Let’s discuss how to approach developing the skills you need to create quality music at home. This can be a difficult subject to tackle, but let’s give it our best, because it’s very important, so bear with me. We’ll start with a little story.
I am the product of a very traditional approach to music education. I started classical piano lessons at age three (yes, my parents struggled with that one), and those lessons didn’t stop until I was eleven. Along the way, I was hearing blues, rock, and other popular styles, and was getting more and more interested in them. Asking my parents about this eventually led them to finding me a piano teacher who specialized in adult contemporary and semi-classical. I guess that was their idea of “pop music”. This was simply not doing it for me. I stuck to it for a couple more years, but wound up quitting as I was really getting the rock bug.
There didn’t seem to be many options. I was still quite young, had no money, and nobody seemed to know what I should do. When I got to know some local rock musicians, I found out that they learned by listening to the music, and learning it “by ear”.
“By ear”, I thought. NO written sheet music, no clues at all? Well, it turned out that, while learning by ear was the primary method, there are actually many ways to notate what needs to be played so I got started. The time I used to spend practicing for my lessons, now became my time to learn songs I liked, by ear. Within a year, I was playing not-too-bad keyboard parts for a dozen albums worth of songs by my favorite artists. Soon after that I was in my first band. That was the first of many to come, and was the beginning of my journey.
The point of this story is that: there are a lot of ways to develop a skill. The serious, formal approach can be great for some. Learning by ear can be great for others. Something in between is often best, but it all depends on the priority you put on that specific skill. Playing piano, for example, can mean “being among the best players around”, or it can mean “picking out whatever notes I need to get them into the computer, so I can use that to fix it”. If you have never studied piano, the latter might sound much more friendly to you, and I wouldn’t blame you, because with my background and what I do for a living, I’ve struggled between these two extremes for much of my adult life.
So what do you do? I would start by going through this exercise:
IDENTIFY EXACTLY WHAT YOUR GOALS ARE. Do it in writing.
Anything worth doing is worth doing right, so you should start by knowing what you’re trying to do first. If you need help working through that, maybe this will be helpful:
1. Describe in 1-2 sentences, what you would love to be doing musically. Something along the lines of “I want to write pop songs, and be able to record them at home.” We’ll use this as our example, just to clarify. Your goal can be totally different, of course.
2. Given your stated goal, what goes into doing it? Take the terms you used: “write pop songs” and “record them”….. these are the two actions you plan to take. Within them, there might be some questions you should ask. Like: “What does writing a pop song entail?” You have to have lyrics—good lyrics, hopefully—and a melody (should be catchy to be pop, right?) … oh and accompanying music. If it’s pop music, what kind of pop? The exact type of pop will get you thinking about what instruments and what style of play those instruments should be doing, in order to make the song sound like the type of pop you intend. (are you still with me?) I don’t want to blow you over by making this sound like a huge task, because it really is just a way to get clear in your head, where you are going. In this way, you can focus on what’s important, and ignore what isn’t. So let’s see where we’re at so far with our example:
(1) I want to write pop songs, and record them at home
(2) I will need:
a) lyrics
b) a melody
c) music
To continue with the other half of the example:
I will also need:
a) the right software
b) a proper computer
c) a microphone
d) a singer
e) other hardware?
f) skills to record the song (list which skills as you think of them)
You get the idea. Make a list of needs, keeping it direct and simple. Check things off that are already taken care of. Whatever you need some work on, underline, and whatever you haven’t a clue about, circle, and start working on that first. You’ll be surpr
