Q&A: If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Welcome back!

Today I’m fielding a question from our YouTube channel just a couple of days ago, which actually wasn’t a question so much as an objection!

And there are a lot of haters online. You know, if you publish anything online, you’re going to get people saying, you’re wrong, you suck. I don’t like your face. And I’m used to that. And that’s fine.

That’s part and parcel of what it is. But this was not that. So this was someone disagreeing, but quite politely and respectfully and having some good points and some interesting points.

And so I wanted to use this for our episode today because in a short amount of space, this lady touched on so many things that are really critical to our mission at Musical U – critical in the sense of essential, not in the sense of criticizing.

And it made me want to say so many things. I composed a short reply to her, but I realized actually there was so much more I wanted to say, and the things she was raising were so important, it would actually be a really great episode for the show.

Because if you’re in our world, whether you’re a member of Musical U or you’re a podcast listener or you tune into our YouTube channel or you’re on Instagram or Facebook, wherever you are, if you’re in our world, there are some things we’re going to be talking about today which are central to our view of what it means to learn music, what it means to become the musician you want to be, how to go about it, and how it fits in with the status quo and what, you know, to put it bluntly, what everyone else tends to say about learning music.

So I was a little apprehensive, I have to say, about this, because… I went for a walk with my wife this morning and I mentioned this comment, and I said to her, you know, I want to do an episode about it. But there’s so much I want to say that I’m super passionate about, and I really want to be polite and respectful with it because the last thing I want is for this to seem like an argument.

Like, this is not. This absolutely is not me saying “this woman’s wrong. Look at how wrong she is.”

I believe no one wins an argument on the Internet, and I never get sucked into that kind of thing. And we’re also always very careful. I think even if we’re criticizing methods or methodologies or traditions, we never want to be throwing rocks at individuals or other organizations or anything like that.

So I just want to say at the outset, like, I’m going to try and rein in my passion and give my response in a way which is hopefully polite and respectful to this lady who had the courage and the interest and the dedication to her craft. To post the comment on YouTube.

I almost actually wanted to just invite our members to address this one. I thought it would be really fun to get a roundtable of like a dozen of our keen members and just see what they thought about it.

Because what really jumped out to me was I spend so much time inside our membership world and with our Next Level clients and with our team, and so much of what I’m about to be talking about is so core to how we see things. It’s easy for me to forget how rare it is and how much of music education is still seeing things from a very particular, different perspective. And, you know, it is our mission at Musical U first and foremost, to spread the word about what’s possible and spread this message of greater musicality and some of what we’ll be digging into today.

And so I just, I really loved this as an opportunity to talk about those things, whether it’s from me or our members or whoever.

So let’s pull up the question without further ado, I’m gonna blur the username if my technology works, just because I believe it’s her real name and again, I would hate for this to seem anything like a personal argument or attack. It’s really just jumping off board for what we want to talk about today, and I believe I can do that. There we go.

So this was a comment on one of our YouTube videos from Sarah, and she said:

“Unfortunately, playing by ear doesn’t help one in a recording studio for film sessions, tv sessions, and playing in some of the top orchestras of the world. Yes, playing by ear is fun, but I’m afraid, not a terribly quick solution to learning an instrument. After my 40 years of teaching experience and playing in some of the best orchestras in the world and playing for recording sessions, I think I’ll stick to my way of teaching reading music, some playing by ear and improvising and composition.

My students have done very well as a result. I recently saw one of your videos which was a little offensive in the way you criticized the way teachers have taught over the years, and that what you’re prescribing is the new solution or miracle way of learning an instrument. Not nice to read after many years in the business and training young students who have then gone on to work in the business and been very successful, too.”

So that was the comment. Hopefully I said it with the right inflection for what she meant. And I do just want to say, as always, I only have what was posted, so I don’t know any more of her backstory, and I hope I’m interpreting her message in the way she intended when I respond to it.

And just before we dive in, there is so much to unpack there, and I’m not going to go like line by line through it because we’ll be here all day. But there’s a quote, I’ve been trying to track down the source, I’ve heard people refer to it, and I don’t know who originally said it, but it’s along the lines of: “you can disagree with me, you can dislike me, but you should never misunderstand me”. And I think this comment has a bit of both going on.

So I’m not sure Sarah and I will ever see 100% eye to eye on the things we’re talking about today! But I do want to clarify several things here in terms of what we do believe at Musical U and how we do recommend going about things. Before I dive in, just for context, I’m going to play the video she posted the comment on. It’s just a minute long.

It was from a longer conversation. And again, I don’t mean this to be like, look at the video, I’m right, she’s wrong. Just, you know, to provide the context of where this comment came up.

Here we go.

“What was a mind blowing discovery for me in my own musical journey was I could play by ear. I just wasn’t very good at it.

And so once I knew that, I knew to work on it and to put on some practice and to, for example, do the kind of ear training that lets you reduce the number of mistakes and go more quickly to the correct example. And so it really does just become this additional skill to practice. And if you sit down in your music practice session each day and after you do your warm up and your scales and your repertoire, like everyone else, if you spend five minutes practicing playing by ear, you’re going to get good at it very, very quickly.

And particularly if you sprinkle in some of that ear training where you’re doing focused drills to help your ear hear what it should. There’s no reason anybody can’t become a very competent play by ear player, the kind that everyone looks at and be like, oh, they must have just been born playing by ear.”

Cool. So that was the video. And then I’m guessing she also saw a video of ours talking about the Superlearning Practice Plan, where I talk about how the traditional methods for learning instrument skills and repertoire are cheating you out of 90% of the progress you could be making. And I admit that’s a bold statement, and I can totally understand where Sarah is coming from.

If I had to paraphrase, I think it boils down to, “it’s not broken, so stop telling me to fix it”. And I can, I get where she’s coming from.

The main thing I wanted to share, and this is really the umbrella over everything else I’ll say, is just: at Musical U, we’re never trying to take away, only to add.

You know, we’re very much about expansion, about growth, about revealing new, bigger opportunities for musicians, about helping musicians and music learners reach their fullest, truest musical potential. And so, in particular, like, we are never against teachers, and I think we’ve been pretty loud about this over the year. We love music teachers! We are, many on the team are, music teachers, and I so appreciate and respect and admire anyone who devotes their life to helping people learn music.

We’re also never against all of the instrument learning websites out there. I won’t name names, but, you know, if you search, learn guitar, or learn piano online, pretty much all of those websites are teaching instrument technique and repertoire, and they’re not bad.

You know, we never tell people “end your membership with such and such”, or “you don’t need such and such”, or “you don’t need to learn with a teacher”. Like, even our most keen members at Musical U, we’re never trying to dissuade them from working with a teacher. But there’s more that’s possible, is the bottom line.

And, you know, in the sense of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”, from our perspective at Musical U, in our worldview and in our vision for how the world could and should be and the mission we’re working on, there are two ways it IS broken for 99% of music learners.

And to be clear, there are people who have great success in music who don’t do the stuff I’m about to talk about. And so I’m not saying none of the old stuff works at all and it’s going to doom you to failure. It really is about adding and expanding, and hopefully that comes through in how I talk about these two things we think are broken.

So the first thing is, what was the only focus of our company, our organization, our membership, for, I’m gonna say, like ten years. About ten years. We were “musicality” through and through.

And by musicality… We’ve had a lot of videos talking about what is musicality? What does musicality mean to you? There’s no single short answer. But for the sake of our argument, for conversation, we’re talking about the inner skills of music. So the ear skills, the instinctive skills, the intellectual skills, not the fingers on the instrument, but everything that lets you bring music out from inside you.

So that can include playing by ear, improvising, writing songs, jamming, singing in tune, having good rhythm, understanding music theory instinctively, all of that kind of inner musicality is what we focused on for a decade before adding anything else. And it’s still our primary focus. And from our perspective, we see musicality through the model we’ve developed, for teaching it, for talking about it, for analyzing it, for assessing it, which is our H4 Model of Complete Musicality.

So I just listed off a whole bunch of skills that go into musicality, and we’ve had incredible guests on the show who shared their answers on this, and we’ve polled our members and asked them, and they came up with some really beautiful responses. And, you know, it runs the gamut from that very practical “can you do this skill or not?” kind of stuff through to really the deep essence of music and what it means to you, and the romance and poetry and emotion of music making that all constitutes musicality.

And the model we’ve developed, the H4 model, which was really first introduced in our Living Music program maybe four, four or five years ago, and it has now become the central way we think about everything.

And so I’ll talk briefly about it. We should definitely do an episode going deep on the H4 model, and it’s part of what I’ll be talking about on our live training coming up this Saturday. If you’re interested in that, the website is now up, you can check out yourmusicalcore.com. I’ll see if I can bring up the little banner. That training is going to be fantastic, and we’ll be going quite deep on that H4 model and unpacking some of what I’m about to talk about.

But the H4 model stands for Hands, Head, Hearing, and Heart. Hands is all about operating your instrument. So it’s can your fingers do what they’re meant to, to play the right notes at the right time? And we kind of include singing voice as an instrument. So even though it’s not your fingers, same thing. So it’s the instrument technique.

Head is all about your intellectual understanding of music. And I say intellectual. We really approach it in more of an instinctive, deep understanding way. So, yes, the textbook music theory, but really connecting that to real music that you hear and that you play.

Hearing is all about, can you understand, interpret, and relate to all the musical sounds that reach your ear, whether it’s what you’re playing or someone else’s?

And then Heart is kind of the funny one we introduced a bit later on because it captures two things.

One is all of the deep emotional and psychological stuff that goes into being a musician and learning music and developing your musicality. And the other is your emotional connection to music. You know, do you feel deeply connected to your instrument, to the music you play, to the other musicians around you, to the audience? That’s what that heart piece represents.

And if you imagine those as four quadrants that constitute your musicality at the moment, this becomes a really powerful lens for thinking about “how musical am I? What can I do? What can I not do? Where are things not joined up?”

And again, this isn’t the episode to go deep on that, but I wanted to mention it because this is the bit that really kicked off our company in 2009 and what we’ve been most focused on ever since, which is… if you take it as a given that that constitutes complete musicality and that what we would call the complete musician – meaning someone who can step into any musical situation with confidence and play something that sounds and feels great.

If that requires all four to be developed and to be connected to one another, then you look around at a lot of what’s out there, and it immediately seems really lopsided.

So, again, we’re not saying that taking instrument lessons with a teacher is bad, but if they’re just focused on your hands and maybe sprinkling in a little bit of head here and there, teaching you a bit of music theory or a little bit of ear training to do the hearing, but it’s really very hands focused. Your hands can get good, but you become very lopsided in who you are as a musician.

Or if you’re on an instrument learning website and all they do is ear training drills, and you never touch your instrument. You just sit in isolation working on the ear skills, you’re going to become very hearing focused.

So hopefully that helps start to paint a picture of how we see things. And what I started to touch on there is the fact that this is very personal. So I describe the complete musician as someone who’s kind of perfect in every area.

That’s a pipe dream, perfection. That’s not what we’re talking about, but someone who is rich and balanced in all four quadrants. And that’s not to say every single musician and music learner on the planet should be aiming for that and should feel bad about themselves if they’re not there yet.

It’s really important to understand. The H4 model is a way of understanding who you are, what you can do as a musician, both to assess where you’re at the moment, and to paint a picture of where you want to get to. So this isn’t a prescriptive, you must aim for this, and you’re bad or wrong if you’re missing one of these pieces.

It’s just a perspective on what’s possible for you in music again, that growth and expansion and what could be in your musical life. So coming back to the question, there were a few comments for me, there were just a couple of things in it that kind of stirred a bit of emotion in me.

And, for example, saying that “playing by ear can’t help in a recording studio”. You may not be asked to play something by ear in a recording studio context, but I’m sorry, you can’t tell me that developing your musical ear and developing that part of your musicality doesn’t make you a more effective contributor in any context, even if you’re with other people playing from the notation.

Also, “playing by ear is fun”. It is! Playing by ear IS fun. But it felt. It sounded a bit dismissive to me, like, it’s just a fun, it’s a little side activity, a game there that. Yeah, I’m not big on offense, but I’m sure that would offend a lot of people who are by-ear musicians and don’t do anything from notation and have incredible careers.

And, you know, one of my favorite touch points is the Beatles, and people often hold them up as an example of “talent”. But if you look at it, they understood music theory inside and out. Even though they’d never cracked open a textbook, they could play all kinds of music and they’d never read it from sheet notation.

So, you know, playing by ear is fun. It is. But it’s not just fun. Like, it’s a perfectly valid single way to go about learning music and playing music, and even greater when added to the sheet music, notation side of things.

For me personally, like, the point of this isn’t me, but just to say, like, I grew up purely sheet music, purely reading from notation, got very good at it, and then I added in the playing by ear stuff, and it was a fantastic addition.

And I think also, like, “playing by ear is not a terribly quick way to learn an instrument”.

That’s something that, I’m sorry, just isn’t true. It really depends how you approach it. And again, there’s a wealth of musicians in different genres, there are genres like gospel, where it is the primary way to learn an instrument.

And, and we see day in, day out with our members at Musical U that taking an approach based on this H4 model that incorporates the ear not as an add-on later on or an advanced skill or a distraction or a thing called ear training that we put in a box, but as, like, an integral part of how you do all of your music making is the fastest way to do it, and that starts to touch on the second thing that’s broken. So we’ll, we’ll come back to that in a minute.

So just to wrap that up, like this lady Sarah said, “I teach reading music and some playing by ear, improvising and composition.” And to paraphrase, “I get amazing results with it.”

Okay, no problem. Fantastic. More power to you if that is exactly the kind of musician that every one of your students dreams of being. And if you’re addressing the second broken thing that we’ll talk about in a moment.

In my experience, just teaching reading music with all that other stuff seen as kind of a, by the way or a fun diversion or, you know, we’ll do a bit of theory or a bit of ear training here or there…

I can’t tell you the number of conversations I’ve had with musicians in person and online over the years where it’s clear that is a huge part of what left them feeling unmusical, untalented, not cut out for it, deeply frustrated and sadly, in many cases, giving up completely. And so this is, this is why it stirs up a bit of emotion.

And why I have to try and make sure I keep things polite and friendly and respectful is just, to me, that massive imbalance in the teaching often leaves an awful lot of people who could otherwise be very successful, very fulfilled, very creative, expressive, happy, competent, capable, collaborating musicians feeling really bad about themselves and giving up on music.

So, again, the point isn’t you must tick all four boxes to the extreme to be a good musician. And it’s certainly not if you only focus on the hands and reading from notation and performing in orchestras as written, you’re lesser than or not a good musician, or that’s not the way to do it.

It’s just about seeing that whole picture and making sure that anyone who wants to learn music understands that whole picture that’s available for them and can really explore the avenues that are exciting and fulfilling and effective for them so that they can become the kind of musician they want to be.

So one last thing to say on that. You know, I started to talk about my own experience, and one thing I definitely wanted to mention here is just something I think is a little bit at play in this whole conversation is like, I am not your guru.

I am not a guru. I am not here, as I think it’s fair to say, a lot of music organizations are. You know, they’re using the guru model where such and such is performing flashily on camera. You show up, he’ll tell you what to do to be exactly like him or her.

And it’s probably clear, if you check out any of our stuff, that’s not what we do here! I’m not here to show off my own musicality, my own musicianship, my own instrument skills on camera, and say, do what I say, and you can be just like me.

And there are a few good reasons for that. But the crux of it here is just, we always prefer to let our students tell the story because of what we just talked about, that this h four model, it’s a unifying model.

But every musician is different. Every music learner is different. And this training coming up at the weekend, that’s the main point of it, is to discover your musical core and what makes you different from everyone else, what can make you different from everyone else, and what can lead to the deepest fulfillment for you.

So that I think I’ll do a different episode another day of, you know, why I am not your guru. But just to say, like we for example, we recently updated our reviews page on the public website.

If you go to musical-u.com and check out the reviews tab, we have like 90 case study videos of all different kinds of musicians, all talking about their own personal journey, every one of them different and interesting in all kinds of ways.

But what shines through, I think, in every single one of them is that excitement and fulfillment of developing their musicality more in the way that makes most sense to them.

So, yeah, again, this is not the Christopher Sutton School of Music, and that’s for very good reason. But if you check out some of those videos or you explore other stuff we’ve done, hopefully you’ll see loud and clear. We are very much about expanding the picture of what’s possible and letting people explore it in a fulfilling and satisfying and rewarding way, rather than saying, this is the way to become a musician.

So that’s broken thing number one. I think I managed to rein in my emotion there! You can let me know in the comments how I did.

Broken thing number two, and I need to be a little bit careful here to say it in the right way.

Even if all… I’m gonna walk that back!

Even if the kind of musician you want to become is playing from notation as written at a very high level, getting every note dead on, playing in an orchestra or a chamber group or whatever it may be, there is a better way than what has traditionally been used for decades.

And one analogy I use sometimes is supposing your task is to chop down trees, and you might go to someone who is really good with one of those big tree cutting saws, and they’ve been teaching it for 50 years, and their predecessor taught them with like 50 years of experience, and it’s been going on for hundreds of years.

This is how you chop down a tree. Grab the saw. We’ll teach you step by step how to do it.

You will chop down some trees. It will work. And some teachers are going to be better than others, no doubt. They’re all devoted, and they will get you some trees chopped down.

But if someone opens a shop next door that’s selling chainsaws and your goal is to chop down as many trees as possible, as quickly and easily as possible, you should probably consider that chainsaw thing.

And so I’m assuming Sarah saw one of our videos talking about superlearning.

This is our label for all of the science of accelerated learning. And I don’t know if Sarah’s using this stuff. Maybe she is and more power to her if so, and all of the teachers out there, if you’re using this, then I have no quarrel with your teaching methods.

But if you’re not, like, if you’re not using and teaching your students deliberate practice and contextual interference and spaced repetition and retrieval practice, this whole toolkit of tips and techniques and methodology that does literally let you learn five to ten times faster than the traditional methods, then I’m sorry, but you are doing your students a disservice.

And I don’t say that in judgment. I’m not criticizing the teacher. They’re teaching the way they were taught and their teachers were taught the way they were taught.

And, you know, we’re doing everything we can to shout from the rooftops that this stuff exists. And full credit to Gregg Goodhart, who helped us develop our methodology for it. And he’s doing good work, too, like shouting from the rooftops.

And the results are clear, whether you look at the scientific research or Gregg’s clients or all of the videos we have of our superlearning students talking about how, you know, they could finally crack that plateau or they could nail tricky passages in no time at all, or that they’ve managed to finally go from the intermediate level to really feeling advanced on their instrument.

Like, all of these things are happening day in, day out by people using these very different and unorthodox and counterintuitive set of learning techniques.

And so I guess I don’t apologize for shouting from the rooftops about that.

I would hate to offend anyone. I never want it to feel like I’m bashing anyone. What I’m bashing is the methodology, the traditional methods, the ways of teaching that have been used and passed down and at this point have been, I don’t want to say debunked because they still work, but there is a better way.

And so those, to me, are the two things that are broken.

And so, by all means, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If your stuff’s working, great, if your students are all delighted, if they’re all making amazing progress, great. But if a lot of your students are giving up out of frustration or getting upset or disillusioned that they’re not learning as quickly as they could, we’re just here to say there might be other opportunities for them and for you.

And ultimately, it all boils down to what kind of musician do you want to be and how quickly and easily do you want to get there?

Because, you know, if I’m speaking to the average music learner, whether they’re an aspiring professional or a happy hobbyist or whatever it may be that musician you’ve dreamed of being, you are able to become that kind of musician.

Again, we could do a whole episode on the talent myth! That’s a topic for another day. But any idea of a gift or talent or natural ability in music, again, has been thoroughly debunked at this point. And I don’t blame anyone who’s still preaching it, and I certainly don’t blame any students who are still struggling under the idea that they don’t have a gift for music or that they’re not talented. But again, it’s the methodology, it’s the cultural messaging we’ve inherited that makes us all feel so limited. You are able to become as incredible a musician as you want to be.

You are worthy of being that musician.

I know that may sound funny to say, but it comes up a lot, particularly in our Next Level coaching. Like when we get into that heart area, talking about the recurring thoughts, the inner doubt, the self criticism, a lot of us have a big part of us that doesn’t feel like we’re worthy of being an incredible musician. So if you need someone to tell you, let me tell you, you are worthy of being that incredible musician.

And whatever stage you’re at, whether you’re a young beginner or a older person who’s been slogging away for decades, or wherever you are in the spectrum of age and ability, it’s never too early or too late to start becoming that kind of musician fast.

And to us, if you bring in this musicality piece, that H4 model, and you start really looking at where the opportunities are, where your strengths are, where you want to develop things, where you’re imbalanced or things aren’t connected, that unlocks a whole level of connection to music that is otherwise generally missing.

And if you use these superlearning techniques that are proven day in, day out to deliver phenomenally better, faster results, then that journey of becoming the musician you want to be can be, as we say at Musical U can enjoy the journey.

So hopefully that sheds some light on our perspective on these things that Sarah was bringing up. Again, really appreciate the comment from Sarah, and I hope this didn’t come across as me arguing with her.

I respect her position. I respect her perspective. I think I’ve spoken to a lot of people with that perspective. And what I wanted to do today, really, in that spirit of expanding and showing the bigger picture, is just to kind of zoom out and say, well, this is how we see music making. This is how we see the journey of becoming a musician. This is what we see all the time is possible for average, everyday music learners.

And that stuff I’m happy to shout from the rooftops about, because it just can’t be denied.

And it’s so exciting and rewarding and fulfilling when we see people transform in that way.

So that’s why I’m putting on this live training this coming Saturday. Again, a shout out for that. I’ll put the little thing up here. Free training, no obligation.

It’s open to members and non members alike. And again, whatever stage of your musical journey you’re at. This is going to be accessible and applicable and relevant and useful for you.

I’m super excited for it. It’s going to be something really special. I see my camera is totally fritzing out, and I apologize for that.

Let’s see if we can bring it back, but go to yourmusicalcore.com and you can sign up for free now.

That’s going to make sure you get access to the video call when it happens, and I would love to see as many of you possible there live with me.

It’s going to be a really high impact session, digging into some of what we’ve been talking about today and really helping you go more quickly from where you are now to where you want to be in music and becoming that kind of musician you’ve dreamed of being.

Cheers. And I will see you on the next one!

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