Listening to Music
Step out of your comfort zone!
By vocal and piano instructor Julia Bentley
In my opinion, one of the most important things you can do as a songwriter and as a musician in general, is to listen to as many different types of music as possible. This is a great way to keep your music original and to really find your own sound. How many times do I hear people saying “Oh I hate country music” or “Oh I can’t stand classical/pop music.” I believe that you can’t possibly hate an entire category of music. Even if you don’t love it, there is so much variety that you can at least find something that you appreciate and can learn from. So, homework for the week? Listen to a type of music that you’ve never given a chance to before. Find a couple of different songs and do some critical listening.
Things to listen for:
- What instruments are you hearing?
- How are the instruments being used? (Melody? Percussion? Chords?)
- If there is a singer, how are they using their voice? (Head voice?
Chest voice? Are they using words or sounds? How are they
articulating?)
- What is the purpose of the music? (Sacred music? Dance music?)
- Most important of all, how does it make you feel? (Energized?
Relaxed? Like you want to move etc.)
You might just discover a new passion! Happy listening!
Elite Music Academy is a private music school in Toronto offering music lessons for students of all ages and skill levels. From beginner to advanced, older or younger, music lessons are offered under the professional instruction of outstanding and qualified teachers and musicians. Julia Bentley offers piano and vocal lessons at Elite Music. For a free consultation please contact the main desk at 416 406 5355 ext 1. Reserve your spot today!
hi julia,
i couldn’t agree more with your beliefs, comments and ideas about exploring different music genre’s with a guarantee of finding something you enjoy or even love. i truly believe that you can apply this idea to the world around us and pretty much everything in it.
i’m presently playing with the idea of taking vocal lessons and learning the bass guitar seeing that the gear i bought for my daughter didn’t really stick. my life long friend is a drummer and it would be fun to see what could happen outside my “comfort zone”. don’t really know if i can sing a note, but i guess that would be up to you to let me know if i could learn.
i would love to know what kind of fee would be involved in studying under you.
look forward to hearing from you.
sincerely,
patrick micallef
Julia,
You’re absolutely right. I accompanied some singers for a Friday Night Live (it’s an open mic night), and one singer asked me to play When You Say Nothing At All by Alison Krauss because she had sung it to her husband at their wedding reception and another asked me to play I Believe by Diamond Rio.
I rarely listen to country music so I had never heard of either song. I did end up learning to play both songs and now they’re two of my favorites.
Also, there’s a song by Mozart in SATB called Dans l’église ici-bas that I taught to some of my french classes and we ended up performing it and getting fantastic response to it. A lot of the students never really thought of themselves “as a Mozart person” and yet they really loved performing it.
Best of Continued Success,
Ernie Baty