Musicality World

The Big “Why” drives our musical journey forwards – it’s our big-picture vision, our musical dream. But what about the Little “Why”? In this episode, we talk about the questions that you should frequently ask yourself about your musical trajectory to ensure you’re on the right track.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• LJS 82: How to Set Game-Changing Goals for Your Musicianship, with Christopher Sutton
• About Choosing an Online Music Course
• About Taking a Long-Term Mindset

Transcript

Hi, this is Christopher, the founder of Musical U, and today I’d like to talk about “the little why” – and how it can help you avoid frustration and wasted effort in your music learning.

We’ve talked here on the show before about staying motivated, and taking a long-term view. How you need to know where you’re trying to get to and why, to find success in your musical training and keep at it.

I’ll put a link in the shownotes to a few past episodes on this in case you missed them.

And inside Musical U we focus quite a lot with new members on getting them 100% clear on their “Big Picture Vision” and primary training goals, so that any modules they choose to take are going to effectively lead them towards those goals – we make sure that the training program is personalised and adapted to suit their actual motivations in joining Musical U in the first place.

You can think of all this as “The Big Why” – the “why” that drives and guides it all in your musical life.

But today I wanted to talk about the smaller scale of remembering your motivation. The “Little Whys”.

We recently had a Q&A call for our Foundations of a Musical Mind course, where students could come along live and get answers to their questions from me and Anne Mileski, our course instructor. And one of the students on the call, a chap by the name of Steve, was asking a question about form. There was an exercise in Module 4 of the course which referred to a song being in AABA form.

Now if you aren’t familiar with that kind of form labelling, it’s really simple – AABA just means that the song does one thing, we’ll call it “A”, then it does that same thing again, so we say “A” again, then it does something different which we’ll label “B”, and then it does the original thing again, so we say “A” again. It gives you a sense of the structure of repetition and variations in a piece of music.

And Steve was pointing out that actually in this song the fourth line was a bit different from the first two, one of the rhythms was different, and he was asking “should this be called AABC instead of AABA?”

We had an interesting discussion on the call about that, and the quick factual answer to his question was that we might call this last line an “A variation” or mark it as “A prime”, but it’s also fine to just call it A.

And this led to the more interesting underlying point: which was that it depends why you’re figuring out the song form in the first place.

One thing I love about working with adult learners at Musical U, and especially in our Foundations course, is that adults have a bit of self awareness and a bit more determination to do things their own way. And while that can make it a bit like herding cats to try to provide training that works for all of them, it also leads to really fruitful and often quite deep conversation about how music is put together, and how all the various areas of music theory and different traditions of music education work – or, as is often the case, don’t work!

So what I said to Steve on the call because I thought it was an important bigger-picture point was: we need to remember to ask ourselves why we’re labelling the form. We aren’t doing it to get a question marked correct on a music theory exam. In the context of the Foundations course, we’re doing it so that we can then improvise or compose variations on that song, so that we’re building up our actual understanding of how the song’s put together. And once you remind yourself of that it’s easy to see the answer to the question. Call the fourth line “A”, call it “A variation”, call it “C” or even “Jeff”. As long as your labelling is clear and serves you in the way you’ll be using it, that’s the “correct” answer.

Steve had understood what he needed to about the form – and so exactly what label he put on it at that point really didn’t matter. He was equipped to do the thing, in this case improvising, that he actually cared about, and had motivated him to look at the form in the first place.

Now it is good to know the “right answers” and use the standard terminology, so I don’t mean to suggest that Steve was wrong in any way to wonder about how best to label the form. But I think we often get tripped up thinking that we must learn these things just because we “should” know them, and that we’re only doing music right if we’re ticking the officially-correct boxes and doing what we “should”. And that can lead to us actually missing the point of it all.

This is really an underlying principle throughout the Foundations of a Musical Mind course, that although we do teach terminology and ways of applying the core skills such as improvising, singing, composing, collaborating and more – it’s the internal frameworks of understanding, the mental models that matter most. Because once you have those in place, all the rest, all the applications on your instrument, all the learning of theory jargon, and so on – that all follows smoothly and easily.

So there are two points here I wanted to share with you. The first is this specific comment that often focusing on the inner frameworks, the mental models, your understanding of music can make it a lot easier or even unnecessary to learn particular skills or memorise rules, or study up on theory. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while then you won’t be surprised to hear me say that! It’s the “inner skills” of music that set you free.

And the second point is a slightly more general one, which is to make sure to be frequently asking yourself “Why do I want to learn this?”. You don’t want to be constantly second-guessing yourself and changing course in your learning, of course. But I’ve seen far too many musicians spend far too much time, and waste far too much energy going down rabbitholes or getting all worked up about resolving some intricate detail of music theory – when actually if they stopped to remind themselves of their goals and interests in music, and shake off the obligation that you should learn it just because it’s there, or just because the establishment says it’s important, then of course you must study it. They might realise they’ve actually already grasped what they really need to, and could spend their time and energy much more usefully elsewhere.

There’s value in systems which have stood the test of time and there’s value in having a teacher, coach or guide in your training. But our learning should never be blind and unthinking – and particularly as adult learners we must make sure to remind ourselves: we’re learning for a reason, we have a motivation in mind. And remembering that motivation often brings simplicity and clarity to our learning in a way that nothing else can.

So ask yourself that little “why?” regularly – as in “Why am I learning this?” – to make sure you’re never putting in effort “just because” – but instead your learning is all on-point and will deliver what you most want in your musical life.

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The post About the Little “Why” appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/consonance-dissonance-music/
Have you ever heard a song that just felt sort of “off”?

If so, you’ve already experienced the drastic difference between consonance and dissonance.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/consonance-dissonance-music/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/think-cant-sing-ask-10-questions/
Recording yourself is a powerful tool to improve your voice. We all sound funny to ourselves at first.

Go ahead, record yourself singing and listen back. No one else has to hear it!

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/think-cant-sing-ask-10-questions/

The same can happen as we build music skills, allowing us to advance from one technique to the next without having to stop and think about what we’re doing.

Strengthening Neural Connections

Despite the terminology, muscle memory has nothing to do with your muscles – it happens in your brain. As demonstrated in a 2010 study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists can detect physical changes in brain matter as people master new skills. To put it simply: when we perform the same physical task over and over, stronger connections form between the different parts of the brain that are required for that particular skill. As these connections strengthen, we are able to perform the task faster and with less conscious effort.

As Ainslie Johnstone, a Ph.D candidate at Oxford University’s Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, pointed out in a recent post on Medium: “Over time, with continual practice, actions as complicated as riding a bike, knitting, or even playing a tune on a musical instrument can be performed almost automatically and without thought.”

It’s easy to see how muscle memory can help you master that tricky chord change, but how do you exercise your brain, anyway? As Johnstone points out, it’s all about “continual practice,” but you’ll build muscle memory much faster if you trade mindless repetition for strategic habits that give those neural connections a workout. Try these three tricks to harness your brain power to build musical skill.

1. Play Every Day

Beginners often think there’s no point in practicing unless they can devote a large block of time to it but in reality, the opposite is true. Playing your instrument every single day, even if it’s only for a few minutes, will serve you better than practicing once or twice a week for hours at a time.

This is not to say you won’t learn anything if you only play your instrument intermittently. You may very well play through your practice pieces without a mistake and earn a gold star from your teacher. But by growing accustomed to sporadic practice, you lean more heavily on the parts of your brain responsible for memorizing facts or formulas, rather than those associated with muscle memory.

“When it comes to learning skills, the brain has evolved in such a way that it has allocated certain parts to learning some skills and other parts to learning other skills,” Todd Maddox, who holds a Ph.D in computational and psychological science, wrote in Training Industry Magazine. The parts of the brain responsible for cognitive skills, such as mathematics, are entirely separate from those responsible for behavioral skills like throwing a football, driving a car, or playing a musical instrument, Maddox explains.

Think of the last time you showed up to a music lesson after running through your practice pieces a few dozen times the night before. You have the pieces memorized, but you find your fingers moving slowly and clunkily – and you have to focus intently in order to play through them without a mistake. “Even when we are proficient at [cognitive] skills, they still feel effortful,” Maddox writes. “We can’t shut off our brains when doing them, because we’ll make mistakes if we do.” When we master behavioral skills, on the other hand, “they feel effortless,” he continues. “It feels like we’ve turned our brain off.”

By playing your instrument every day, you move away from pure memorization and begin to activate the parts of your brain responsible for behavioral skill – allowing for faster and more instinctual motion.

2. Be Consistent

When you’re just getting started, it’s tempting to try to play as quickly as possible. In our hurry to play as fast as the pros, we often strike that note or chord with whatever finger is closest – rather than consistently using the same finger or combination of fingers each time. This may save you a few precious seconds in the short term, but in the long term, it will only slow you down.

Let’s take a very simplified look inside the brain to understand why: a certain type of cells, called climbing fibres, are responsible for a great deal of the brain connections associated with fine motor movement. Along with helping our brains build connections that correspond with the right way to perform a task, studies indicate that these cells are keeping track of our mistakes, too.

“Climbing fibres encode the degree of “error” associated with a given motor task,” Thomas Robb, legatus secretarii at the Advisory Board for Movement Disorders, wrote on the Oxford Neurological Society blog, citing recent research. “For example, when first learning to touch-type, the learner will be relatively slow, and make errors in their typing accuracy. Climbing fibres register these mistakes, and weaken cell synapses that are associated with erroneous motor movements.”

Over time, as the brain continues to log mistakes and successes, it effectively “declutters” itself by strengthening the pathways we need and weakening those we don’t – allowing for faster, smoother motor control, Thomas explains. When you play fast and loose with the way you use your fingers, you make it more difficult for those trusty climbing fibres to do their job, and it will ultimately take more time to reach mastery. In short, you may play a little slower at first, and that’s okay. Consistency should be your first priority.

3. Change Your Mindset About Practice

If you approach practice like a chore, it will feel like a chore. Building any new skill is difficult, but don’t lose sight of why you picked up music in the first place – because it’s stimulating and fun. Finding ways to maintain that enjoyment, even as tasks grow more challenging, will actually help you learn better than trudging through something you’ve grown to dislike.

My new book, Beginner’s Guitar for Kids with Winden and Squiggy, emphasizes creative play alongside music practice to keep learners engaged – but this tip isn’t just for children. A 2006 study published in the journal College Teaching found that university students recalled facts more easily when the professor included jokes about relevant topics. Another study, published last year in the Journal of Vocational Behavior, notes a strong correlation between fun activities in the workplace and employees’ overall learning.

Winden and Squiggy includes things like storytelling, coloring pages, and activities to keep lessons interesting for young learners. Try something similar to break the drudgery of your own practice: introduce other creative tasks you enjoy, such as drawing, writing, or working with your hands. Or, if it seems a better fit for you, carve out some time to yourself as part of your practice – listen to a favorite song, do some stretches, meditate for a few minutes, or just sit quietly and center yourself. Overall, just make sure you’re having fun.

A Fast Track to Muscle Memory

I’m not a neurologist, and there’s a good chance you aren’t either, but the science behind learning and memory is both fascinating and extremely practical. There are a lot of takeaways from neuroscience research that can help you structure your practice as effectively as possible.

Learning a little more about how your brain functions and understanding why we do what we do when we’re learning music will help you be more intentional about your choices and ultimately develop that sought-after muscle memory a little faster – allowing you to play naturally, effortlessly, and musically, rather than focussing your brain on finding the right notes and fingering.

Corey Klaus is a teacher and music lover based in Southeastern Pennsylvania. He is the author of Beginner’s Guitar for Kids with Winden and Squiggy, a book of guitar exercises for beginners that helps children of all ages learn the instrument on their level. Follow him on Instagram at @Corey_Klaus

The post Turn Technique Into Muscle Memory With These 3 Habits appeared first on Musical U.

Lisa McCormick discusses the concept of the “self” in music, the importance of nurturing a positive and constructive mindset for learning, and the need for a holistic approach to practicing that encourages constant dialogue between mind, body, and music.

Listen to the episode:

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Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Lisa McCormick’s website
• Note2Self: “I Love This!”, with Lisa McCormick

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Musicality Podcast, my name’s Christopher Sutton and I’m the founder and Director of Musical U.

Recently at Musical U we’ve been revisiting our past masterclasses, producing full transcripts and cheat sheets, and packaging them up really nicely – and a cool byproduct of that is it’s been an excuse to go back and watch them again.

And as you will have noticed if you’re a regular listener, I’ve really been inspired to want to share little bits and pieces with you guys in our podcast audience, because these masterclasses are packed with gems and insights, and although the full recordings are for members only, sometimes I just think “Ooh, we have to get this bit heard by more people!”

So today I have another masterclass gem for you, this time from when Lisa McCormick visited us at Musical U to share her “Note2Self” method which, in my own words, I’d say is about transforming your music practice to be more mindful, joyful and ultimately more effective.

Lisa was introducing the concepts behind the name “Note2Self” and after explaining that the word “Note” can refer to the music itself, she went on to say this…

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In Note2Self, a note is also a message. It’s a personal reminder. It’s, “Oh, I really need to work on that E7 chord. I’m not really, I’m not good at that. That’s a problem,” as you’re playing through a song that you’re working on. I highly encourage you to make it also a written reminder. If you discover a problem spot in a piece, draw a circle around it, and we’ll come back to what to do with what you put in that circle. But, actually use what’s called in education multi-modality. Which, is to say, we’re using listening, we’re using seeing, we’re using assessing, and we’re using written language to make really useful notes to ourselves so we don’t have to remember it, and reinvent the wheel every time.

A note could be a mental flag while practicing. I kind of already said that. Like, “I’m playing this song along, but ugh, there’s this one part that always kind of gets me. I’m just going to make a note to myself, and come back to that.” It’s also your internal dialogue and narration. Is this going well? Is it not going well? If it’s not going well, is it because you don’t have a musical bone in your body? No, it’s because there’s some misunderstanding, or skillset that hasn’t quite come into form yet.

Internal dialogue and narration is super important, because what it does, is it… Again, it stimulates brain chemicals that stimulate certain mood sets. If you’re having a positive internal dialogue and saying, “Well you know, this is coming along. I’m working on it, I’m getting there.” That’s adding to a positive mindset with those endorphins, and dopamine, and stuff like that. That allows your process to flow.

If you’re having negative thoughts about yourself, about the instrument, about music, about any of that. What that does, is it actually, the brain, the very deep part of your brain interprets that as an attack on your wellbeing. You get a little bit of that fight, flight, or fright response. Which creates tension, physical tension. The more physically tense you are, because you’re having negative thoughts, the worse your playing is going to get.

It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. You want to watch for that. My thinking existentially like, “I can’t play this chord because I stink,” is just not going to help you. “I can’t play this chord because I haven’t sorted it out yet, and we have some sorting out to do.” That’s great, great. Okay, so two aspects of note. A musical note, and the note as in a message to yourself, in your internal dialogue, or something you actually write down.

Then, self. Two aspects of self. Your physical self. Your hands, your fingers, your arms, your shoulders, the parts of your body that are in contact with the instrument, the parts of your body that need to be loose in order to really bring your best interpretation to the music, and relaxation.

You and your instrument physically itself. Some people, if you’re a small petite person and you play a big dreadnought guitar, that may not be the greatest relationship physically for you. You want your instrument to be something that you can physically be comfortable with. I do a lot of that with ukulele and guitar students, “Let’s experiment with a slightly different size. Let’s experiment with a slightly different way of sitting, way of holding the strap.” It’s your actual physical relationship to the physical instrument, and is it maximized to let you bring out your best?

Your breathing. This, I don’t know how many times as a teacher I’ll be having somebody work on something kind of intense and they’ll be like, “Huh.” I’ll say, “Breathe.” I understand the impulse, you’re kind of all in. But, on the other hand, if you can be aware of breathing while you’re working on working at a bug, or a sticky part, what you’re doing is building a sense of relaxation into your technique, into what you’re learning, okay? You’re learning not only how to do it with your fingers, but you’re learning how to do it in a relaxed manner.

You don’t want to be playing a song all relaxed and then, “Huh, here comes this part,” and then go back. You want there to be a relaxed flow all along. Keep an eye on your, “Am I breathing?” Pretty simple. Physical quirks. Oh, how many people have said, “Oh, my fingers are too short.” Or, “My fingers are too fat.” Or, “My belly is too fat.” Or, “I broke my finger when I was 11, and it healed funny.”

All of these things may be true, and what we do is we just work with them. I mean, there’s a ton of professional musicians who have physical disabilities of many different kinds, and it’s not an… It doesn’t mean, in most cases, you can’t play. It means we’re going to have to find some workarounds, if you have some physical issues. Arthritis, weird fingers, whatever. But, that’s something to be aware of, and something to work with and not say, “Well I’m doomed because I broke my ring finger 10 years ago.” No, you’re probably not doomed.

And, brain chemistry that we’ve talked about a little bit. Are you nurturing a positive sense of joy, and flow, and relaxation in your process? Or, are you in a state of stress, and tension, and angst, and anxiety? Which is just going to make the playing tenser, no matter what the difficulty level is, okay? Keeping an eye on your mindset, and that will bring us around to the Note2Self mantra that helps maintain that.

Then, self, also. Your mind and soul. We’ve talked about your body, now we’re talking about the mind and the soul. Your analytical thinking mind. Why is this chord change giving me trouble? Let’s figure it out, let’s think. Your present thoughts. Again, your self narration. “What am I, am I any good at this? Should I just give it up?” Or, “I’m on the path. I’m getting there.” Your beliefs, your core beliefs about yourself as a musical person. Your beliefs about music. Is music only for certain special people, like high class athletes? Or, is music for everybody? What are your beliefs about that? If you believe that music is for everybody, then you believe that you’re in the right place. Even though all of us are always working to make it better, to make it flow better.

Your personal identity and core beliefs. Again, the teacher who said, “Don’t sing, you haven’t got it.” “I’m not a musical person. My core belief is that I’m not a musical person.” Well, what if you pretended that you didn’t think that? What if you just threw that out and said, “Well, let’s find out, you know? Let’s find out what happens if I actually try and make some notes. I might surprise myself.” I see people do it all the time. I’ve taught hundreds of thousands of adult beginners, who thought that, “Eh. This is not going to… This is going to be really hard, it’s not going to be for me. I’m too old, it’s too late. I’m not a musical person.” But, surprise, they’re out having a great time.

The state of emotion that is brought up by that, feeling good about yourself or what’s going on, feeling upset, feeling discouraged. Again, keeping an eye on keeping a positive environment. And, your state of focus when you are practicing. I really, really, really, really encourage people to practice in a place where they feel they have privacy. Where they can experiment, and try different things. ‘Cause, that’s how you’re going to learn, is by experimenting and trying different things.

If your roommate is in the next room, and you go out after your practice session and they say, “Man, how many more times you going to play that song?” Suddenly you’re self conscious in your practicing, and when you go back to your practice space you’re thinking about, “Oh God, they can hear me.” It really, really breaks the kind of focused attention that we need to do this kind of work. Are you private, or are you in a state of feeling witnessed? You want to be private. Get creative. My dad, he started playing ukulele at the age of 78. For privacy, he goes and plays in the car. He just pushes the seat back, and takes his ukulele, and he’s in his own little world, and it’s great.

All right, so let me make sure this is all in the screen. There we go. You see, we have the note, it’s two aspects. It’s the music, and it’s also the message, the language, the thoughts that go around it. We have the self, your physical self. Your body, your muscles, your physical memory. And, we have the mind and the soul. Practicing music is a constantly flowing conversation, between all of these things. They’re constantly informing one another, okay?

—-

I hope that you enjoyed this little snippet from our masterclass with Lisa. There’s so much wisdom in her Note2Self method and I’m a really big believer in the power of these little changes to your mindset in music to have a massive impact on how much you enjoy and succeed in your musical life, so I hope you’ll be taking some of these observations on board for your own practicing.

You can learn more about Lisa McCormick and the Note2Self method at her website, LisaMcCormick.com, that’s McCormick spelled M-C-C-O-R-M-I-C-K, LisaMcCormick.com, and of course we’ll have that link, as well as Lisa’s interview here on the podcast, in the shownotes for this episode at musicalitypodcast.com.

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post About Your Self appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/what-is-kodaly-and-how-does-it-relate-to-ear-training/
There are almost as many approaches to learning music as there are musicians!

Let’s dive into the Kodály method, which combines several powerful techniques for developing the core skills of musicianship.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/what-is-kodaly-and-how-does-it-relate-to-ear-training/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/patterns-playgrounds-4-ways-approach-improvisation/
If you want to improvise music you are eventually going to have to confront the fact: learning to improvise is hard.

Learn some insights and approaches to help make this an easy and natural part of your musicality.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/patterns-playgrounds-4-ways-approach-improvisation/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/prose-indie-rock-writer-embraced-musicality/
Is making music something that is limited to professionals? Hear how one writer embraced his inner musicality and found a passion for creating music.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/prose-indie-rock-writer-embraced-musicality/

With Marc Schuster.