5 Daily Practices To Improve your Musicality
Improving musicality is one of those things that doesn’t have a formula. Many of us develop our own musicality with the guidance of a teacher; however, we’re seeing more and more instances of self-taught musicians coming into their own and finding their voice their own way. If you are one of those self-learners, or if you’re a musician looking for new ways to explore your musicianship, here are 5 things that you should do EVERY DAY to improve your musicality.
1. Active Listening
This does NOT mean you play your favorite tunes in the background as you’re working or playing a game. It means sitting down and giving all of your attention to the music and learning as much as you can. Pick a song that you love and then pick a specific aspect to listen to. It could be the melody, the harmony, the groove, or it could be the arrangement of the ensemble, the fills the drummer is doing, the articulation of the keys, or even the mixing. You’re going to make discoveries that you could never dream of through active listening.
It’s never just one element that makes a song captivating. It’s some sort of combination that hits you in the feels just right. Giving your entire mental energy to active listening will lead you to discover WHY that combination works. And like anything else, the more you practice your active listening, the more second nature it will become.
2. Sing
“But I can’t sing!” you say. Well, then, it’s time to learn! I’m not talking about you getting ready to go on stage and bust out some Puccini. I’m talking about the kind of singing where you’re capable of carrying a tune. Being able to reproduce pitch and rhythm in your voice is just another way of understanding music.
Music is physical, and singers and instrumentalists know this well. You EDM producers know this too because you feel something in your body when you’re making music. Say you’re working on this section of a piece, and it’s not quite where you want it to be. Sing that section out loud. Feeling where you want the music to go in your voice will make it easier to reproduce in your music.
To practice this, spend a little time mimicking a tune with your singing. It doesn’t have to be full speed, nor does it have to have perfect intonation. You’re simply using your voice to understand the music in another physical way. Singing is also a great way of communicating with your collaborators. If you can reproduce what you want with your voice, that’s going to get the point across much quicker than saying “on measure 74 beat 3 I need you to do it better blah blah blah….” Learning to sing is learning to communicate.
3. Mimic a Performance
We say “Monkey see, Monkey do”, but I think we should add “and then Monkey learns a whole lot”. Whatever instrument you play, you can learn a lot from straight up copying somebody else’s performance. This is great if you’re into classical or jazz because there are hundreds of different performances of any tune. I recommend picking either a musician you admire or picking a musician you haven’t even heard of. The first suggestion will have an emotional connection and it will be much easier to copy that performance. The second will force you to pay attention, and that effort is often memorable and can bring valuable lessons.
Copying those different performances will also force you to play something different than you normally would, and there is value in that. You may discover an articulation or phrasing that you love that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own. Or you may stumble upon a technique that drastically improves your playing! From Liberacci to Gould, from Vai to Cash, from Uematsu to Tallarico, there is always something to learn from copying performances.
4. Technique Practice
If you have tried all of the above, and you still don’t have the sound that you want, it’s time to work on your technique. Most issues with musicality can be solved with better technique. You can’t go wrong with practicing scales and arpeggios, but find ways to make it very, very specific. For example, if you want to have a lighter touch on your instrument, practice everything with a quiet staccato. Or maybe your issue is that you get tired very quickly while playing loud, fast music. In that case, it may be time to re-examine your posture and adjust your technique accordingly. As I said before, music is physical, and improving your physicality improves your music. Being present in your body is how we best control our music, so spend time improving technique every single day.
5. Level Up
When I say “level up”, I mean deciding what the next step is and working on it. Shout out and thank you to Mona Butler (Principal Bassoonist and Music Librarian of the Pacific Northwest Ballet) for giving me insight on how she teaches her students to improve their musicality. She focuses on completing one level at a time. Those levels are:
Correct notes
Rhythm
Articulation
Dynamics
Character
The level I want to talk about is Character, which is the stuff that’s not written on the page. There’s more than one way to play a piece of music, and this is called interpretation. One way to develop the character, or your interpretation, of a piece is to learn the history of it. For a video game tune, if you haven’t already played the game, learn where in the game it plays, and what its function is. Learn a little bit about the composer (i.e. where they’re from, other projects they’ve done, etc.) Also, learn why this particular style was chosen to accompany the game and learn about the technology behind it. Is it 16 bit? Full orchestra? Punk band? Learn anything and everything. This WILL affect your interpretation of the music.
This is why we can have so many different versions of the same song--each person will give their own insight and experience to the tune. So, the more you research and study, the more of yourself you can give. Creativity and analysis are just two sides of the same coin.
Now, it looks like I gave you a lot of things to do for daily practice, but the goal here is to make these daily things become second nature, and if you don’t do each one of these things every day, that’s ok! Active listening is something you can do in your car, but mimicking a performance might be better to do once a week. Whatever your combination of these daily things are, make sure that they are changing according to whatever you’re working on.
Good luck and happy practicing!
Sydney Kjerstad
Sydney Kjerstad is a video game composer in many different styles, but some of her favorites are pop and orchestral. She’s a strong believer in collaboration and enjoys working with artists/developers of all kinds.