https://www.musical-u.com/learn/strange-cover-songs/
It’s hard to deny the fact that music is all around us. As musicians, we often hear tones, melodies, and rhythms where others don’t.
Some of us have a knack for hearing those bits and pieces and fusing them together to make actual music out of seemingly random sounds.
We’ve rounded up some of our favourite covers from musicians who are using the most unusual things as instruments. From toddler toys to old computer parts, these artists have painted amazing sound pictures.
Listen for yourself! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/strange-cover-songs/
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we talk about ways of infusing your musical journey with creativity right from the get-go.
Creativity in music isn’t something reserved for a gifted few, and it’s not some advanced skill you need to study for years before you can do.
Creative activities like improvising and composing can be part of your music learning from day one or added in at any time.
If you’re like most music learners, you see creative skills like composing, songwriting and improvisation as advanced skills. Things you’ll be able to do one day once you get “good at music”.
Or you might even have ruled them out completely, thinking you’re just not a “creative person”.
And I understand why you’d think that way. When you see people be creative in music it’s impressive, and it often does go hand-in-hand with instrument proficiency and advanced skill levels.
But why do we pick up an instrument and start learning music in the first place?
It’s to experience that sense of freedom and self-expression, to just play anything you want to and be part of the music you love so much.
Do you really have to study for years before you can get a taste of that?
We get given drills and exercises and told to study other people’s music note-by-note. We’re told that things like playing by ear and improvising either require “talent” or they’re advanced skills that we’ll one day be able to do if we just practice and practice…
It’s no wonder people get bored, frustrated and give up!
Despite what traditional music education would have you believe, playing by ear, improvising, composing, collaborating – these can all be part of your musical life literally from day one.
You can see this just by handing a child an instrument. Do they sit there quietly, waiting for you to give them some sheet music to perform? Of course not! They dive straight in, improvising and having fun.
Sure, the music they produce sounds a bit rough, but clearly there’s creativity there and a freedom to play whatever they want.
So what if those free, expressive skills didn’t have to just be an eventual destination that you hope to one day reach?
What if you started creating in music right from the outset?
This is entirely possible – and actually incredibly constructive. If you do it right those creative musical activities aren’t an addon or a distraction – they can actually be the vehicle through which you learn all that music has to offer…
It’s never too late to start with this kind of creative practice, and with the right kind of training it doesn’t feel super advanced and intimidating. In fact it can be easy and fun.
How do you do it? By putting in place the foundation of mental models we’re talking about in this Musicality Unleashed series – the foundation that’s probably been missing for you and which can empower you to feel creative throughout your musical life.
Creativity in music isn’t something reserved for a gifted few, and it’s not some advanced skill you need to study for years before you can do. http://www.musicalityunleashed.com
Creative activities like improvising and composing can be part of your music learning from day one or added in at any time.
If you’re like most music learners, you see creative skills like composing, songwriting and improvisation as advanced skills. Things you’ll be able to do one day once you get “good at music”.
Or you might even have ruled them out completely, thinking you’re just not a “creative person”.
And I understand why you’d think that way. When you see people be creative in music it’s impressive, and it often does go hand-in-hand with instrument proficiency and advanced skill levels.
But why do we pick up an instrument and start learning music in the first place?
Discover more with Musicality Unleashed! http://www.musicalityunleashed.com
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/5-genius-ways-practice-music-daily/
Everyone knows that practice equals progress, but making the time for regular practice can be hard!
When it comes to habits, consistency is key so developing a daily music practice habit is a better goal than a three-days-a-week music practice habit.
The expectation of daily practice means there’s no excuses for putting it off until tomorrow. But how can you improve your practice habits?
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/turning-the-piano-inside-out-with-sarah-nicolls/
The inner workings of the typical piano hide behind yards of carefully lacquered furniture.
As innovative concert pianist Sarah Nicolls collaborated with contemporary composers, she found herself exploring the sonic possibilities found inside the piano using various tools and body parts to produce otherworldly yet acoustic sounds.
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we talk about the roadblock of musicians thinking they cannot sing because they are tone deaf, and outline the first steps in learning to sing naturally, confidently, and expressively.
Ask the average person in the street to sing for you and they’ll say “Nope, I can’t sing, I’m tone deaf!” Sound familiar?
What’s funny is that even passionate musicians, from amateur to professional, will tell you this!
But “tone deaf” means you can’t tell one note from another – so if they were truly “tone deaf” they would be physically incapable of enjoying music, let alone performing it well.
We treat singing like an innate part of us, something you’ve either got or you don’t.
And I understand why you’d think that because singing is an innate part of us, it’s the most natural of musical activities.
BUT real tone deafness is extremely rare – 98% of those who consider themselves tone deaf or unable to sing actually just haven’t yet trained their ears and their voice.
If you were truly tone deaf you wouldn’t be able to tell one note from another, and all music would sound like a drone.
And if you were truly incapable of singing then you also wouldn’t be able to change your pitch when speaking and every sentence you spoke would sound like a monotone robot like thiiiis.
So singing is possible for you – and this is extremely important, whether you aspire to be “a singer” or not, because for any kind of musician your singing voice is the most powerful tool you have to train your ears and unlock your inner musicality.
There are two parts to singing: your voice and your ears. And both can be trained so that you can understand and reproduce pitch.
Over the last ten years we’ve helped over half a million people start singing in tune.
We start with singing a single note, any note.
Then matching pitch with a single note you hear.
Then learning to move confidently, accurately and reliably between notes.
There are other factors (15, in fact) that go into having a “good” voice but once you master just this one skill, singing in tune, you’ll feel and sound like someone who “can sing”.
Once you “can sing”, singing can be a powerful tool, for example when learning solfa to recognise notes by ear or improvise or compose your own musical ideas.
This idea that “good singing isn’t a gift, it’s learnable by anyone” is a mindset shift that can transform your musical life – learn more in the rest of this Musicality Unleashed series.
Ask the average person in the street to sing for you and they’ll say “Nope, I can’t sing, I’m tone deaf!” Sound familiar? What’s funny is that even passionate musicians, from amateur to professional, will tell you this! http://www.musicalityunleashed.com
We treat singing like an innate part of us, something you’ve either got or you don’t.
And I understand why you’d think that because singing is an innate part of us, it’s the most natural of musical activities.
BUT real tone deafness is extremely rare – 98% of those who consider themselves tone deaf or unable to sing actually just haven’t yet trained their ears and their voice.
If you were truly tone deaf you wouldn’t be able to tell one note from another, and all music would sound like a drone.
And if you were truly incapable of singing then you also wouldn’t be able to change your pitch when speaking and every sentence you spoke would sound like a monotone robot.
So singing is possible for you – and this is extremely important, whether you aspire to be “a singer” or not, because for any kind of musician your singing voice is the most powerful tool you have to train your ears and unlock your inner musicality.
There are two parts to singing: your voice and your ears. And both can be trained so that you can understand and reproduce pitch.
Discover more with Musicality Unleashed! http://www.musicalityunleashed.com
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/who-moved-the-tonic-part-1-hearing-key-changes/
If you’ve been working on playing by ear – with or without solfa – you know by now that the tonic gives you most of the information you need to play and/or transcribe a melody without written music.
It tells you the key, the scale, the accidentals, the potential chord progressions and more.
And if you can pick out the subdominant (fa) and the dominant (sol) by ear then you can figure it out even faster.
https://www.musical-u.com/learn/choosing-music-performer-bandleader-studio-musician-and-educator-dylan-welsh/
Freelance guitarist, bandleader, arranger, and music educator Dylan Welsh is already an eight-year veteran of the vibrant Seattle music scene.
When he was still too young to hang out in bars and network, internet-savvy Dylan built a career by creating an online presence that now includes remote session work, Skype lessons, arranging/chart preparation and more.
This episode is part of the Musicality Unleashed series. Learn more and get a bonus “cheat sheet” at musicalityunleashed.com. In this episode, we talk about how you can connect the music theory and ear training you’re learning with the music you want to play and are passionate about.
Learning music means learning to play songs or pieces – right?
Actually, if you approach music that way you’re drastically limiting your musical potential.
Yet songs *can* hold the key to the most enjoyable and effective kind of music learning there is… How can that be?
Music education normally focuses purely on learning to reproduce songs on your instrument.
That can be satisfying at first but it quickly makes you start feeling like a robot rather than a real musician – painstakingly learning new pieces note-by-note and always worried about playing a wrong note.
At the other end of the spectrum you could focus purely on your “inner musician”, training your ears and brain to understand music on a deep level.
That’s really valuable and often it’s really helpful to rebalance things by including more of that kind of work in your music learning.
The problem is that kind of music theory and ear training is often taught with dry, abstract studies and exercises. You develop the understanding but it’s completely separate to the songs you’ve been learning to play and the real music you’re passionate about.
It can feel like you’re bending over backwards to connect the two worlds: of understanding musical concepts intellectually, and playing “real music”.
So how can you have the best of both worlds?
Learning with songs and real music, and gaining that deep intellectual and instinctive understanding of how music works?
It turns out you can do this, using an approach called “song-based learning”.
With this kind of approach you learn real musical pieces, like songs – but you don’t learn them for the sake of just replicating them note-perfectly.
Every song is carefully selected because it features the new musical concepts you want to understand next.
The music itself is used to teach the concepts so that you actually get to understand what’s going on instinctively even before you’re explicitly introduced to the concepts underneath.
When you do it this way, music theory and ear training aren’t separate activities from learning pieces of music – they all go together, and the whole process of learning music becomes more effective, more efficient, more enjoyable, and – most importantly – more musical!
So any time you’re trying to understand a new musical concept or learn a new musical skill, ask yourself: could I do this through a song? And any time you’re learning to play something new, take a moment to ask: what could this song teach me about music, what can I learn here that will empower me in the rest of my musical life?
Do this and you’ll start to experience the power of song-based learning – and you’ll soon wonder how and why you ever did it any other way!
This kind of song-based learning is the ideal environment for exploring the kind of new mental models we’ve been talking about in this Musicality Unleashed series.
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