Musicality World

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Have you ever had an awesome idea about how you could mash up your favorite musical genres into your own original style?
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But sometimes, you need a little kick to get you to try something a little tougher or something outside your comfort zone. This can work wonders in expanding your musical practice and fast-tracking the development of your musicality.

This week, we at Musical U have three challenges for you:

1. Hand over the reins of your creative process to a songwriting challenge, and see how imposed limitations can bring out your creativity
2. Go beyond singing “pretty” – learn how to sing smart
3. Use your ears to try to pick out the individual notes played simultaneously in a chord

But before we dive into how to do all that, to get you inspired, we have an interview with a man whose job brings him face-to-face with the ultimate challenge: making musical masterpieces that will be put to use in everything from luxury car commercials to the TV adaptation of your favourite book series. The most impressive part? He writes, arranges, produces, and plays multiple instruments on nearly every single track!…

The Background Music Magician

The music we notice is the music we’re listening for: music at a concert, on the radio. In short, places where we’re listening for it.

But what about music in places we don’t actively listen for it? In movies, commercials, and TV programmes?

Drummer-turned-background music composer Mike Reed creates music that will complement the visual media it’s used for. Playing the multiple roles of writer, producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, he crafts compositions that you might hear in your favourite Netflix show or next season’s blockbuster movie, if you just open your ears.

In Creating Background Music Masterpieces, with Mike Reed, Mike talks about what drew him to background music composition, compares the creative and business sides of his work, and gives some truly inspirational advice with bearing on everyone involved in the world of music.

As a truly solo musician, Mike is responsible for all parts of the compositions that he writes. This includes taking the initial ideas and arranging them into a full piece of music. Forrest Kinney gives a great introduction to the art of creating an arrangement.

The music composition industry can be difficult, and finding your big break can seem impossible at times. To learn more about how one composer broke into the film composing industry, tune into The Portfolio Composer’s fascinating podcast episode with Albanian composer Aldo Shllaku.

Mike’s success in finding a niche in the music industry is an inspiring story indeed! The music industry can be so complex that we often don’t think about all the people that have jobs that create music. Thinkspace Education discusses four incredibly interesting behind-the-scenes careers in music that you may not even know existed!

Challenges for Songsmiths

Some days, the songs just flow out of you. Melodies and lyrics pop into your head, fully-formed and ready to be turned into a song.

But sometimes, the creative well runs completely dry. Every time you pick up your instrument or try to put pen to paper, the magic just won’t happen.

We’ve been there, and we know that sometimes you need something to force you to write.

Enter the songwriting challenge: an exercise where you must write a song (or several!) about a certain topic, or in a certain amount of time. As those who take the challenge soon find, these limitations actually foster creativity, rather than stifling it – your brain will find incredibly inventive ways to work with the constraints imposed on your songwriting process.

In Songwriting Challenges to Cure Your Writer’s Block, we introduce you to the types of songwriting challenges out there, where you can find them, and how to make your own challenge.

The multitude of different songwriting challenges that are available for your next project means there is something for everyone. While many of them are about producing a song per day, or week, we found a challenge to write a song in only 10 minutes. Quite the challenge! Andy Guitar gives you some tips to ace this challenge!

Often, starting the songwriting process can be the most difficult part. What are you supposed to write about? A popular topic throughout the ages is to write a love song. Dylan Laine shares her process for writing a love song in only one hour.

An additional benefit to songwriting challenges: they remove many of the barriers that songwriters face when starting the songwriting process! They do this by encouraging productivity through deadlines and fixed objectives. Many people find that they are actually much more productive when they have a timeline that they have to meet. Speed Songwriting has even more tips on improving your productivity when writing.

Chords: Dissected

Most musicians, with a bit of ear training and solfège (solfa) practice under their belt, can learn to replicate a series of notes and identify the intervals within it.

But what about chords, when several notes are played simultaneously, with multiple intervals to worry about at the same time?

This week on The Musicality Podcast episode About Chord Tones, we present you with the challenge of figuring out chord tones: the art of dissecting chords into their individual notes. Beyond just being a neat trick, being able to identify chord tones opens up brand new avenues of songwriting, allowing you to hand-pick the perfect notes to go into each chord, and effortlessly solo over your progression.

Furthermore, it works wonders for your improvisational chops, because you now have the tool that bridges the gap between melody and chords.

Learning the structure of chords and what notes are used to create the harmony is an important aspect to learning how to use chord tones. By learning how to solo within the confines of a chord, you’ll get more comfortable with chordal structure and how the notes are laid out on the instrument. This is a practical application for a visual instrument like the piano or guitar; My Guitar Workshop explains how to get started.

Any musician can really benefit by knowing how to improvise with chord tones. These can be a great stepping stone to get more confident in your ability to improvise over chord changes, and there’s no time like the present to start, with Mutant Bass’s clear cut step-by-step method.

Once you have mastered working within the chord tones, it’s time to expand your boundaries into all the other notes in the scale. This will enable you to add color and interest to your music and express yourself. To try your hand at this, Jazz Piano School has a lesson to get you started!

The Art of Singing Smarter

Your voice is an instrument.

And as with any instrument, there is a science behind making beautiful sounds come out. Though many singers can glide by on their instincts and by purely listening, they often hit a roadblock when the time comes to sing sheet music, collaborate with other musicians, or perform vocal techniques.

This is where “singing smart” comes in – it’s a method to the madness that the vocal world can be. Learning proper singing technique, ear training, and solfège will help you achieve everything you’ve ever wanted as a vocalist, be it improvisation, vocal fry, or being able to sing sheet music you’ve never heard out loud.

Meghan Nixon of HowToSingSmarter.com applies ear training and music theory to her vocal coaching to give her students the freedom to approach new songs, techniques, and challenges with confidence. In How to Sing Smarter, with Meghan Nixon, we sit down with her to learn about her singing background, ear training-focussed teaching approach, and how she came to launch her website, where she provides a treasure trove of resources for singers of all levels.

In her interview, Meghan talked about how she has taught hundreds of musicians over the years. If you are serious about becoming a musician, finding a teacher and taking lessons are a great place to start! A Higher Note discusses why you should take the plunge, especially if you’re uncertain.

For Meghan, she was better able to hear some pitches when she began to play the piano as well. The piano provided a visualisation of the pitch that wasn’t as readily apparent when only using her voice. You may have struggled to sing without your instrument – and you’re not alone! This podcast from All Things Vocal explains the phenomenon of why it feels so weird to sing without your instrument.

Have you ever found that interval or pitch that you just can’t internalize in your ear training? Meghan takes us through her method for mastering Ra, or the minor 2nd, interval of the chromatic scale.

Get Challenged, Get Ahead

Taking a break from our regularly scheduled music practice to engage with challenges is a great way to discover a new musical skill: in this case, maybe you’ll learn that you songwrite best under strict time constraints, or that you have an excellent ear for chords, or that you picked up sight-singing quickly and easily.

Or, maybe you yourself are inspired to take a page from Mike Reed’s book and try your hand at not only writing a song, but also arranging it and playing each instrument yourself.

The post The Background Music Magician, Challenges for Songsmiths, Chords: Dissected, and The Art of Singing Smarter appeared first on Musical U.

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Learning and understanding chord tones will help you create memorable melodies with tension and release and solo over existing progressions. This in turn will help you play by ear, improvise, and write songs – enabling you to choose the notes that sound the best, rather than using trial-and-error to form your chords and melodies.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Interview with Meghan Nixon
• Playing By Ear with Brad Mavin – Chord Tones
• Chord Ear Training How-To: Chord Types
• Practice I-IV-V Progressions

Transcript

In this episode we’re going to be talking about chord tones, something which came up in my recent interview with Meghan Nixon of HowToSingSmarter.com.

Depending on the instrument you play and the way you play it, you might be very used to thinking about chord tones – but most likely you aren’t, and you may be missing out… As Meghan explained, chord tones can provide us with a helpful framework for playing by ear and improvisation, letting us choose notes that are musically meaningful in the harmonic context. Whether you play piano, guitar, saxophone or sing, whether you want to play by ear, improvise or write music, this is a really powerful concept to get your head around.

I’m going to talk a bit about chords and chord tones, then demonstrate why this concept of chord tones is useful, and then talk about how you can get started using this yourself.

About Chords

The concept of a chord is very useful: it gives us a single clear label to mean a whole group of notes. We can say “the chord progression goes C, F, G” and we’re actually communicating about a whole bunch of notes that are to be played, to create that harmony.

But this is the drawback of the simplification too: it leaves many musicians almost oblivious to the fact that chords are made up of individual notes. Sure, we all know intellectually that this is what’s going on. But when we listen to or play music we often think of chords as whole, solid things, and we miss the point that there is a lot to be learned from thinking about them in terms of their individual notes too.

In fact, I think pianists and jazz musicians are the only people who do generally think about the individual notes of chords. Even guitarists who play a lot of chords tend to think about a chord as a certain fretboard shape and it’s only the more advanced players who start digging into that and exploring where those shapes come from and what else can be done with them.

About Chord Tones

Before we go any further: what do we mean by “chord tones”? Well, as we talked about back in episode 5 on half steps and whole steps that word “tone” can be confusing! We’re not talking about the interval of a tone or a “whole step” here. We’re using the looser meaning of “tone” to just mean “note”.

So “chord tones” are simply the notes present in the chord. If we imagine a line of a song where a single chord is playing, and we’re trying to play the melody by ear, or choose notes for an improvised solo, we might initially be considering all the possible notes in the key, all the notes that belong to the scale. But we can also ask: which of those notes are being used in the current chord?

Here’s an example. I’m going to play a scale to give you an idea of the key we’re in, and then I’ll play a chord in that key.

Now I’m going to play the scale again, with the chord as a harmony underneath. Try to hear which notes from the scale belong to the chord.

Could you hear how some of those notes matched up and felt relaxed and comfortable, while others created more tension? None of them sounded terrible or out-of-key, but there were definitely some that went better with the chord.

Now you might be thinking “Well, duh, that’s why it matters what chords you choose for a song!” and that’s exactly right. If you’re starting from a melody then yes, you can choose the chords based on which will harmonise it nicely.

But the key thing to understand about this idea of “chord tones” is that the reverse is true too.

If you’re starting from a chord progression, then you can go a long way in understanding the melody or what improvisation will work by thinking about the chord tones present.

As you just heard, some notes will fit in really comfortably while others will create tension. And so by choosing your notes based on hearing whether they belong to the chord or not, and if they do which note of the chord they are, you have a huge shortcut to picking the “right” notes for playing by ear or improvising a solo.

How to Use Chord Tones

So how can you get started taking advantage of this? Well, that’s going to depend a bit on your musical life, but step one is going to be to get your brain and ears familiar with what’s going on.

At Musical U, in our chord ear training modules one of the key things we help people do is get past that stage of hearing a chord as just a single blur of notes, and be able to dissect them aurally into each note, so that you can hear both the overall sound and each of the notes present. That’s a key skill if you want to make use of chord tones by ear. Without that you can still proceed using your brain and knowing in advance what the notes of the chords are, but it’s really best if you can bring your ear and brains to the task together!

Once you’ve done a bit of groundwork to get your ears dissecting chords, start with simple songs. Pick a song that uses just three or four chords, ideally the I, IV, V and maybe vi. If you don’t know what I’m talking about there, I’ll put a link in the shownotes to explain! I’ll also include a backing track or two where it’s just simple chords you can experiment over.

Then take a little time to figure out the notes in each chord. If it’s one of these simple progressions then you’ll have three notes per chord. For example, a I-IV-V in C Major would have the notes C, E and G for the first chord’s chord tones, then F, A and C for the second chord’s chord tones, and G, B and D for the third chord’s chord tones.

Next, simply spend some time playing along with the song making use of those notes. Your goal is to be able to actually hear how those notes are present in each chord. You might start by just playing the root note of each chord, then play the arpeggios (meaning each note in turn, lowest to highest and back again), then start experimenting a bit with little melodies based just on the chord tones.

From there you can move into playing by ear if that’s your interest, using these chord tones to give you an insight into which notes are being used in the melody. Can you hear where the melody blends well with the chords and where there’s more tension? You’ll often find that phrases start and end on a note from the current chord but might draw on other notes from the scale in between.

We have a great tutorial by guitar teacher Brad Mavin on our site which walks you through using this chord tones approach for a pop song, I’ll put a link in the shownotes. There are some guitar specifics but I think it can be applied for any instrument.

Or if you’re more interested in improvisation then your next step is to explore how you can shape your phrases by choosing notes which do and don’t belong to the chord. This is a really great way to quickly get that powerful tension and release in your solos. Which notes can you linger on to create a clashing sound that demands resolution, and which note do you need to move to, to create that release? The chord tones have the answer.

This is a key technique for jazz musicians who will improvise a solo thinking almost entirely about the chord progression rather than the key. The key and its scale alone don’t really reveal the complex harmonies going on in a typical jazz standard, but following the chords can reveal the notes and scales you need to use to create a dynamic and powerful solo that matches the song well.

This was the context where Meghan was talking about it: as a singer if you need to improvise it can feel a bit overwhelming. You need to really hear the notes you choose before you sing them and getting your ear around the chords makes it far easier to narrow it down to the notes which are going to sound good. It provides you with a kind of palette of sounds that you can then draw on to shape your solo.

Conclusion

So that’s what you need to know to start making use of chord tones. It’s a pretty simple idea: that we can approach melodies and solos based on the chords – and learn a lot from which notes belong to the chord and which don’t. But this simple mindset shift can have a big impact on your success in playing by ear, improvising and simply understanding how music fits together.

Add chord tones to your musical toolkit and you’ll have a powerful new insight into the music you hear and the music you play.

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The post About Chord Tones appeared first on Musical U.

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In this article we give you some great rhythmic patterns you can apply to your instrument! Which is your favorite?
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There are musical artists who you won’t see on stage, and whose names you won’t always find printed on the back of your favourite 12-inch vinyl. They make music that does not simply stand alone; instead, it blends with another art form – so seamlessly that you don’t always notice it.

We’re talking about the people who make the music for entertainment we consume on a daily basis: it could be a hair-raising score for a Hollywood thriller, a tune for a potato chip commercial, or background music for a seven-season television show. It could even be a soundscape for a museum exhibition. We’re talking about background music.

Musical U had the opportunity to chat with drummer-turned-background music composer Mike Reed, who wears the hats of writer, producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist in his eclectic compositional work to create a diverse array of material spanning genres from classical music to synthpop. His compositions get put to good use in everything from minute-long commercials to blockbuster films – among which are The Legend of Tarzan, Cuban Fury, and Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Here, he shares his compositional techniques, discusses what an ordinary day on the job looks like, and compares the solitary and the collaborative aspects of his work. 

I was brought up in the Salvation Army Band, playing cornet from age 5 or 6. I then progressed to trumpet, and started playing in the Devon County Youth Orchestra. In the meantime, I had some music theory and piano lessons and then went on to take up drumming lessons at school as a teenager. At the same time, I was experimenting with writing programs to control a Casio keyboard from my ZX Spectrum computer (this was in the late 80s and early 90s), and also taping songs from the radio to try and work them out by ear.

Drums always seemed cooler than the trumpet! I had some drum lessons while at school, and then went on to study with the legendary drum teacher Bob Armstrong after I’d finished university. Bob sadly passed away earlier this year, but he was one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met – musically and personally.

I can’t pretend that I was the most successful drummer ever, but I was lucky enough to do some recording with The Prodigy amongst a few other big names, and play on a number of film soundtracks for the composer Michael Price (who is now very well known for his work on Sherlock). I still play for various projects, but my session drummer days are behind me.

Concurrently with drumming, I was pitching on some TV advertisements in the USA through a friend who was with a music advertising company over there. As that progressed, I began to enjoy it more than drumming on other people’s music, and started to look for opportunities to do more.

Unfortunately, with adverts, there are usually many other composers pitching, so you often don’t “win” the job.

Library music, while not quite as instantly lucrative as a big advert, is reasonably stable and less plagued by various creative types up the advert music chain sending feedback like “It needs to sound more green”, or “Can you make it sound soft and hard at the same time?”.

I started co-writing with a few other composer friends who were already doing library music, and gradually found my way in from there.

Trial and error! I really enjoy the sounds that come out when someone who is musical picks up a new instrument and approaches it in an untrained way – not that it always works! I muddle through on guitar and bass with lots of editing, and my classical background means I have at least an inkling of how orchestration works, so that helps for programming string sections and the like.

I was very lucky at university to have Sebastian Forbes as my orchestration and composition professor – I wish I had taken more advantage of his genius while I was there. I also learnt a lot from playing on other people’s music – both as a drummer at university on other students’ projects, and later professionally.

Generally though, I think I’ve learnt most from just listening – soaking up as much music in as many different styles as possible. My learning process with production has been similar. Many of my university friends have ended up as recording engineers and I’ve learnt a lot from them about production, mixing and equipment. I do lots of listening and experimenting – often failing, but I always get there eventually!

Basically, the bulk of my work is writing and producing music to a brief – that could be anything from massive bombastic orchestral epics to tiny evolving synth drone soundscapes.

I write, produce, and mix it to be delivered to a music library company.

A music library is a bank of pre-written music that is ready to use on productions – TV programs, adverts, films, and so on. If a filmmaker wants, for example, a tense string quartet piece, they can search through these libraries catalogues and hopefully find a few options. Then they pay a fee to the company to use the track.

Generally, I have a bunch of briefs in different styles from library music companies in at any one time. Unless I’m working on something to a tight deadline I generally just see how I feel in the morning after doing the school run, and start coming up with ideas for whichever of the briefs I feel like.

I generally come up with more ideas than I need for a project and then whittle them down to my favourites. I often leave things and come back to them to get a bit of distance. Then it’s a process of “working up” the ideas – fleshing them out, working on sounds, and eventually mixing.

Often there are revisions to do on tracks I’ve submitted, and sometimes I come up with ideas for briefs myself or put some tracks together to pitch to a company. I also ghostwrite a lot for other (more well known!) composers in TV and film, and that’s generally more deadline-based and takes initial priority on many days.

It’s a struggle, to be honest. I’m not great at meetings or maintaining contacts, but I seem to have managed so far! I have an accountant and he’s set me up with an online accounts system which means I no longer have to think much about that side of things. Anything business-related, I try to keep to defined blocks of time rather than bits and bobs when I’m trying to be creative.

I do 90% of things myself, although I love to bring in other musicians when budget allows. The most common thing is to bring in various singers on projects, but occasionally guitarists and other musicians too when something that I can’t play well enough needs doing. Obviously, it’s great when budgets can stretch to a full real orchestra, but those are few and far between!

I think it helps with my “voice”. I enjoy rhythm and much prefer writing rhythmic things to long lyrical melodies, so it’s nice to be told that comes across!

Drums and rhythm are alien to many composers, and it’s not unknown for some to outsource their drum programming and percussion writing, but I like to build upwards from rhythm which hopefully means I have at least the potential for a different sound.

Contacts and friends are a big part of this business, so develop and nurture those as much as possible. Most importantly though – listen, experiment, fail, try again, learn from everyone and everything, and don’t stop learning or being inquisitive about music (or life in general)!

Mike Reed is an eclectic and prolific composer, drummer and producer. Based in rural Devon in the UK, his work can be heard on countless TV programmes, films and commercials all over the world, including movies such as Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Cuban Fury, The Legend of Tarzan, major UK and US TV series, and tracks by bands as diverse as The Prodigy and David Gray.

The post Creating Background Music Masterpieces, with Mike Reed appeared first on Musical U.

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How can you easily find the key to the piece of music you are playing? Share any tricks that you use below ⬇
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