slow-3-reasons-practicing/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/jazz-improvisation-ear-training-5-tips-from-chris-cooke-learn-jazz-faster/
The first and perhaps most important thing for any musician to do is to understand that music is an artform of the ear.There’s this misconception in jazz that ear training is just one separate part of your practicing. If you’re a beginner improviser, you’re actually in a great place. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/jazz-improvisation-ear-training-5-tips-from-chris-cooke-learn-jazz-faster/