Exploring

Every musician learns differently. Some learn by emulating artists they admire, mirroring a style, specific songs and even wrestling to transcribe note for note. For these artists, finding their original voice is a worthy challenge, as they carve out a way of playing and sounding that isn't a reflection of their influences. 

However, there is a fallacy in using your self identity as a compass, as it only points in one direction. 

To explore music is to go beyond yourself and who you think you are and make sounds you have never made before. Sing in a way you've never sung before. 

This concludes my ongoing battle against branding oneself, which seems to be the style at the time. To claim you are something is to deny the possibility of becoming something else.

Some musicians start off so independently that learning to play with others becomes a worthy goal. These artists need to delve into charts, and the common language of music theory, whether it's spoken, in sheet music or on lead sheets. The point of these tools is to get everyone on the same page, pun intended. The individual voice can then be shared with other people. Let the irony soak in. 

These artists also may be so into their own work they rarely learn or cannot learn cover songs and they miss the joy of learning songs by other composers.

Whatever your learning style is don't miss the chance to explore. 

You're Not a Brand, You're a Stock

In the 1960s, if someone told young musicians that they had to brand themselves, and be more like brands of that era such as Tupperware (food storage containers), Tab (soda), Mary Quant (fashion) or Zippo (lighters), they'd be laughed out of the Gaslight Cafe for being the squarest thing since the cube. But somehow in the 2020s, if you don't understand yourself as a brand, then you're not with it. Take one look at marketing strategy of today, and you'll see branding yourself as imperative. 

Need proof that branding is a popular approach to marketing these days? Let's ask Google. When googling "How to brand yourself as a musician" there's many results, starting off with this screenshot:

The company WIX offers a personal branding guide, check it out here.

The company Looka has a branding kit, check it out here.

You don't need to look far to see that branding is a considered an important, imperative step in marketing today.

Branding is not an end in itself.

A brand is just a brand, a cigar is just a cigar. Just because you are recognizable, and have a color scheme, logo, and fonts doesn't mean your music is any good. It just means your marketing is in place. 

If the corporate mentality has permeated music, so be it. If so, then let's take that a step further. To be more than a brand or flavor of the month, you must have stock value. 

To this end, consider your music as a stock: is it rising or falling? Are you further along than last year? Would people invest in you? Once you start looking at your music as a stock, which has a value, then you're able to make strategic decisions to increase that value. 

A Tax on Wit

While in a meeting with fellow musicians, the topic of social media came up. I found myself saying, "artists are what make social media interesting." At the time, it was merely a way of blowing our collective trumpet. 

Then I thought of the power of boycotts. What if all of the artists pulled out of social media? It would be a vapid place. Zuckerburg's pocketbook would go down. The value of the enterprise rests on us, the artists and the people. 

Hasn't Zuckerburg, while watching the online empire grow, unintentionally put a small "wit" tax on us all? Facebook convinces us we are witty, sharing our opinions, pictures and quips. And who is making a proverbial penny off every post? 

With this realization my inner Proletariat reeled like the guy in the Caravaggio painting when he touches a snake, and proclaimed, I shall not be taxed. Zuckerburg isn't going to make a dime off of my wit and creativity. 

To that end, I am off Facebook. Correlation is not causation but I am happy to report I am being more productive than I have ever been on my goals in music and art, not concerning myself with my next scheduled post. 

Not without function, social media has at times helped me kill time, stay sane, share news, and stay up to date, get fans and customers, or maybe just a little ego boost.

Yet ponder for a moment the sheer amount of time you have spent on social media in the last day, week, month, year, or decade.

I am enjoying my experiment of making Zuckerburg 2 pennies less rich by withholding my participation in the centrifuge. I might even keep the penny for my thoughts. Care to join me?

The Audience: Where the Focus Belongs

Image source

It's Not Me It's You.

Music is often a me-focused enterprise. Independent artists are asked to develop their brand, social media presence, content content content, and "become their brand." All of this is supposed to lead to more followers, more gigs, and more opportunities to play music. However, with this me-centered approach, the music suffers. This is because a key component is often forgotten in the process.

That's right, the people out there. The audience. The audience which is going make an effort to come out and see the show. To address this, I challenge you to not just start thinking a lot about the audience, but to experiment by thinking ONLY of the audience, as a starting place.

If your focus starts only on the audience, imagine how that would change things. No more worrying about your image, brand, website, promotions or number of followers on TikTwitter. If the focus did happen to stray from the audience, what if its second stop was the music itself: the notes, the sounds, and to the appreciation and magic of those sounds. So between these two things, the audience and the music, that is where focus belongs.

If focus might go to yourself as the performer--the rarest exception--it might be to consider how your dress, demeanor, and heck, the angle of your hat, contributes to how the audience experiences the show or the song. Or, how your physical stance affects what notes you can play and how.

This is all bringing it back home: the goal is to emphasize the experience of the audience. If your thoughts are constantly, without wavering, focused on the audience, while writing, practicing, sharing your music (rather than focused on yourself), imagine how the music could sound.

The Value of Music Theory

I wanted to back pedal a little and report that, despite the nervously adamant nature of my last post, that yes, I do understand the value of music theory. The funniest, realistic way which I can prove this, is that I have noticed that the jobbing musicians who get paid to play music know music theory. The rambling indie rockers begging for gas money on tour don't. I see this like the light shining from a 100 watt bulb. 

Music theory has a commercial value. Audiences who pay for tickets are often paying to hear people who have studied music formally (not always but often). Those who know music theory can also be hired to do things which mere mortal musicians cannot, ranging from producing, arranging, transcribing, and/or teaching. 

There are definitely exceptions to this, from days of yore to today, where music that does not have an academic backbone, or even an academic pinky bone, appeals to the masses and audiences far more than belabored academic music. 

What I am trying to cull out then, is how can music theory be applied in a practical way? I suppose even my musical comrads who are deep into music theory would be interested, so let's explore it briefly.

To this end, let's call "music theory" the "study of music" as I am using the term to refer to an academic study of music.

• Studying music needs to be rooted in the core of musical curiousity.
• Studying music is all about listening.
• Studying music is all about proclaiming what gets you excited.
• Studying music is all about embracing what intrigues you.
• Studying music is realizing the path is long.
• Studying music is realizing it's not as hard as you thought.

The dangers of formally studying music (rah-hah-hah): yes there are some:

• You think you know more than you do.
• You get cocky.
• You want to tell others how to approach music.
• You are full of the illusion of knowledge.
• You start using your brain more than your ears.
• You are parlyzed when you don't have guardrails.
• You get frustrated.

All of these are a false sense of knowledge, or a false sense of inadequacy. What a roller coaster. 

The challenge is to find natural curiousity and a teacher able to see it. But, that's just a theory!

I will keep you updated, dear reader, on my journey to find that balance between the magic of music and the method.

Image soure: here.

Bubble Wrapped in Music Theory

I have a new equation to share, something along the lines of the more money you have to spend on music lessons, the longer and more complicated music theory becomes. Sadly, music theory, while being handy in some cases, is also the biggest racket known to music lessons.

Through experience of taking lessons with multiple teachers, and doing research online watching videos where people talk about music theory, please allow me to wave my hand and clear the fog.

Music theory is only a small part of what is called music theory. Most of music theory is music facts.

The difference is this: 

Music theory is analyzing. It's deciding whether to call a chord a certain name based on the root note, or based on the key it's in, for example. The "theory" part comes in when a chord can go by multiple names. It's kind of like calling a color orange-red, or red-orange. It's just what you call it. The notes are still the notes. Music theory is a way of looking at music after its been written or played. It's a lens. It's a way of looking.

The word "theory" makes it sound like a scientific principle is at work, but in music theory, the word theory just means "subjective." Looking at chords a certain way can help a composer or help a player navigate a piece of music, but nothing in music theory is about facts. Which leads is to...

Music facts are the common vocabulary and agreed-on vocabulary used in written music. C is C. D is D. A certain string of intervals is an Ionian mode. These are not theories! These are facts and vocabulary of things that everyone has to agree on. If C wasn't C, then sheet music would be pointless. Everyone needs to agree what a C note is. There are tons of facts, and not a single one of them is a theory! It took me awhile to separate these two things. Knowing the vocabulary of music helps to communicate with other musicians, and it helps explore the fretboard (or explore the full range of whatever instrument you play). 

Music theory is often seen as a mysterious, complicated thing, but it's not. It's just a bunch of facts, and a tiny bit of analyzation thrown in on top. I've learned not to let the intimidation of the hardest parts of music theory stop me from just hopping, skipping and jumping through simply learning the music facts. Facts are just something to learn step by step. Like all the other facts we know.

I've heard that there was an idea in classical music that students would learn yards of music theory before being allowed to touch their instrument. In a context where that makes sense, great, but I am not going to be bubble wrapped in music theory, I think I'll just hit the street with the facts--it's much cheaper that way.

Image source: here

Songwriter's Corner: Heroic Speech

In Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo, the author dives into conversations with super-songwriters about their craft, and his interview with Bob Dylan offers this gem: "Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me it's something to strive after."

To help wrap your head and craft around this, here's some quotes on heroism:

“I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.”
― George Carlin

“Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”
― Jodi Picoult, Second Glance

“Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.”
― Fred Rogers

“One part brave, three parts fool!”
― Christopher Paolini

“To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“Heroism doesn't pay very well. I try to be cold-blooded and money-oriented, but I keep screwing it up.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat

“So you love war. I used to think you were a decent man. But I see now I was mistaken. You're a hero.”
― Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

“Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Common farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone. Once you told me that the seeking counts more than the finding. So, too, must the striving count more than the gain.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The High King

“Heroes are people who face down their fears. It is that simple. A child afraid of the dark who one day blows out the candle; a women terrified of the pain of childbirth who says, 'It is time to become a mother'. Heroism does not always live on the battlefield.”
― David Gemmell, Dark Moon

“Perhaps a hero is someone who doesn’t register his own vulnerability. Is it courage, then, if you’re too daft to know you’re mortal?”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“He found that it was easy to make a heroic gesture, but hard to abide by its results.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage