Jonathan Harnum's Blog, page 31

Free Practice Aids

One of my goals in my own practice, with my students, and in the 6-Bullet Saturday newsletter is to keep things practical and useful. Here’s something you can put to use in any practice session:

free printable staff paper;
a simple printable practice journal;
piano keyboard with note names,

guitar fretboard with note names,
circle of fifths,
musical terms and markings;
major, minor, pentatonic, and blues scales along with patterns to practice (in treble clef) and a


scale practice checklist.

They’re taken from the “extras page” that goes along with Basic Music Theory: How to Read, Write, and Understand Written Music, a book I wrote for my students nearly 20 years ago because there was nothing like it on the market. There still isn’t.

And while I’m at it, check out this great, free poster (see below) to remind yourself and your students about the power of mindsets. Also free and printable. It’s from  chapter 6 of The Practice of Practice.

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Jamming & Improvising: The Absolute Basics (a free mini-course)

About a year ago, I helped develop some teaching material that will be part of a Music Learning Playlist for Arizona State University’s CITME, directed by Dr. Evan Tobias. You can take the mini-class on jamming for free here.

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The module covers absolute basics of jamming. It’s directed at middle school kids and above who have little or no prior knowledge about what jamming or improvising is.

So, if you know even a little, these probably aren’t for you, but send it to a kid you know who might enjoy it, or give it a post on social media, if you’d be so kind.

Here’s what’s in the course:

Class Curriculum

 

Part One – The Basics: What Improvising Is and How It Works

 
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Overview of the Video Tutorials (3:58)
 
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How is Jamming Like a Boat On the Ocean? (4:35)
 
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How Improvising, Jamming, & Freestyling Works (5:40)





Part Two – Skill Development

 
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Jamming Skills You’ll Need (2:43)
 
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Basic Listening: Dive Into the Mix (8:09)
 
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Beat & Rhythm Basics (3:56)
 
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Find (and Keep) the Beat (1:47)
 
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How Low Can You Go? Pitch and Melody (3:32)
 
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What Was That!? Sound Effects & Timbre (3:07)





Part Three – Going Solo: Jamming Alone

 
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General Jamming “Rules”
 
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Find Sounds to Jam Over (4:13)
 
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Create Beats to Jam Over (8:14)
 
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The KISS Rule (Keep It Super Simple) (2:54)






Part Four – Plays Well With Others: Group Jams

 
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Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way: The “Rules” of Jamming With Others
 
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Say What? Call and Response
 
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It’s Opposite Day! Mirroring (1:27)

 

Questlove’s “Creative Quest”

[image error]Just learned of a new book from  Questlove (Roots drummer and Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon bandleader): Creative Quest. I’m listening to the audiobook. Nice to hear the author speaking his own words. I’ll post a review when I’ve finished it.

The Art of the Cover: Learning from others: Pomplamoose

Imitation has always been the best way to go deep in the arts (or anything else, really). Always is, always will be. In any genre, any good musician learns from past  masters through imitation.

After you learn, the art of the cover lies in bringing something new to an interpretation, no matter the genre. Here’s a fantastic example from the band Pomplamoose. It’s a mashup of the Bee Gees and Jamiroquai:

 

“How to Play the Piano,” by James Rhodes. A book review. But first, a talk.

James Rhodes stopped playing piano for 10 years. That’s not a detail you hear about from any other concert pianists I’ve ever heard about. It’s usually the opposite: long long hours of practice every day for years. Decades.

The talk below is about trust, but it goes much deeper than that. And broader. How is it that you can tell when words come from the heart? I don’t know, but you’ll hear it in Rhodes’s talk.

Alert: some F-bombs in this talk, and a few other swears. I like it, and think it adds to Rhodes’s likeability (some evidence of why that is).

Anyway, it’s been a long time since I’ve been so moved by a talk on music or anything else. Hope you find something valuable in here, too. A review of Rhodes’s book, How to Play the Piano is below the video. I’ve not read his other books, or his recordings, but they’re now on my short list.

How to Play the Piano, by James Rhodes: A review.

This is a tiny slip of a book, and yet it contains so much.

Bach’s Prelude in C isn’t usually considered a “beginner’s” piece of music. Don’t let that scare you, because Rhodes’s book approaches this gorgeous piece (played at the top of the vid above) in a such a simple, straightforward style, that I bet you’ll be surprised  how easy it will be to learn this piece using the book.

[image error]The book–much like the Prelude–is a tiny beautiful thing, only 60 pages long, and small, a testament to Rhodes’s no-BS vibe. The visuals of piano keyboards and fingerings, the quick-and-useful music reading lessons, and the advice on practice all contribute to the book’s charm and utility.

Give it 6 weeks of 45 minutes a day and you could be playing this piece on piano. It sounds like one of those cheesy, remoral adverts for losing weight, I know, but give it a shot. What if it actually takes you 6 month? So what?! That’s still amazing.

I would love, love, love to hear how you do using Rhodes’s How to Play the Piano. If you’re stuck or want some extra practice tips, do check out my books on how to read musc and practice. I’d love to hear about your experience.

I’m giving a copy of Rhodes’s How to Play Piano to anybody interested in playing piano. And I’m going to learn the piece myself, even though I already play, just because it’s so beautiful. Order all the Bach Preludes and get busy on the. Why not?

The Work: Inside Classical Music Practice

There are more ways to practice than this video documents. It’s one of the blind spots in academia: all of the research on practice is focused on Western Classical Music. It’s like other styles and other approaches don’t even exist. Weird, right?  It’s why I did the research I did on practice (and wrote a book about it).

So, despite that blind spot, this is still an interesting video from Dan Piccolo (University of Michigan) on how Western classical musicians practice. Even if you’re not into playing that kind of music, there are some nuggets of wisdom in here you can use no matter what genre you play.

Erin McKeown used songwriting and recording to hone her skills. Nicholas Barron used performing to practice. A French musician (fantastic upright bass player whose name escapes me) I was chatting with at Django In June in 2016 said he practiced by sitting on his couch, listening to great music. When he heard something he liked, he got up and learned it. Then back to listenting. I kind of like that approach.

All this is to say, “Don’t  buy into just one way of learning music. There are other ways to get good, and many are more enjoyable than what some see as the ‘boring’ kinds of classical music practice.”

Learn about them in The Practice of  Practice.[image error]

 

Evidence keeps rolling in: Early childhood music training can lead to better music and language skills.

Weird how one thing leads to another. Either that or Google is watching me closer than I thought. Could be. Anyway, after posting Victor Wooten’s talk about how learning language and learning music can be the same, here’s the first year of data from a longitudinal study from Sean Hutchins at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada.  The study measured language and music skills in younglings after their first year of formal music study.

One question I have: The kids are studying in a conservatory setting, so that means they’re probably reading (or learning to read) sheet music. I’m convinced that’s not the best way to start kids out (see VW’s talk to get a taste of why that is), but that decoding skill has gotta be very closely related to reading words. I don’t have access to the full study, alas, so I can’t get answers to these questions. It’s still a fascinating connection. I’m suer glad to see it’s a longitudinal study and look forward to hearing about future  findings.

Details from the abstract of the study [snip]

Here, we present the first year of data from an ongoing longitudinal study, aimed at finding if measurable improvements in musical and linguistic abilities can be seen among children taking music classes. We studied 90 children (age 3–6) who were enrolled to take group classes in a conservatory setting. We measured their musical, language, and perceptual abilities both at the beginning and the ending of the school year. Pre vs. post comparisons showed an increase in vocabulary size, pre-reading skills, and singing ability; these increases were beyond what could be attributed to normal development during the time. We also found that singing ability was correlated with language skills. Taken together, these results show that early childhood music training can lead to associated improvements in both musical skills and language skills, strengthening the evidence for a developmental link between these two abilities.

Source: Early childhood music training can lead to better music and language skills – Music Education Works

Learning Music Like Learning Language: Victor Wooten

ABSOLUTELY! Victor Wooten speaks wisdom. Our approach to teaching music (often sight before sound) is backwards.

Listen to Victor!

Wooten’s book, The Music Lesson is pretty good, too. Like if Carlos Casteneda learned music from Don Juan instead of magic.

Polyphonic overtone singing explained visually.

Wonderful stuff from Anna-Maria Hefele. More tutorials here.

Brains of jazz and classical musicians work differently, study reveals. Which is Better?

The brain activity of jazz musicians is substantially different from that of classical musicians, even when they’re playing the same piece of music.

Source: Brains of jazz and classical musicians work differently, study reveals – Classic FM

Stoked to learn of this study and so glad we’re beginning to learn more about improvisation in music. Long overdue. If you haven’t alredady, check out Charles Limb’s work with improvisers and freestyle rappers in an fMRI machine. Fascinating stuff!