Musicality World

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-space-between-hearing-and-singing-intervals/
At Musical U, you’ve learned some of the basic principals of solfege syllables and how to determine the tonic.

Now let’s discuss intervals. Recognizing the distinct sound of different intervals and being able to sing them back accurately in solfege will go a long way with developing transcribing skills.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/the-space-between-hearing-and-singing-intervals/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-tune-your-guitar-by-ear/
A lot of discussion can be had over whether the guitar should be tuned by ear or with the help of an electronic device.

As we’re about to see, tuning by ear has multiple benefits over the “easier” path of using a tuner.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-tune-your-guitar-by-ear/

Musical U’s own Adam Liette talks about his long and winding musical journey – from his conservatory years, to serving his country through music in the Army band, to his work at Musical U – and the realizations he’s made along the way about playing professionally vs. playing for the sake of joy and fulfillment.

Listen to the episode:

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

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

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• About the Message in the Music

Transcript

Hello. My name is Adam Liette and welcome to the Musicality Podcast. Now if you’re a regular listener to the show, you’re probably thinking, “Wait a minute. That’s not Christopher Sutton.” No it’s not. Christopher asked if I could share with you some of my personal insights and experiences, and how it really relates to you our audience at the Musicality Podcast.

I’m the communications manager for Musical U, and in that job I do just a wide variety of different things. And one of those things that I love to do is to manage all of our social media channels on Facebook, and Twitter, and YouTube, and Pinterest. And I love to get to see and read your comments, the things that you post on our articles and our videos. And it’s a great thing to get to hear so many of you musicians, and how what we’re doing at Musical U inspires you.

And then every now and then there’s a comment from someone that feels that life has passed them by, that they were a musician and now they’re too old to pick it up again, or too old to pick it up for the first time. And it just breaks my heart because that hasn’t been the case in my life. It hasn’t been the case in my experiences, and I just wanted to share with you just how far you can get away from music and still come right back to it.

So I’m calling this episode The Long and Winding Road, not just because I love the Beatles, and I do, but because that’s how life feels sometimes. We get this perception from our coaches, and teachers, and family that we should have this path in our life, these goals that we set when we’re 18 and 19 years old, and we continue on until we fulfill those goals, and we’re happy and we live happily ever after. And I know for me that hasn’t been the case. And I imagine for a lot of you it’s not as well. And that’s not just because of my age, I’m barely a millennial, just barely, and my generation is pretty notorious for career changes. We are not set to just stick in the same job. We move around a lot and we do a variety of different things. And that certainly has been the case in my life.

So just to travel way back to that time when we’re supposed to make those decisions. At age 18 I entered into college. I had this dream of being a band director. And so I went to the conservatory, and for the next four years studied classical music in hopes of becoming a high school music teacher. Now at the time I was also playing Rock and Roll. That’s how I largely financed my college education. So I was learning classical music all day, and going and playing heavy metal at night, kind of a juxtaposition and an odd mix of different musical styles, but I loved it! I love the variety of music I had in my life and how I’d just go from Mussorgsky and Mahler to Megadeth and Metallica. It was wonderful. I loved it.

And then I graduated. And I graduated, I’m supposed to go get a job, get married, do all those things that we’re supposed to do. And instead I chose a remarkably different path. You may remember, this was back in 2006 when I graduated, and at the time the war in Iraq was raging. We were at the height of the war and the surge was in effect. And I was at that age where for better or worse I felt that it was my turn, it was my time. And I was compelled to put aside everything else and go serve my country. Now I didn’t do it the typical way, just entering the Army, I entered the Army band because that made the most sense to me. And I would do it again, absolutely.

And so I served my country through music. I was a trumpet player and so I played Taps for funerals, was one of my biggest jobs during my first year in the service. I played Taps for hundreds of funerals, because I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And Airborne does mean we jump out of airplanes. That was part of our job was we were paratroopers. And the 82nd Airborne really took a big hit in that war. It was not pretty. And I’ve talked about this on a previous episode of the podcast, talking about what that was like to play Taps for so many funerals.

Now it wasn’t all drudgery and these kind of depressing gigs. I got to do some incredible gigs. I got to play at NASCAR races. I’ve played for two U.S. presidents, four star generals, and U.S. ambassadors. I toured the world as a musician in the Army band, going to Afghanistan and training the Afghan National Army Band for a year, in addition to also picking up country music as I was touring around the country playing for our troops, living out of Black Hawk helicopters, the ultimate dream as a musician, right?

And life was great. I was a father. I had two young children at home. I had a wonderful wife. Everything should have been perfect, and I should have been able to stay on this path that I was on as a professional musician making a living. And yet once again life pulled me in a different direction, because I did love my job, I loved the service, but I still felt the need to go a little deeper. And so I tried out for U.S. Army Special Operations, and to my complete shock I made it. I made it through the initial selection. I ended up going through a year long qualification course. And then for the next seven years I was in an operational unit deploying almost every year. I deployed for a certain amount of time, and I wasn’t home a lot.

Now I remember when I made the switch I deliberately decided if I can’t be a professional musician, I don’t want to play anymore. Because I felt at the time that I had reached a certain level of performance, a certain level of professionalism that I wouldn’t be happy playing as a “amateur” anymore. I wouldn’t be happy and content with my musical experience unless I could continue to play at the level that I had been playing. And just from a mechanical perspective, if you’re not playing the trumpet for two to three hours a day at the level that I was playing, two to three hours a day is just maintenance. You’re not improving at that point, at that level. And so I gave it up entirely, because I knew that. I knew that there was no way I could maintain where I was as a musician and still have a job, and still be a family man. So I gave it up entirely. And for close to two years during the initial training and some of my initial deployments I didn’t play at all. I would barely even listen to music, let alone actively listen to music. Music became a background. It became something I used to do, someone I used to be.

And then little things started to happen. I remember being on the deployment when our host nation counterparts invited us out to Karaoke. And after a couple beers I agreed to go sing. And I didn’t let go of the microphone for the rest of the night. I sang one song, they went absolutely crazy and asked for more. And so I kept singing. And then someone came up with a guitar and they gave it to me. And I hadn’t played guitar in close to two or three years. But it was like riding a bike. I picked it right back up. I strummed a few chords and played some songs.

And that was the start of a slow journey back. A slow journey realizing that, yes. I would never be the professional level musician that I was ever again. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with just playing for the sake of playing, and playing for my own enjoyment, playing for my own self fulfillment.

And this would repeat itself over the years several times. So I knew that the path I was on and the job I was doing, I couldn’t do that forever. Who can do that kind of job forever? Plus I had a very loving wife who was more than ready to be done with the military. And so I did all those other things you’re supposed to do. I went to grad school. I got my MBA. And I was a couple years away from getting out of the military and I was just bored, so I started freelancing. I was deployed and I needed something to pass the time in the evening, so I started working in digital marketing. And I was just having a hard time initially getting gigs, getting clients, because without getting too much into specifics, this is kind of a dog eat dog industry.

And then along the way the most amazing thing happened, is I saw an advertisement online for this company called Musical U that was looking for a communications manager to help with their company. And I applied for the job and I got it, and I’ve been here ever since. And I just think it’s so amazing when I sit here and reflect on everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve done, the amount of countries I’ve been to, the times I’ve been around the world, and there’s always these opportunities that just present themselves. They appear in front of us, and it’s amazing what happens when you have the ability to say yes, I will do that. Yes, I will take that chance and put myself out there, and maybe do something I’m a little uncomfortable with because I haven’t done it in a while.

Now you may be thinking, “Gosh Adam. You’re just lucky. You got this gig landed in your lap, and now you’re able to do this again.” But I don’t believe in luck. I believe that luck is what happens when preparation and opportunity meet. We all make our own luck, and it’s a matter of recognizing the opportunities when they’re in front of us, and jumping back into something that we are deeply passionate about even if we’re scared to. And since then I’ve discovered that yes, mechanically I’m not nearly as proficient a musician as I used to be. But in many ways I’m a better musician, because I have a deeper appreciation for the art, I have a deeper love and passion for making music. But I developed and matured as a person so that I’m more able to apply myself to go through different exercises, to learn from different experts, and to become an even better musician than I was in many aspects.

And that’s really something that I’ve noticed just in the short time here at Musical U, all those things, those innate inner skills of musicality, they’ve come back tenfold. I’m now for the first time able to really hear intervals, able to hear a progression and a melody in a way that I wasn’t be able to back when I was playing professionally. And it’s because I was not afraid, and I was able to take that chance.

And as I sit here now I think to something that often happens in our culture, in our societies, where you compare a man to their father. And I’m realizing more and more that we are a lot alike. I’ve always known that, but even more now because my father had very much a similar career path. He started as a musician, left in order to raise us, raise us children, and took a different career. And now that we’re grown and out of the house, he’s able too, to return to music. And it’s not in the way that he thought he would ever do it. But it was opportunities that presented themselves in front of him that he was able to jump on to do something different, and discover a new passion for a different genre and style of music that he never knew he had. For my father specifically it’s Barbershop, not really what he thought he would ever get into. But because of where he was in singing in our church choir and being a community band director, an opportunity presented itself and he was able to take that opportunity, and make it his own and discover a new passion and love for music that he didn’t have before.

And I just think we only have so much time on this Earth, so much time together, so much time to share and experience this joy. If we’re not taking advantage of it, if we’re not looking for those opportunities and doing stuff that may seem out of the norms, but you know it makes you happy, you know it fulfills you, I just think that’s one of the greatest gifts we’re given is these opportunities and the people that we meet, the experiences that we have, and the joy and pleasure of being able to share with others.

And that’s what I wanted to do on this episode of the podcast, share with you some of my journey, how I came here in hopes that I will inspire just one of you. If I do that, I’ll be thrilled. So just to close the episode, we are all on a winding road, this winding path of life and it will take many turns. And whether or not you came from a position of being a professional musician, or you’ve ever just thought that you would like to play music, don’t be afraid to just take that opportunity, take that chance, because you’ll never know until you do it. Because life is too short to live with regrets or what could have beens, when we have every opportunity we need right in front of us. Until then this is Adam Liette from the Musicality Podcast and I’ll see you next time.

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 the Long and Winding Road appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/getting-track-process-goals-vs-outcome-goals-musicians/
Having an outcome-based goal is helpful, but musicians need to couple outcome goals with process goals.

Learn more about goal setting to inspire you to reach for you aspirations.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/getting-track-process-goals-vs-outcome-goals-musicians/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/songwriters-secrets-mastering-the-melody/
Having great lyrics is only the first step in the songwriting process.

To really shine, a great set of lyrics needs a good melody: a tune that the audience finds memorable and enjoyable.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/songwriters-secrets-mastering-the-melody/

Things got serious a few years later when a friend gave me a copy of Cakewalk Sonar 4 for my PC. The ability to create music at home was a revolution for me, and I spent thousands of hours writing, recording, and remixing in front of a computer screen over the next few years.

The ability to record music at home is almost taken for granted in the modern era. Most computers now come equipped with free versions of DAW software, more than capable of capturing your music and offering a wealth of free sounds.

Whether you consider yourself a more traditional musician and dedicate your time to mastering your instrument, or gravitate more towards the production side, the ability to record your music without paying for expensive studio time is a real privilege.

A World Connected

Sooner or later, most of us as musicians, songwriters, or producers want to take our music to the next level and collaborate with others. I was no different, and in a digital age I soon discovered that I could work with musicians and producers from anywhere in the world, right from my bedroom.

Imagine you are a budding singer or songwriter. You’ve got a great voice, and you feel you have a real talent for writing lyrics and melodies. You can strum a few chords on the guitar, bash out a couple of chords on the piano, but you are by no means an accomplished instrumentalist and have no idea how to mix and master a song so that it sounds radio-worthy.

This is where remote recording makes something magical happen. Imagine, you’ve been working on your own music part-time at home after you finish work, and you’ve written a song over some very basic chords you’ve strummed on your acoustic guitar. Now, you want to turn it into a full-fledged song by filling out the instrumentals, adding embellishments, and of course, getting a killer mix. How will you do it?

Making the Magic Happen – Remotely!

You could have a drummer in Chicago lay down an original drum track for you from his home studio, and send you the .wav files back in a few days. You find an awesome keys player from Sweden, who enhances the basic chords you wrote with an intricate piano track and synth lines. You hire a guitarist from Manchester who has a really unique playing style that you love, and he nails a guitar line that brings your song to life.

Now that you have all the parts, you need to put them together. You find a producer based in New York – he mixes your track and sends you a couple of revisions until it’s tweaked the way you want it. Finally, you hire a separate mastering engineer from France and when you get the master file back two days later, your track sounds unbelievable.

From that simple idea you had in your bedroom two weeks before, you now have a track that sounds like it belongs on the radio.

Why? Because this is how songs on the radio are made.

Parts are played by experienced session musicians, who can totally transform or create parts for you or play them exactly as you instruct.

Don’t feel bad about it, you aren’t cheating here. Ariana Grande didn’t lay down the drum track on her last number one, and you shouldn’t, either. There are loads of musicians who take the DIY mentality to the extreme – but attempting to do everything yourself is a mistake, and it’s wise to play to your strengths.

Maybe In A Perfect World…

The above example is how remote recording should go in a perfect world. In reality, it’s highly unlikely the process would run this smoothly. Back in 2010, when I first starting reaching out to collaborate with people, there was literally no platform and these interactions were all handled over emails or MSN messenger. Sending or receiving payments was fraught with danger, and there was little recourse if the parts we not delivered to standard (or not delivered at all, which was also known to happen).

In 2018, the remote recording industry is a slow-moving beast, but still ever-growing. Most of the companies who provide remote services are based in the USA, and I was surprised to find that there was no dedicated remote recording service that was based in the UK. That was until 2016, when we started our company Kollab and became the first.

I still find it strange that so many people are unfamiliar with the concept of remote recording, as it has been happening within the music industry for decades on a larger scale. For example, for all of the songs Slash recorded with Michael Jackson in the early 90’s, the two were never in the same room together!

The Pitfalls of Remote Recording

Like any emerging market, we are constantly having to educate people about the service we provide and the benefits it can offer to aspiring musicians, vocalists and producers. Although there are more options out there than ever before, there are still numerous pitfalls to the remote recording market – proof that the exciting world of remote recording is still in its infancy.

For example, the majority of remote recording websites today operate as a marketplace service – this means musicians sign up as sellers and the interactions are left for the buyer and seller to handle between them. Whilst a good idea in theory, over the years I found frustration with this model as it makes it harder for the websites to control the quality of the output, and often leads to rogue sellers encouraging people to work outside of the platform (which always end badly for the buyer).

The marketplace format often leaves a cold feeling on many websites, with little to no interaction from the website themselves. You are basically in the hands of the seller, without any customer service interaction from the company.

The other big issue that is commonly encountered in this emerging market is finding reputable professionals. Most marketplace formats allow anybody to create a “seller” or vendor account and sell their services, but it is a real lottery whether you are dealing with an industry professional or an enthusiastic amatuer.

The Kollab Solution

The past couple of years have been a learning curve for Kollab, as we initially followed the marketplace format when we launched. Discovering quickly that the site was being driven away from the high-quality service we always wanted to provide, we now take a more hands on, agency-style approach.

If you visit the Kollab website the first thing you will notice is that our artists have worked with some big stars. We are talking household names here, from Led Zeppelin to Little Mix. And, although the names of our session players on those hit records or tours may not be familiar to most, you are still getting access to the same talent as those multi-platinum artists did.

Reducing Overheads

Not only do we at Kollab make award-winning industry professionals accessible to anyone, but the fees to hire them are surprisingly modest, compared to hiring out a recording studio for the day and paying for their time and travel in the traditional way. Embracing the concept of remote recording and communicating everything over phone and email (with the help of our dedicated staff), it’s now affordable for anybody to hire the best talent for their music.

We have handpicked all of our artists and are completely confident that every project delivered will exceed expectations. It’s for this reason we offer a money back guarantee if you are not completely satisfied with the recording works you receive (incidentally, we’ve never had to enforce this).

By Musicians, For Musicians

As a recording bedroom artist myself, I have been in the exact same place as my customers find themselves: not sure whether to take a leap of faith and hire someone I’ve never met from a website. Musicians have to work hard for their money, and it shouldn’t be gambled with, which is why we have taken every step to give our buyers complete confidence. It’s also the reason Kollab was created in the first place.

Bringing Your Musical Dream to Life

Remote recording is a great way to work with the best possible people to make your musical dreams come to life – with concerns such as geographical distance and a lack of recording studio becoming obsolete, you’re free to focus on making amazing music with the help of dedicated professionals around the world.

If you write and record original music and would like to learn more about how our services could help you, get in touch with us. We are always happy to have a chat about your project and can cater for all genres, budgets, and deadlines.

Kollab lets you hire industry professional music producers, vocalists, and session musicians through a reputable, quality-guaranteed platform – at a fraction of the cost of traditional recording studios! With our service, you’ll work remotely with musicians and artists all over the world, gaining access to top-level industry talent to make your song a hit.

The post Kollaborating with the Best appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/4-ways-spice-scales/
Scales can be a real sore spot for musicians but they don’t have to be.

There are a variety of ways you can make scales more interesting to practice. Get the benefit of scales practice – without the boredom!

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/4-ways-spice-scales/