https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-avoid-guitar-injuries/
No pain, no gain? Despite the romantic image of a guitarist working well into the night, you can overdo your musical practice. Perhaps even causing injury to your body.
Learn more about common guitar injuries… and how to avoid and overcome them. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-avoid-guitar-injuries/
With Max from I Will Teach You To Play Guitar
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/four-steps-to-sing-in-tune-infographic/
Singing is a core skill for any musician – whether or not you have any intention of stepping up on stage with microphone in hand!
But what can you do if you can’t sing in tune? Check out this handy infographic from the Musical U team.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/four-steps-to-sing-in-tune-infographic/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/children-music-lessons/
The fall season is nearly upon us! With so many choices for children, how can you decide to enroll your child in music lessons or a sports team? Or can children do both? https://www.musical-u.com/learn/children-music-lessons/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-best-practices-for-online-song-collaboration/
Collaboration among musicians is nothing new to the business. The Beatles, for one, were formed as a result of several individuals deciding to work together as a group, all the way back in the late 1950s.
Learn more about online song collaboration from our friends at Tunedly
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-best-practices-for-online-song-collaboration/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-starting-my-music-degree/
Who’s ready for the start of a new year at University?! Whether you are in music school or not, this is a good time to assess what you are learning in your music lessons, and identify where you may need additional resources to have success in your music. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-starting-my-music-degree/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/seven-reasons-to-learn-a-new-instrument/
How can you can you improve your understanding of the guitar? Perhaps try adding another instrument to your toolbox and see the benefits that playing multiple instruments can bring! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/seven-reasons-to-learn-a-new-instrument/
In this episode, we discuss the value of using your voice as a training tool to hone your instrumental skills – and how your voice is closely tied to rhythm, phrasing, and storytelling in music.
Listen to the episode:
This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!
Subscribe For Future Episodes!
Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!
Enjoying The Musicality Podcast? Please support the show by rating and reviewing it!
On this podcast we often talk about the specific skills of musicality: such as playing by ear or improvising.
But there’s also the broader notion of “playing musically” – which is a slightly more subtle thing. And while it’s closely related to all those specific skills, it’s something to be cultivated in its own right.
When you see a great performer and think “Wow, they’re really musical” or “Gosh, they have incredible musicality”, it might be specific skills you’re noticing, like their ability to play anything they hear, or sit in easily with a new band, or improvise something that sounds amazing, seemingly out of nowhere. But it might just as well be a concert performer who isn’t demonstrating any of those specific skills, but plays in a way that moves the audience and makes a really deep impression with their music.
That’s what I mean by “playing musically” and one valuable thing to know about if you want to play more musically is the notion of playing like you’re singing.
Now before we dive in, one thing to clarify: I’m not going to be talking about making an instrument sound like a human voice. That’s a fascinating topic in itself. I remember back when the first MUSE album came out there was this particular solo on a track where I just could not tell whether the distorted sound I was hearing was a guitar or a singer – and that was really cool and made me realise just how expressive guitar playing can be. And it’s not limited to distorted sounds and audio effects, I think we’ve probably all heard a saxophone or a violin play and felt a deep instinctive connection as if we’re singing or hearing somebody sing. So there is a lot of interesting stuff around instrument technique and the way you can make your timbre sound more like it’s somebody singing. But that’s not what we’re going to be covering in this episode.
We’re going to be talking about some powerful things you can learn from singing to make your playing sound “more musical” – whether you’re a singer yourself or not, and whatever kind of timbre you want your instrument to have.
When I chose the topic for this episode I was expecting to go deep into one specific thing about approaching playing as if it’s singing – but when I started to think about it I realised this is actually a big and multi-faceted topic. So I’m going to cover a few different interesting angles in a lighter way. Because I think that if any one of them resonates with you, you’ll be able to take that idea away and quickly make your own playing much more musical…
All the main methods of musicianship training like Kodály, Orff, Music Learning Theory, and so on agree: to play musically you need to develop your inner hearing. The ability to imagine music vividly in your mind.
This is imtimately tied to your singing voice and while it is possible to develop good inner hearing without singing it’s vastly easier to do so through using your voice as a training tool, as discussed in episode 37.
What’s more your voice is the most direct route to bring the music you hear in your head out into the world without the complications of key signatures and fingering and instrument technique.
If you’re flinching at this and thinking “singing’s not for me” then I’d encourage you to check out episode 12 with George Bevan for the low-down on how anyone can learn the fundamentals of singing quickly and easily.
So one reason approaching music from the viewpoint of singing is that a musically meaningful performance almost always stems from the performer having a vivid mental model of the performance they want to create – and that inner hearing is deeply tied to our ability to imagine ourselves singing, or indeed to actually do it.
I loved how Gerald Klickstein, author of “The Musician’s Way” talked about this back in episode 10, the importance of forming your own mental model of how you want your performance to sound *before* working away on your instrument trying to produce it.
If you don’t find yourself frequently getting your current repertoire stuck in your head on loop, or absent-mindedly humming it to yourself during the day then you probably aren’t spending enough time and effort on the mental model side of creating a compelling performance. Challenge yourself to sing the pieces you want to perform and imagine yourself singing them and you’ll find you get a whole new depth of understanding of the expressive possibilities available to you.
The second reason to think in terms of singing is a much more literal one. Singing and spoken language evolved together and a lot of the rhythmic ideas in music actually stem from the rhythmic patterns in speech. In music we formalise things tightly in terms of quarter notes and triplets and time signatures and rests – but listen to a great musician play and you’ll realise they are absolutely not sticking rigidly to the precision of a metronome for their rhythms!
They’re also not strictly obeying the dynamic markings like forte and piano, crescendos and diminuendos – or at least they’re not sticking only to these. The performer has enormous leeway to make their own decisions about note emphasis and volume, and the best performers make full use of that.
Now I’m not saying that you should completely ignore the written rhythms or dynamic markings and make it all up completely – but to stick intensely strictly to them would be a big mistake too.
Often when talking about Musical U I’ll make reference to how we can help musicians get away from “playing like a robot” and instead feel free, confident and creative. A big part of that is in those specific skills like playing by ear and improvising that we teach, but a lot of it also comes down to making your own musical choices, such as interpreting rhythms and dynamics in your own way.
So what does all that have to do with playing like singing? Well, one big gateway here is to think in terms of words. Whether or not the piece you’re playing has lyrics, you can approach rhythm and phrasing as if the notes you’re playing are syllables of words in a sentence. You can make up meaningless scat syllables DEMO or even write your own lyrics – or use the existing lyrics if they exist. But the point is that the stream of notes with rigid rhythms defined in the sheet music will suddenly reveal all kinds of subtleties and possibilities.
This is what Marshall McDonald was talking about in episode 94 when he mentioned concert pianists actually taking a breath between phrases, almost as if they were singing each one rather than playing it.
And here’s the really cool thing: We all speak and listen to language, pretty much all day every day. Which means you already have a deep instinctive understanding of how spoken phrasing works.
It’s pretty hard to explain to a musician in words how to make their phrasing sound more expressive – there are tips you can give but often it’s best done through demonstration and mimickry. But another big shortcut is to just ask: if this was a spoken sentence, how would I say it?
If you’re playing solo you actually have complete freedom in this. For the tune to be recognisable you won’t want to wander completely from the official rhythm but you can bend it pretty far. If you’re playing in a group then you need to be a bit sensitive to which players have that freedom at any given time – for example the rhythm section of drums and bass in a rock band tend to be pretty rigid in keeping the beat, which gives the other players and particularly the melody part a lot of freedom to play around with rhythm. In an orchestra everybody needs to be quite careful about their timing for things to sound cohesive – but there it’s really the conductor “playing” the orchestra as their instrument, and so it’s he or she who has that rhythmic freedom.
So next time you work on a piece try looking at the notes not as individual notes or dots on a page – but as syllables of words of sentences. Try speaking or singing them and explore what you feel would be a natural way of expressing it. Then bring that to your playing.
The third way to approaching playing like singing is kind of a subcategory of the last one. When a piece actually does have lyrics, it can be instructive and inspiring to really give thought to the content of those lyrics.
This is what Fiona-Jane Weston was talking about in episode 96 when she said sometimes the words are saying one thing while the music tells another story – and to perform the piece credibly you need to understand and express both sides.
So stepping away from the message of “you have total freedom and words or singing can be an avenue to finding that”, this is more about “there is a message already in the piece, and considering the words can help you find it”. Naturally those two aren’t mutually exclusive, you can use the words to understand the piece, and then also to help you express what you’ve found. But I did want to distinguish them because they are very different benefits of approaching playing like singing.
What does this mean in practice? Well it means if you’re an instrument player you need to always consider: does the music I’m playing actually have words to it? If so, what are they, and what do they tell me about how I should be playing this music? If you’re a singer then it means taking a bit of time to consider the lyrics not just in technical terms of vowels and breathing but in the artistic sense of what the song is about and why each word was chosen by the writer.
If we start from an assumption that composers and songwriters had good reason for choosing the words they did, and that the power of the music they wrote is strongly tied to those lyrics – then it’s clear that for any musician to perform the music without carefully considering those words would be really missing out on the potential musicality of their performance.
There’s a broader point too, about understanding the context the music was written in, aside from lyrics. In my conversation with Fiona-Jane she talked about needing to know the storyline a song fits into to really get its meaning and convey it well, and I gave an example from my own past, of spending months learning a piece that was inspired by a painting – without it ever occurring to me to go see what the painting looked like! If we value the artistic creation of a piece of music then we owe it to its creator to pay some attention to the context they wanted it to be understood in.
A small corollary here. I said this idea of considering the meaning of words was different but not entirely separate from the last point, about playing notes as if they’re syllables. And to return to an idea there, that you can make up your own words for music that doesn’t have lyrics: don’t underestimate the value of doing so, especially when you combine it with this idea, of drawing on the lyrics to guide your artistic expression. To put it simply: If you take a piece without lyrics and you write a set of words that are all sunshine and butterflies and play it with those words running through your head – and then the next day you write a different set of words all about tragedy and yearning and play the music with those words running through your head – I think you can probably imagine how differently those two performances would turn out!
The last thing I’ll say here is just: please don’t be intimidated. If you’re anything like I was then you might already be feeling a little lost in all of the technicalities of music, playing the right notes at the right time – and this layer of artistic expression, and the idea of bringing such meaning to your playing might seem lofty and very advanced. But as I hope my butterflies versus tragedy example demonstrated, this doesn’t need to be high art to be effective. Any musical performance can be enhanced by the musician having a vivid inner model of what they want to create, playing notes as if they’re parts of words and sentences, and having a specific lyrical meaning in mind for each phrase they play. This applies to you playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” just as much as it applies to Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach or Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah.
So if approaching playing like singing is such a powerful concept, are there any downsides? Well, overall I’d say none so big as to discourage you from trying it. But one thing worth mentioning is that it *can*, if you’re not careful, actually restrict your creativity rather than enhancing it.
For example I spent a while learning jazz standards on piano and I would always hesitate when picking one I didn’t know and wonder if I should look up the words or not. Because as we’ve talked about, those words can bring a great richness and depth to your performance. But it is also easy to get trapped in that interpretation of the notes. In a way there was something elegant about approaching the new piece purely as dots on a page, and trying to find for myself what the form was, where the best phrasing lay or which parts were most important, and how it all could work as a whole. Once you know the lyrics, a lot of that falls into place, and a bit like when you see a movie before reading the novel it was based on and seeing all the characters in your mind played by the actors they were in the movie, it can be hard to get that idea out of your head once it’s there!
The good news is it’s hard but not impossible. I found that the scat or “bum bum bah” idea mentioned earlier helped, as I could consciously blat out the lyrics with some meaningless syllables, and that let me escape a bit from any preconceptions about how the music should be played. And it’s no coincidence this is a core part of jazz improvisation, the idea of taking the melody and then starting to strip away the details of the verse version and cut it down to its core and start playing around with what it could be.
So, as I said at the start: I thought this was a neatly-defined topic I could share a few pointers on, but I quickly realised there’s a ton of interesting stuff here to explore. I’ve pulled out three ideas about playing like singing that I hope will be useful for you: The idea of using singing, or inner hearing, to develop your ideal performance before you try playing it out loud. The idea of treating notes as parts of words and sentences and leveraging your natural instinct for spoken language to help you find the rhythmic and dynamic possibilities available to you. And the idea of really paying attention to the actual text of a piece to ensure that you appreciate the artistic intention behind it and can convey it as powerfully as possible to your audience.
I won’t pretend to have covered this topic fully but I hope one or more of those ideas gives you a fresh perspective on the music you’ve been playing and how you can make your performances sound more musical, just by shifting how you’re thinking about the notes that you play.
This month only get the first 100 episodes AND MORE with the Musicality Podcast Power Pack!
Subscribe For Future Episodes!
Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!
The post About Playing Like Singing appeared first on Musical U.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/open-your-ears-to-jazz/
Out of the rich pain of the blues, the rhythm of the slaves, and the traditional harmonies of Europe was born a unique style of music that was as much Americana as it was African, as complex as a symphony and as popular as any dance tune, permeating society with syncopated rhythms and a beat that made you want to move your feet.
What are we talking about? Jazz.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/open-your-ears-to-jazz/
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-can-you-get-excited-about-ear-training/
Ear training is one of those topics that tends to illicit yawns and apprehension from many musicians. But the fact is that ear training is only boring if you’re using methods that don’t suit you.
Learn why we are always excited about training our musical ears here at Musical U. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-can-you-get-excited-about-ear-training/
Learning a new instrument fills a musician with pride and confidence, but the longterm benefits don’t end there. In fact, learning a new instrument has been linked to better memory and brain development for those that start at a young age – studies show that musicians tend to be more mentally alert, and a musician’s improved reaction time is correlated to their consistency in playing their favorite instrument.
While that might be enough to get some people to begin taking up guitar or piano or saxophone, far too many others who have an interest in learning a new instrument never take the time to actively pursue it.
So what stops many people from choosing an instrument that interests them and just going for it?
Some people believe that “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” – the notion that if you’re an older adult who is relatively set in your ways, learning an instrument will be too complex for your mind.
For others, learning a new instrument sounds great on the surface, and they understand the benefits it can bring to their lives… but being able to balance the interest in learning an instrument while also juggling the rigors of being an adult – a full-time job, a spouse, raising children – is far too challenging.
But the two above excuses pale in comparison with the biggest obstacles most people face – the worry of making a mistake and the fear of failure.
These fears extend far beyond just the realm of music learning. It’s in our nature to try to find reasons to not accomplish a goal we know is important when it involves the risk of messing up or failing.
Your friend, for example, may know that he needs to lose weight. He understands that there are successful methods in place to help him live a healthier lifestyle. And he is certainly aware of the mental and physical benefits of being slimmer.
However, overhauling your lifestyle is a difficult and daunting task – it’s so much more comforting to go to that family barbecue, eat cheeseburgers, and guzzle soda.
Falling into these old patterns of behavior feels good because of its familiarity. When something is familiar, it’s not scary. And if it’s not scary, you’re free from fear.
When seated nicely in your comfort zone, you never have to worry about making mistakes. You’re the master of your own cushy domain.
In truth, our mistakes are much bigger than simply making the wrong choices when presented with smarter options. In fact, when it comes to music learning, the fear of making mistakes can be crippling.
Some people are monumentally hard on themselves, or terribly embarrassed about being judged by others, so the idea of sitting with an accomplished individual that knows a given instrument like the back of their hand feels daunting.
In fact, if you’re an older adult that’s had a lot of success in your personal and professional life, it can feel downright intimidating to sit down to play the acoustic guitar or violin or keyboard and commit errors in front of your teacher.
The truth is, as human beings, many of us fear failure. And any time you’re posed with the opportunity to move outside of your comfort zone in order to have an enriching experience, the fear of failing can be so strong that it creates a “fight or flight” response within the body.
And many people do choose to take flight, running as far away as possible from the chance to learn a new instrument.
To have a new experience.
To acquire a new skill or tap into a talent that’s gone dormant.
The problem with this choice is that it’s antithetical to the learning process. Whether you’re learning to ride a bike or play the piano, mistakes are a necessary evil.
”Nobody comes out of the womb being proficient in anything – not even the rare child prodigy. One has to hone his or her skills through commitment and hard work.”
You have to fall off your bike a couple of times before you understand how to properly balance your body weight on two wheels. And you have to hit the wrong notes a few times before you truly master the music alphabet.
When we have a fear of making a mistake, we make a mental connection to both danger and judgement. When it comes to music learning, it’s important to remember that your music teacher is present to help grow your skills, not shrink your ego. Wherever you choose to take music lessons is a safe space for all who enter. The only danger is in not walking through the front door.
Will you be a perfect student? No. Will you make mistakes? Absolutely. But it’s important to make mistakes.
You cannot learn how to play an instrument properly without seeing where you erred, and then using those mistakes as your foundation to master the instrument.
Holding your violin bow the wrong way initially and being corrected by your teacher will enable you to master the correct hold. Messing up a difficult bar or two leads you to hone in on the tricky spot and play it through until it’s no longer a problem area. Ineffective practice, with self-reflection and adjustment, will turn into deliberate practice.
Nobody comes out of the womb being proficient in anything – not even the rare child prodigy. One has to hone his or her skills through commitment and hard work.
Learning a new instrument is as much about the mind as it is about the body – both your memory and your muscle memory improve over time. How fast they improve is directly tied to your commitment to practice and repetition. Because learning a new instrument is very much a mental exercise, it would be wise to understand that your mental attitude helps set the tone for whether you will have success over the long term.
If you accept the challenge of learning a new instrument from a positive point of view – that you understand it won’t be mastered overnight, but through repeated practice and perseverance you will accomplish your goal – then you are already halfway there.
”Nobody loves hearing this, but learning an instrument is going to take a whole lot of good, hard work.”
LeBron James isn’t successful because he’s physically gifted. LeBron James is successful because he works hard at his craft. He’s dedicated. He’s persistent.
He doesn’t always find ultimate success in the form of a Championship ring every single year, but he doesn’t let his fear of failure hurt his chase for that success. Instead, he learns from his mistakes. He works hard in the off-season to get better. And he’s always back on the basketball court come the Fall.
This is how you achieve success in learning anything in life – especially a new instrument.
So, you have the positive mindset you need to embark on your musical journey. You have accepted that mistakes and failure will be a part of it – as will triumphs, breakthroughs, and revelations.
So how do you translate your mentality and musical goals into action?
Nobody loves hearing this, but learning an instrument is going to take a whole lot of good, hard work. This will mean playing the same tricky passage over and over until you’ve mastered it, wrapping your head around some difficult theory, and listening to criticism.
Practice everyday, even if some days, it’s only for ten minutes. If you’re learning alone through books or an online course, read them multiple times and take notes, if needed. If you’re getting in-person lessons from a teacher, never be afraid to ask for additional help. Internalize the music alphabet and learn to speak the musical language – these basics go a long way.
And remember: whatever mental gymnastics your mind is doing to keep you in a safe, familiar pattern, the truth is that can learn a new instrument. Failure only becomes a reality if you’re unwilling to take your shot.
The post Why Mistakes and Failure Are Essential for Music Learning appeared first on Musical U.
Stitcher