Grace Notes Music Studio

In the beginning, there was music

I was 6 or 7 years old when I had my first music lessons. My family didn’t own a piano, yet, I was taking piano lessons! I practiced my scales and finger patterns on a flat, folding cardboard keyboard. I remember unfolding it on the dining room table to practice.

I couldn’t received any aural feedback from my practice. Only during lessons in which I played on a real piano did I get to hear what sounds my fingers were making. The desire to make music was strong in me even as a youngster, since I continued piano lessons for a year; all the while practicing only on a cardboard piano!

A few years later, I had the opportunity to learn a band instrument. I am grateful to my parents for renting me a real saxophone.

My first year of lessons on the sax were in a group class of five or six 5th graders, taught by a local college student. I loved learning to play the saxophone; reading music, not so much.

We were taught fingerings with a numbered diagram of the sax keys. Numbers one through six were used to indicate which fingers and corresponding keys to depress. These diagrams were placed below the staff, describing the finger position for the note above.

It didn’t take long for me to learn to read the fingering diagrams. They were quite easy, in fact. About six months passed before my teacher realized I was only reading the diagrams and not the pitches on the staff.

Aural, Visual, Spatial Learning

When I am teaching someone who is brand new to reading music, I encourage use of the finger diagrams, periodically checking note identity without the diagrams. I also encourage motivated students to test themselves by erasing their drawn-in diagrams after a short period of playing with them.

We learn in different manners and at varying paces. Some of us are more visual, others are more aural. Still others learn quickest spatially. Both the cardboard piano and the finger diagrams of my early music lessons demonstrate that I am a mostly visual learner.

I used to think that being a predominantly visual learner meant that I wasn’t destined to be a great musician; that great musicians are principally aural learners. What I’ve come to understand is that all types of learners, aural, visual, and spatial, make great musicians.

Your Brain on Music

We tend to think of music solely in terms of what we hear. But research on the brain about how we process music shows that a lot more than our hearing is involved. In fact, the Auditory Cortex is only one small part of the brain that processes the various input from musical activity. Further, those parts of the brain that are stimulated when a person listens to music are also stimulated when the person merely hears the music in her head!

When we listen to music there is a neural symphony of activity going on in various parts of the brain. Check out the interactive brain area of Daniel Levitin’s website for his book, This Is Your Brain On Music. Dr. Levitin writes, “Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain that we know about and nearly every neural subsystem.”

No matter what type of learner you are; reading, playing, and enjoying music are within your grasp. What’s more, studying music is great exercise for the brain! Practice of a new activity fires neurons and creates connections and pathways throughout the brain. Repeated practice reinforces the new neural pathways. Reading, playing and listening to music appears to stimulate more areas of the brain than any other activity, according to research thus far.

And something else, when you are studying something that is important to you or that carries with it a lot of emotion, the brain tags these new memories with more importance and you retain the information better. Caring about a subject (like the strong longing to be a musician) accounts for some part of how quickly you will acquire your new skills.

It’s a Win-Win!

Wanna improve your brain activity? Study music.
Wanna study music, but have doubts about your innate musical talent? Do it! Not only can you discard those doubts, a music practice is good for you!

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Read the next edition of Musician’s Motivator Dec. 10, 2009. Subscribe now and receive each edition delivered to your email acocunt.

My Train Of Thought

For today’s newsletter I have brought together a collection of quotes that express a train of thought I’ve had; and well, these folks just express it so well!

Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.

Mozart is certainly one to know about genius. Love is the soul of genius. Ah, put your heart into your endeavors; don’t hold back; be in love with your efforts. Make leaps into the creative unknown.

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.

Good advice from both Ella and Amadeus for every musician. In learning and practicing a musical instrument, voice included, there is no room for caution. As Confucius says, “The cautious seldom err.”

Mistakes are part of the learning experience. And many times, are just part of the experience! Mistakes do not know the difference between professionals and amateurs.

There’s a way of playing safe, there’s a way of using tricks and there’s the way I like to play which is dangerously; where you’re going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven’t created before.

Henry Ford agrees, “Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.”

What happens when you put your love and inspiration into your music?

A note can be as small as a pin or as big as the world; it depends on your imagination.

One of the things I like about jazz, kid, is I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Do you?

Life is about rhythm. We vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythm machine, that’s what we are.

Any good jazz player has innumerable tricks he can fall back on whenever he gets stuck. But to be an improviser you have to leave these tricks behind, go out on a limb and take risks, perhaps occasionally fall flat on your face. In fact, what audiences love most is for you to go ahead and fall. Then they get to see how you manage to pick yourself up and put the world back together again.

Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.

Allow yourself to be inspired. Give yourself permission to fall on your face and feel your saxophone play you.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.

And where does magic come from? I think that magic’s in the learning.

Now we’ve come full circle, back to the concept of genius:
A genius is the one most like himself.

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.

Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass… it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

Having collected all these quotes, I am inspired to make music. I feel the soulfulness of Janis Joplin, the playful unrestrained creativity of Mozart, and the passion of Ella Fitzgerald all coursing through me, swirling and whirling in me, demanding release. I hope this collection will inspire you to play your cello or harmonica or whatever your instrument, like the true genius you are!

Got a quote to share? Got a motivational experience to contribute? Email me or add your comment below.