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Musicality is the nuance and detail that make a performance sound like music giving it the emotion and style that can set a mood. It is the difference between expressing music and mechanical sounding notes and rhythms. Most listeners can hear the difference between a performance that is musical and one that is not even if they can’t articulate why they are different. Listen to the two examples below.

Why does one sound better than the other? They both have accurate notes and rhythms but one has details that bring it to life. The examples may seem extreme but if you were to just plug notes and rhythms into a computer software this is what you would get UNLESS you gave it instructions on dynamics and phrasing. These are the main tools that add expression and musicality.

Phrasing. 

Connect notes that are part of the same phrase. Most music has slurs already written in to show where the phrases are. If not, it is usually easy to figure out. There are often rests or held notes at the ends of phrases. If the song has lyrics, the musical phrases will go along with the phrases in the lyric. There are different phrasing choices that can be made but the general rule is not to lift in the middle of a musical idea. Phrasing is really like punctuation in speaking. Small pauses go between ideas for the listener just like commas and periods in sentences.

Lifting between phrases. This is like putting the punctuation between phrases or sentences. Make sure to lift your hands and foot at the same time if you’re using the pedal to get a clean break.

Example of phrases in Mary Had a Little Lamb

Phrase 1: Mary had a little lamb

Phrase 2: little lamb, little lamb

Phrase 3: Mary had a little lamb it’s fleece as white as snow

Dynamics.

Shape melodies with dynamics. A general rule is that when the notes go up, they get louder and when they go down they get softer. Weight of the hand and arm should be used to create dynamics, not finger muscle. Use more weight for louds and less weight for softs.

Don’t let any notes stick out or disappear. Dynamic shaping should mostly happen gradually over a string of notes. They should not be abrupt unless there’s a specific reason to for that effect.

Bring out the melody or other important ideas by making them louder. This can be a hard skill to develop. In general, the melody is usually in the right hand with supporting harmony in the left. In this case, make the right hand louder than the left. A great trick to learn how to do this is to play right hand at the volume wanted and touch the left hand notes without sounding them. Once this is possible, allow the left hand to sound the notes but keep the same light touch you had when they weren’t sounding. Right hand should end up sounding louder than the left.

As you’re learning to add musicality to your playing, it’s a great idea to listen to other performers as a reference. Look for recordings of a piece you’re working on and choose a performer or performance that you think is expressive.

1. Listen phrase by phrase and try to replicate what you hear. Listen for the kind of details mentioned above. Musicians learn new skills by imitating. Once you’ve spent some time doing this, you will start to have ideas of your own.

2. Listen for style. Does the music speed up or slow down or is strictly metrical. Does it swing? Are the dynamics extreme or subtle?

3. Record yourself and listen back. You may not be aware of details that could use tweaking until you listen as an observer.

Don’t lose touch with enjoying music as you play. Tap into the emotion it makes you feel or imagine what kind of scene it paints.

 

I often get asked how to start composting pop music from aspiring songwriters. The best place to start is by playing and singing pop music. I’m going to lay out some rough steps. This should help you not just end up with a random little snippet that isn’t complete and doesn’t fit into anything. Lots of people have ideas, but developing them into a full song is the real art and the hard part!

1. Use chord lyric sheets and label the song form (intro, verse, chorus etc.) for some of your favorite pop songs that you would like to write in the style of.
2. Decide what you want to write about. I find that most writers have to have a burning desire to communicate or be heard. It’s what drives them to write. If you don’t know what you want to write about you need to do a little soul searching. When I’m trying to help a student who doesn’t know where to start, I usually start with asking them, “What’s been on your mind lately? What have you been thinking about a lot or feeling?” If you can answer that question, you probably have a place to start.
3. Brainstorm everything thing you can about your idea or story. Allow yourself to go on wild tangents. Put it all out there on paper. It doesn’t have to sound beautiful or be coherent yet.
4. Sort through your brainstorm and decide what direction to take your idea. Try to pick out all of the ideas that can work and especially the unexpected little gems.
5. Do a Rhyme and Synonym Sheet. Come up with as many rhymes and synonyms for any words you can think of that relate to your idea or story. Yes, definitely use words from your brainstorm sheet. You can use rhymezone and Dictionary.com – The world’s favorite online dictionary! to help you find rhymes and synonyms.
6. Try to do a song map. This is simply mapping out the main sections you need to make a complete song work. (this is why you want to have been looking at other pop song structures!) I’d probably stat with the following structure: Verse/Chorus/Verse/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus. For each section you should jot down what needs to be said in that section. You can put it in prose or poetry later. For now just get down the idea. It should be a different idea that relates to your story or topic in each verse. The chorus should some how sum up the verse. The bridge should be a different idea that relates to everything else. It could be a realization etc. This is an important step that can help you not fall in love with an idea that you don’t have enough content for or make you flesh out an idea that is incomplete. You may have to add sections later to keep it flowing but you want a rough plan to start.
7. Start writing either your verse or your chorus. A lot of people come up with their chorus idea first. Use all your prep work to help you start crafting your lines. Make sure you set up a structure that you can repeat with different lyrics for your verse. Pay attention to how many syllables, the rhythm of the words and the rhyme structure.
8. Choose a three or four chord progression in a key you like. You can take some right from a song you like. (Chord progressions aren’t copyrightable. If they were no new music could happen! )
9. Play around with your chord progression and try to sing some of your lyric to it. I find that melodies already have a lot of suggestions in rhythm and pitch with our natural speech patterns. If you use them as a guide, you usually don’t end up with a melody that is awkward or horrible. You can start with your melody first, just be careful you don’t end up drifting back to the same chord for each line. If you do melody first, your melody note should be in your chord. Figure out all of the different chords that have your melody in them and try it out to see what you like best.
10. Once you get some sections done, start running it front to back. Try to get in listening mode. It’s always more interesting to do something yourself that to listen to someone else. This stage is about putting yourself in the listeners shoes. You want to make sure that you’ve created enough contrast in sections (especially verse and chorus) to keep the listeners attention. You also want it to have enough familiarity to be catchy and flow nicely from one idea to the next. Pay attention to how the whole thing unfolds. Notice areas that get boring. When you find those spots, change it up. Create some contrast.

One of the things that I like to do when I song write is treat all of the pieces as a puzzle. That means I keep rearranging pieces until I get the most interesting order and structure. I’ll even do this at the lyric writing stage. I try rearranging the order of the lines in my verse or my ideas to see what order is the most interesting or reveals the story in the best sequence. I do a lot of editing. I also like to give my ideas the overnight test. If I still think an idea is brilliant tomorrow, it’s probably pretty good. It’s easy to get excited about something in the moment when you’re in a completely subjective state. Try to look at it later like it is someone else’s idea so you can look at it more objectively. Also, try to only look at what’s on the page. It can be easy for us to imbue meaning into our work that no one else has access to. The whole goal is to transmit that meaning to someone else. Help them feel or see what you do.

I’ve learned a lot of things DIY where I didn’t have a class or structure that would keep me motivated artificially. Often times I need to learn things that I’m not DYING to learn in order to enable me to do other things I want or because I couldn’t afford to pay someone to do the thing I needed. I’ve learned everything from bookkeeping/ Quickbooks, indesign, Photoshop, knitting, sound engineering, water color, etc. I work for myself so being self-motivated is a crucial skill. Don’t let anyone discourage you with unhelpful suggestions such as “you have to want it bad enough.” Your logical brain clearly wants it. Now you’ve got to get the other side of your brain (the amygdala ) that only cares about gratification on board. Btw, I recommend M.J. Ryan’s Book, ‘This Year I Will” for further reading on this phenomenon.

The best way to motivate yourself to learn a new skill is:

1. Reframe the reason you want to learn the skill in a way that appeals to your basic instincts of pleasure and security. “This will be good for me.” Is not going to be enough to inspire you. You need a reason that this skill is going to give you something you want or feel good.

Example: Years ago, I knew that I really should learn some basic recording/engineering skills but it felt too overwhelming and not interesting enough so I kept putting off doing it. Finally, I realized that being able to record music whenever I felt inspired instead of when it was scheduled would feel amazing. I’ll never be a sound engineer for a living but once I got going I found I really loved the freedom and possibility it gave me to do the one thing I truly love, which is to be creative.

2. Make yourself accountable. Have a project you must complete using this skill or a place you have to show up regularly and work on it. Tell other people you’re doing it. Just knowing that other people will ask you about it will probably make you not want to have to admit you’ve done nothing.

3. Give yourself a project that you really want to do where you can use and practice this skill. Learning a skill and then using it to do something is an important part of learning. Having a project and a concrete use for your skill will also be more motivating.

4. Start with a small component. One of the biggest points of failure is feeling so overwhelmed that you don’t know where to start. Don’t worry if your first step is the wrong one. It’s better than taking no steps and will definitely lead you to finding out what you should do.

5. Schedule a regular time when you must drop everything else and work on it, preferably attached to another regular routine. Just putting in the time is an important part of being successful at learning something new and removing the decision to do it is crucial. It’s always easy to find a reason to keep putting it off if you have to make a choice every time whether you’re going to work on it or do something else.

6. Find a way to engage your interest. Your brain actually releases chemicals that help you focus and encode memories when your interest is engaged. For instance, I had to take a math credit for my degree but I don’t really enjoy math. I took an acoustics class to fill the requirement and aced it. I get to find out how sound works?!? Physics and Trig you have my attention!

Music theory is really about understanding how music works and being able to communicate with other musicians using a common musical vocabulary. Although that sounds simple, even basic theory contains a large amount of interconnected knowledge and information. I often get asked how much does having perfect pitch help in the AP Music Theory exam. I went to look up and see exactly what’s in the course description and it actually covers a bunch of core music subjects including theory and ear training. It’s a huge amount of material which you really need an instructor or someone with a four-year music degree to help you learn. I don’t want to discourage students because I LOVE to self-learn but part of that is always doing research and finding out what I can do by myself and what I’m going to need some help with.

Having perfect pitch will certainly help give you with the mechanics of dictation but it won’t really give you a leg up in the understanding area. It’s hard to just jump in and learn, you need a plan or you can easily get overwhelmed.

Here’s a couple of examples of what you need to know for the exam that won’t rely on your ear alone:

Terminology- You need to know the correct name to call scales, chords, intervals, and other music concepts that often rely on knowing how to construct it.

For instance: if they ask you to recognize intervals (which you may already know), you might be able to know that they are playing a C and an E above it but you need to know that it is called a major third. That’s an easy example.

What if they asked you to write out the notes in a C7 chord? Even if they played it for you, if you don’t understand how to make it, you may end up even incorrectly naming the pitches. For instance: a C7 chord has a lowered 7th making it Bb. If you called it A# instead, it wouldn’t be correct. That may seem like jerky tediousness but it’s not. Players and arrangers need to recognize things quickly in order to play them in time or use them properly. This is especially true for piano music which quickly gets complicated and is almost always more than one note at a time. Incorrectly notated music makes it difficult for musicians to read your accompaniment, arrangement or composition well.

What if they asked you what quality is a C7 chord? Nowhere in the name of the chord does it tell you the quality is dominant. You need to know that with 7th chords, when it doesn’t say anything between the letter and the chord you assume it’s dominant. You have to use specific abbreviations to indicate another chord quality. This is different than triads where if you see nothing written next to the chord letter, you assume it is major and have to indicate when it is another

Dictation- This is when you have to notate music that you hear with no other tools than your ears, pencil and paper within a few listens (often 3). You may do fine on the melodic dictation if you know how to recognize and notate rhythms. However, the harmonic dictation may be rough. You can certainly listen to the bottom for the bass notes and build the chord up from there (assuming the root is always on the bottom), but you may not have enough listens to work it out. Knowing what chord qualities typically happen on certain numbers of the scale, what your primary chords are in each key and common progression patterns allow you to do this much quicker. It’s the difference of choosing between a few known options or infinite possibility. Also, the exam you need to understand the naming conventions for Roman Numeral chords and Figured Bass.

Here’s a link to the document I found on the AP curriculum and exam. There are practice exams there so you can easily go try one and see how you do. That could be really helpful for assessing what you already know and getting a scope on how much you’ll need to learn. You may find that the easiest thing would just be to take the AP class. Of course, that’s assuming the class is available at your school and that you can fit it in your schedule.

AP Music Theory Exam Practice – AP Student

I hope this helps you make your decision. I would also like to say that I really think that learning theory will fill in a lot of missing puzzles pieces that you’re probably not even aware of. I don’t have perfect pitch but played by ear primarily before I went to college and had a lot of natural intuition for how music works. I can tell you that theory still opened up so many possibilities of new things I could do. I use what I learned everyday (along with my ears skills) in writing, teaching and playing music.

1. Sing as often as you can. The one thing I’ve noticed about singers that seem to be naturals is that they have the desire to sing all the time. Along to the radio, while they’re doing other things, when they’re by themselves, etc.. Believe it or not this is a form of practicing. You get better at matching pitch, vocal control and ear skills by doing it at lot.
2. Imitate. Take a song from a singer you like. Listen to a phrase, pause the music and sing it back. Repeat the phrase until you can get it to sound as close to the original as you can. This is probably the top way that most singers initially learn whether they realize it or not.
3. Record yourself. Your voice always sounds different outside of your body. This will allow you to listen to your self more objectively. Warning: Most people hate to hear themselves in recordings at first. You’ll get used to it and hopefully it will make you start to be aware of areas that need improvement.
4. Join a Choir. Having a reason to sing regularly where others will expect you to show up is a good way of making yourself accountable. You will also learn a lot from working with other singers. Your fellow singers should want to help you in this environment because you are part of the whole sound being created together.

Obviously, you could also could take singing lessons but regardless of whether you take lessons or not, you will need to sing a lot.

Here are some of the main components of singing that singers work on. Most of these things are easiest to work on if you have someone who can guide you, give you feedback and be an example of what you’re trying to replicate.

1. Pitch. Matching notes all over your range.
2. Tone. Getting a clear sound throughout your range. There are other kinds of sounds you may want to make as a singer but a clear tone is the basis for everything and will probably be the sound you want to use the most.
3. Range. Growing the size of your range so that you increase the songs you’ll be capable of singing.
4. Breath Control. All sound is carried by breath. Learning to control the breath in a steady way can affect everything from tone to pitch.
5. Enunciation. Learning to pronounce words clearly as you sing. Because sounds are held in singing it naturally becomes harder to understand the words being sung.
6. Projection. This refers to projecting the sound outside of your body and is what allows for that ‘big sound’.
7. Resonance. Learning to control where the sound resonates in your body. Head Voice (high range) and Chest Voice (lower range) are the two main areas. They each have their own strength and sound. Most singers naturally gravitate to one or the other. Learning to use both increase range and versatility.
8. Musicality. How to make choices in your singing and shape the storyline and performance of the song.

Muscle memory is key. In order for that to work though you definitely need to TRUST that your hand knows where to go. Try practicing it with your eyes closed. I also have small hands and work with kids who have small hands so I have a little extra insight to this problem. I’ll add a couple of tips that might also help with this:

• Play your white key octaves on the outside of the keys, not on top. My hands are small enough that I will press unwanted keys if I play octaves on top of keys.

Good:

Not Ideal:

• If you are alternating between octaves or jumping to an octave and it is a stretch for you, pivot your wrist so that the middle of your hand stays connected to the keys to give you stability as you swing between thumb and pinky.

• Always center your body in front of middle C, so that your muscle memory is consistent and accurate from where you will ALWAYS sit. If your hand looks unnatural while trying to play, make sure to shift your weight over the corresponding leg so your hand stays in perfect playing position.

• Make sure to also engage large motor skills when you are making big jumps, don’t try to stay glued to the keys. Fine motor skills are not ideal for jumping over large distances.

Good luck!

I have played around with many solutions for this.  I suggest planning and experimenting as you go to get the perfect result. The thing I think that would work best is making your lines in permanent marker and then putting a clear adhesive tape over the entire staff to protect it but still allow you to write and erase on it.

One thing to consider, is what is the perfect size of staff that will be comfortable to notate on and give you enough room to capture your idea. You may want to experiment by printing out some staves of different sizes on paper and trying it out. You can build your own staves from scratch in any word processing or layout program by creating some lines with the line tool and then adjusting the line thickness or font depending on whether you used a line tool or the plain underline. I like indesign for this because I can do step and repeats to create the exact distance between lines that I want.

Permanent marker lines (Sharpie) are probably the best if you’ve really decided that you want it on the whiteboard. You can use masking tape to lay out your lines before you draw them. The masking tape will make it easy to make a straight line and also to get a consistent distance between your lines. If you get the standard 3/4 width masking tape, probably one deep would be a good distance for your spaces. I recommend getting the masking tape near the paint section or at an artist supply so that you get low tack tape, meaning it will come off easily without leaving a sticky residue on your board. I’d measure from the top or bottom of your white board at various points and mark it so you can get your lines on the board straight.

You can get clear adhesive laminate tape in a roll that and put that over the top. (The tape should be glossy not matte so you’ll be able to write and erase on top of it.) Here’s a link for something that might work:

Amazon.com : Avery Self-Adhesive Laminating Roll, 24 inches x 600 inch Roll (73610) : Laminating Supplies : Arts, Crafts & Sewing

It doesn’t have to be that particular tape. I grabbed the first link I found just to give you an idea. You can shop around. I think using a decal or stickers to lay out the lines is going to be a lot of work getting straight and lined up properly. I’ve put pinstriping on a car before. It’s NOT easy to do a great job. Also, decals will make it bumpy to write on.

I’ve also created smaller page size whiteboards before by printing a staff on it and then laminating it.