Musicality World

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/creating-background-music-masterpieces-with-mike-reed/
When people think of the work opportunities that the music world offers, the first job descriptions that come to mind are typically gigs like musician, record producer, and radio DJ. But, as we’ll learn from composer Mike Reed, the music industry has its fair share of “hidden” jobs… https://www.musical-u.com/learn/creating-background-music-masterpieces-with-mike-reed/

For your musical journey to continue progressing, you need to be constantly updating your musical toolbox – that is, your set of skills that allow you to express yourself through your playing.

This week, we’ve got four incredibly useful tools for your consideration: a unique guitar technique from one of the key musicians in the Nashville scene, the concept of swing rhythms and the interest they add to your music, the skill of seeking out and finding your own musical opportunities, and the art of arranging music.

Double-Down on Music

Brad Davis has been on quite the ride throughout his musical career. Not only has he worked with the likes of Sheryl Crow, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson, but he is a successful recording artist in his own right who has developed some killer guitar techniques and tools.

In Doubling Down on Your Craft, with Brad Davis, he gives us an in-depth look at his journey in mastering guitar, how he ended up collaborating with some of the biggest names in music, and how he developed his unique guitar method, the double-down-up.

Brad has even patented his own guitar invention, a B-string bender known as “The Brad Bender” to get at some crazy country links.

The “double-down up” picking style is a must-try for guitarists – it’s amazing how big of a difference this slight variation on picking style can make in the sound of your playing! Perhaps we have been neglecting picking hand technique as we learn guitar! For another approach to accentuating the up strums, Matt from Country Song Teacher shows how he adds interest and variety to his chord progressions with a simple, yet powerful, method.

Now that we are talking about right-hand technique, let’s continue exploring other ways that you can improve your guitar picking. Our friend David Andrew Wiebe’s guest post on Music Industry How To describes some simple exercises that you can use to strengthen your picking hand

Brad mentioned a technique that is probably new to anyone that is not familiar with the style… flatpicking. In addition to his double-down-up, perfecting his flatpicking technique opened up a lot of doors in his musical career. Read more about how to flatpick and its history on Flatpick.com!

Swingin’ Rhythms

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing” isn’t just the name of a timeless jazz standard – it’s proven to be quite a prophetic line!

Uneven or “swung” rhythms are found everywhere from rock and pop to country and jazz. Though you may think that swing is rhythmically elusive, fear not: our resident pros are here to demystify the concept of these groovy rhythms.

Head to Swing Rhythm: Resource Pack Preview to learn how our guitar, bass, and piano experts break down this feel-based rhythmic concept into accessible parts!

The Musical U Resident Pros offer some great tips on how to get your instrument into the swing of things. While learning how to swing on your instrument is important, Band Directors Talk Shop offers an alternative on how to get started – and it all starts before the first note is even played!

To be successful at playing swing music, you need to make sure that you have a solid rhythmic foundation. As we’ve talked about previously on the podcast, you can begin to develop a feel for rhythms, which will take you a long way to swinging success. Our friends at Learn Jazz Standards have put together five exercises that will help you get there.

When we think of swing, we often reminisce of the 1930s and 1940s, at the height of the big band era. Or, we fondly remember the all-too-brief revival in the 1990s. But if your zoot suit is getting a bit dusty and you have a sudden urge to jitterbug, no need to fear! There are still plenty of fantastic musicians creating new swing music to be enjoyed. Check out this new album of original swing music from Keenan McKenzie.

Centering Music

For some, music is a hobby…for others, it’s an all-consuming passion that they are compelled to practice.

For Stan Stewart of Muz4Now, music has been a life-long compulsion leading to an career in  songwriting for any occasion – with his own improvisation-based touch!

In our interview with Stan, he provides some fantastic insights about seeking musical opportunities, and gives valuable advice for anyone seeking to dabble in musical improvisation. Seeking Musical Opportunity, with Stan Stewart is an absolute must-read for any independent musician looking to find their sound and get their music out there!

It was incredible to hear how early in his life Stan began to compose music. While not everyone is fortunate to have such an early start composing, it is a fun skill that you can pick up at any age! To get started, here are some helpful tips from Flat.

What do you need besides a little bit of inspiration when starting to write a song? If something is missing from your composing toolkit, perhaps you just need to find a better tool. Learn about how to use Noteflight, and how it can enhance your compositional experience!

For many musicians, music has been a powerful force in their life that has healed many of their pains. Some musicians will even profess that playing music has saved their lives! Music can be that powerful. Philanthropy is a great way to give back to your community, and one record label has found a way to turn their love of music into a force for good – read more about how Sino Studios gives back!

The Art of Arranging

If you think musical arrangement is an art reserved for classical composers and orchestras, this episode of the Musicality Podcast is for you.

This skill is not reserved for advanced musicians, and can be as simple as figuring out how to play your favourite blues rock anthem on your acoustic guitar.

In About Arranging Music, we look at the elements that arranging can encompass, and how you can dive into arranging yourself – no advanced theory or musical expertise required!

We hope this podcast has convinced you that arranging music is not something that only professionals do. The truth is that anyone can start arranging music with a little bit of training and motivation. David Wallimann shares his tips for any beginner wanting to get into the arranging game.

Christopher mentioned in the podcast that one way to arrange music is to simply play it on a different instrument. With a little creativity, there are almost no limits to what you can do when arranging music! One young musician is particularly fond of a musical style that’s near and dear to the hearts of all of us at Musical U – a cappella. Take a behind-the-scenes look at how Dan Purcell makes a cappella arrangements using Garageband.

To wrap up this roundup, we travel to the beautiful Hawaiian islands for a lesson on arranging music for the most lovely of instruments, the ukulele. Ukulele Tricks outlines four things that you need to master to arrange a chord melody song. Get strumming with this fascinating lesson and we’ll see you at the beach!

Same Musician, New Tricks

We hope this week’s content has inspired you to add a new skill or two to your arsenal, whether it’s Brad’s double-down-up technique or some basic arranging skills. With new skills come new musical opportunities. And that can come in the form of interpreting your favourite music your way, finding new places and people to play to, or even writing your own tunes.

The post Double-Down on Music, Swingin’ Rhythms, Centering Music, and the Art of Arranging appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/singing-in-english-tips-for-esl-singers-and-coaches/
From Mexico to Japan, the amount of international performing artists that are singing in English might surprise you. Although time and regular practice can allow ESL singers to become proficient in a non-native language, learning how to sing without an accent can be incredibly challenging and even costly. Here are some tips from the Musical U team to make this easier! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/singing-in-english-tips-for-esl-singers-and-coaches/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learning-guitar/
Learning to play the guitar can be fun as well as challenging. It’s a great instrument to play with family and friends and it’s incredibly portable. And with the right tools and a bit of patience, any song can be mastered. Just follow these 6 simple tips that will help you strum your way to success. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learning-guitar/

Arranging music is not nearly as complex as its name may lead you to believe – if you’ve ever plunked out the chords to your favourite song on the piano and sang along, you’ve already done it! In this episode of the Musicality Podcast, we discuss the elements involved in arranging music, and why you (yes, you!) should take a whack at it.

Listen to the episode:

Links and Resources

• Interview with Brad Davis
• Arranging for Songwriters

Transcript

In our recent episode with Brad Davis we talked a bit about the terrific “bluegrass tribute” albums he’s put together, where he takes well-known music in various genres and arranges it into a really cool and different bluegrass-style performance.

I wanted to pick up on that idea of “arranging” music because I know that for a long time I put it in a specific box that existed in the world of classical composers and advanced orchestral stuff. But over time, as I’ve connected more with my musicality, I’ve realised how much broader arranging music can be, and how it’s actually something that any (and all) of us as musicians can be doing.

What is Arranging?

So what is arranging?

Well, as I just referred to, there is a traditional sense of the word in which a serious composer of music creates a full, and sometimes quite complex, score. An orchestral arrangement might have dozens of pages of music notation for each of dozens of instruments!

So it’s no wonder that a lot of people think of arranging music as a really advanced skill, requiring classical music training and deep understanding of music theory.

In my mind the composer “invented” the music, and then they or someone else would go to the trouble of producing a full arrangement to be played. And I still think that’s a pretty good way of thinking about it.

Distilling and Expanding

A lot of what we cover on this podcast is about distilling music down, often by ear, into its most important components. When we did our episodes on solfa, on lead sheets, on the “hook” – we were talking about listening to music and pulling out the notes and chords that really define that music. Not necessarily worrying about identifying each and every note being played, but honing in on the essence of the song or the piece. In a way that’s getting back to what the composer originally thought of, their core idea for the music.

Then all the detail – all the specifics of which instruments play what notes when – that’s the arrangement. So if our ear skills let us distil music down to just its essence, you can think of arranging music as the opposite, expanding it back out into a full version of that music that can be played and heard.

So obviously this is where it gets interesting – because the same core idea, the same melody and chords and rhythmic patterns can be expanded in any number of ways, to produce an endless variety of arrangements. And of course a complex orchestral score in traditional notation is only one of those possibilities!

The variety of arrangements

If I asked you to sing your favourite song right now, you’d probably hum or sing the melody. Not the chords, not the full band arrangement, you probably wouldn’t sing me every verse or chorus. But you would be singing me the song, and that means that you have just arranged the song, for a short solo voice demonstration.

If you listen to Elton John or Amanda Palmer perform a song accompanying themselves on piano – and you figure out the chords by ear then pick up your guitar and give it a try – you have just arranged that song for guitar.

If you take an 80s pop hit or a classical masterpiece and you perform it in a bluegrass style like Brad Davis – you have just created a bluegrass arrangement of that music.

If you sample a rock track and add extra loops and transform it into a dance version in Logic, your remix is essentially a dance arrangement of that track.

And if you create a viral YouTube video of yourself performing a Disney love song in four-part a cappella harmony, you have created your own arrangement there too.

So arranging can encompass:

• Instrumentation – deciding which instruments will be used, and which ones will play what notes when.
• The musical style, for example modifying rhythms to change a straight rock anthem into a downtempo swung ballad.
• The form, meaning which sections of the music are repeated and in what order.
• And you can alter some of the core elements themselves, for example when a jazz singer improvises embellishments to the notes of the melody or a musician comes up with a reharmonisation of the melody with different chords.

Give yourself permission to try arranging

I wanted to talk about this topic today not because I had any in-depth teaching to share – but because I think there’s an important mindset shift here.

A big part of developing your musicality is about taking ownership of the music you play and create. Transforming from a musician who only ever plays the notes they are told to, the notes that somebody else has written – into a musician who feels free and confident and creative to make their own choices.

Sometimes that comes out through playing by ear and knowing that as long as you capture the essence of what you heard, that’s what matters.

Sometimes it comes out through improvisation or composing, bringing the music you imagine from scratch in your mind out into the world.

And sometimes, if we relax our notion of what “arranging” music means and who is allowed to do it, your musicality can come out through simply taking some music you love and asking yourself: how could I perform this differently? What if we took it in a different direction?

So I want to encourage you today to give yourself permission. Whether or not you’ve yet done the kind of ear training and musicality development we offer at Musical U, I assure you that you do have what it takes to begin arranging, in some way or another.

So this week why not take some music you enjoy playing and instead of playing it exactly as written, see if you can change something about it – and create your own unique arrangement.

The post About Arranging Music appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/dont-need-music-degree/
When you’re dedicated to music – as a craft, a career, and a passion – it can be extremely disheartening to be told you’ll never “make it” without a degree. If you’ve heard that message before, don’t fret! Here are 5 times when many people think you need a music degree, but actually, you don’t. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/dont-need-music-degree/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/exploring-classical-music-the-romantic-era-part-2/
The Romantic Era of the Western classical tradition, corresponding roughly to the 1800s, represented a radical shift in how composers saw themselves. Following in the footsteps of Beethoven, composers obliged their burgeoning middle-class audiences by cultivating their larger-than-life heroic personas, prefiguring today’s rock stars. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/exploring-classical-music-the-romantic-era-part-2/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/exploring-classical-music-the-romantic-era-part-2/
The Romantic Era of the Western classical tradition, corresponding roughly to the 1800s, represented a radical shift in how composers saw themselves. Following in the footsteps of Beethoven, composers obliged their burgeoning middle-class audiences by cultivating their larger-than-life heroic personas, prefiguring today’s rock stars. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/exploring-classical-music-the-romantic-era-part-2/