Musicality World

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/ultimate-guide-to-interval-ear-training/
Musicians are often told they should “learn intervals”. But why? What is so important about intervals – and if you do want to learn them, how exactly do you do interval ear training? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/ultimate-guide-to-interval-ear-training/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/21st-century-music-careers-with-susan-de-weger/
As Notable Values Susan de Weger healed her own broken musical identity, she re-examined the whole music education and career system. In the process, she discovered that following her own path meant blazing the trail for others to create a new paradigm for 21st-century music careers. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/21st-century-music-careers-with-susan-de-weger/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/every-voice-deserves-heard/
Dr. Daniel K. Robinson believes that “It is the birthright of every human being to sing.” His greatest passion has become helping others claim this birthright. Over the past two decades, while maintaining his own performance career, Daniel has instructed thousands of voices: from beginners to touring professionals. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/every-voice-deserves-heard/

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.

This month, we implemented a fantastic new member dashboard to help you find the most important stuff within the site for you and also released the new Resource Packs for our instrument packs, this month on the topic of singing and audiation. Let’s dive in.

New Member Dashboard

Inside Musical U, there is a wealth of training material, discussions and all kinds of exciting stuff. After a week or two as a member, it’s easy to feel a bit overwhelmed and you remember all kinds of interesting stuff that you’ve seen – but it wasn’t always easy to find your way back to the most important things.

So this month we totally revamped the member homepage and replaced it with more of a “dashboard”. The idea is to try and fit all the most important stuff on just one screen.

We have our member profile. If we click through, we can view or edit the information that’s shown to other members about us and our musical life. On the profile page, you can see what instruments someone plays, what kind of skills they’re working on, their favourite genres of music, and all of the training they’ve done inside the site, as well as finding a link to their progress journal, where you can learn a lot more about how their training is going.

Then we have the news section, which is where we put any important updates about the site, as well as linking to our most recent weekly updates. Our community conductor, Stewart, always does a great job of making these fun and interesting every week. He has a real knack for pulling out fascinating music trivia and music history that brings life to these weekly updates, but it’s also a chance for us to just celebrate all of the member accomplishments in a given week.

Then over here on the community box, we have links to all the new discussions since you last visited the site. That’s quite a handy one if you just want to catch up on what’s been going on. You can also go straight to all the discussions you’ve started, the ones you’re following, or the ones you’ve just been involved with. If I take a look here, I should get a list of all the discussions I’ve contributed to inside the community.This is an easy way just to get back into the discussions you were having with other members. You can also see the recent activities, what members have been up to. Here’s one of our team members, Andrew, getting involved in the discussion for the Approaching Improvisation module, for example.

We also made it super easy to just pick up with your training. This part shows the most recent module you were working on and the most recent lesson. So you can go straight back into the last lesson you were working on inside Musical U and pick up where you left off.

Then just down below, we have links to your training plans. We have a very flexible planning system inside Musical U to help you figure out which training modules to use and how that integrates with the rest of your musical life. Here are easy links to view those training plans and edit them if you need to and then a link to your Progress Journal. As I said before, this is kind of your home to keep track of how your training is going, share with other members any insights or questions you have along the way, or get help from the team should you need it.

Then here we have the modules list. This is handy because you can take a quick look and see how you’ve done on the quizzes for a particular module and just at a glance see which ones are in progress and you can click to resume that module and finish it up.

Then finally, we have a box for the Instrument Packs. If you’re on an Instrument Pack membership for guitar, piano, bass, or singing, this is where you’ll find a link to that. That leads neatly onto our next big update in Musical U this month…

Resource Packs: Singing and Audiation

Our Instrument Packs in Musical U are a way to bridge the gap between the kind of core listening skills we really focus on and the day-to-day instrument practice you’re probably already doing. They give you an easy, concrete way to connect up those two worlds and put into practice the kinds of skills we teach at Musical U, such as playing by ear, improvising, and having freedom and creativity on your instrument. Here in the guitar pack, you can see there’s various discussions going on but there are also the Resource Packs released every month.

The latest one is for audiation and singing. Audiation is the skill of imagining music vividly in your head. Obviously, this is powerful for improvisation, so that you can just imagine something and then play it directly on your instrument. It’s also great for playing by ear and memorization and all kinds of other musical skills. The topic of this pack was “audiation and singing” and how you can use those two to really connect to your inner instinct for music with what you’re actually doing with your fingers on the guitar.

As always in our Resource Packs, we have a tutorial video of about 10-15 minutes. Then we have a quick reference guide with the top-line important stuff from the video to remember it by and any tab or detailed instructions you might need for the exercises. Then we have a few audio tracks to help you practice those exercises.

We won’t dive into the videos now but we do publish preview videos for every Resource Pack now on our YouTube channel. If you’re interested to get a peek inside and see what’s been going on in these Instrument Packs, please do head on over to YouTube where you can take a look at the Resource Packs for audiation and singing that came out this month.

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Thank you for joining me for this look at what’s new inside Musical U this month. We have our new snazzy member dashboard, which, based on feedback so far, is really helping people feel more organized and find their way around the site a bit more easily and goes straight to stuff that interests them most. We also have an exciting set of new Resource Packs for our instrument groups on guitar, piano, bass, and singing to help you use audiation, the skill of imagining music in your mind, to be a more free and creative musician on those instruments.

Thanks for watching and I hope to see you inside soon!

The post What’s New in Musical U: July 2017 appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-key-skills-musical/
Becoming a musician means much more than just learning to play an instrument. There are a wide variety of skills involved in learning to become a capable and versatile musician beyond mechanical abilities and understanding music theory. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-key-skills-musical/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-pick-the-perfect-song-to-fit-your-voice-5-tips/
In these heady days of universal musical access, singers can choose from a dizzying range of musical styles to sing. Singing in different genres can increase your vocal abilities and opportunities, but how do you know which styles best suit your own voice? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-pick-the-perfect-song-to-fit-your-voice-5-tips/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/what-is-musicality/
We use the word “musicality” a lot here at Musical U. But what exactly does it mean? Let’s take this opportunity to explore: what is musicality? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/what-is-musicality/

And that’s fine – eventually you get better at it!

The problem is that any audience that doesn’t consist of your mom and two best friends (if they’re not already in the band) rarely cares about your lack of experience and expects you to be exactly who you want to be from the first try. This is, of course, both frustrating and terrifying.

You know what usually helps? Help. No, it really does!

You need someone to tell you whether you sound good. Just ask. Embarrassed? Fair enough, but think of it this way: there’s no way in the world you’ll get good at music fast if you rely solely on your own senses (unless you’re someone like Mozart). Assuming you are not a rare prodigy, here are a few tips to help your progress:

1. People you know

Know any musicians? Asking them would be a good first step, of course. Especially the ones that are ahead of you. Asking the above-mentioned best friends or your relatives, however, can be a double-edged sword.

First, it’s a really good way to make yourself feel good if you expect to get mostly compliments. But that doesn’t really help you make your music better. If you’re easily pleased, your mom’s opinion would probably make you think you’re better than you actually are.

But asking people close to you to tell you what they think of your work is not an inherently bad idea.

For example, if your dad has been a hardcore stoner rock fan for the past twenty years and you’re trying to get that Kyuss sound, he may just be the perfect person to turn to. And if your friend Terry is a real jerk but you trust his judgment and taste in music, he may actually tell it like it is.

And if you’re scared your family members will give you a hard time or make fun of your music, you should probably run away and find a new family. No, please don’t do that.

2. Ask complete strangers

Years ago, a random guy stopped me on the street and handed me a set of headphones. “This is my music,” he said, “If you like it, I have some CDs you can buy.” I put the headphones on and immediately loved it. I ended up buying two of his albums, which I still listen to sometimes.

The thing is, I didn’t know this person. He wasn’t my friend. I didn’t owe him anything. I could have just refused and walked away without feeling bad about it, and he knew that. But I didn’t walk away, because I liked what he had created and since I opened up my wallet for it, he obviously got the feedback he was looking for. Impartiality is just one benefit of asking people you don’t know for their opinions.

The other benefit, of course, is that you don’t know them. The opinion of a random person on the street would probably have less emotional impact on you than that of a close friend – especially if it’s a negative one – and you can still get some good free advice. If you’re not the extroverted type, just think about bothering your family and friends with your music, and strangers suddenly become more approachable.

3. Ask online, duh

I mean, come on. These days, there is an overflowing abundance of online places where you can talk to people about anything. Drooble, of course, is the obvious pick if you’re looking for a large number of fellow musicians from different countries to ask about your new song, but there are plenty of options on the web with varying focus and different structures.

Just look for the right one or, if you’re feeling energetic today, hit all of them. What you’ll get is a variety of tastes, backgrounds, and viewpoints – which is exactly what you need, even if you’re not ready for it.

Anonymity is the perfect excuse for people to treat others horribly so if they hate your music, there’s a good chance they’ll let you know. And if they love it, they have no reason to be mean to a stranger.

Another good thing about online music communities is the context. People go to social networks and forums to write stuff and express their feelings and opinions. This means they’re willing to take the time to write an answer or comment and go into detail – if not to help you, simply to show off and try to convince others they’re smart.

Seriously, if you haven’t asked an online community by now, you literally have no excuse. Just do it now.

No, really, I’ll wait.

4. Paying for opinions is always an option

If you’re a fan of Karl Marx, you probably won’t understand this, but paying a person who’s working for himself to provide a service he says he’s good at can actually work wonders.

Contrary to what you might think, detailed feedback that makes real sense takes real time. A first listen is never enough and a good musician will take as much as is needed to dissect your song, point out what’s good about it, what makes it bad, and how you can make it better.

You know, listening to music and sharing your first impressions may seem like a pretty easy job that you can easily abuse, but it’s not. If you’ve ever met a musician in your life, you’ll know we take music very seriously.

Helping people become better musicians is what we do at Drooble, and we enjoy it immensely. But there’s no doubt that it’s also a great responsibility. Giving good, in-depth feedback is not a way to take people’s money. It’s a matter of pride and honor. As I often say to my friends, if I wanted to be rich, I wouldn’t be a musician. A good website I can recommend for this is Audiu – check it out and tell us about it on Drooble.

5. Just go for it!

Here’s the scariest, yet most effective tactic. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge. A leap of faith, if you will.

Whatever other people tell you, even if they’re right, you alone know what you’re trying to achieve. When all else fails, just go on stage and play the darn song.

People will either love it or hate it; at least you’ll know.

The worst that can happen is that you’ll have to do better next time, which is basically what musicians aim at every day.

The first time is always the hardest but it gets easier the more you do it. This sudden act of madness can lead to bravery, which is the first step to confidence. And if there is anything crowds like, it’s confidence. Well, that and good music, but the whole point is to find out how good yours is. In any case, one leads to the other so go out there, give it your best and people will appreciate it. In the words of the late Chris Cornell, to be yourself is all that you can do!

The post 5 Ways to Get Early Feedback in Your Career appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-funky-ones-what-makes-funk-guitar-what-it-is/
What makes a Funk guitarist? Great Funk guitarists follow the rhythm, and then find their spaces in which they can shine, dancing on top of the groove. They give funky personality to the all-mighty groove. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-funky-ones-what-makes-funk-guitar-what-it-is/