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Why do major and minor keys sound so different? Learn how to easily distinguish between the two keys in this lesson of a fundamental musical skill from the Musical U team 🎶https://www.musical-u.com/learn/major-minor-keys/

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Every musician has to deal with stage fright at some point in their musical career (and usually at many points!) Learn how to overcome your hesitations and become confident and comfortable in the spotlight with Musical U 😎 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-overcome-stage-fright/

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Improve your daily practice with just 4 easy steps! Musical U has compiled our 4 favorite tips that will increase the quality of your practice and get you closer to your musical goals ♬🎉 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/instrument-practice-techniques/

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Improvisation is not just limited to jazz music. Some of the biggest names in rock history have been highly capable improvisers. As AC/DC famously said; “For those about to rock… we salute you!” https://www.musical-u.com/learn/carved-names-rock-5-giants-rock-improvisation/

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.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-tips-on-preparing-for-your-first-ear-training-course/
Making ear training part of your 2018 musical goals? 😎 Before you begin your first course, Joanna from JustAnotherFlutist talks about her ear training experiences, and what you can do to best prepare yourself. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-tips-on-preparing-for-your-first-ear-training-course/

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Have you heard that “practice makes perfect”? That’s not necessarily true… 😞 it’s more correct to say that “PERFECT practice makes perfect” 😉 Learn how to improve your musicality 🎶 through the application of deliberate practice in this article from Musical U. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/deliberate-practice-for-musicians/

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What is “The Own” that James Brown talked about? Today, we dive deep into the world of funk guitar 🎸and how you can apply this style to your playing. Guest expert Joe Gatto from Funkish takes us on this musical journey. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-funky-ones-what-makes-funk-guitar-what-it-is/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/destroyers-of-mastery/
In this New Year, have you identified bad habits that are holding you back? Brian Jump is our expert guest today at Musical U 🎶 Find out what are the most common musical bad habits… and how you can eliminate them! 💪 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/destroyers-of-mastery/

Listen to the episode:

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!

The post About Active Listening appeared first on Musical U.