I’ve been listening to this interview with Seth Godin;
One thing that he said made me think a little bit.
He said, “what would you make if you knew that you’d fail.” He follows that up by clarifying that if you knew every single person would reject the project, what would still be worth making.
I know that sounds very ethereal and not very practical and realistic, but I think it’s something that we, as musicians or even as people, should consider. Making a living is definitely something that needs to be considered, but I think this question requires just as much consideration. Especially if you want to be making anything that is personal and means something to you.
It’s a hard question to answer and takes some thinking. It also takes some serious introspection because it means that you would still be proud of making that thing, knowing full well that every single person that heard it wouldn’t like it. That’s hard to do. It’s really hard to do. No one wants to be rejected, let alone rejected by every single person that sees/hears whatever you made. But if you do that, I’d bet that you’ll make something pretty good. If you make a song that is something you’re proud of, no matter what other people say about it, you’ll be happy you made it.
From personal experience I know this is true.
My album Expanding (An Electric Symphony) is something that I’m proud of no matter what people say about it. It’s my first release. It’s my first album. It’s one of my first long form pieces of music. Few people have heard it. The people that have heard it (mostly friends, family, and professors I had in college) have said wonderful things about it, but even if no one heard it I’d be happy I made it. That, I think, is the answer to Seth’s question.
Expanding is something I’d make knowing full well no one would like it.
Now, to be realistic, it’s hard to make this happen every single time you make something. For me at least, that’s not realistic at all. I couldn’t spend the energy I spent on Expanding every single time I make a piece of music. BUT. And there’s a very big but here. If you enjoy the process of making the thing, then that, I think, satisfies that question.
It’s is one of the reasons I really enjoy the music of Andrew Huang. He seems to enjoy the process of making music. The act itself of making music is enjoyable to him. So he makes a lot of music. Naturally as a result of enjoying that specific process, he makes a lot of music.
If you enjoy the process of making something, then it’s worth making.
I’ve been filming, editing, and releasing one video a week on YouTube since last July.
Thinking of ideas for videos can be difficult. Sometimes you think of a great idea for a video or you have someone ask you a question about music and then realize that’s a good video idea. But sometimes it can be hard to find ideas. The main thing I’ve found to get around this problem is brainstorming.
I have a notebook where I keep notes for what to mention in each video. That way they sound coherent and have some structure.
In that same notebook I’ll brainstorm as many ideas as I can think of. I’ll put a timer on for a few minutes and write down whatever comes to mind. I don’t do any editing. I just write. Even if I don’t think it’s a good video idea I’ll write it down.
Maybe I’ll write three pages of ideas and I’ll only find three ideas that I’ll use. That’s still a success to me. I have three useful ideas and it only took me a few minutes to find them.
But the main thing to do when brainstorming is to KEEP WRITING. Write everything down. Even if you don’t think it’s good. Write it down anyways. You can cross it off later, but your job when brainstorming is just to write as much as possible.
Try it out sometime. I bet you’ll be surprised at how useful it can be.
Here are 50 things I’ve learned from arranging music for and teaching my youth orchestra students.
1. Key signatures matter and can be hard.
2. Beginning violin players don’t like flats … Like a lot
3. They really don’t like flats
4. D major is cool
5. Alto sax players learn sharps quickly because their in Eb and their key music has an extra 3 sharps
6. Syncopation isn’t fun
7. Neither are 16th notes
8. C natural is fine sometimes for violin players
9. Fuck bowings
10. Playing legato is hard
11. Beginning trumpet players don’t like notes above C5
12. Dotted quarter note + eighth note is hard
13. Starting a melody on the “and” of 1 is hard
14. Beginning violin players don’t like flats … again
15. Playing music you know is a big deal
16. If you’re excited, they’ll be excited
17. They’ll forgive your mistakes if you forgive theirs
18. They’ll put in effort if you put in effort
19. Be genuinely excited when telling them they did a good job
20. Saying “this may be too easy for you, so let me know if you need more of a challenge” will get them to try harder … A lot harder
21. Read 20 again
20. Saying “I want to challenge you, but let me know if this is too much. I can change it” will get an honest response
21. Read 20 again
22. Some beginners are well aware that they don’t sound very good.
23. If someone is sight reading and plays the piece kind of alright with a few mistakes, tell them that they did well for sight reading. Remind them how hard sight reading is.
24. Be honest about your own skill level. They don’t see being overly humble the same as you.
25. Letting them know how long it took for you to get to your level can help a lot
26. Tell them they “killed it” when they played well
27. Tell other teachers how well they did
28. Breath control is hard
29. Tonguing notes properly feels weird
30. Fingerings are hard
31. Hearing when you’re out of tune is completely different from being able to play in tune
32. F major is surprisingly hard for beginner violinists. Don’t use that key.
33. Playing by yourself for all your classmates is terrifying.
34. Beginning trumpet players try to breathe too much
35. If you don’t know a fingering when they ask you. Be honest that you’re looking it up for them.
36. Tuning is important
37. Tuning is important
38. Seriously … Remember to have everyone tune.
39. Tuning is important
40. Apologize for messing up. They notice.
41. Seriously apologize if you mess up. They’ll love you for it. And think much less of you if you don’t acknowledge it.
42. They want to have a good time in class just as much as you do
43. Even though they’re kids they’ll realize they don’t have fancy recording equipment. Tell them you know and don’t expect them to have fancy recording equipment. A webcam mic works.
44. Webcam microphones can sound really good
45. Violin always sounds awful on Zoom. Get used to it. Never mention it.
46. Talking too much is really boring
47. Call people by their name
48. At one point whole notes were hard for you. They’ll be hard for all beginners.
49. Tell them they’re playing a simplified version. They won’t be offended. Some will be happy you also realise it’s not the original.
I’ve been thinking about conventions in music. Mainly I’ve been thinking of them as they relate to tonality.
You don’t need to follow the conventions of tonality. Those conventions can be broken. If you want to write a piece of music that is purely atonal, write that piece of music. Also please send it to me because I love atonal music.
But conventions are not rules that must be followed or else something bad will happen to you. If you have a good reason and a useful reason to break them, then break them.
In terms of music I’m thinking of expressing yourself. If you need to express yourself in a way that is non-tonal or atonal then do that. Write an atonal song.
This post won’t be as educational as some of the others, but hopefully it’s helpful and encouraging. As many people may know I’m a music teacher. I teach Kindergarten through 8th grade music as well as private lessons and I direct a middle school orchestra. I’ve been doing all that online as of last March. I also teach 2nd grade Science, Social Studies, and Cursive.
For further background I play melodica in my music classes all the time. I was inspired by Jon Batiste to get one.
Anyways I got this email from the mother of one of my students the other day (I’ve changed his name for privacy):
“Jacob was so excited to show you his melodica abilities today. He really looks up to you because he loves music so much. He wanted one for Christmas because you had one. He’s been playing non stop, and has somehow figured out what notes are which by ear from this electronic music book he has. He also got a harmonica!
Thanks for being a great teacher!”
I often get thank you notes, but very few make me as emotional as this one made me.
Something I recommend everyone do, regardless of what they want to do, is make something that I once learned as a “musical umbrella.”
Write down what you want to do and why you want to do it. Include quotes that inspire you if you want to, but try to really think about what you want to do and write that down. Mine is mainly about inspiring people to do whatever it is that they want to do, whether or not it’s music doesn’t matter. My goal with making music and making content is to hopefully, one day, inspire someone to make better music or art today than they did yesterday.
I know that’s cliche. But the people that have inspired me have meant a lot. As someone that studied music and has been a musician for many years that list is long, but the people that have encouraged me to continue to make music mean a lot to me. Even if it’s something simple like “hey good job on your solo today” or “congrats on releasing an album.”
I can still remember random times in my life when people said things that, at the time, meant a lot. Sometimes that’s a fellow high school student telling you “nice solo today” after a concert in Jazz Band. Sometimes that’s hearing a family member say “when are you releasing that music?” Sometimes it’s hearing that your high school guitar teacher told your parents something similar to, “you know he has a lot of skills. I’m worried that his skills won’t help him much while he’s at Berklee, but he’s a really smart kid.” Or honestly it could be something as small as a friend saying something similar to, “you’re album was really good. Congrats on releasing it.”
I don’t bring these things up to be self-aggrandizing. I hope they’re some type of encouragement. If you’re reading this and for whatever reason you need encouragement today send me an email, or send me a direct message on Twitter or Instagram, and I’ll send you a message that (hopefully) is some type of encouragement.
Making music is hard. Not just because making money doing it is difficult, but because many people don’t understand the desire to do it as a profession. It’s thought of as a hobby for everyone, but professionals. The irony there is that every single person that is a professional musician at one point was not a professional musician.
But back to the email.
This met all the requirements for my “musical umbrella”. I wanted to inspire someone to make music or to create music. It met the requirements.
So as a closing reminder: be aware of the influence you could have and please, please, try to make that a good one.
This is something that I told one of my students the other day.
So this is about music, but can be applied to much more than music.
I had my students make simple songs using this online music making tool called BeepBox. It’s fairly simple to use even if the interface is a little confusing. One great thing about it is that you can change the scale of the piano roll. You can adjust the scale so that it’s only allowing you to use notes in the pentatonic scale, or the major scale, or the minor scale. So I’ve started having my students learn how to use it. And they’ve largely enjoyed it.
Today I had a student tell me that nothing they write sounds good and they didn’t know what to do. They didn’t want to keep making music they didn’t like and it obviously didn’t make them feel very good learning that they couldn’t make something they liked with it.
The title of this post is what I told them. It’s okay if you’re not good at first.
I compared it to ice skating. I live in Los Angeles and if you’re not familiar with the weather over here, it’s never snowed in the few years I’ve lived here. Never. It hardly ever gets below 60°.
So I compared it to ice skating. And I asked that student if they’d ever been ice skating. They said they hadn’t. I followed that up with, “how good do you think you’d be at it the first time?” And they said they probably wouldn’t be very good. So I told them, “Yeah. You probably wouldn’t be very good. But that’s fine. You’ve never done it before. If you’ve never done something before then you can’t expect yourself to be super good at it the first time.” And I told them the more they try to get better at it, the better they’ll get.
I also gave them some ideas to use in their own music to help them get closer to something they’d like. Just so they had some real applicable tools to try to use.
But it’s always a good thing to remember. It’s totally okay if you’re not good at first.
The idea of inspiration is kind of weird to me. Inspiration is great, when you feel it, but when you don’t it can feel a little weird to write something.
But write anyways. You’ll still get better at writing.
And what are the drawbacks? You write a piece of music you don’t like? So what, throw it out.
What are the potential benefits? You write a piece of music you like.
That benefit enough is reason enough to keep writing.
Don’t burn yourself out trying to write something great for three hours, but still push yourself to write something.
You’ll quickly get over the feeling of “well I don’t have anything to write about” and you’ll get better at generating ideas to write about. Some might be garbage. Well, let’s be honest. Most will probably be garbage. But so what? If you think of 10 ideas for a song and 9/10 of them are garbage, you’ve still found 1 good idea.
Focus on that good idea.
Even if you don’t have inspiration. Write anyways.
I recently started studying to get a master’s degree. My first class was this week and we talked about how to get students engaged in teaching. One thing I mentioned was I think that teachers and students both want to be learning and teaching about things that are enjoyable.
So the teacher asked me, “And how do you learn what your students want to learn?”
I had no idea how to answer that question.
She then responded, “You could just ask them. I’m not trying to trick you with that question. Just ask them. Give them a chance to tell you what they want to learn about.”
That’s so straight forward and simple, but it’s so quickly forgotten by teachers and by educators because for whatever reason.
So if you want to know what someone’s interested in.
I’ve been reading What to Listen for in Music by Aaron Copland recently and I wanted to make a post about some ideas from that book.
The book is definitely worth a read if you’ve never read it before.
One thing that he mentions is repeated listenings. It’s really simple, but listening to a song multiple times can teach you a lot about the song.
It’s difficult to get a lot from one single listening. It takes a lot of very focused listening to be able to get much from one single listening. It takes knowing quite a lot about music and takes listening to a whole bunch of music to get much from one single listen.
So what’s the solution?
Simple.
Listen again.
And keep listening until you’ve gotten what you wanted out of the song. You’ll notice more the second time. You’ll notice more the third time. You’ll notice slightly more the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth times as well.
So if you listened to a song once and didn’t really understand it, try listening a few more times.
This becomes difficult if you’re listening to long pieces of music like symphonies, so I suggest using songs or shorter pieces of music to start. Then move on to listening to longer pieces of music if you’re into that.
Using pads can be a great way to beef up your music and add a harmonic backdrop for whatever other music you have.
You could keep them simple and just have a pad play chords. You could also make them a little more complicated an include some tensions in those chords, like 9ths or 13ths or 11ths. I’m a fan of adding a few tensions into pads because they won’t intrude on the other music, but it’ll add some flavor.
This can be a great addition to a song if the chords are mostly triads. Adding a 9th, 11th, or 13th to those chords without the 7th can be a nice touch of color.
Another thing to remember when using pads is that they might be stale after a while if the synth doesn’t change. So you can add a filter at the beginning and some type of warble in the middle. This can be done in a couple different ways that I explain in my video How to Make Your Pads More Interesting.
Some quick ways to do this are to add effects like chorus and delay. You can use a step sequencer to control different pieces of effects so that they change as the pad plays.