Creative Capacity.

[Realms of Wonder]

How do I increase my capacity to train?

How do I increase my desire to train?

Hi all, new to the forum, any honest, constructive feedback appreciated

It's taken two years to really internalize that actual training is necessary to build a world class musical skillset. with those two (very important and foundational) years just creating, music, songs, sounds, lyrics. exploring, trying  new things out. but now I realize... I want to deliberately practice, each specific facet of music production, so that my overall ability to create remarkable music increases, allowing this music to connect people with their authentic self.

I am currently training 30 minutes a day, aside from song creation and playing around. 

[KingCrimson]

I'm a musican with a degree in music production. I don't work professionally in the music industry right now though, just making my own tunes and playing in a band. Having said that, I have been playing various instruments since I was 4 and I think I know a thing or two about the field and how to practice.

It really depends on a lot of factors, and I think you need to be very clear and specific on what it is you want to do. Music is such a huge field that even mastering any one small subset could take you a lifetime. You could spend your whole life practising just a single instrument and get really good at that. Hell, not even a single instrument, you could spend your entire life just working on one particular style of music on that instrument, e.g. if you wanted to be a jazz guitarist you would have to practice completely different stuff than a classical guitarist. The same goes for all aspects of music production - you could focus on synthesis, sound design, mixing, mastering etc., all of which are so involved that people specialize in one of these areas and find work that way. Another area is music theory, ear training, solfege etc. Depending on what it is you want to do you will need certain skillsets more and others not so much. If you want to produce EDM music, what you want to focus your practice on will be completely different from a classical violinist.

Do you play an instrument? Do you have any formal musical training or went to a music school, or did you mess around on your own so far? Do you want to get a job in the music industry as a producer, engineer, arranger, composer, session musician or whatever, or do you want to make your own, original music? What style of music do you want to create? Depending on the answers, I could give you much more specific advice.

Generally speaking, my best advice would be to get regular 1-on-1 lessons with a teacher. If you wanted to master rock/jazz guitar, for example, have guitar lessons once a week with a guy who has mastered the instrument in that particular style. The lessons should be at least 50 minutes, 25 is not really enough in my opinion. Let your teacher guide you and do your homework diligently. You will learn how to practice correctly, and having weekly lessons will motivate you to do your homework, if only because you don't want to disappoint your teacher. 30 minutes a day of instrument practice is not a whole lot, but if you did that for a couple years, you would get enormous results. Obviously, the more time you put in, the quicker your progress will be. If you actually wanted to be a professional musician, 30 minutes a day will not be enough, though. All the great players I know had a time in their life when they just really went to town with their practice, focusing on almost nothing else for a couple of years, practising anywhere from 8 to 12 hours A DAY. This time is usually music college, and this is when you really get good. When you go out into the world as a professional musician, you won't have that much time to practice anymore with all the touring, gigging etc.

But yeah, if you shared a bit more about what you have done so far and how you go about creating your music, I'm sure I could offer some more specific advice. Writing your own music is one of the most satisfying things I know in this life and I am happy for you that you found enjoyment in it as well. I would gladly help you improve as a songwriter and musician, just need a little more info.

[Realms of Wonder]

@KingCrimson  Thank you for making the time to write out such a reply.

 

Here is the context: My life purpose as it stands, is to.. "Create beautiful music that connects people to their authentic self."

I am, and want to be, an independent artist, releasing and performing my own music, informed by the divine, infusing wisdom and perspective built through life experience, contemplation, meditation and so on. 10 years from now I see myself touring, as a solo artist or with musicians I hire, almost like a ministry of authenticity, radiating love into the audience, giving people a vision of what their self is, AND leading them to actually EXPERIENCING WHO AND WHAT THEY ARE. To play my part in evolving humanity.

I am drawn to electronic music, pop, and indie, think Enya meets Tame Impala meets Coldplay. Another reason I want to master the basics, is so I can transcend them, creating truly unique and innovative sounds and melodies no human has ever heard before.

 

I grew up taking lessons and practicing classical, fiddle, and Celtic violin, I took weekly lessons and practiced 45-90 minutes a day from ages 5-14, in  highschool was concertmaster of the school orchestra and in band for two years (I was  homeschool up until 11th grade.) Post highschool I completely ditched music, with lots of resentment, feeling I had been forced into it by my parents. Until two years later when---after working my way through the Life Purpose course---during a 4-ACO-DMT trip, it hit me out of the blue. "MUSIC! of course! its been staring me in the face my whole life!" Since then it has been a slow process of building basic habits in my life, and retaking the course, getting sidetracked, falling off course, coming back... over and over haha.  (I was still a complete newbie at this point.) Until right before Covid hit, I told myself "I cant have a life purpose in music unless I am actually creating music." So I started producing music in Ableton. During that year I invested 800 hours in just learning HOW to use Ableton, create sounds, and so on, not deliberate practice, more focusing on getting music back into my life. I continued on, starting to release music on SoundCloud, then Spotify, even building an audience on Instagram. 

BUT...

I started seeing that to make the best music possible, I need to go away and practice the fundamentals of the craft for a few years, then come back and share this new (more valuable) skillset with the world.

And that is where I am now. the practice I am doing is Synth practice, researching, but mostly intentionally learning HOW to create sounds with a synthesizer, pads, leads, percussion, strings, etc.. daily, most of it is crap, but that's normal.

Here is a list of skills I have define as important for me to actualize my life purpose. (there may be more, but these are the core)

 

- Melody

- Music theory (need a solid refresher)

- Synths (be able to create any sound needed)

- Song structure (What is the most addicting song structure possible?)

- Piano/keys (to a level where I can express without hinderance)

- Singing

- Mixing

- Mastering

- Song writing/storytelling

- recording 

- Music industry understanding

 

I am in agreement with what you said about the amount of work necessary to become truly world class, in his book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" Cal Newport really stresses the difference between "Playing" and "Deliberate practice." I have been playing for years, now its time to PRACTICE.

The amount of work ahead is difficult for me to stomach, but thanks for putting it so starkly.

how do I work from 30 minutes a day, to 3-4? (I work full time so any more than that and the rest of my life wouldn't function.)

Taking lessons is something I have been avoiding, because I know you're right, I really need guidance to grow in some of these skills, someone much more experience then I am, who socializes in that skill/domain.\

Thank you

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2022 by Realms of Wonder

[Sucuk Ekmek]

If you haven't watched the movie Whiplash I recommend it. 

[Realms of Wonder]

@Sucuk Ekmek 

22 hours ago, Sucuk Ekmek said:

If you haven't watched the movie Whiplash I recommend it. 

Just watched it last night. Holy shit. What a movie! Thank you for the recommendation.

[KingCrimson]

Ahh, a lot of what you are saying sounds very familiar. I can see a lot of myself in you. I can relate to your story a lot and my life purpose is very similar to yours. It's a bit complicated for me because my entire life I have been struggling to decide between two passions (philosophy and music). I ended up studying both of them and I am sort of working both in tandem, which is a challenge, but I have made peace with the fact that I simply can't decide, and that I really don't have to, and I can instead combine the two and have both benefit and transform each other. But enough of me, this is just to say I believe that your life purpose is beautiful, I understand where you're coming from, and my wish is that you will succeed in this endeavour!

I think you already figured out quite a lot of important stuff, but in very general terms. What seems to be missing, or maybe you simply didn't include it in your post, is actual, clear, precise, actionable goals. It's great to say that you want to work on your "music theory" or "piano", but HOW are you actually going to do it, what's the timeframe, what's the highest priority? You've probably heard of the 80-20 rule. Especially if you don't have a lot of time it's important that you spend your time effectively and do those things which have the most impact. So, this is something I would think about. Here are some things I might do if I were in your situation.

Piano, Music Theory, Songwriting, Ear Training

Looking at your list, I would say that definitely getting 1-on-1 lessons with a piano teacher would be my #1 priority. Your playing ability is absolutely fundamental and you can actually kill multiple birds with one stone here. You can tell your teacher what it is you want to achieve, and he/she will structure the teaching accordingly. You don't have to necessarily focus on being able to play very hard classical pieces by Chopin or whatever. For now, you need only some basic playing ability, so you can play chords and melodies at the same time. I would focus on learning chords and their inversions, scales, learning to accompany yourself on the piano while singing, and coming up with chord progressions on the fly. I think your best bet might be a jazz pianist, because essentially, you want to learn improvisation, and jazzers definitely know how to do that. Getting piano lessons would not just improve your playing ability, your teacher could also work with you on your music theory, ear training, songwriting ability, and how to craft effective melodies. So just by doing this one thing, you've basically got the first five points on your list tackled already, plus ear training. Don't underestimate ear training, definitely ask your teacher to practice that with you! Maybe 5 minutes at the beginning of every lesson or something, that would net you huge results.

If you live in a city, you shouldn't have trouble finding a suitable private tutor with some teaching experience under their belt. There are a lot of music college graduates out there trying to make a living and looking for students. Not every good musician is a good teacher, though - Make sure that your tutor actually enjoys teaching and doesn't just do it because he failed to make it as a professional musician. This is usually easy to tell by the vibes he/she gives off.

Recording, Mixing, Mastering

Well, this is a bit trickier, because it really depends on what exactly it is you want to do. Judging by the artists you've named (Enya, Tame Impala etc.) it seems like you actually don't need to be a world-class mixing and mastering engineer. You just need the ability to find your way around the DAW, have a speedy workflow, and craft the sounds that you want. But I might not focus too much on mixing and especially mastering for now, because the other stuff (piano lessons) is more important, and also because in practice, you will probably want to have your songs mixed and mastered by a professional anyway. Yes, it costs money, but it's well worth it, especially if you aren't that great at it yourself. Of course, you need some basic mixing skills. But for the final mix and especially the master I would highly recommend sourcing that job out to a professional and just focusing on the more creative and less technical aspects of music creation for now. If you're like me, you enjoy that more than the technical stuff anyway.

Synths

As far as synths go, there's a teaching tool you might have come across called Syntorial. It is a software tool/course for learning synthesis from the ground up. I really loved using it and learned a lot. It comes with its own little synthesizer and teaches you to recognize certain sounds and then build them yourself from scratch. This focus on ear training is great and absolutely essential when it comes to creating your own sounds. You will learn to recognize "ahh, this is a square wave with this kind of filter opening up at a certain speed" and stuff like that. You will learn how to deliberately create the kind of sound you want without having to resort to pure trial and error. You can certainly learn by trial and error alone, but that will take ages. There is even a special subsection that focuses on the very popular Serum software synthesizer in particular. So, this is a great resource you might want to check out. Well worth the price imo, I can't remember how much it was but it's not expensive. Obviously, there are many other resources on synthesis, including books, so definitely make use of that. I really like Syntorial because it's 100% practical, you complete exercise after exercise, and you will see more actual results than by merely reading a book.

Music theory

Music theory is something you can work on with your teacher as well. Remember that music theory is a tool and that it should be used as such. It's not enough to know the theory intellectually - you have to be able to actually work with it in a practical manner. That's why it's so important to learn chords, scales etc by heart. This stuff needs to be part of your muscle memory so you don't even have to think about it too much. 

Obviously, you can find many great books on music theory too. I like this one a lot, for example - it's compact, concise, yet comprehensive and practical, aimed at the modern musician.

https://www.stretta-music.com/en/haunschild-the-new-harmony-book-nr-285912.html

Singing

If you want to learn to sing well, I would recommend getting a teacher for that as well. If this is not feasible due to time/money constraints, I would say stick with the piano lessons for now, and just make a habit of singing more often. I like to find karaoke tracks on YouTube and sing along with them, for example. Experiment, get comfortable with your voice and with singing in front of an audience. Karaoke bars are or public jam sessions are great for that, too.

Music industry

Music industry is a huge topic, but I'll give just one piece of advice: Playlists. Today, it's all about getting your tracks into playlists on Spotify, YouTube etc. That's how people discover new music nowadays. Do some research on that. Most playlists have very specific requirements (i.e. there might be a playlist where only acoustic guitars, female vocals are allowed etc.). Go and find playlists that fit your style and get your tracks on there, that will get you lots of exposure.

Discipline / How to practice more

As to "How do I practice more?" - There is no easy and clear answer to this, but I believe that if you get very specific and clear about your practice routine and schedule a certain amount of time each day, this would make it a lot easier for you. Have your piano teacher devise a daily practice schedule for you, and stick to that religiously. This alone should solve many of your problems and I believe you will see much quicker results than you are seeing right now.

Regarding Whiplash

It's a great movie, I enjoyed it. But it's important to know that it is not an accurate portrayal of what music college is like. If you're curious, this video does a great job of explaining which parts of the movie are realistic and which not so much.

Last piece of advice:

You seem to know this already, but you need to create A LOT of shit. Don't be a perfectionist about your songs. Create, create, create. Create a lot of shitty music. Finish a track, even if it's bad, and move on to the next one. As you do this, you will naturally get better at songwriting, and sooner or later, every once in a while you will write something that you will actually be rather happy with.

Alright, I could go on but I'll leave it here for now, hope some of this stuff will be useful and inspire you to take your life purpose to the next level.