Living the life of a musician, you are bound to meet the person who believes that your talents are not the result of years of hard work, but rather that you have “the gift” for music. These same people also use this illusive “gift” as their excuse for not being musical. “I just never had the gift,” they say.
Allow me to reveal what “the gift” really is: It’s a myth! As much as I love disabusing people of myths, I find this one particularly insidious. It robs from so many of us the joys of music making, simply by spreading the notion that if you aren’t spectacular immediately then you shouldn’t be making music. This is a terrible outlook when endeavoring into an art or skill like music because the most reliable method for building those skills is repetition over time.
Almost everyone is musical. We can’t all be Mozart, but let’s be honest, Mozart was a freak. We all have the capacity to learn one or more instruments and explore various styles, but we need to make a game plan to do so. Here, I will present just a few things newcomers to music can do to build up their musical mind. All it takes is repetition, and maybe come this time next year, you can surprise yourself with the progress you’ve made in your musical journey.
So music, as we know, begins with the human body. This was humanity’s first instrument. Even if you are completely tone deaf, you can still keep a beat with your hands. This is a great place to start. Learn to explore rhythm with your hands; whether clapping, snapping, or drumming on a table, you can play tribal rhythms or KISS drum solos with just your palms and knuckles.
The next instrument your body provides is your voice. Now, before you say that your voice doesn’t sound good, go look up Tom Waits and realize that this man actually sells records. Singing is one of the most direct, efficient ways to get music in your head (you are using your head after all). Even if you can only sing in the shower, do it. Singing can be taken as seriously as you want, but do your best to find the range of notes that works well with your unique voice.
This brings us to a skill of utmost importance in music making: listening. A good musician is one that listens to him or herself unapologetically, and thus knows where they can improve. But furthermore, people who listen closely to music—whether recorded or live—develop a finer fluency in the language. Work toward dissecting music and songs. What kinds of instruments are being used? What emotions are being conveyed? What kind of time or place does the music remind you of?
Another way to ramp up your ability to learn music is to connect what you’re learning with memorable or meaningful ideas. Remember how you learned the alphabet? Did you notice that the tune for “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is used to memorize the 26 letters? We can use music to remember things, but the inverse is true as well, we can employ meaningful thoughts or ideas to remember music. Pick a song you would like to learn, don’t worry about the difficulty of it, and listen to it a few times. Write down some main thoughts or ideas in the form of a flowchart as the song progresses. View this flowchart as a small story and use this little mental story to remember how the song moves along and progresses.
So far, these suggestions can be done without guidance or help. Lessons are always nice because they provide expertise and information that the layman may not ever be exposed to. But much fun can be had on your own, when you act as your own teacher. All you need to do is hone your ears, tap your fingers, and open up your voice.
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 15-22, 2015.
