https://www.musical-u.com/learn/crazy-easy-weird-modal-improv-trick-part-2/
Oooo modal… it sounds so mysterious, so deep and so difficult. Like something you should really wait to learn until you’re way advanced, like a super-shredder metal guitarist or a jazz genius.
Even if you never take your modal improv beyond the white keys on the piano, there is so much to discover about how pitches relate to each other.
So modal is nothing to fear – enjoy the infinite benefits to your ears, and to your new found ability to create meaningful new melodies.
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we discuss the importance of having a solid foundation in music – and how neglecting to build this foundation can be detrimental to your musical understanding and autonomy later in your journey.
4: Missing Foundation (that’s why everything’s hard) – “Did You Skip Step One?”
Learning music is hard. But it doesn’t have to be…
Has music felt like a struggle for you? I know what that’s like. Sometimes it feels like every practice session is a slog and every step forwards is followed by a step or two backwards. There’s so much to juggle and not enough time to fit it all in!
But music itself, when we listen to it and love it – it seems so natural!
So if music is so natural and wonderful, why is learning music such a struggle?
Part of the reason is that most of us only get taught one of the three essential components – see the link alongside this video to another in the Musicality Unleashed series to learn more about that.
But the main cause is actually that you’ve skipped a fundamental stage of learning music.
Imagine setting out to build a house – and focusing all your efforts on painting an elaborate mural on the walls. You skip the step of putting a solid foundation in place and just start laying bricks and painting on top of them.
Things will start off okay – but the higher you build the more unstable things become and the harder it is to keep making progress.
At a certain point the house actually starts to collapse faster than you can build it up!
If you follow the traditional path for learning an instrument, this is exactly what you’ve been doing.
By focusing on instrument skills we leap forwards in the complexity of the music we can reproduce – which at first seems good – but we’re totally missing out on developing the corresponding musical understanding and autonomy – the ability to do what we want in music rather than just painstakingly reproducing what we’ve been told to play.
You don’t have the “mental models” which empower you to feel like you know what you’re doing in music.
As a result of this missing foundation of mental models when you do decide to study some music theory, or composition, or improvising, or ear training, you’ll find it really difficult to wrap your musical mind around.
That’s not because the material is inherently super complicated.
It’s because you’re not just missing some mental models – you’re actually missing the most fundamental of them.
You’re missing the foundation of mental models which can set you up to easily understand whatever you choose to study in music.
Any time you encounter something in music that seems really hard to wrap your brain around or develop a musical instinct for, the chances are it’s because you weren’t given the first few steps of developing the most fundamental and important mental models you need to “think like a musician”.
The good news is: It’s never too late to put that missing foundation in place – and once you do, everything else in music follows on dramatically more easily and enjoyably.
Learn more about what goes into a foundation that will truly empower you in the Musicality Unleashed series.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-do-you-use-intervals-to-recognise-notes-by-ear/
When musicians ask themselves “why learn intervals?” often the answer is “to recognise notes by ear”.
Intervals can be seen as the “building blocks” with which melodies and harmonies are created, and so interval ear training helps you to pick apart these elements of music by ear and recognise the notes present. However, where many music students get stuck is that even when you learn to recognise intervals, it is not immediately obvious how to use that new skill to recognise notes in music you hear.
There are three ways you can apply the knowledge of intervals to recognise notes by ear:
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we explore what really makes a musician “natural” – and as you’ll learn, it’s not countless hours spent at the instrument!
3: Mental Models (not technique/skills) – What makes a musician a “natural”
Mastering your instrument won’t make you a great musician.
If you’ve wanted to be more capable in music, then putting in more time practicing instrument technique is not the answer.
If you’re someone who’s dreamed of feeling free, capable and confident in music – but instead feel restricted, limited, and like learning music is a struggle – then you may have fallen for the big lie which mainstream music education tells: That learning music means learning an instrument.
Yet if that were true, surely anyone who’s studied an instrument for years would feel free, confident and capable? They’d be able to play whatever they want, improvise or create their own music, they’d perform and collaborate with ease.
In reality, very few musicians ever enjoy that kind of freedom – and it’s because learning an instrument doesn’t deliver what you really need to become that “natural” in music.
What is it that distinguishes a “natural” musician from the average music learner?
Why is it that even when you get good with instrument technique you don’t really feel any closer to feeling really “musical”?
We think the better we get at our instrument the closer we’ll get to those pros and “naturals” we admire.
That’s understandable. They often do have some impressively flashy instrument technique.
But even a robot can play music note-perfectly! And it wouldn’t move the listener.
All the instrument technique in the world doesn’t capture the essence of true musicality.
In fact, if all it took to be a “great” musician was instrument technique then every concert would be performed by robots.
So if the difference isn’t in the instrument technique, where is it?
Well, there’s only one place it can be: in the mind of the musician.
That’s not actually surprising, right? You’ve probably suspected that the “great” musicians just have a different kind of “musical mind” than you do.
They think about music differently, they understand it more deeply and intuitively than you do.
If you’ve thought that, you’re absolutely right – BUT if you also assumed that is something they were born with, here’s some good news: It’s not. You too can learn that “musical mind”!
The difference between you and the greatest musicians you admire and dream of being is all in their “mental models”. Meaning the way their brain represents musical ideas such as pitch and rhythm.
We all have mental models for music, whether it’s something you’ve ever thought about or not.
The trouble is that most musicians lack the specific and fundamental mental models that unlock those “instinctive” skills in music like playing by ear, improvising, composing, collaborating freely and so much more.
When you study music theory or do ear training you’re extending and improving your understanding of music – but not always in a clear and coherent way. It can feel very piecemeal, like you’re learning bits and pieces but it doesn’t all fit together into a single cohesive mental model of how music works.
Put the right mental models in place and the whole world of music opens up to you.
So if you’ve yearned for that freedom and confidence in music and wondered why instrument practice alone doesn’t seem to be getting you there – maybe it’s time to acquire some new, more empowering mental models for music and upgrade your musical mind.
Stay tuned to more Musicality Unleashed to find out what exactly that means…
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/bassline-melody-four-ways-hear-difference/
You might think that telling bass from melody should be an easy task.
But from the Baroque era to the music of today, the bass line has always been a powerful attractive force in music, pulling our attention away from the melody line and sometimes causing us to lose track of which is which…
So what can you listen for when you’re not sure what’s melody and what’s bass? Here are four ways you can tell these two apart.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/box-yourself-into-creativity-5-tips-for-recording-and-songwriting/
Though it’s fun to take your time creating music by tinkering with samples, jamming on a riff for long while, or layering track over track, sometimes, you need to tighten up and set yourself a deadline and some constraints to get the job done.
You may think that imposing some rules on the songwriting process will stifle your creativity, but the opposite is true; limitations will bring out your creativity in unexpected ways.
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we discuss the three aspects necessary for becoming a great musician – and how traditional music education often ignores two of them.
2: The Trifecta (instrument skills, theory, ears) – “The Two Things Most Music Education Is Missing”
Most people think that learning an instrument will let them become a good musician – but that’s actually just one of three essential things you need to be doing.
Adding in the other two doesn’t take any more practice time and will transform the enjoyment and effectiveness of all your music learning.
If you’re someone who’s putting in the time and energy to learn an instrument it’s probably because you love music and you’ve dreamed of being free, confident and creative in music.
And if you have ended up feeling bored, frustrated or fed up with learning music, it’s not your fault. Traditional music education has failed you.
Although it promises to turn you into a great musician in fact it completely neglects to give you two of the three essential components of becoming musical.
We pick up an instrument full of our excitement and passion for music – but what we get often feels like dry, repetitive exercises or trying to train your body to perform like a robot.
What’s musical about that?
You’ve probably felt like “that’s just the way it is” and it’s easy to understand why – that’s what all the “authorities” tell you learning music looks like.
The reality is that this approach to learning music was born centuries ago for classical music – and it persists because the authorities want to make music an easy thing to set exams and test students in.
If you follow this path of learning an instrument you’ll inevitably get bored – because it’s not really a musical experience.
You’ll get frustrated – because you’ll always feel like something’s missing and it’s all harder than it should be.
And you’ll probably end up always feeling a bit inferior, like you just don’t have what it takes to be a great musician.
This system produces musicians who are nervous to perform and feel trapped, unable to play anything except what they’ve carefully learned, note-by-note from sheet music, tab or chord charts. Does that sound familiar?
If you step back and ask what really goes into becoming a good musician you’ll see that everything covered by the traditional instrument-learning system actually represents just ONE of THREE critical aspects.
The first is that instrument technique. It is important and valuable to get good at making an instrument do what you intend it to.
But what about understanding what you’re playing, or having the instinct to choose your own notes or way of playing?
The other two aspects are music theory – something that is quite often part of music education, but taught in a dry, abstract—and frankly boring—way, almost entirely separate from the instrument skills and what you’re actually passionate about in music. So it’s no surprise that most musicians find music theory boring or difficult, and so miss out on the amazing benefits and deep insights into what makes music tick that real music theory can deliver.
The third aspect is your musical ear. Again, “ear training” is sometimes a small part of traditional music education, but it’s a tiny amount, taught in a dry, abstract way which makes it boring and difficult for the student. And so we miss out on the amazing benefits that truly developing your musical ear can provide.
The result is that we’re learning to be good music-reproducing robots – instead of feeling true ownership of the music we love and play and feeling empowered to create and express our own musical ideas with the freedom that we imagined when we picked up our instrument in the first place.
Now if you’re like most musicians you’re probably thinking “I’ve got my hands full just doing the instrument bit!”. Where are you going to find the time for these other two areas too?
Well if you approach them right, taking on all three does not take three times as much time. In fact integrating the other two areas can actually accelerate your instrumental progress, so you can go further, faster, without needing extra practice time.
Because when you think about it, if being a great musician involves your brain, ears and instrument, surely the best way to learn music would develop all three of those together, right?
Discover what this looks like in the rest of the Musicality Unleashed series!
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-hear-chord-inversions/
Learning to hear different triad types and their inversions is not really that difficult, it just takes a little time and understanding.
This article focuses on using our knowledge of the sound of major and minor triads in root position and its interval make-up to tease out the sound of different inversions of these basic chords.
As with any approach, consider this one as a tool to use while you learn the different sound qualities of these sonorities. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-hear-chord-inversions/
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we unpack the concept of “talent”, reveal why it’s a myth, and how this knowledge can help you shift your mindset to realize your full musical potential.
This is the first in a series of episodes we’re calling Musicality Unleashed.
I said in our last episode that these are designed to help you kick off a seriously strong musical 2019 – and I wanted to just take a moment to let you know where this is all coming from.
Last year, as we worked on the Foundations of a Musical Mind course we had the opportunity to step back from Musical U, and all the publishing and podcast episodes we’ve done so far and get a fresh perspective.
In the process we got a whole new clarity around what really matters – both in terms of the mission we’re on at Musical U and what matters for you personally in your musicality journey.
It’s not new stuff we’re conjuring up from scratch – so if you’re a long-time podcast listener or Musical U member then a lot of what I’ll be sharing in these Musicality Unleashed episodes will sound familiar.
But I realised we had the opportunity to really distill down literally thousands of articles and hundreds of hours of podcast content into the crucial few concepts and mindset shifts that can have the biggest impact on your musicality.
Now I could talk about this stuff all day! So I set myself the challenge to explain the most important concepts as succinctly as possible – aiming for just 5 minutes each.
So what you’re about to get is a series of short, punchy episodes, each representing a fundamental insight or mindset shift you can make – which if you truly take on board can transform your musical life for the better.
These episodes also mark the start of our video podcast so if you want to check out the video versions then please head to musicalitypodcast.com where you’ll find the links to our YouTube channel.
Wherever you’re at on your musicality journey and whether you’ve been with us at Musical U and the podcast for years or this is your first time tuning in, I hope you’ll enjoy Musicality Unleashed and the impact it will have you *you* and *your* musical life.
So here we go with the first one. And I figured why not start out with the biggie. So let’s talk about “talent”…
The Truth About “Talent”
Have you ever seen an incredible musician, someone who seems like they can do absolutely anything in music – beautifully, expertly and apparently effortlessly?
If so you might have thought “Wow, they’re talented!”
You probably felt inspired – but also a bit intimidated. Maybe even disappointed because you feel like you don’t have the talent it would take to be able to do that yourself.
And I can understand why. Everywhere around us society talks about “talent” and glorifies the overnight success story of the “gifted” musician.
And when you see someone step up on stage and hold the crowd enthralled with their performance, or improvise an amazing solo out of nowhere, or sit in with a group of musicians with no preparation and just jam along – it can seem magical – like they must have been born with something that you just don’t have.
But those amazing skills of the “natural” musician actually don’t require talent at all.
In fact, so-called talent doesn’t actually exist.
If you think about it, surely if the superstars we admire all had a natural “talent” then they would all have seen great success from an early age and throughout their life? Yet what you’ll always find if you dig into their backstory is years—decades even—of struggle and practice before society suddenly decides they are “talented”.
And if you go on believing that it’s talent that sets those “natural” musicians apart from the average musician you’re going to go through life feeling “untalented” and like you’re lacking the “gift” for music. And you’ll continue living your entire life feeling disappointed that you can’t play like the people who inspire you.
If you’re someone who is really passionate about music, you might stick with it anyway. But compared to those amazing “naturals” you’ll feel slow, robotic – and like everything in music is just harder than it should be.
Those skills and confidence you dream of can be yours – but only if you cast off society’s myth about musical talent.
Here’s the thing: although the idea of “talent” is widespread it’s actually totally outdated. In recent years all the scientific research has has conclusively proven: there is no such thing as “talent”.
Last year I had the chance to speak with Professor Anders Ericsson, the world’s leading expert on the question of “talent”.
He’s spent over a decade researching talent and there are two big findings from his research.
First: The traditional idea of “talent” simply doesn’t exist. Not a single research study has been able to demonstrate that some people are born with a musical gift that others don’t have.
The most you can say is some people have a natural inclination for something when they’re young. That can get you going quicker in your learning – but that headstart dwindles over time.
The second big finding is that there’s no known skill where an innate “talent” is required.
All those amazing musical skills like playing by ear, improvising, writing incredible music, performing with rock-solid confidence? Every one of them is learnable.
So what sets those amazing musicians apart if it’s not talent?
It turns out that they have different “mental models” for understanding music than the average musician. And they’ve put in hard and smart work to develop those mental models.
Dig into the backstory any of those “talented” stars and overnight successes and you’ll find a long trail of hard and smart work that got them there.
And while it might take years to get to that superstar level the truth is that it’s never too late to start studying these skills of the “natural” musician and unlocking for yourself all the amazing musical experiences they can provide.
That means the opportunity is in front of you to become that incredible “natural” musician yourself. Everything you’ve dreamed of in your musical life is possible, however “talented” or not you might have thought you were.
Learn more about the mental models and other mindset shifts required to reach your full musical potential in the rest of this Musicality Unleashed series.
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