How can I improve as a musician?

Anything about MUSIC but doesn't fit into the forums above.
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

Transcribe what you hear.

Seriously. You won't be perfect at this right away, but there are programs that can slow down the music you are listening to as well as help identify the notes you hear.

But again... If you are trying to improve play from what you hear, then you'll have to begin with practicing to play what you hear. Yes I wrote that correctly.

The good thing about transcribing what you hear is that you are still improving the skill you've already built up, and are now building off of them.

You can add improvisation skills to your repertoire, but they won't nearly be as useful to you if you haven't built up your ear.

Post

OzoneJunkie wrote:It's "perfect practice makes perfect". Knowing how to practice is important. Intelligent focus is necessary.

A good personal example is picking technique on guitar. Economy of motion, even/equal up and down pick strokes, appropriate amount of tension/looseness in fingers/hand/arm, and so on. Observing and refining these things assist in better technique. Just practicing without the 'intellitent' side will yield lesser results. We're all capped by our own genetics, but I believe that that cap is far beyond what most people actually achieve.
I agree. You can't find the limits of your abilities on an instrument without the proper training and years of practice.

Post

Put yourself in unfamiliar circumstances too. Learn pieces you don't particularly like, jam with someone you don't know, etc.

Anything that makes you think about new or different approaches can only be a good thing in terms of improving.

Post

Thanks all for all the great suggestions!

There's enough wisdom in there to keep me going for many years. I realized, after reading some of this, and thinking about it myself too, that I've been way too theoretical in my approach towards everything so far. Or maybe that's not the correct way to describe it, but basically at some point, I started relying too much on educating myself rather than actually doing stuff. Of course learning is and should be life long, but somewhere in my mind I felt I wasn't quite ready and was still learning. Just rethinking this and getting out of this rut has been quite an eye-opener.

As for learning by playing by learning by playing, that exactly what I did and its actually a lot easier than I thought :). For the last week or so, when a song comes to mind, I've just been sitting down on the piano trying to figure it out and its actually not that hard, and the more you do it the easier it gets. I remember trying the same time thing a few years back and it seemed a lot harder then, so it looks like I've definitely made progress.

Somehow a lot of things have become a lot clearer and a whole new world has opened up, so I'm obviously quite kicked about this.

Post

OzoneJunkie wrote:If you're on Android, get the "Interval Recognition" app. Fantastic for ear training. I suggest starting with the major diatonic intervals first. Then add the others in or concentrate on sections (m6, M6, m7, M7) together. Also, do 3 note phrases.

In a couple years, my ear has gotten much better.
The concept of ear training is fascinating to me...as I had always wondered if such a thing is possible,as I always assumed that either people are genetically endowed with it,or they're not.

Main reason being,is that I had known someone who had several years of meticulous piano training from an early age,& his classic piano performances via sheet music,were phenomenal.
However...without sheet music in front of him(& aside from the pieces he could play that he memorized from sheet music)..he was utterly lost and was difficult to work with in the studio,as well as in a band.

Myself...on the other hand,have had the built in ability to learn music by ear so meticulously,that I can accurately reproduce almost anything I hear & replicate each and every track in most songs.
Of course though...something really complex that is performed very rapidly...like the Vince Guaraldi Trio or any intricate classical music,is beyond my capacity to interpret in every detail.

The downside for me though,is I have never been a very disciplined musician..as I hated sheet music,because it seemed like reading Chinese and I never had the patience for it....so,I admire those who do possess the discipline to learn sheet music fluently.
Added to which,my devout love and fascination for hardware workstations and PC DAW's...have made me so lazy,that I can't even play any song from start to finish in a live setting....but then,being in a band was something that I had lost interest in early on.

Post

AlesisVi61 wrote:
OzoneJunkie wrote:If you're on Android, get the "Interval Recognition" app. Fantastic for ear training. I suggest starting with the major diatonic intervals first. Then add the others in or concentrate on sections (m6, M6, m7, M7) together. Also, do 3 note phrases.

In a couple years, my ear has gotten much better.
The concept of ear training is fascinating to me...as I had always wondered if such a thing is possible,as I always assumed that either people are genetically endowed with it,or they're not.
I always consider my ear to be one of my weak points - friends in school usually had better ears than me. I've used the above app on my train commute for the past year and a half. Definitely not daily, but I have put many hours into it. At the start of it all, I could NOT recognize the the major diatonic intervals well at all. I would correctly answer around 25%. Now, I am better than 99% accurate - I've had a run of 299 out of 300 correct. I'm still stronger on ascending intervals compared to descending.

I've been concentrating on the group of m6, M6, m7, M7 intervals now - that was very hard for me to differentiate. I'm getting better - 90% or so.

It's amazing how much one can improve. And in doing so, my singing has improved dramatically.

This all does translate to recognizing intervals while listening to music, but I'm much less accurate with that presently, but still do fairly well. I do train interval phrases (3 note phrases presently), and so that's improving as well. In time, I expect to be able to just hear things without effort. Within the app, major diatonic, it truly is without effort - there's no thinking involved, nor singing (internal or external) required. I just hear the interval as is - it's instantaneous recognition. At first it wasn't this way - I would mentally map the interval to a template so to speak - for another song I already knew (the app helps with this - guess the interval wrong and it plays a phrase from a song). So, say, an ascending fifth, it would play the beginning phrase of Star Wars.

Anyway, if I could have only 1 app on my phone, this would be it - it's invaluable to me.

Post

When I was 14 in terms of copping a Hendrix, or Cream, or Beatles track there seemed to be nothing available to me other than to cop it off the record by ear.
You'll tend to recognize intervals as they happen meaningfully in the music by doing that, as opposed to totally in the abstract. There was nothing easy about this, I didn't start with much of an ear frankly.

Post

jancivil wrote:When I was 14 in terms of copping a Hendrix, or Cream, or Beatles track there seemed to be nothing available to me other than to cop it off the record by ear.
You'll tend to recognize intervals as they happen meaningfully in the music by doing that, as opposed to totally in the abstract. There was nothing easy about this, I didn't start with much of an ear frankly.
For me it was pretty much the same. Except I was trying to play piano and I did not even know what the dang notes were.

I think I ended up with sax when I was about 14...
Barry
If a billion people believe a stupid thing it is still a stupid thing

Post

AlesisVi61 wrote:
OzoneJunkie wrote:If you're on Android, get the "Interval Recognition" app. Fantastic for ear training. I suggest starting with the major diatonic intervals first. Then add the others in or concentrate on sections (m6, M6, m7, M7) together. Also, do 3 note phrases.

In a couple years, my ear has gotten much better.
The concept of ear training is fascinating to me...as I had always wondered if such a thing is possible,as I always assumed that either people are genetically endowed with it,or they're not.

Main reason being,is that I had known someone who had several years of meticulous piano training from an early age,& his classic piano performances via sheet music,were phenomenal.
However...without sheet music in front of him(& aside from the pieces he could play that he memorized from sheet music)..he was utterly lost and was difficult to work with in the studio,as well as in a band.

Myself...on the other hand,have had the built in ability to learn music by ear so meticulously,that I can accurately reproduce almost anything I hear & replicate each and every track in most songs.
Of course though...something really complex that is performed very rapidly...like the Vince Guaraldi Trio or any intricate classical music,is beyond my capacity to interpret in every detail.

The downside for me though,is I have never been a very disciplined musician..as I hated sheet music,because it seemed like reading Chinese and I never had the patience for it....so,I admire those who do possess the discipline to learn sheet music fluently.
Added to which,my devout love and fascination for hardware workstations and PC DAW's...have made me so lazy,that I can't even play any song from start to finish in a live setting....but then,being in a band was something that I had lost interest in early on.
This is an interesting point. My belief on this matter is that everyone (or most people) can do it. In simple terms, it is simply a matter of aligning the body and mind and then with the proper training and discipline, anything can be done. My practising tai chi and martial arts has a lot to do with this. Somewhere in another topic on kvr, someone equated "talent" with "affinity" and I kind of agree with this. Sure, it'll always be easier for some people to learn a particular skill or technique, but I believe that assuming there is no handicap, anyone can learn anything.

As a corollary, the person you mentioned with years of piano training is actually an example of this working the opposite way. You said he was learning from an early age, and therefore I believe that his inability to play by ear was actually more a result of his conditioning than anything else. In other words, he can't do it because he developed an over-reliance on classical methods with time, and it is more a mental thing than anything else.

This has become clearer to me in the last few weeks, as this has been a period of observation and self-discovery. In this time, I have made an effort towards and somewhat succeeded in undoing some mental patterns, putting myself in situations and improvising in ways I did not think of before, but now that I'm doing it, seem remarkably obvious and intuitive. In a way, I was stuck in the same trap as the person with the classical training, however in his case it is probably a lot harder to undo it because of the much longer training he had. These traps are only created by our own methods, and us following them mechanically, but the mind is more than capable of undoing them and creating new ones, if this makes any sense.

Post

I suggest jamming along with mp3s or CDs of music you enjoy. Also, there are a lot of "learn to play blues piano" DVDs and the like. They might help free you and they will probably be pretty easy compared to what you are used to.

Post

AlesisVi61 wrote:
The downside for me though,is I have never been a very disciplined musician..as I hated sheet music,because it seemed like reading Chinese and I never had the patience for it....so,I admire those who do possess the discipline to learn sheet music fluently.
Added to which,my devout love and fascination for hardware workstations and PC DAW's...have made me so lazy,that I can't even play any song from start to finish in a live setting....but then,being in a band was something that I had lost interest in early on.
Learning the notes takes a couple of hours - "there's an app for this", easy task (finally there are only 12 (11) different notes.. :clown: )

I guess you mean sight reading, which is much more difficult and takes a lot of practice.

Post

maschinelf wrote:This has become clearer to me in the last few weeks, as this has been a period of observation and self-discovery. In this time, I have made an effort towards and somewhat succeeded in undoing some mental patterns, putting myself in situations and improvising in ways I did not think of before, but now that I'm doing it, seem remarkably obvious and intuitive. In a way, I was stuck in the same trap as the person with the classical training, however in his case it is probably a lot harder to undo it because of the much longer training he had. These traps are only created by our own methods, and us following them mechanically, but the mind is more than capable of undoing them and creating new ones, if this makes any sense.
Brilliant when we have the ability to step outside ourselves to observe objectively and then step back in and adjust.

This is a cycle that has served me immensely well the past few years. Not just musically, but as a person. From the human perspective, I've stepped into an awareness that has let me separate the human body/mind as the tool and the 'me' as what resonates within me most. Seeing the body/mind as a tool has let me separate function from personality, knowledge and ability from ego, and so on.

I was limiting myself by my own interpretation of myself.

Post Reply

Return to “Everything Else (Music related)”