Author: musicalitywrld

You’re probably imagining total unmusical chaos, right? You might be surprised by what’s possible…

Today we’re talking with Davin Youngs, founder of Davin Youngs Voice, Chicago Circle Singing and the VOXUS Experience. Davin is a remarkable singing educator and although (as you’ll hear in this episode) he doesn’t much care about pedagogy for the sake of pedagogy, he does actually have a fascinating, unusual and in my opinion wonderful approach to helping people learn to sing and express themselves with their voice.

In this conversation we talk about:

• How group improvised singing can work even if the participants aren’t trained to improvise – or sing!
• Why focusing on what “sounds good” is not necessarily the right way to improve as a singer.
• How someone who grew up as a natural singer ended up specialising in helping those who don’t feel natural at all to find their authentic voice and start expressing themselves through singing.

We were really happy to have the chance to speak with Davin and learn more about his innovative projects. There were a ton of useful insights and ideas in this conversation, whether you consider yourself “a singer” or not.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Davin Youngs Voice
• Circle Singing
• VOXUS Experience
• Jeanie LoVetri’s Somatic Voicework
• Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs Workshop

Transcript

Christopher: Welcome to the show, Davin. Thank you for joining us today.

Davin: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Christopher: So can we begin with a little bit about your own background story in music? How did you first get started singing?

Davin: Well, that’s kind of a tricky question, because it feels like it’s something I’ve always done, and honestly, I think a lot of people who associate themselves as singers feel that way. It’s kind of a part of their identity, a part of their existence, whether they do it in front of people, or not. But I grew up with the ability to use my voice routinely in a church setting, and so from a very, very young age I was in front of people singing, specifically at church, but then early on in voice lessons and then at school and musical productions and choir and so forth.

So singing, specifically, has — as long as I can remember, it’s been a part of what I do and who I am. But would say some of the most, some of the most influential parts of that were leading people and singing in front of my small town, rural church experience and then some of the opportunities I got in school choir just participating in making music with what became some my closest friends and the choir director at the time, who was an incredible mentor to me.
So it’s really an essential and identity-associated part of my story and something that’s always been a part of who I am.

Christopher: And, was that something that was in your household growing up, too? Do you come from a musical family?

Davin: Yeah. My whole family participates in music in one way or the other and my mom, specifically, probably has the least natural ability out of any of us, but she was the great support system and the person who would drive us to music lessons and attend all of our concerts and take way too many pictures and hold the tape recorder up when we used tapes to record my lessons, etcetera. So it was something that was very much supported in the community around me, and my family didn’t pursue it. No one in my family pursued it to the level that I have, but they’ve all participated and continued to participate in music in one way, shape or form.

Christopher: So it sounds like it definitely came naturally from an early age. Was it clear to you throughout that you were destined to be a singer?

Davin: Well, yes. (Laughs) And I can’t say that it hasn’t been, you know, filled with all sorts of existential crises along the way. But you know, I really — where I am in life right now, I don’t look at being a singer as vocation. I look at it as more of a, kind of grand calling, a human identity, and when I can think about singing like that I know that that’s always been my calling. It’s always been — from my earliest age, it’s always been part of what I was supposed to do, to use my voice beyond the spoken word and so it seems like that when I can understand singing like that, it is part of what’s always supposed to have been for me.

But when I look at it as a vocation, you know, when I was quite young I landed in a private voice lesson setting where I studied classical singing styles really early on. I started at the age of 11 and I had a lot of success doing that. I was a naturally gifted operatic baritone when I was very young and I had success winning competitions and I received a lot of affirmation for singing in this, sort of, heroic style and I pursued that in college with the intention of beginning an opera singer, and that’s when you can, like, cue existential crisis number one as happens to many of us in college.

Davin: (Laughs) I landed in a fantastic conservatory and was able to study with a premier pedagogue and I just walked away feeling like I didn’t want to be an opera singer, and it was a really difficult time in that I had put all these years and all this effort into learning specifically classical singing and that’s when I started to really question, like, “What am I actually supposed to do with my voice?”

Christopher: Hm. That’s fascinating, because I think up until that point, your story sounds like the background story of someone who just became a professional singer, and I don’t mean just in the sense of diminishing the importance of that with the grand career you can have as a singer, but you are someone who now aside from singing also is a very influential educator in the world of singing, and I think it’s unusual to hear from someone who was on such a — I suppose — such a singing-focused path who is now so broad in how they help others to sing. I’d love to hear how that existential crisis resolved and led you to this different direction for your calling.

Davin: Well, it hasn’t resolved, but that was just the first of many.

Christopher: Let’s say “how it developed”.

Davin: No, I think that — yeah, sure. No, I think that — so I think for a lot of people who participate in music in maybe a hobby-like setting and then they look at people who do it professionally, who earn money — and when I say professionally, I strictly mean, like, make some money making music. There are an incredible amount of variations in terms of professionalism in making music, and by the way, it doesn’t always have to do with skill, either. That’s an important thing to note. There are a lot of people that make money doing music that aren’t necessarily the most skilled musicians and there are a lot of people who are incredibly skilled who never make a dime.

So there are a lot of systems in place, especially around music education that point — can tend to point — a person in a specific direction. So in the western musical tradition, especially the academic tradition, most institutions are based in musical theater and classical singing styles and some jazz. You’ll find jazz. There are very, very few institutions that educate on any sort of other styles, whether that be popular music or world music — I use that term begrudgingly, but, you know, styles that come from different ethnic groups around the world — and so it — the path that I took is a very natural path in terms of our educational systems, but in hindsight, what I realized is that although I don’t regret any of that, as it led to where I am today, I wish the systems would have enabled me to explore vocally more because — and I don’t know that I would have, quite honestly, because I was having a lot of success doing what I was doing, but when I think about singing as a means or as a way of exploring my identity, I’m so much more than that one style of music and so I think that was the first time I really encountered that when I — as one does when they’re 21 years old, was in college when I started to go, “Okay. What’s the life I want to create for myself if it involves music and singing?” and, specifically, the path of classical singer wasn’t what I wanted to do and so I think if you look at any professional musician, there are key moments in their lives like that, and if they haven’t had those, they probably haven’t developed much as an artist, because it’s a essential part of becoming a more realized human being but a fully capable artist, is to really question your education, question your path, what you’ve been doing. So it has not in any way been a direct path, and I still feel like it’s a zig-zag all the time.

Christopher: I’m sure that’s reassuring to a lot of our listeners to hear. So when you realized that the classical path maybe wasn’t right for you, how did you go about exploring and zig-zagging and broadening, from there?

Davin: Well, it’s, of course, a long story, and I won’t dig into the external stuff as much, but just to say that I actually went and worked in an office. I worked non-profit arts administration work. I didn’t pursue professional singing. I did little bits. I sang in professional choirs on the side and I taught, because I had a degree that, you know, allowed me to say I could do that, but if you fast-forward a number of years, I was introduced to — I returned to the Oberlin Conservatory for a symposium on contemporary commercial music and it was — and that was very, very unique for Oberlin, which was a strictly strictly classically driven vocal school.

There’s a jazz program there, but that’s it, and so at that symposium I met a woman named Jeanie Lovetri, who has been a pedagogue for many years who’s operated within these systems that are so classically oriented and kind of been a voice of questioning throughout, saying, you know, a lot of people look at these teaching methods or these methodologies as superior, but we also know that we have artists throughout time who have created years and years of music healthfully and with much success and we don’t know how they’re doing what they’re doing — or, that’s not actually true. She’s saying we actually do know how they’re doing what they’re doing, but a lot of us aren’t teaching to that. Scientists told us we — there is enough contemporary science to know.

And so that experience was super transformative for me, because I realized that physiologically my technique, a lot of the stuff I had been working so hard on for so many years was actually why I felt so confused as a singer. I wasn’t able to functionally make some of the sounds that made, that felt more authentic to me as a singer.

Christopher: That’s really interesting. So can you give us an example of the kind of insight or breakthrough you had after discovering there was this other way to think about learning to sing?

Davin: Yeah. I mean, the bottom line is, is that a lot of teachers teach singing in terms of sound, and they teach singing in terms of what they think sounds good and that — honestly, a lot of systems have supported that, and a lot of people don’t even know that they’re doing it, but the problem with what sounds good is it’s not always what’s functionally most free for the singer, and so that really — that seems basic. When you say to most people, when people go into my private studio space and I say to them, “You know, I’m really listening for what’s going on in your throat when you make sound,” people kind of look at me like, “Duh.”

Christopher: (Laughs)

Davin: But I’m — what I’m saying is, is that not everyone does that, and they don’t always know that they don’t do it, but when we make sounds, there is actual physical manifestation of a sound. There’s something happening in your throat and when we can learn to hear the function of it we can respond to the sound with exercises that would encourage the singer to sing with more physical freedom, and physical freedom always translates into a more beautiful sound, always, because it’s the body that makes the sound.

So meeting Jeanie was really the first time I had ever heard anyone say that, and it was the first time I ever heard anyone do exercises that didn’t sound good and I started to understand more fully that the exercise is the stimulus and the way in which the person sings aftwerwards is the response. But the stimulus is so essential, and so if we’re doing sounds all the time that we think sound good, it might be an improper stimulus. Does that make sense?

Christopher: It does make sense. I wonder, could you give us an example from your own experience or with a student of a particular thing, where you could hear, you know, their throat wasn’t quite working right and you could do an exercise to help them free that up.

Davin: Yeah. So in somatic voice work and in functional vocal training, the paramount piece is what we call, “register,” and register for a singer is typically — and this is probably pretty common terminology — is chest register and head register, and in men’s voice sometimes we call it falsetto, and there are people that would argue that head register and falsetto are two different things, but for right now, I’m just going to use them interchangeably.

And then the way in which those registers are able to work together is mix, mixing the voice. So if you were to google, you know, singing technique, especially around any sort of commercial styles, you would probably hear something along those lines. The thing is, is you’d probably also hear a lot about breath and resonance and a lot of other stuff and all of that is potentially important, but it’s not as important as register, because register refers to the ways in which the vocal chords actually close. They come together and that’s the manifestation of the sound. That’s where the sound begins.

So if I’m able to hear that a singer comes in and there’s an imbalance in registration– and that imbalance usually looks like one of three things: too much chest, too much head, or caught in a mix. That’s what most of us experience, myself included, and this is after years of working with Jeanie, where I was actually — I used to sing with a very chest-dominant sound. It was super heavy, it would get really woofy on top, dark, and it’s what people liked, it’s what they were impressed by, but it didn’t feel good when I made the sound, and especially when I sang more contemporary pop, it just wasn’t appropriate. It sounded, you know, like an opera singer trying to sing pop music.

And so in working with Jeanie I really was able to create a better, lighter mix and now I sing much more successfully with a contemporary pop sound in a light, what I would call a light chest mix and I like to sing R&B and pop and rock and so that’s, those are the dominant sounds that you hear. So specifically, in terms of exercise, I — there are a million options, but the exercises need to encourage the singer to go one of those different directions and the most exciting part is, is that the journey never ends, because we’re always out of balance, you know, we’re always trying to create some better balance in terms of the way in which our voice functions, and so for me, I haven’t been feeling very well, lately. I’ve had some illness floating around and so my voice feels so out of whack, right now, but the good news is, is that when I get healthy I have a series of exercises that I can go through to kind of bring things back into balance.

Christopher: Hm. What I love about that is that it’s very, kind of, step-by-step and practical, and I think singing, maybe more than any other instrument, is so wrapped up in myths and confusion, and this idea that, you know, you’ve just got to do it naturally and if it doesn’t come naturally, you’re not a singer, and, you know, a lot of people can feel like, you know, learning to sing is beyond them, and it’s, kind of, this mystical thing that you’ve got to have a gift to even begin, and, from what you’ve described there, it sounds a lot more, kind of, scientific and analytical, and, you know, if there’s a problem, we’ll address it and we’ve got exercises to help us do that.

Davin: Totally, and that takes all the pressure off the singers. That’s the beauty of working with a teacher who can listen functionally, is that the objective is to help you make the sound with more freedom. Now, that is not to discount the fact that singing is an incredibly vulnerable act and it takes a lot of bravery just to stand up in front of someone and use your voice. It doesn’t discount the fact that there’s a lot of psychological and spiritual and emotional baggage that comes up when you sing, but it takes the pressure off of necessarily fixing all that first, because that’s going to naturally come forth.

It happens with anything we do with the body, whether that be yoga, athletics — you know, there’s all this stuff that we carry around with us that’s a part of our story. A lot of it gets trapped in our throat. That’s really an important component, but you know what? I’m not a therapist. I’m a teacher of singing, and so my first objective is to lead you into the experience of making as free and as easy a sound in as most efficient a way possible, and from there we can see what comes up, but I love that about functional training, because I used to teach with a lot of metaphor, you know, asking people to sing like a tree. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but you do hear that a lot, and it doesn’t mean anything. It potentially means something to someone, potentially. Potentially I could tell you to sing like a tree and you could have a positive experience, but it doesn’t mean something specific for your throat, and that’s what functional training does, is, it allows a singer into a specific experience of making a specific type of sound as well as they’re able to.

Christopher: So we were introduced by Meagan Nixon, a former guest on the show, and I’m so thankful to her for making the introduction, because when I looked at your websites, I just found it so refreshing and enlightening, because you have this quite pragmatic, analytical, down-to-earth, let’s-figure-out-the-problem-and-solve-it kind of approach to teaching singing, but at the same time, you’re not a boring scientist in a lab. You actually talk, at the same time, a lot about the spiritual side of things and having an authentic voice and how people can have a very deep and meaningful experience through singing, and, you know, that’s not a combination you often find out there.

Davin: Well, it’s so important to me. I literally was just in exchange with a fellow voice teacher yesterday, and I kind of facetiously asked her if she cared about pedagogy and she responded, “You know, I don’t think I actually do,” and I responded, “You know what? Good, because I don’t think I do, either.”

The thing is, I only care about it as a means to an end. I only care about it as an opportunity to lead a human into a more fully realized experience of themselves.

There are other people who really love pedagogy for the sake of pedagogy, and I don’t discount — that has — I mean, we have to have those people, that’s how we learn, but I think me, specifically, the reason I sing is to feel more alive, to feel more human, and so from a teaching and leading and coaching standpoint, the thing that’s most important to me is to bring, draw people into that act, and fortunately, I have some understanding of pedagogy that allows me to do that, as well.

Christopher: You have a fascinating project called, “The Chicago Singing Circle,” which is maybe a great example of your work in that area. It’s been running, I think, monthly for two years, now, and you welcome anybody to come along and take part in improvised group singing. Now, improvisation and singing are two things that I know a lot of people in our audience are probably feeling, even just at the mention of them, they’re probably feeling a bit nervous.

You know, improvisation in music is putting yourself out there. It’s scary if you don’t know how to do it. Singing is something that, as we touched on before, a lot of people feel like they’ve either got a natural flair for it and it comes easily, or they aren’t a natural singer and they’re just not gonna do it. How does that work? Is this something for advanced singers, only, that they can show up and take part in improvised group singing?

Davin: No, absolutely. I mean, literally anyone, regardless of whether they feel successful as a singer in any way, we encourage them and welcome them into our group. You know, after I met Jeanie and worked and studied somatic voice work, I think, for about two years, I had this urge to kind of explore my own voice with this newfound functional freedom, and so I learned about a workshop at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York with the famous musician, Bobby McFerrin that was all about improvised singing, and that’s kind of his, uh, his, he has spent years working at his successful improvisation, and so I attended this workshop over a week, and you literally just improvise and sing for a week and the workshop starts with about 180 singers and it slowly gets smaller throughout the week, but this was an incredibly pivotal point for me, because as someone who felt stylistically confused, I realized that I had all of these sounds and all of this opportunity at the ready and I just needed the freedom to be able to explore that, and so I left that workshop learning these methods of improvisation and brought that back to Chicago and happened to have a friend that had just moved here who is an expert at this, as well,and we started these, servicing the gatherings, these monthly gatherings, and essentially what happens is, we lead people into a space through exercises, through games that are traditional games of improvisation, but applied to using our voice, and really just making up sounds. There’s no right or wrong sound in this setting, and we give you the tools to feel safe being silly and making stuff up, but essentially what we do is, we make up sounds and we create patterns that then lead us into an orchestra of voices, and you realize how quickly we can create, together as a group, create something that is quite meaningful and spontaneous.

Christopher: So I think from your description just there, our listeners might be imagining a kind of music therapy session where everyone gets in a room and they just make noise until they feel better and probably to anyone walking past the room it sounds like a cacophony and no one would call it music, but I’ll — let’s put in a little clip of what your Chicago circle singing can sound like.

[Inserted clip at [00:22:59]

Christopher: So that is far from a cacophony. That is what anyone would call great sounding music. How does that come from a bunch of people who aren’t necessarily musically trained getting together and improvising sounds?

Davin: So it’s all based in pattern. You know, the thing is, is it’s a difficult thing to describe to people, but one of the closest things that you might be able to correlate with what we do is a drum circle. So in a drum circle, which, you know, has a million connotations for a lot of people, but you could imagine a drum circle where someone originates a beat and then people add in various rhythms.

We do that with the voices, but there are some tools and patterns that we can draw people into the experience quickly, helping them explore the different parts of their voice. They might the different types of sounds, simple things like consonants.

A lot of what we do is nonsense syllables, but the goal is to quickly and efficiently make patterns so that the group can build upon the pattern, and quite honestly, that’s the key to songwriting. We look for, we try to quickly gain access to melody, pattern, groove, rhythm, and from there you try to create something a little bit more complex, but it always starts with that really simple formula, and for me, you know, I never felt like a songwriter in my whole life, and one of the things that improvisation has allowed me is a way in to songwriting. I do write songs now, and it all started with me just making stuff up along the way, but we also use words.

We encourage people to use words, if that feels right to them at the time. It is remarkably quick for most people, and that is the surprise of it all, and it has a lot to do with the success of the facilitation, but also just the human spirit and the ability to, kind of, like, know what it is to make something in the moment with a group of people that makes sense. That’s really the greater lesson is, is that we can so quickly, based on our experiences, we can so quickly land on something collectively, and that’s a big blessing for me, outside of music-making.

Christopher: That’s really interesting. I think what captures my imagination with this is that you’re not talking about people getting together in a room and thinking about, “Okay. We’re gonna sing a 1-4-5 progression. You do the arpeggios, I’m gonna throw in a major seventh, so it sounds kind of snazzy.” You’re talking about people who don’t have that kind of formal training, who aren’t kind of thinking through music theory, who haven’t spent years practicing improvisation, who haven’t even spent years training their voice, but you’re somehow tapping into an instinct for music, I suppose.

Davin: Well, and I always say — you know, most people, when you say improvisation, their first fear is that they’re gonna have to make something up, and while there is an element of making it up, there is also a much greater element of drawing on your experience, and the bottom line is, unless you, you know, can’t hear, you’ve had a lot of experience listening to music. There’s a lot of context in your head, already, and one of — the reason that circle singing, specifically, as an improvisational tool and singing tool spoke to me is for years, as someone who had a teaching studio, I would think, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get people singing to sing together?” but I work with such a diverse clientele, you know, from gospel singers to attorneys to rock singers to doctors to, you know, waiters, I mean, massage therapists, I could name — you know, I’ve worked with literally every type of person you could possibly imagine, and it never ceases to amaze me, and I’ve never known, what do all of those people sing together? Is it folk music, is it church music, is it — you know, they don’t have the same context, so the beauty of improvisation is it allows us to enter the space with our diverse set of experiences and stories and create something spontaneous that speaks to the experience in the moment and brings our stories into the picture.

I can’t think of anything else that would do that, especially so quickly, and there’s science around specifically doing it with your voice that leads people into a close connection more quickly than anything else, that they would feel a closeness more quickly using their voices than they would with an instrument, than they would playing sports, doing other artistic acts, you know, those are all social bonding things, but there’s something about the vulnerability of using your voice with others that leaves you walking away feeling changed, having spent that time with other people.

Christopher: I think that definitely comes across in the video on the Chicago Singing Circle website, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. I’d encourage listeners to go take a look and get a feel for how, kind of, viscerally connected these people seem to be in the moment when it works, but Davin, you touched on something interesting, there, when you said, facilitator, and how important the facilitator can be. When we talk about improvisation at Musical U, we try and explain to people, you know, it is a matter of balance between drawing on frameworks and patterns that make it kind of easy and safe and also giving yourself enough space to be creative and expressive and come up with new musical ideas, and I imagine that’s part of the challenge as a facilitator, you know, trying to draw people away from bland, safe, repetitive choices in music that just sounds very samey for minutes or hours at a time, and everyone just going off in a completely random direction and, you know, creating sounds that just don’t gel well with the rest of the group. How do you approach that challenge as the facilitator?

Davin: Well, I mean, we leave space for all of it, so there are times when we make sounds that don’t gel, you know, or allow that to happen, because if — quite honestly, when you let that, like, sit, it eventually coagulates, and sometimes our traditional understanding of what gels isn’t exactly a full understanding. It doesn’t provide us access to the full spectrum, so there are times where we let people really be uncomfortable with the crunchiness of the sounds that they might be making, and then, you know, what you’re saying is true.

So most people’s instinct, when you talk about improvisation and singing, is to resort to tradition scat syllables, so whether that be (Sings) “Bah-doo-bah-doo-bah-zee-bah-doo-bah,” that’s most people’s instinct, because when they think about improvised singing, that’s the first thing that comes to mind, so that’s why we’ll take people through exercises that allow them to explore, like, different consonants, like, what would it be if I only sang on “cuh,” you know? What if I made a whole song just going, (Sings) “Cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh-cuh?” Maybe it’s not any good, I don’t know, but what happens? What does it feel like in my mouth? What do I find in my body when I make that sound?

So you have to have explored the farthest reaches to come back to a more comfortable middle, and most of us, most of us, myself included, are afraid to really go there, most of the time. So in the facilitation, the exercises typically point people in one direction or another, but I count my success as a facilitator in my ability to be free while having the context of having studied music for a long time. You know, I have an understanding of harmonic structures. I have an understanding of rhythm, and I think that that’s necessary to feel skilled in this, but I don’t think it’s necessary to find your way in to this.

Christopher: Hm. So speaking of finding your way in, the Chicago Circle Singing is something where you invite anyone to come along and so the people who show up have a certain willingness to put themselves in that vulnerable situation and, you know, give this whole improvised group singing thing a try, but you actually take that a whole step further with another project which is your Voxus experience, which is where you don’t just invite people to volunteer to come along, you’re actually putting on corporate workshops where huge groups of people don’t even necessarily know in advance they’re going to be getting into this, and you show up and you lead them through this kind of improvised group singing. Could you tell us a bit about that, and how it works, or if it works?

Davin: Yeah. So it works, I promise. That’s the first thing I’ll say. It’s never not worked. So I have — I had the opportunity to teach some private voice lessons, or our group voice class at Google here in Chicago, and I left that experience feeling a little bit dissatisfied. It just felt slow, like, I felt like I wasn’t able to lead the Google employees into an experience of singing in the way that I wanted them to experience as quickly as I wanted to, and although they learned a lot about their voices, I just felt like — because, there just wasn’t enough time, and so when I encountered this improvisation, I thought, “Oh, this is how I can get into the corporate arena and help people into the experience of singing quickly,” and that’s when I came up with the idea for Voxus, which is a company that specifically targets groups.
You know, we’ve kind of angled ourselves toward corporate groups, but we can really work — I’ve done, you know, church groups, we’ve done non-profit schools, really any group of people, quite honestly, who were to gather, I can lead them into an experience, somewhat unexpectedly, of making music and singing, and I have to say that whenever you have a group of people, there will be a critical mass of people that are game and are willing, because most of us have singing as a part of our story in one way, shape, or form. For some people it might be traumatic. It might have been a bad part of their story. For a lot of people, it’s something that they do commonly privately, you know, I mean, in the shower or in the car, but especially when you’re in a group of people, chances are, there’s someone who loves karaoke, there’s someone who has a band outside of work, there’s someone who sang in high school choir, there’s someone who majored in music and has since left it. So there are always people that are ready and game and willing, and the other people just, kind of, end up coming along by default, because when you do something collectively, something so visceral, something so fully present, it’s difficult not to participate, and the beauty of it is, is that no one gets hurt.

Christopher: (Laughs)

Davin: It’s singing. It’s not that big of a deal, you know, I don’t understate the value that it has for some people, but I always joke, I mean, no small animals are going to be hurt as a result of us singing together. In fact, I can promise that as a result of singing together, you will be physiologically changed. The hormonal structure of your brain will change because you made sounds.

So that’s why it works. That’s why it works, is because by its very nature, singing creates change, and so that’s been really, really, fear-inducing for me to enter into those spaces and be like, “Man, I hope this happens,” but also I have enough experience now to just be confident that it will happen.

Christopher: Amazing, and I would highly encourage anyone listening to go and check out the video on the Voxus website. We’ll put a link in the shownotes so that you can see this in action. It’s really quite inspiring.

I have to ask the devil’s advocate question, though. We recently on the show had Casey McCann from Eclectic Music, and one of the things we were talking about was the unfortunate state of adult singing ability. She was talking particularly in the United States, but she was giving the example of when you’re at a restaurant and a group sings, “Happy Birthday,” a lot of the people can’t actually sing it in tune , and I think you and I would both agree that’s not any, you know, fundamental failing on their part. It’s not anything physical or fundamental that holds them back, it’s just that we don’t necessarily train people to sing in tune very well in our culture in the U.S., in the U.K., around the world.

When you go in to those big groups where people haven’t even self-selected as being up for singing, do you have any trouble that half of them just sing out of tune and whatever you do, it doesn’t quite sound musical, or do you somehow find a way to draw on everyone’s level of ability that makes it work?

Davin: Well, we certainly can draw on everyone’s level of ability. Look, I mean, you might not feel like you can use your actual voice, but you certainly can make some vocal percussion or bang on your body or something like that. There’s a way in for everyone to participate in the music, but, I have to say that, as a teacher singing — and this is my personal opinion, and I don’t know t there’s literature on this — but as a teacher singing, when we feel fear that has a physical implication, so if I feel self-conscious in making sound, that shows up in my body, and the infrequency of people doing that collectively, I think, has a big part, or, is a big part of their lack of skill around it. They don’t feel physically in their bodies when they make the sound, because it’s not something they ever do. Why would they? You know, they don’t do that in front of people, so suddenly you’re at a restaurant and you’re supposed to sing, “Happy Birthday,” and there’s actually no one in the group that can carry the tune, you know, and then there’s an overall self-consciousness that covers the whole experience, and then the tune gets worse, and it’s terrible.

So I think one of the things that we do in the setting is, quite honestly, lead people into an energized version of their physical self, I mean, they’re physically participating, which automatically makes them better singers, you know, the body is what is making the sound. The body is what is making the sound. A lot of times in life, in contemporary culture, we feel disconnected from our bodies. It’s impossible to sing and be disconnected from your body — to sing well, especially, and so I don’t think that people, I don’t think that people lack skill. I think people lack experience and I think that the overall pervasive feeling of self-consciousness or fear around using our voices publicly plays into some of those patterns that we see.

Christopher: So Davin, a lot of people in our audience are a bit later in life and, you know, at Musical U, we’re constantly having people join with a real concern that because they’re coming to it in retirement, or because they didn’t have music education early on, maybe it’s too late for them, and, you know, they can still enjoy a bit of music learning, but they’re maybe past the point of really getting the hang of it.

What’s your own opinion of that, particularly when it comes to singing? Is there a point where it’s just too late for people to really get into being a singer?

Davin: No, and I have a specific story that — well, no, it’s never too late, and I have a story to tell you that will resonate for a lot of people. There was a woman who came to me. She had come to an event at my studio where we were actually singing Christmas carols, and she came to me, and I don’t know her exact age, but I’m gonna guess that she was in her early sixties at the time that we met, and she had believed all of her life that she was, quote-end-quote, tone deaf, and, you know, science tells us that that’s not really a thing, that when someone struggles to sing in tune, it’s actually an issue of coordination, and so in working with her, when she came and she started voice lessons together, it was a struggle, to say the least. I mean, we spent a lot of voice lessons really working on just getting her to even use her voice with any sort of level of physical comfort, because it had been so many years of fear around the sound, but I’m happy to report, now — and this is no small commitment. I think it’s been four, almost five years, but she sings songs completely in tune the whole time, and she’s participating in a choir, and those two things at times can seem insignificant to her, because she’s thinking, “Why is this taking so long?” but for me, I’m thinking, in the context of your life, after all of these years of avoiding this task, this is an incredibly short amount of time to make your way into doing it successfully.
Now, she is not the most naturally gifted singer that I’ve worked with, but that’s not the point. The point is that it brings her joy to use her voice, and as a means of learning and consistency and hard work, she has been able to bring herself into the music-making process with success. In this case, the success is just showing up and being able to sing in tune, and that story, for me, is always a great reminder, and I have to say, most people don’t stick it out. Most people aren’t willing to put in the amount of time that it’s going to take, and I’m always very honest, but this specific client has stuck it out for the appropriate amount of time and it has a result. She’s yielding the results.

Christopher: That’s wonderful, and I think it’s a beautiful counterpart to your circle singing, where, you know, anyone can walk up and be part of music making immediately. At the same time, if you want to be a confident solo singer and sing perfectly in tune, and you’re willing to put in a few years, there’s no reason you can’t get there, whatever stage you’re at in life.

Davin: Yes, absolutely. The last thing I want to say about this is that — specifically, to singing — as we get older, the body changes, and so there are new challenges that are presented, specifically for women who go through menopause. They experience, you know, the hormonal changes that may make things like warming up their voice seem like they take longer, and that is true. It’s a fact, so there are changes that we experience physically that can make things feel challenging in a different way, but the only way to get through that is to do it, to use it, and I know from working with a number of people past 60 and even into their seventies, that the more consistent they are, the more able they are to maintain muscle tone and coordination in terms of making the sound, and they can find just as much success as someone quite a bit younger.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, I hope anyone who is listening to this and has felt that self-conscious fear about singing or worried that there isn’t a route into singing for them is feeling inspired, right now, and if you need any further inspiration, I would definitely recommend checking out Davin’s website, particularly chicagosingingcircle.com and voxusexperience.com, V-O-X-U-S. We will have links to those and davinyoungsvoice.com in the shownotes.

Do head to those websites, watch the videos, and I guarantee you will come away with a new inspiration and confidence that singing might be for you, after all.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Davin.

Davin: Thank you for having me. It was a real pleasure to speak.

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The post Singing that Sounds Good – and Beyond, with Davin Youngs appeared first on Musical U.

Best of all, minor keys do not limit you to songs that are exclusively sad and wistful; you can just as easily evoke feelings of mystery, dread, tension, and even hope and optimism. Believe it or not, countless pop songs are written in minor keys!

For example, Santana’s “Oye Como Va” is written in A minor, but many wouldn’t ever guess that from its jubilant groove:

Several questions arise: why do minor keys usually sound sad? What is the difference between major vs. minor keys? How do you play in a selected minor key?

In this comprehensive guide to minor keys, we’ll cover all of this and more. Read on to learn the theory behind minor keys, how to build minor scales, chords, and intervals, and how to listen for them in the songs you know and love.

Table of Contents

1. What is a Minor Key?

2. Finding Minor from Major

3. Minor Keys and the Circle of Fifths

4. Minor Scales

5. Building Chords in Minor Keys

6. Listening for Minor Keys

7. The World of Minor

What is a Minor Key?

First off, let’s understand minor keys by applying some basic music theory.

A musical key is, by definition, a certain collection of notes that a piece of music is composed in. There are a total of 12 minor keys, and each minor key contains seven notes that can be used to write music in that key.

So, what makes a minor key a minor key? It’s the pitch difference between the notes in the key. If arranged in ascending order, the seven notes within a key form a scale, which when played, makes that unmistakable wistful and sad sound.

Listen to the C major and C minor natural scales, and you can immediately recognize the upbeat, bright character of the major scale, and the melancholy mood of the minor scale:

Tones and Semitones

Looking at the scores, it is evident that the two scales use different notes. Looking closer still, you can see that the spaces between the notes differ also.

The semitone is the smallest interval in Western music, and is the interval between two adjacent notes (for example, C and C♯). A whole tone, or simply a tone, is comprised of two semitones, with an example being C and D. Semitones and tones are also known as half steps and whole steps, respectively. For the purposes of this article, we will be using the semitone (ST) and tone (T) terminology. Modern Songstress has a more in-depth description of whole tones and semitones, for those interested.

Let’s look at how semitones and tones are used to build up the major and minor scale:

Comparing the patterns:

• T-T-ST-T-T-T-ST (major)
• T-ST-T-T-ST-T-T (minor)

This difference in the sequence of steps results in each scale having a completely different sound.

As we will look at later, the most important difference between major and minor is the third note in the scale.

In fact, all natural minor scales share this tone-semitone pattern. That’s right: whether the minor key is the accidental-free A minor or the A♯ minor scale that features seven sharps, the tone-semitone pattern never deviates in the natural minor scale.

With this knowledge, we can build a natural minor scale starting on any note. However, if you already know your major scales, there’s an easy way to figure out minor scales without counting tones and semitones.

Finding Minor from Major

Though they may sound worlds apart, major and minor keys are in fact closely related. You can easily convert major keys to minor keys simply by understanding the concept of relative keys.

Each major key has a relative minor, with which it shares a key signature.

The relative minor is found on the sixth scale degree of a major key, or three semitones down from its corresponding major key. For example, the relative minor of C major is A minor.

Try it out: what is the relative minor of F♯ major?

For a bit more on this, head over to Essential Music Theory for another useful explanation of relative minors, including a great keyboard visualization of the concept.

Relative keys have a special relationship: not only do they share a key signature, but they contain all the same notes. Therefore, if you can name the notes of a major scale, you already know the pitches of its relative minor.

There exists another kind of relationship between major and minor keys: the parallel minor of a major key starts on the same note, but contains different notes. No Treble helpfully compares and contrasts the two concepts of relative minor and parallel minor.

Minor Keys and the Circle of Fifths

There’s an even easier way of understanding major-minor relationships, the notes contained within keys, and key signatures.

If you need to find all the notes within a certain minor key, you don’t need to count semitones and tones to find the notes or the relative minor – you can instead look directly to the Circle of Fifths to find which notes will be flatted or sharped:

Finding the Notes Using the Circle

To understand minor key signatures and how they can help us find the notes contained in a minor key, remember: a relative minor is found three semitones down from its corresponding major key, with which it shares a key signature. On our handy circle of fifths, the outer circle contains the major keys, the inner circle shows their relative minors, and the key signatures of each are major-minor pairing are shown adjacent. If you really want to dig into the mechanics of the circle, Pianote gives an excellent explanation of the construction and works of the circle.

Let’s say you need to figure out the pitches found in C♯ minor. Looking at the circle, C♯ minor has four accidentals: F♯, C♯, G♯, and D♯. This means that starting with the tonic, your pitches for this key will be C♯, D♯, E, F♯, G♯, A, and B.

Try it yourself: what would the notes of the key of F minor be?

Minor Key Signatures

To get used to finding key signatures on the Circle, try the exercise below. You’ll be given a specific key signature – look to the circle to find the minor key it belongs to.

It’s worth noting that you may not have the circle handy at all times. In these cases, there is a simple trick you can use to quickly determine the key signature from the key and vice versa, as detailed by A Higher Note.

Minor Scales

Minor scales offer rich harmonic and melodic variety that’s not found in major. In fact, there are a variety of minor scales available for your musical expression. Here, we’ll look at the three most ubiquitous and useful minor scales.

Bear in mind that there is actually another world of minor scales outside these three – the minor pentatonic is another useful scale, especially for soloing, as explained by Guitar Habits.

The Natural Minor Scale

Look closely at the pitches you derived from the circle of fifths – when placed in ascending order, they form a scale. The natural minor scale, to be exact. To verify this, you can count the whole tones and half tones and check if they fit the signature T-ST-T-T-ST-T-T pattern.

How To Sing Smarter has created a great vocal exercise to get you singing in A natural minor. This will help you recognize the distinctive feel of the natural minor scale, as well as developing your sight-singing skills.

Moving beyond the natural minor, something interesting starts to happen when we add accidentals…

The Harmonic Minor Scale

If you make a little tweak to the natural minor by raising the seventh degree of the scale, you obtain the harmonic minor scale:

This raised seventh degree makes quite a difference in sound. It adds a hint of tension to the scale, which then resolves once the tonic is reached. The harmonic minor scale is a useful tool for jazz guitarists, and as Jazz Guitar Online explains, it can be used to solo over chord progressions in a fascinating way.

Once you get comfortable with the notes of harmonic minor scales, a world of improvisation opens up to you. Kent Hewitt shows how you can begin improvising in the fifth mode of a harmonic scale, which simply means using the fifth note of the harmonic scale as your tonic:

The Melodic Minor Scale

If you raise both the sixth and the seventh degrees of the natural minor scale, you’re left with the melodic minor scale:

The notes in the A melodic minor scale are A, B, C, D, E, F♯, and G♯.

But wait! The melodic minor has more tricks up its sleeve. On the way down, the sixth and seventh degrees are lowered back down to their natural minor places:

What?!  A scale that goes up one way and down the other? How could that be?

The melodic minor actually came about by reflecting how Baroque composers of the 1600s and 1700s solved the problems of minor harmonies (more on that later). The best part is that minor melodies in this scale offer two extra note choices than the standard seven-note scales.

The principle seems strange, but when you hear it all together, the melodic minor sounds quite musical:

The melodic minor is an interesting scale sonically. In the first half of the ascending scale, A-B-C-D-E follows the pattern of tone-semitone-tone-tone, the same as the natural minor. Meanwhile, the second half, E-F♯-G♯-A, is a tone-tone-semitone pattern, which is the beginning of a major scale pattern. Therefore, the scale starts off sounding minor, and then switches to sounding major. This lends an interesting, conflicting quality to the scale and places it somewhere between major and minor. It also gives it internal dissonance in the form of tritones, which is the name for an interval formed by three whole tones:

The tension and musical interest that the tritones and major/minor ambiguity add to the melodic minor scale make it perfect for jazz and experimental music, though it is found in classical and popular music as well. An example is the famous “Carol of the Bells”:

If you’re a little unclear on how each of these minor scales is formed, check out MusicTheory.net’s step-by-step construction of the natural, harmonic, and melodic scales! Then, try forming each type of minor scale in different keys to cement your understanding. EarMaster provides an excellent exercise for building these scales in various keys.

Building Chords in Minor Keys

Because there is not one, but three different types of minor scales at your disposal, the opportunities for chord-building are bigger than with the major scale.

To build a chord on any note in a specific minor key, simply add a third and a fifth above the note, applying the key’s accidentals where appropriate.

Let’s take a look at the chords available to you from the natural, harmonic, and melodic minors. We will use Roman numeral notation to represent the chords built on each minor key scale degree – however, the Nashville number system, which uses regular numerals to denote scale degrees, may also be used.

Here are the chords built on the A natural minor scale. You’ll notice no accidentals, and that the resultant chords take on different qualities based on the distances between the notes:

Here are the chords built on the A harmonic minor scale. G♯ is present instead of G, because of the raised seventh degree in harmonic scales:

Lastly, here are the chords built on the A melodic minor scale. The sixth and seventh degrees are raised in the ascending scale, but not in the descending scale:

When we write chord progressions in minor keys, we can use the chords directly from these scales. Depending on which minor scale we use, we can get different progressions:

• If we use the natural minor scale, we will obtain a progression of i-iv-v (all minor chords)
• With the harmonic minor, the progression is i-iv-V
• With the melodic minor, the progression is i-IV-V

This is a big part of what makes minor keys so rich and nuanced.

Listening for Minor Keys

As you can see, the accidentals of minor keys will lead to the formation of chords that are either major, minor, augmented, or diminished. Let’s focus on those first two.

The Importance of the Minor Third

In many cases, what separates a major chord from a minor chord is the middle note – that is, the third. A major third will have a bright sound:

While a minor third will sound far more serious:

The minor third is incredibly important in Western music. Not only does it help form the backbone of minor chords, but it sounds great as a standalone interval. In fact, it’s the darling of the jazz improvisation world, as detailed by Altobone.

There is a myriad of ways you can train your ear to distinguish major from minor, and even different types of minor scales and chords from one another. It is likely that your ear can already pick out minor key melodies from their wistful sound.

Major vs. Minor Chords

Let’s start with a straightforward comparison:

Listen to each – the difference should jump out at you. The major chord sounds bright and happy, while the minor chord sounds dark, gloomy and sad.

Chances are, your ear is quite good at telling apart major and minor. See if you can determine the tonality of the following chords! Answers are below.

You can extend this logic to a full song. If the tune sounds bright or happy, uses mostly major chords and generally comes to rest on a major chord, it’s probably a major key. If the song sounds dark and gloomy, uses mostly minor chords and generally comes to rest on a minor chord, it’s probably a minor key.

Predictably, transforming a major key song into a minor key song will result in a dramatic shift in the song’s mood. For example, listen to what happens to the Village People’s “YMCA” when it is transposed into a minor key:

The mood shifts considerably! Minor key versions of major songs sound darker, more tense, and more epic. 

Listening for the Tonic

The tonic is truly the anchoring point of a song. As such, songs often tend to begin and/or end on the tonic or on the chord built on the tonic.

In a song written in a minor key, the melody or chord progression will often conclude on the minor chord built on the tonic of that minor key.

For example, if we have a i-iv-v-i chord progression, it naturally resolves back to the tonic i chord:

Listening for Minor Chord Progressions

Minor key chord progressions exist in many flavours, thanks to the presence of the natural, harmonic, and melodic minor scales. With some practice, you can train your ear to determine which scale the chord progression you’re hearing is based on.

Let’s have another look at the above progression:

This i-iv-v-i progression is based on the natural minor scale, as evidenced by the lack of raised sixth and seventh degrees.

Let’s tweak this sequence slightly to form a progression based on the harmonic minor scale, by replacing the minor v chord with a major V chord. This is achieved by raising the seventh degree of the scale, which corresponds to the middle note in the chord built on the fifth degree of the scale. In A minor, this raises the G to a G♯:

Listen for the difference between the i-iv-v-i and the i-iv-V-i progressions. What quality does that raised seventh lend to the latter progression?

This type of chord progression is where the harmonic minor scale becomes a handy soloing tool. As explained by Zombie Guitar, the A natural minor scale will sound great when soloing over those Am and Dm chords, but will not work with the E major (V) chord. However, the A harmonic minor will work beautifully over that major V chord.

As for the melodic minor scale, it is less commonly used as a basis for chord progressions. Composers tend to instead use it for melodies, as its name implies.

If we were to tweak our original i-iv-v-i progression to fit the notes of the A melodic minor scale, the resultant progression is i-IV-V-i:

The raised sixth degree results in a major chord built on the fourth degree of the scale, with the notes D, F♯, and A. As before, the raised seventh degree results in a major chord on the fifth degree of the scale, with the notes E, G♯, and B.

The World of Minor

As you delve deeper into the rich world of minor keys, melodies, and chord progressions, you’ll realize how much musical interest and depth they can add. The worlds of major and minor are certainly not separate – they often coexist beautifully, with a song containing both major and minor chords (and chord progressions!) that complement one another.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Minor Keys appeared first on Musical U.

This week at Musical U, we have you covered on all three. We first interview the co-hosts of the Music Student 101 podcast to understand how learning theory has helped them achieve success in the music world. We then move on to ear training, specifically the practice of active listening, to understand how it can boost your musicality. And lastly, we move on to actual music practice, with a lesson on how you can train your brain and body to play guitar and sing simultaneously.

Tackling Theory

What happens when you put together an academic music professor/composer with an active performer/sound engineer? Though Music Student 101 podcast co-hosts Matthew Scott Phillips and Jeremy Burns have taken their love for music in different directions, they wholeheartedly agree that learning theory played a major role in their success.

On the Music Student 101 podcast, they take an an accessible, easy-to-understand dive into music theory. We were lucky enough to have them on our own Musicality Podcast, where they spoke to us about how theory has helped them over the years, and how to make theory exciting and pertinent to your own practice. They even took the time to answer the age-old question: is there any point to doing a music degree?

Tune into this special episode to find out Why and How to Learn Theory, with Matthew Scott Phillips and Jeremy Burns!

Jeremy and Matthew seemed to “accidentally” find their way to playing the bass guitar out of the needs of other bands and musicians that were in their area. Many have the misconception that bass guitar is simply about holding down the root of the chord for any song. In reality, the bass guitar is much more versatile: it can carry the melody as well as full chords! Mark from Low End University developed a fantastic lesson on playing chords on the bass that left us speechless.

For every benefit to music theory, there are one or two myths that seem to discourage learning more about this valuable subject. Learn Guitar Malta discusses and dispels seven of the most prevalent myths about music theory.

Music theory is a wide and diverse subject, with many different ways of approaching the content and musical styles to consider. Before diving too deeply into any one of these subjects, an overview of music theory and the resources that are available on the internet is very useful. Luckily, Sheet Music Scanner recently published a helpful compilation of resources for those new to music theory, which references great sources like Theta Music Trainer, MusicTheory.net, and Musical U!

A question that is often asked inside Musical U is whether or not music school is a good option to grow musically. There are many resources that can be found at the collegiate level that can help any budding musician grow and become confident on their instrument. To hear a fascinating defense of going to music school, the Outside in Music Podcast interviewed professional Jazz saxophonist Lucas Pino.

Opening Your Ears

A key part of being a musician isn’t just knowing how to play, but knowing how to listen. This involves having a critical ear and paying attention to aspects of music you wouldn’t ordinarily consider.

The benefits of this are plentiful: active listening will help you train your musical memory, learn to recognize intervals and musical motifs, and even imagine music in your mind without having to hear it out loud.

Check out our primer About Active Listening to learn the simple way you can begin honing this skill today.

Beginning to actively listen to music is not the easiest task for someone that is used to listening to music purely for entertainment. However, there are steps that you can take to allow your mind to better focus on the task at hand! The Blind Cafe has this simple, four step process to block out all outside distractions and really hear the music in a new light.

Active listening doesn’t have to be a monotonous chore. There are many ways that you can structure your listening to give it a better sense of direction so that you are able to get the most out of the exercise. Solfeg.io has created simple lesson plans that will help you guide your active listening and make it a fun and inspirational exercise.

Of course, active listening is not something that only the instrumentalist must be concerned with. People that work in sound production must learn specific skills that will allow them to be the best producers that they can be. Ask.audio reveals some listening exercises that will benefit your music production skills.

Active listening is not only useful for learning your instrument – it can help you completely transform your playing! A great example of this is learning a new genre of music. Liberty Park Music talks about how important the art of listening was to one musician as they switched from classical to jazz piano.

Since we have spent so much time talking about active listening, what exactly is passive listening? And is there ever a time when even a seasoned musician could (and should) passively listen to music? The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra defended passive listeners in this insightful post about how music is often meant to be enjoyed in a more passive manner. Don’t feel guilty about listening passively – it absolutely has its place.

Lastly, let’s explore a cultural phenomenon that knows no boundaries. Of course, I’m talking about Star Wars! Aaron Krerowicz recently saw The Last Jedi and actively listened to the various musical themes throughout the movie. If you want to understand the impact that this film’s music has on the audience’s enjoyment, you won’t want to miss this exploration.

Singing and Strumming

Music multitasking is no easy feat, particularly if you’re aiming to be a one-man show as a singer and guitarist.

Here’s a partial list of things you’ll need to worry about: remembering the lyrics correctly, singing in tune with yourself (and with the guitar!), staying at a steady, consistent tempo, and of course, playing the right chords, licks, and riffs on your guitar!

Thankfully, the process of learning to play and sing at the same time can be broken down into steps, where you focus on one factor at a time, to avoid overwhelming yourself. Head over to 8 Tips for Playing Guitar and Singing at the Same Time for an intuitive process for teaching yourself this invaluable skill!

In this article, Cody from Musician Tuts presented a great method for learning to sing while playing the guitar. While we all love our guitar players, there are so many other musical instruments that have to approach this skill in a slightly different way. Our Worship Sound developed a step-by-step method to learning to sing while playing the piano that has valuable advice for our favorite masters of the ivory keys!

When learning a new skill, sometimes it is helpful to pick a song that is a little easier. By not having to think as hard about what you are playing, you can devote more energy to adding singing to your instrumental practice. Contrary to popular belief, drummers can be also be great singers and frontmen in any musical group! Kick Start Your Drumming has compiled this list of easy songs to play on drums that are perfect repertoire to begin adding singing to your drumming.

Despite our best intentions, there are simply some instruments that do not lend themselves to being able to play while singing (i.e. any wind instrument!). Nevertheless, that shouldn’t stop you from using your voice to expand and enhance your musical expression. Laurie from Violinist.com teaches the importance of singing your instrumental parts and how this can have a tremendous impact on your ability to express your musical interpretation. Get singing with these tips!

A Trifecta of Musicality Skills

Doing the triple duty of training your ear, learning the theory behind the music you’re playing, and putting the appropriate hours into putting your knowledge and skills into practice will guarantee that your progress in your musical journey is consistent and steady.

You may be tempted to gloss over theory in favour of practicing more. Or maybe you’re in the camp that thinks that you need to spend hours on understanding theory before you even play. Remember that the key is balance – spend time on all three, and you’ll find that these skills bolster and complement one another!

The post Tackling Theory, Opening Your Ears, and Singing and Strumming appeared first on Musical U.

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Links and Resources

• Interview: Why and How to Learn Music Theory, with Matthew Scott Phillips and Jeremy Burns
• Article: How to hear more in the music you love
• Article: Close your eyes to open your ears
• Article: The #1 activity for every musician
• Article: Audiation, the secret music practice skill

Transcript

In our recent episode with Matthew and Jeremy from the Music Student 101 podcast we touched on the topic of “active listening” or “critical listening”. Jeremy talked about how having a critical ear, meaning one that’s really tuned in to what’s going on in what you hear, was a big common factor in his success as a musician and as an audio recording engineer. It’s something I talk about in an upcoming episode with Katie Wardrobe too where she shares some ways she likes to practice active listening.

So what is “active listening” and why should you be doing it?

Musicians often make the mistake of thinking that “ear training” is just about specific concrete skills like recognising intervals or learning to adjust EQ bands on a mixer by ear.

But actually there’s one big-picture skill that’s possibly more important than all of those – as well as providing a great opportunity to put those skills to use. And that’s active listening.

Active listening simply means your brain is truly engaged in the activity of listening. As Jeremy put it “A lot of people are hearing, but not many are listening”.

Ask yourself: for the music you heard in the last few days, did you just hear it? Or were you actively listening to it?

Active listening is closely related to the idea of “music appreciation”. If you take a class on music appreciation it helps you start learning this skill of active listening and equips you with some key concepts to put into action as you do it. Music appreciation isn’t about judging music as good or bad – it’s about becoming more aware, and understanding more about the music you hear. It’s useful and interesting for any music fan, but doubly-so for musicians.

Why practice active listening?

So for a musician, what’s the point of doing this? Clearly active listening is going to take more mental effort than just having music on in the background.

The answer is that active listening “wakes up” your ear. Everything you’re learning in music, whether that’s skills on your instrument like playing scales, chords or pieces, or skills in your mind like recognising notes by ear or creating your own musical ideas – all of these can be applied to and will benefit from active listening.

Think of it this way: With active listening, every time you hear a song it’s an opportunity to both put your musical skills to use and also improve those skills. Whenever a member at Musical U asks about finding more time for music practice amid a busy life, active listening is high on our list of recommendations – because there aren’t many of us who don’t have opportunities during the day for listening to music. You might be walking the dog, washing the dishes, driving a commute – all those times when music is normally just in the background can become valuable opportunities to level up your skills.

There are also a couple of great knock-on effects. When you listen actively you are also training your musical memory. To be able to mentally analyse what you heard, the brain needs to kind of hold it in place for a moment. It starts modelling what’s going on, and that kind of modelling and mental structure is exactly what you need to more easily remember longer sections of music you hear.

It’s also great for the skill of audiation, meaning imagining music in your mind. This is often applied to improvisation, where to be truly free and creative you want to be imagining the music before you play it rather than just playing notes and hoping they sound good. When you practice active listening you’re teaching your brain to conjure up vivid mental representations of music, and that’s something you can then apply to music you’re creating in your mind yourself as well as the music you’ve heard.

How to practice active listening

So are you convinced? Active listening is a versatile and powerful music practice activity that you can easily fit in to a busy life – oh, and it’s great fun too!

You’re probably wondering what specifically I’m suggesting you do. What exactly are you doing when you’re doing “active listening?”

One way to think about it is: You’re listening while thinking. You are focusing your attention on the music you’re hearing, not just letting your thoughts wander or being distracted by some other activity.

The best way to do this is by using questions to focus your mind. Instead of just trying to generally pay attention to the music, try asking yourself specific questions about the music and then use your ears to try to answer them.

You can begin with the overall question: If you had to describe this song to someone, what could you tell them?

To answer that big question you can ask yourself a bunch of followup questions. For example:

What instruments are present? It might be a rock band of guitar, bass, drums, keys and vocals, or it might be a string quartet, or it might be a full orchestra. Can you hear each of the instruments present if it’s a small group, or each of the sections if it’s an orchestra? Of course this can change during the course of a song or piece, so this alone can be a great question to pay attention to throughout, try to follow one or more of the instruments by ear and stay conscious of whether it’s present and what part it’s playing in the arrangement.

What’s the overall structure of the song or piece? Which parts repeat and in what sequence? This lets you form a big-picture mental model of the song, and a lot of these other questions we’ll cover can slot into that structure once you figure it out. If you know the proper terminology or theory by all means use it, but a simple labelling system like “section A”, “section B” and so on can work great too.

How many bars are in each section? Count it out: 1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 4 and so on.

What types of rhythm are being used? Is the beat straight or swung? Are syncopated rhythms being used? Is it the downbeat or the upbeat being emphasised?

Is the song in a major or a minor key?

What’s going on in the harmony? You can try to hear which chords are major or minor, or if there are more advanced types of chord being used. If you’ve done some chord progression ear training you can try to hear the actual progressions, I-IV-V-I, etc.

If you’ve been learning solfa or intervals, can you figure out the melody notes by ear? It can be handy to have an instrument or a keyboard app on your phone to check if you got it right.

What production techniques or audio effects are being used? For example have real instruments been recorded in a simple way or is it a full-blown electronic creation?

Another great task is to pause the song, or you can just take a minute after it ends – and try to recreate the song in your mind in as much detail as possible – again, this is developing your skill in audiation and your musical memory. The more of the questions you’ve been able to ask yourself and answer, the easier you’re going to find it to reconstruct the song in your mind.

If you start doing all of this then when someone mentions a new track instead of saying “Oh yeah, I heard that song. It’s a pop song.” you might be able to say something like “Oh yeah, that song. It’s got kind of a country shuffle beat to it, simple trio of guitar, bass and drumkit with the vocalist on top. Just follows a basic I-V-vi-IV progression in the verses, with a I-IV-V chorus. Starts out with an intro then it’s just verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus. In that bridge the bassist gets a solo and throws in these great syncopated rhythms to spice things up. The melody pretty much sticks to the major pentatonic in the verses but has these phrases lingering on the 7th note, the “ti” in the chorus which match up well with the lyrics about yearning. I love the barebones sound, just has a little bit of reverb but it’s otherwise totally clean.”

Now you’re not just sounding like a music fan – you’re sounding like a musician!

Imagine having this kind of awareness of every song you hear, and the impact that would have on learning new songs or collaborating with other musicians in a band, the impact on your ability to play by ear or write your own music.

Active listening is the key to developing a truly aware musical ear. To come back to our previous podcast episode on Mindfulness for Musicians, this is a bit like developing a mindful ear: one that doesn’t just drift through its experiences unaware, but is fully present to all the rich detail and structure in all the music you hear, so that you’re able to hear, appreciate, understand and remember it all in a powerful way.

At first active listening takes a lot of conscious thought – but in time, though your attention will be focused on the music you hear, you’ll find you don’t need to think through all those questions so much. You will have awakened your ear to everything it can appreciate and be aware of in the music.

Possibly the best thing about active listening is how easy it is to get started. As we’ve talked about there’s any number of ways to approach this, and you can base it totally on what you’re currently working on in your musicality training. You can start out with real basics, like listening to the instruments present and trying to tune in to one particular one throughout the song. And then every new concept or skill you learn in music, bring that to the task and ask yourself what this song is doing relating to that concept or skill, such as tonality, harmony, rhythm, and so on.

This is something you can do each and every time you hear a piece of music – so it’s an amazing way to fit in a huge amount of additional useful ear training. Give it a try, and start waking up your ears with active listening!

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The post About Active Listening appeared first on Musical U.

Being able to play guitar and sing at the same time makes a performance much more engaging for the audience, and allows everyone to get involved. Furthermore, if you’re a working musician, it’s easier to get a gig if you can do both.

Depending on how experienced you are, playing guitar and singing at the same time may be easier for some than it is for others. What it comes down to is being able to focus less on what you’re playing on the guitar so that you can focus more on the melody of the vocals.

Regardless of what stage you’re at in the process of learning how to play guitar and sing at the same time, it’ll come with challenges. For this reason, I’ve outlined eight things you should take into consideration as you work on improving your ability to multitask as a guitarist.

If you’re new to wanting to learn how to play guitar and sing simultaneously, start from the first tip and work your way through. If you’re more experienced, you may have already applied a few of these tips. Therefore, focus on the ones you haven’t worked on yet.

1. Start with a simple song

Regardless of whether you’re a more advanced guitarist or not, starting with a simple song is essential. The goal here is to build up your ability to multitask, which can be much more difficult than just playing a hard song on guitar without singing over it.

Choose a song with three or four chords in total.

If you need some song suggestions, check out this list of 100+ easy guitar songs which contain links to Ultimate Guitar tabs, Guitar Pro tabs, and the official chords and tabs.

2. Work the guitar part into muscle memory

Play the guitar part of the song you’re learning over and over again without singing.

Seriously.

Play the whole song, then start over and play it again and again until it’s ingrained in your muscle memory.

You should be able to play the guitar part without any problems even when you’re not fully engaged with what you’re doing. For example, try playing it while you’re watching TV or while having a conversation with somebody.

3. Use a metronome

A metronome provides a constant beat that helps keep you in time with the song as you play.

Furthermore, as a beginner, once you start singing and playing guitar simultaneously, the first thing to suffer is usually your beat. Keeping a metronome handy will allow you to identify when you’re out of time so that you can quickly correct it.

Another handy trick is to tap your foot to the beat of the song as you’re playing it. With enough practice, your foot will basically act as your metronome helping to ensure that you’re always in time.

4. Practice counting the beat aloud

Once you’re comfortable with using a metronome, you should try counting the beat aloud while playing the song on guitar.

You won’t be following a vocal melody, but at least your brain will start to get used to saying words while simultaneously playing the song.

Try this exercise both with and without a metronome. When practicing without a metronome, ask someone else to listen and see if they can identify whether or not you’re staying in-time or have slipped out. If you don’t have anyone around to ask, simply record yourself and listen back.

5. Hum the vocal melody as you play guitar

To ease you into the process of singing the lyrics and playing the guitar part of the song, try humming the vocal melody instead.

You shouldn’t have to think much about what you’re playing on guitar at this point, so you can turn your focus to the humming aspect. You’ve likely listened to the song enough times that you’ve memorized the melody, so try going through the song from start to finish without any actual singing.

6. Make sure you’ve memorized the lyrics of the song

Before moving on to being able to sing the lyrics and play the guitar part of a song, ensure that you’ve memorized the lyrics.

This will become less important as you progress, but during the beginning stages, it helps greatly as you can focus more on singing the melody and keeping the beat rather than reading the lyrics off of a sheet of paper or a computer.

Sing along with the song in your car and study the lyrics so that you know each and every word!

7. Replace the humming with actual lyrics

At this stage, you should have the guitar part of the song ingrained in muscle memory, know all of the lyrics, and be able to hum the melody while playing guitar.

Therefore, all that’s left to do is to replace the humming with the actual lyrics of the song. If you are still struggling at this stage, try playing one chord of the song and sing the lyrics that go over that chord. Then move to the next chord and sing the next set of lyrics, rinse and repeat.

You’ll eventually become more comfortable and will be able to sing and play the song without pausing.

8. Practice, practice, practice!

The most important step is always practice. Practice hard and practice often. After enough of it, you’ll eventually be able to play guitar and sing naturally.

As I said before, the trick is being able to build up enough muscle memory in your fingers so that you aren’t thinking about what you need to do on the guitar and you can put more focus towards singing the melody and lyrics of the song.

Two-Trick Pony

Being able to play guitar and sing at the same time is a great skill to have. I can personally say that ever since I started singing and accompanying myself on the guitar, I’ve been able to entertain audiences much more effectively – and it allows people to sing along. Whether you’re playing for a few friends, at an open mic, or want to start gigging around town, crowds will typically be much more responsive to a guitarist that can both sing and play.

To improve your ability to sing and play guitar at the same time, be sure to follow the eight tips above and remember the last one especially – practice often!

As a last piece of advice, I find that recording my performance and listening back to it allows me to get a better grasp of what I need to improve on. So give that a shot and good luck!

Cody is the founder of Musician Tuts, a free tutorial hub for musicians. He has over 10 years experience playing guitar, drums, bass and audio engineering. He spends his days blogging, listening to Spotify, and playing music.

The post 8 Tips for Playing Guitar and Singing at the Same Time appeared first on Musical U.

We’re here to help you get a head start. We think the last week of the year deserves some special posts, something a little extra to shine a light on the possibilities that open up when you think (and play) outside the box of your regular music practice.

In that spirit, we bring you the following:

• A music teacher that doesn’t limit her students to one instrument only, but encourages them to try out and switch between multiple in order to build their musicality
• A way of improvisation that goes beyond just major and minor keys, venturing into the exciting waters of modal playing
• And lastly, one of the most famous and oft-used major chord progressions in modern music with an extra minor chord thrown in there for interest and a little bit of extra learning

Making A Musician

How do you empower a just-beginning music student and give them the tools they need to succeed early in their music education?

By helping them develop their musicality, something that will aid them with everything from hitting the right notes to playing expressively to being able to recognize chords.

Nobody knows this better than Casey McCann, who founded Eclectic Music and The Little Middle School with the aim of promoting each musician’s personal growth and teaching these core skills right from the get-go.

In Turning Ordinary People into Musicians, with Casey McCann, she takes us through her beginnings in music, her unique way of teaching musicality at Eclectic Music and The Little Middle School, and her take on the hot-topic debate of talent vs. training. She even shares an incredible anecdote about how she dazzled a room full of musicians with her ability to play by ear, back when she did not yet know how to read music!

We were delighted that Casey was able to share her amazing story on the Musicality Podcast. She discussed how a great deal of her learning occurred before she was ever able to read sheet music. When she finally had to learn to read the music, it was a matter of translating the theory and musical knowledge that she had into the written music. Whether you are just getting started or are already seasoned at playing by ear, Best Piano Method can show you how to play any song on piano without needing the sheet music.

When she finally started to learn the theory behind the songs that she had been learning, it all fell into place for Casey. At Musical U, we have heard the same from many of our students, who knew how to place songs but were unaware of how the theory worked. Hear and Play recently explored this topic, and made some fascinating observations about how popular chord progressions work and why they are so attractive to our musical ears.

When Chords “Click”

As a guitar player, Casey quickly learned about chord shapes and how she could play songs just by remembering what shape to form. This was usually without any regard to what notes were actually in the chord, but with respect to the muscle memory of the shape itself. This is a great way to get the notes under your fingers and enjoy playing while learning the art of your instrument!

There are many different instruments that this same type of thought can be applied to. Ukulele Mag talks about three movable chord shapes that will unlock millions of songs in your fingers, for a quick-start that will take you to beach-pickin’ happiness in only a few minutes!

In our modern era, there are so many interactive tools that can show you the chord shapes that you need to remember. 8 Notes’ tool shows you numerous common inversions that will increase your ability to move freely about the piano keyboard.

Finally, some instruments, like the guitar, lend themselves to interesting sounds through the natural structure of the instrument. In this case, the ability to add an open string to a chord shape can completely change the character of the chord that you are playing. FretJam has compiled the best chord shapes for creating a dark, tense, and dramatic song.

Beginning Modal Improv

Modal improvisation tends to put many musicians off because of its associations with extremely complicated jazz guitar.

Though it’s true that modal solos can get mind-blowingly intricate, all you need in order to understand modes and build unforgettable licks, riffs, and solos out of them is a little bit of chord theory and a good ear.

In Beginning Modal Improvisation, with Brian Kelly from Zombie Guitar, master guitarist Brian gives an incredible beginners’ guide to playing in modes, discussing the difference between keys and modes, when to use each one, and how to understand modes using music theory you already know. Best of all, he helps you hit the ground running by introducing and demonstrating two modes that you can easily start soloing with right now, even if you don’t know how to read music!

Hats off to Brian for creating such a practical and easy-to-follow lesson that introduces modal improvisation. Why do modes work, and why can’t we stop talking about them? Fretello explores the fascinating world of modes, and explains why they add depth and colour to your musical creations.

There are so many fascinating musical sounds that can be created using modes. Though many musicians believe that this is a difficult concept that is impossible for them to wrap their heads around, the truth is, once you can understand some of the basic theory, you’ll be on your way to applying modes in your practice. Jazz Guitar Online has compiled a fantastic comprehensive lesson on all the modes.

Learning all the modes and how to play them on your instrument is one thing. When it comes to play in a live setting, how can you know which mode is the best fit for the song? You may have learned that you can play multiple scales over a chord, but this lesson from the Jazz Piano Site delves deeper, going into great detail about how to wisely select a scale to solo with.

Once you have become comfortable using modes, it’s time to put it all together and make your own musical creation. Courtesy of Effective Music Practice, see how one musician combines a Lydian chord progression with improvisation to create a beautiful piece of music.

Four Magic Chords

Most musicians have at one point (whether unconsciously or on purpose) played the famous I-IV-V progression, a staple of blues, rock, pop, folk, and country music.

This week on the Musicality Podcast, we take a peek behind the curtain, answering the questions of just what makes these chords sound so good together, what exactly those numbers mean, and how to take this progression from one key to another.

To add a little something extra, we’re including the very useful vi (minor) chord in our lesson, a chord second in popularity only to the I, IV, and V. If you want to be able to recognize these chords in action, and even get yourself writing music based around the beautiful progressions built on these chords, look no further than our lesson About the I, IV, V and vi Chords.

At Musical U, we like to stress that being able to hear chord progressions is a very important part of your musicality. One way that you can practice this skill is through ear training quizzes. EW Guitar Lessons’ educational quiz will help you internalize the relationship between the I-IV-V chords in a progression.

This episode of the Musicality Podcast talked about the Nashville Numbering System for chords, and how it is slightly different than using Roman numerals. While neither system is “the right way”, it’s important to understand that different musicians use different musical languages to essentially say the same thing. Singer-songwriter Kate Rockey explains how the Nashville System greatly improved her ability to recognize chords.

Why do songwriters need to know and understand chord progressions? Because it’s no secret that some of the most popular songs of all time tend to have a similar structure! Learning how to use the power of chord progressions can give your songwriting a boost and help you to understand which tones will work best in your songs. American Songwriter explains how to build unforgettable chord progressions in your songwriting.

While we all know that some of the most famous songs of all time have been written using this basic chord structure, it is so refreshing to hear new sounds as well. Rick Beato is no stranger to pushing musical boundaries, and he shares four simple yet effective chord extensions you can use to add interest to your music. You won’t want to miss the amazing sounds he creates!

Pushing the Boundaries of Your Practice

You can see how something as simple as adding one more chord to a standard progression, soloing outside the confines of major and minor, or teaching yourself musicality using an unconventional yet effective technique can bring new interest and dimensions to your playing.

The post Making A Musician, Beginning Modal Improv, and Four Magic Chords appeared first on Musical U.