Musicality

The idea of musicality is surrounded with a shroud of mysticism. It is often thought that people are either born musical or they are not, and that musicality isn’t really a skill that can be learned. Taken at face value, that proposition is obviously wrong: babies are born with very little knowledge and acquire almost all of it through learning.

A stronger argument can be made that there is a critical period in children’s development after which musicality cannot be learned. This is a harder claim to refute. If we look at most of the great pianists of history, almost all of them were child prodigies. The evidence seems to be clear.

While it might be true that an opportunity for mastery and elite performance is lost after the age of 7, that is not to say that it is impossible to gain any skills and achieve any level of greatness at ages 16 or 30. In my personal experience as both a pianist and a teacher, I have seen more than enough evidence to believe that musicality is a quality that can be acquired at any age.

The problem is that musicality is rarely taught as a separate skill, it often acquired haphazardly through normal instrumental education. If it is never directly taught or addressed, it’s hardly surprising that it doesn’t consistently emerge in students.

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the ways we can actively develop our musicality. All of this development stems from attention.

Attention

If you were to compare two paintings, one made by me, and another by Leonardo Da Vinci, there would be no hesitation in attributing one to me and the other to him. Why is that? He’s a better artist and his painting is better than mine. Yes, but what does that mean? In this case, I mean his painting is closer to reality than mine is. He paid more attention to the details: the texture of the wood, the shape of the branches, the way the light interacts with the leaves, and many more details that I’m simply unaware of. While I wouldn’t be able to replicate those details, I can instantly recognise his painting as a much closer representation of reality than mine. It’s easier to recognise correctness than it is to create it.

Learning the arts is a process of turning observation to knowledge. Everything there is to notice about the world is there from the beginning. It’s easy to see, it’s more difficult to notice. Learning music is the process of going from hearing to listening. Throughout this chapter, I will bring your attention to different aspects of the music. Eventually, through this process of listening with increasing detail, you will learn everything there is to know about music.

Listening

Music is often compared to a language. While I wouldn’t say music is a language, there are a lot of similarities between the two, and the analogy takes us pretty far.

How does anyone learn a language? By listening. It is the foundational skill.

As I mentioned earlier, learning music is the process of going from hearing to listening. Traditionally, this has been a haphazard process, but it doesn’t have to be. In this section I will give you a set of mental models to learn to listen.

Learn to recognise differences

Spot the difference is a simple game, and as it turns out, it’s a great way to start paying more attention to the music we listen to. It’s much easier to observe details when have a point of comparison.

Before delving into the specific differences in technical terms, listen to each of the pieces below and fill out the accompanying survey.

This type of survey is great to start to get us thinking about the abstract qualities of a piece of music, and helps clarify what effect the differences have on our perception of the music.

Here are some other things to consider as you’re listening out for differences and similarities between these two recordings:

• How are the fragments different? Think about the separation between the notes, the bounciness.
• How are the fragments similar? Pay close attention to the left hand.
• Which fragment did you like better? Why?

You can do this same exercise with other pieces, here are a few more below.

• How is the pedalling different and how did it impact the effect of the music?
• How was the speed different, were there variations in one that weren’t in the other?
• Is there any part of the melody that stood out more in one compared to the other?
• Which version did you prefer? Why?

The same exercise can even be done with a whole orchestra!

• Both conductors push and pull the time but how do they do it differently? When do they do it similarly?
• How different is the balance between the vocals and the orchestra?

I encourage you to keep practising this exercise with music you listen to. Pick at least two different recordings (can even be the same pianist!) and identify the differences (and similarities) between the recordings. What effects do those differences in interpretation have on your impression of the music? Do you like one better than the other? Perhaps some sections are better in recording A and others better in recording B. What about if you introduce a third recording in the mix? This will start to build up your ability to observe changes in music and more importantly, it will develop your taste and your ability to describe music intelligently. Eventually you will find that you are having opinions about the way a piece should be played and that you can’t find any recordings that exactly fit your ideal. You are developing your own style, your own voice.

Here is a list to help guide your ear towards hearing differences when they might not be obvious.

• Dynamics – The term we use to describe volume. It’s not quite the same as volume because of the way that acoustic instruments sound. When you turn up the volume, you are increasing the amplitude of sound waves – when you play something increasingly louder and louder on the piano, it doesn’t only affect the volume but also the texture of the sound. This is why dynamics is a different term.
• Tempo – Most music we listen to has a pulse, a rhythm for us to nod our head to. Tempo is the speed of that pulse.
• Articulation – Articulation makes the most sense when we think about the voice. Think about the difference between singing the same note but pronouncing: da, ta, ba, and la. All of these have a different articulation. For the piano articulation mostly describes the continuum of note connectedness (fully separate or overlapping).
• Phrasing – Phrasing is a term that describes both the dynamic shape of a musical statement but also its articulation. It’s a term that refers mostly to a group of notes – hence the term phrase.
• Variations in speed – While tempo is the general pulse of the music, this pulse (or even the subdivisions of this pulse) can vary. Time in music can be quite elastic. Where performers choose to stretch time can have a huge impact on the feeling of the music.
• Voicing – The term voicing in classical music has a different meaning than in jazz. In classical music, the term voicing refers to which ‘voice’ (or layer of the music, e.g., instrument) is more prominent. Often times this is the top note or melody, but not always. The idea of inner voices can bring a lot of depth to music.
• Timbre or tone – Every instrument sounds different, even from player to player the same instrument will sound different. The timbre or tone of music refers to the textural uniqueness of an instrument. A melody played on the bassoon will sound nothing like the same melody played on the piano.

Learn to separate sounds

Most music is a combination of separate instruments or separate parts. One important skill is to be able to mentally isolate what is of interest so we can understand it.

We will begin by isolating instruments because the difference in timbre will make the task easier.

The video below presents a great way to ease into this exercise. At around 6:28 he begins recording each part of the score separately. This will give you a great understanding of how the instruments sound individually and how they come together to form a masterpiece.

Learning to separate sounds from a recording is one of the most difficult ear training exercises there is. The goal is to be able to listen to any piece of music, hear all the parts and be able to sing them or write them down. This will take time and must be practised regularly, here are some pointers to get you started:

• Listen to various orchestral recordings and try to identify all of the instruments
• Listen to a piece of music you’re familiar with and try to find a part (instrument of melody) that you don’t usually pay attention to

Learn to recognise sounds

As you listen to more and more music, you will start to find patterns, musical fragments that sound similar to one another. Eventually you will need to learn the words for those patterns.

Here’s some examples of what we call major triads:

Compare that to minor triads:

As you learn more and more about the music you’re listening to, you will need to learn new words to describes these increasingly complex ideas. This is why music theory is useful, it gives us terms to be able to understand the music better and to be able to communicate those ideas with other more easily.

If those terms are unfamiliar, don’t worry about learning them now; we’ll get to them later in the book. What I want to emphasise here is not the terms themselves but the importance of learning them when they come up.

Imagine chemists did not have words for any of the compounds they have discovered but instead had to describe the molecular shape of the compound every time. Nothing would get done, because all their time would be spent explaining stuff to each other rather than discovering new things. Imagine having to memorise a sentence, or a paragraph in a foreign language. You know the sounds that characters make, but that’s all – you don’t understand any of it. How much do you think you’ll be able to remember? The same applies to music, you can read the notes, but if you don’t understand what’s going on, how are you going to memorise it?

It can be tempting to ignore theory while things are easy. That is not a good idea. You will eventually come up against a hard wall, it’ll seem like you can’t memorise the music you’re learning any more. You’ll feel stupid and inadequate, you’ll be demoralised. Music theory historically for me has been tedious because I never understood its use and how it related to the music I liked. Hopefully as you go through this book, this integrated approach to theory keeps you engaged enough to not make the same mistake I did.

Artistic Image

Great artists are all unique. They have stood out from their contemporaries by not only being masters of their craft but also by having their own vision, their own perspective on the world. You’ll notice this most easily in the visual arts. Each of the paintings below depict some natural scene, but each of them are completely different from each other.

I defined musicality earlier as the ability to form a personal artistic ideal of music; this ideal is what we’ll call the artistic image.

I would often ask my students what they envisioned when listening to a piece of music, and they would all have different interpretations. Sometimes those differences were extreme, other times less so. The point is not to be different for the sake of being different, the point is to make sure we connect to the music on an individual level.

To a certain extent, even without any training, you already have the ability to form your artistic image. The point of training is to develop it further, to have interesting things to say about music. Everyone has opinions, but not all opinions are born equal; there is a huge difference in weight between an educated opinion, and an uneducated one.

Developing this vision can seem like a haphazard process, but it doesn’t have to be. Let’s discuss a few exercises to help you develop your image.

Mix and match

Let’s imagine you have two paintings of the same subject in front of you. Without thinking, you have probably immediately formed a preference for one over the other. Compare this to a different situation: you are presented with a painting (which you don’t necessarily love) and you have to paint a better version of the same subject. These situations highlight an important asymmetry: having an opinion about what’s better is easier than knowing how to do better. While we are developing out skills, we can use this asymmetry to our advantage and leverage it to build our artistic image. The mix and match exercise is designed to leverage the effortlessness of having preferences to produce an interpretation that is unique to us.

1. Pick a piece
2. Find different recordings of it
3. Compare those recordings and for each section (however you define that), pick your favourite recording
4. Mentally splice your favourite sections from the different recordings

At first, you might not be able to describe why you prefer a section from recording A over recording B, but over time, this skill will develop. You will eventually be able to pick out smaller and smaller details, you will have more nuance in your decisions.

Override the recording

As you mix and match more and more, you’ll start to notice that there are no recordings that play a particular section how you think it should sound. You’ll think: “I would’ve liked this section to be a little slower… I think this part should be brought out more…” This is your artistic image emerging. Eventually it becomes so clear and so strong that you must play the music yourself, because no one else will do it exactly how you want it.

This is not necessarily an exercise as much as it is a goal. You want to get to the point where you can identify sections from recordings that you don’t like, and be able to articulate exactly how you want them to be better. It’s important to note that you don’t have to be able to actually do it better – just to imagine it.

Link to other art forms

How do you describe art? If you’ve ever tried it, you’ll know that it’s a difficult thing to do. An artist paints or sculpts, they write music or dance because it is the best way to communicate what they’re trying to express. Taking what they have created and describing it through another medium (painting to poetry, music to painting) is ultimately a destructive endeavour. It takes something that was perfectly encapsulated and self-explained and turning it into something completely different. It doesn’t mean that the output is worse, just that it’s not the same. A description of a painting – no matter how good – is not the painting itself.

If you agree with the above statement, it’s understandable to be reluctant to describe art. But if you want to systematically improve your ability to develop your artistic image, it is a great exercise.

The place I usually start with describing music is through a story. Stories are probably one of the most universal things humans have; everyone tells stories. Here’s the exercise:

Listen to this excerpt of music and try to write down a story that follows it. Listen to it multiple times to get a clear picture of what’s happening. Once you’ve done this, read on for the way I interpreted the music. This is not a competition, we’re not looking to see who has the better or more accurate description. I just want you to realise how different or similar interpretations can be between people.

Another good exercise is thinking about the music in visual terms. It can be as abstract or realistic as you want. It could be a photograph of a bridge, or a painting of different coloured squares.

Find a different piece to listen to and imagine how you would represent it visually. Alternatively, if you know a lot of music, you can start with a painting or a photograph and find the music that matches most closely.

Conclusion

Musicality is a skill that can be learned and practised. It is not something prodigies are born with, and there is no critical period for achieving a great level of skill. It might be more difficult, you might never be as good as Mozart, but that doesn’t mean the pursuit is worthless.

Attention is the key skill to build for improving our musicality. Learning art is the process of turning observation to knowledge – for music: hearing to listening.

The first step to listening is developing the ability to recognise differences and describe them with increasing detail. Through this process, you will learn to separate instruments or sounds to pay closer attention to them individually.

As you listen more and more, you will start to develop your own preferences and tastes, you will develop your artistic image. This artistic image can be further developed by looking around to other art forms and by becoming more critical of the music you have been listening to.

Musicality is an infinitely deep pool of knowledge. You will always have something new to learn and discover, no matter how long you have been paying attention. For beginners, I recommend spending some time on musicality before touching the instrument. It will give you a strong foundation upon which you can build your technical skills.

In the next chapter, I will discuss the common difficulties that come with self-teaching and how to deal with them.