Latest Posts

You don’t need a grand opening

I started listening to Seth Godin’s podcast Akimbo and this is one thing that he said, “you don’t need a grand opening.”

The way I interpret that is that you should release something even if you’re not sure how many people will see it. Even if it might flop you should release it.

I like that mentality a lot. It takes the stress off. If I release something and it does well great. If not, I’m still happy I released it.

That’s how I think about YouTube and this blog. If something does well, great. If not, no worries. I’m happy I got something done.

So release that song you’ve been thinking of releasing. Send it to me once you do.

ISJ

…

Imitation is the backbone of creativity

When I was at Berklee College of Music, my first semester music theory teacher gave us an assignment to write a piece of music using ideas from existing music. He gave us a choice of jazz standards and we had to take the chord progression of one and a piece of the melody from another. Those were our materials to start with. Then we had to write a piece of music.

I had another assignment to listen to Leia’s Theme by John Williams and write a piece of music that sounds similar; a sound-alike. These are super common in film music because film editors and directors will often put in temporary music, or temp music, while editing together a film. So the composer sometimes might have to write a sound-alike; a piece of music that’s unique and new, but sounds similar to an already existing piece of music.

Both of those assignments started with imitating other pieces of music. The first one was very direct. I took the chord progression from one song and a melodic fragment from the other. The finished piece didn’t sound anything like either of the two I took from, but those two pieces were the starting point.

The opposite is true of the second assignment. My piece sounded and felt very similar to Leia’s Theme. It wasn’t the same musical material, but it was expressing the same emotion and idea.

Doing this when you’re stuck can help a lot. Use a song you like and imitate it.

My song “Caffeinated” that came out a few weeks ago was inspired by EDit and Glitch Mob. I took ideas from them and wanted to make my own music with those ideas. Mainly the heavy bass drum and fast glitch sounds.

I was imitating them and using that imitation as a jumping off point to make my own art.

Imitation can give you a push or a start to creating some music. Use it. Don’t copy exactly what someone else wrote, but imitate them. Take a chord progression, or a fragment of a melody, or a word. Put it into your own music and see what you can make with it.

Imitation is the backbone of creativity.

ISJ

…

Fix it in the next piece

A friend of mine told me this in college. He played marimba and was kind enough to ask me to write a piece of music for him to perform at his senior recital. So I wrote a piece and met up with him a number of times to learn about marimba and different techniques I could use.

There were a few techniques he showed me that I didn’t include in the piece I wrote for him. For different reasons I didn’t include them, but some of them were techniques that were interesting to me that I wished I’d included.

And that’s when he said, “fix it in the next piece.”

I’d already written that specific piece, and I’d learned something about music composition and how to write for marimba. Rather than go back and completely change the piece I had, I could write a new piece that includes the new ideas.

I like that mentality a lot. Sometimes you might need to edit a piece of music over and over, but at some point that is no longer productive and it would be better to just write a new piece.

So write a new piece and use all of the new information and skills you have, that you learned from the last piece, in your new piece.

ISJ

…

How to get less rusty

I’ve been playing more guitar recently and one thing that’s helped me get less rusty is learning other people’s solos. Guitar was my principal instrument at Berklee College of Music and I played for multiple hours a day when I was there. Here’s a video of me playing some music from Banjo Kazooie that I recorded while at Berklee. After I graduated I played less and less guitar and more piano. So I got a little rusty.

But I’ve been learning solos from different guitarists and they’ve helped me get less rusty with my technique and with my knowledge of the fretboard. I started learning songs by The Black Keys and solos by their guitarist Dan Auerbach. I started with these because they’re fairly simple and aren’t very fast. They’re pentatonic based so they refreshed my memory of those shapes. Next I started learning some songs by Royal Blood and some solos by the bassist Mike Kerr. Their riffs are a little faster and a little more involved so that was a good next step after The Black Keys. Then I started learning solos from songs by Band of Skulls and their guitarist Russell Marsden. Now I’m learning songs by Guthrie Govan and Deep Purple, as well as solos by Ritchie Blackmore.

So why did I chose these specific people?

First reason is that I’m a fan of their music, but I did learn songs by these people in this order for another reason. The reason I started with The Black Keys and then went to other similar rock bands is because I knew the technique wouldn’t be difficult for me. I’d learned more involved songs when at Berklee, so I knew these would be easy enough to start with.

Then I progressively moved to more difficult and more difficult music. Royal Blood’s stuff is slightly faster and more involved than The Black Keys. Same with Band of Skulls.

Now I’m learning some solos by Guthrie Govan and Ritchie Blackmore, which are pretty shred-y solos. They’ll definitely be the most difficult. They also move around the guitar the most. The solos in songs by Band of Skulls that I’ve learned stay within a few pentatonic shapes. Ritchie Blacakmore’s stuff tends to use a lot of the fretboard. Same goes for Guthrie Govan.

So if you’re rusty on an instrument here’s what you can to do get less rusty:

1. Make a list of some songs you want to learn
2. Start with a song that you know will be incredibly easy
3. Choose pieces that are progressively harder
4. Repeat step 3 until you’re amazing at playing

I think the most important step in doing this is starting with pieces that are easy. Start with pieces that are incredibly easy. Songs that you’d likely be able to learn in a few listenings or by sight reading. Something that doesn’t have any challenging sections. A song you could learn and play well in a day.

Think of this as the warm up, but rather than a warm up lasting 5-10 minutes it lasts a few days. Start with the easy stuff to refresh your memory of technique and of the instrument. You don’t want to struggle at the beginning. Don’t even choose pieces you used to play all the time that used to be easy. It won’t be easy if you’ve had some time off practicing. And there isn’t much worse than thinking you’ve regressed because you haven’t practiced in a number of months.

You likely won’t have regressed much if at all, it’s just that you’re a little rusty. Give yourself a week or two back practicing regularly to get back to where you were. Then try to play pieces you used to play all the time.

I promise it’ll feel much better because you may have regressed a little bit or forgotten some parts of the song, but you’ll likely be able to play most of it almost as easily as you could before. Definitely with some practice it’ll come back.

So start with the easy stuff.

ISJ

…

Practice makes permanent

I don’t like the phrase “practice makes perfect” because I think it’s incomplete. Practice can make perfect, but that’s only when it’s perfect practice. So you could say, “perfect practice makes perfect”, but that’s a little clunky. So instead I say, “practice makes permanent.” It’s more complete.

If you practice well and you try to improve every time you play, that’ll lead to you playing better. But if you constantly practice with sloppy technique or playing inaccurately, then you’ll perform with sloppy technique and with inaccurate playing.

So make sure that you practice with good technique. Now you can get really hyper focused on this to the point where, I think, it becomes detrimental, but the main idea is good. If you want to perform with good technique and accuracy, you have to practice with good technique and accuracy. Maybe that means playing things slowly and making sure each note is articulated correctly. Maybe that means recording yourself and listening back to it to double check how your technique was. Whatever method you use to check your playing and make sure that you’re playing with good technique and accurately is what will be helpful.

So rather than thinking that any type of practice makes perfect, think that practice makes permanent.

Practice how you want to perform.

ISJ

…

Steal ideas

At Berklee one of my classes had an interesting assignment. The assignment was to analyze two different songs, take the chords from one, and a piece of the melody of the other, and create your own song. Basically my teacher was telling us all to steal small musical ideas and write our own song.

That’s an interesting thought; take small ideas from pieces of music that you like and use them in your own music. It’s something that most composers and producers and musicians will do naturally, especially if you’re writing music that’s similar to another musician. If two pieces of music are the same genre then they’ll definitely have musical ideas that are similar.

So I took the two different ideas and wrote my own song. It was a completely new piece of music because I took a small melodic fragment and used that to write a melody and added chords from another song. And I had myself a new piece of music.

It’s a fun and useful exercise to do if you ever get a chance. You’ll likely write something that you’re proud of, and something that you enjoy.

ISJ

…

Pentatonics are super powerful

I’ve been practicing guitar a little more recently and I’ve been listening to some of Guthrie Govan’s music. A lot of it is pentatonic based. Even his fast fusion licks are sometimes based off of the pentatonic scale.

The scale is everywhere.

If you’re not familiar with what a pentatonic scale is, it’s a 5 note scale that has the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 6th scale degrees of a major scale. So if we take a C major scale – C D E F G A B C – and we take only scale degrees 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 we get a C major pentatonic scale – C D E G A. That’s it. Five notes. Another common note to be heard in this is Eb, which people call the “blue note” because it’s used in a lot of blues music.

Lots of melodies and solos are based off of the pentatonic scale. For example, “If I Can’t Have You” by Shawn Mendes uses it. So does “Going Home” the traditional indigenous song. And tons of rock songs are based off of the pentatonic scale.

If you’re practicing soloing on either piano or guitar don’t overlook how powerful the pentatonic scale can be.

ISJ

…

What is a song that’s similar? How specifically is it similar?

One thing that can be really useful when listening to music is asking yourself those two questions – What is a song that’s similar? How specifically is it similar?

Just getting used to thinking that way can get you to notice more details in a song that you might not have noticed before. Often we might think two songs are similar, but not know exactly what makes them sound similar. We want to go a step farther than that. Rather than leaving it at, “they just sound similar”, we want to know why.

Maybe it has a similar drum beat. Maybe the chord progression is the same. Maybe the instrumentation is the same and they use the same group of instruments. Maybe the melody uses similar scale degrees. Maybe the rhythm of the melody is similar. Whatever it is try to think about what specifically makes them similar.

This takes some concentration and practice because in order to be able to point out what specifically is similar about two songs you need to get used to listening for specific things, but with some time and practice it gets easier.

You may even be surprised after getting better at this how many similarities you here and where you hear them.

Almost every time I teach the pentatonic scale on guitar I tell my students, “If you play around with this scale and just mess around I guarantee you’ll play something you’ve heard before.” Often my students don’t believe me. The next lesson they almost always have an example of something they played using the pentatonic scale that they recognized.

ISJ

…

Last minute changes and releasing

The reason I started this blog and a YouTube channel and why I enjoy releasing music is because it forces you to really look at what you’re making.

The act of putting something out there into the public for people to see makes you think differently about what it is that you’re releasing. This happening with that song “Caffeinated.”

Listening to it, knowing that soon it’d be searchable and available on Spotify and Bandcamp and iTunes and TIDAL and all of the other music listening platforms forced me to be critical about it. But critical in a way that’s beneficial. Critical in a way where you get rid of the unnecessary stuff and make changes that you wouldn’t have thought to make before.

You hone in on how you want it to sound because you know that it’ll be available for other people to here.

The first time you do this you’ll make a mistake. You’ll probably make a mistake the next few times too. But those mistakes are going to get smaller and smaller and more detailed and more refined until they’re hardly mistakes anymore.

That’s what makes releasing something beneficial. Finalizing it. Finishing it. Telling yourself and the project that you won’t be making any more changes.

And telling other people, “here I made this.”

That’s what will help you improve.

ISJ

…

Listening vertically vs. listening horizontally

There are kind of two different ways to pay attention to music. You can listen for the vertical structures and how different instruments interact as one group of notes, or you can listen to each different instrument as it’s own unique line. You can think of this as listening either to the harmony of a song (vertical) or the melody (or melodies plural) of a song (horizontally).

They can help you pay attention to what’s happening in a song.

This works especially well with contrapuntal music (like classical music and jazz) where there are multiple lines going on. For example, if you’re listening to a symphony you can listen to the specific violin line or you can listen to what the harmonies are and how that violin line contributes to them.

Listening for specific instruments can be thought of as listening horizontally because you’re following one specific instrument as it plays. Listening to the specific chord being played would be listening vertically to how everything that’s being played at the same time interacts.

The main difference is where you’re focus is. If you’re normally used to paying attention to just the singer, you’re used to listening horizontally to that specific instrument. What if you tried listening the same way to the guitar part? Or the bass part?

To switch to vertical listening, what if you tried to imagine one beat of a song played by the whole band over and over and over again. One single beat of a song. How would that sound if it was repeated? Then compare that beat to the next beat. Do they sound the same? That’s listening horizontally.

ISJ

…