The Power Of Making BAD Sounds (Coaches Corner, Episode 6)

Christopher: Do you worry about making bad sounds when you play music? What if those bad sounds were actually the gateway to even more incredible good sounds?

That’s just one little nugget shared in this week’s episode of Coaches Corner!

So another great week here at Musicality Now, we’ve had some terrific episodes, and if you haven’t been following along, it accidentally turned into a bit of a singing-themed week.

We kicked off the week with an “Inside The Book” episode, looking at all of the benefits of singing for musicians. Whether or not you want to be a singer, singing brings benefits throughout your musical life, and we dug into that a little bit on Monday’s episode.

Then we had our mini-interview with Michaela Bartoskova, who’s a voice, singing and yoga coach, with this really wonderful holistic perspective on the human voice.

Not just singing, but speaking and really that deep connection with your voice. So her interview gave a little glimpse into her perspective, and then we followed it up with a segment from her masterclass starting to tune into breathing as a gateway into singing.

Really fantastic masterclass. If you are a member, I highly recommend checking that one out. And it’s essentially, it should be obligatory if you’re someone who feels too nervous to even make a sound with your voice in music, that masterclass is a beautiful pathway into it for you.

And then we did an episode on three ways to use singing in your music practice. If you’re wondering why we keep talking about singing, I gave a little kind of illustration of a few ways our members are regularly using singing as part of their music practice, even if they don’t think of themselves as a singer, even if they’re not performing as a singer. They might be a devoted instrumentalist, but these were ways that you can use your voice to accelerate all of your music learning.

And then it just occurred to me, even our Meet The Team episode was a little bit singing-inspired, in that it was with Charm Cajurao, our Operations Assistant who is herself a part time singer! She does weddings and other performances.

And so really, a singing week all round! I don’t think our Coaches Corner today is particularly singing-y, but I’m sure you could listen to it through a lens of singing if you tried.

So today’s episode of Coaches Corner has some real fantastic nuggets for you. Zac shares the power of making bad sounds, something we normally shy away from, but he explains how it was actually really impactful for one of his clients to realize the power in making bad sounds.

Andy gives an amazing tip for handling those days when you just don’t seem to have enough practice time to really do a good practice session.

Camilo, in a similar direction, talks about how you can keep working on your musicality even when you’re away from your instrument. He had clients taking trips, they wouldn’t even be at home, but he had a great tip for them to keep developing their sense of music.

And Andrew flips the script on those “warhorse” pieces, the ones you’ve been dragging around for years trying to master. And while we do a whole lot at Musical U to help you crack them, he actually gives a really interesting mindset shift on them that really opened things up for a couple of his clients.

So all that and more in today’s episode of Coaches Corner. Here we go!

———

Christopher: Hey, hey! We’re back with a new round of Coaches Corner, where I get to hang out with our Next Level coaches and ask them to share with you some of the awesome things that have been going on in coaching lately to help you in your musical life.

Today, I’m joined by our Head Coach, Andrew Bishko, and coaches Camilo Suárez, Zac Bailey, and Andy Portas. Welcome, guys!

So let’s kick things off this week with Mr. ZSonic himself, Zac Bailey.

What’s been going on in coaching? What can you share?

Zac: Hey, Christopher. Yeah, coaching has been going awesome.

I had a client come to me with this really amazing insight, and when she told me about this, I was, like, so excited.

I was like “wow, that is cool. I want everyone to hear about this”. So I was really excited to share it today.

And what she has been doing, she’s been working on her singing voice, and she’s been making a lot of progress. And a lot of that progress she found came from recording bad sounds. That’s her words.

She said “oh, the power of recording bad sounds”. I was like “oh, okay, that’s interesting”

She said if she hadn’t recorded the “bad” sounds and listened back, she wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to make the “good” sounds, sounds that feel good and sound good to her and that are satisfying.

And also, when she got to a place where she’s making good and satisfying sounds, she’s recording those, she’s able to go back and listen to those recordings from before and realise how far she’s come and also be a lot more accepting of those sounds.

She appreciated those original sounds that she thought were bad, and she said, “oh, well, these sounds were necessary for me to get to these other better sounds”.

And I think that is so powerful because I’ve heard so many clients and just people on Musical U website and just people in general, they don’t want to record because they think they don’t have something that’s worth recording.

They think they don’t have something that’s good enough to record. I’ve heard people say that “oh, when I get good enough, I’ll record something”. I’ve heard a lot of people say that.

And I think it’s so powerful that this client, she got good by recording the things that maybe wouldn’t have been good enough to record. Those bad, unsatisfying sounds that didn’t feel that good, didn’t sound that good to her. She recorded those anyway, and she learned a lot from them. And then later she said “wow, those were absolutely necessary for my growth”.

And if she hadn’t recorded those, she wouldn’t have progressed as fast or learned as much. So you can learn a lot and progress really fast if you just go ahead and record everything.

Really, it doesn’t have to be about good or bad. Just record everything and you’ll learn a lot and you’ll progress really fast. And I think that’s so cool. I was so excited for her.

Christopher: Yeah, that’s really powerful. I’m reminded of a video Andrew did one time about “making the mistake on purpose” and how much you can learn from those mistakes, even if you’re doing them intentionally or unintentionally.

And, yeah, it’s something I love about the singing training in Living Music. Like, Colors Of Your Voice and Free Your Creative Voice, it really helps you shift out of the traditional view of singing to “I’m making musical sounds with my vocal apparatus” and really getting into that exploring mode.

And it sounds like she’s really adopted that kind of experiment-and-explore, and then learn from the different sounds your voice is capable of making, how you want to shape your singing voice. That’s super cool.

Awesome. How about you, Andy? What’s new in coaching?

Andy: Well, this is, I suppose, as a kind of continuum from what Zach’s just been saying there really.

I’ve had a client who, she’s doing great, she’s doing her Practice Logs every day and making marvelous progress. But she works quite extended hours on a Wednesday, and she was really dissatisfied with the fact that she couldn’t really get any practice in.

So we kind of had a bit of a think about how we can get over this issue.

And she came up with the idea that she did have a little bit of time. So what she would do is video herself performing a few of the songs she’s been learning with the view to watch them the next day and highlight any issues that you got in there, as well as anything that was going great.

So, as Zac was saying there, it really kind of helps you focus on what needs to be done for the coming week. So it’s a wonderful way of kind of highlighting what your next steps are. And it’s been working really well for her.

Christopher: That’s terrific. Yeah. We’ve done various things in the past about, like, how to find more practice time in the day. And obviously, we teach people singing and audiation and different ways you can get that extra practice time.

But I don’t think we’ve talked much about that, just capturing a performance, even if you don’t have the time to sit down and really dig into it and just, like, saving that moment for later reference. That’s a really powerful way to better manage your time.

Andy: Absolutely.

Andrew: Yeah I also really like the idea of having a day where “this is what I do on Wednesdays” and have that be like, a ritual rather than every day being the same kind of a practice day. Being like, Wednesday is my recording day.

And you can do that in other things as well, because a lot of times when we’re practicing, we feel like “oh, I’ve got to be doing this every day or I’m not practicing”. And to have those special days that you look forward to. And I think people don’t realize that even if there’s something that you only do once a week, how much that could really move you forward in your general direction.

Christopher: Yeah. Not to mention those recordings will be a treasure trove, to look back on the week-by-week progress.

Andy: I was going to say she’s having great fun doing it as well.

She really looks forward to kind of Wednesday evenings now as well.

Christopher: Nice! Well, that speaks volumes to coaching, that she’s in that attitude towards performing and recording herself as something to look forward to!

Good. Camilo, how about you? What’s new in coaching?

Camilo: I have a couple of clients that are traveling, and they were worried about interrupting their practice. The question was, what do I do? Should I take a portable piano? Should I carry my double bass with me in the train?

I said “no, that’s not necessary. That’s actually a good thing that you’re going to be away from your instrument, because we can take that as an opportunity to keep working on our inner abilities”.

And I remembered this tip that I got from my bass coach, Danny Ziemann, and he said, you know, when you are away from your instrument, you can take any pitch that you listen that you find in your surroundings. It could be from the train, it could be from the microwave oven, or any sound from a car passing by.

And use that as your tonic note. Then start building melodies, familiar melodies, using that tone. That will keep your ear very much in shape. When you get back home, try to find where the note was and you will be surprised.

Christopher: That’s really cool, I love that.

It reminds me of something I used to do when I first started doing relative pitch ear training.

We had a fridge that hummed a certain pitch, and I just got into the habit of harmonising it with it when I walked into the kitchen. It was really fun. It was satisfying to be able to do that!

And, yeah, you’re right. There’s musical sounds all around us that you can use as a starting point if you have a few exercises up your sleeve to do.

How about you, Andrew? What’s been going on in coaching?

Andrew: Well, one thing I’ve noticed lately is that a lot of us have these big pieces, these big dream pieces or things that we’ve worked on before that we never quite got to where we wanted them to get to.

I know that I have one client that calls them her “warhorses”. You know, these were pieces that she played when she was younger, and she’d gotten really good at them. She couldn’t really remember how to play them again.

She remembered how satisfying it was to play them, but would like to regain that.

And I’ve found that with that kind of a piece, there’s often a lot of baggage. There’s a lot of the emotional stuff that’s been holding us back all along from various things that’s tied in with those pieces.

And as near and dear as those pieces are to our heart, sometimes it’s better to just ditch them and start something new.

And what I’ve found is that the best new thing to start is to start something creative. Especially if all you’ve played all your life is other people’s music, then to go and create something of your own, to create something that’s yours, it’s an amazing, an amazing feeling to do that.

The other thing is that to create music, a lot of times, certain performance of certain pieces, we’re tied up with all kinds of emotions and feelings that we have about our technical abilities. But you don’t need technical abilities to create beautiful music.

You can create beautiful music that’s within your technical abilities. Oftentimes, really what happens is you wind up playing something that if you had to read it, you would, like, find it really technically difficult. But because it’s creating, it’s coming out of you, you just bypass all that garbage, all that baggage, and you’ll be surprised what you can come up with, either through improvisation or composing or songwriting.

And I have some clients now that came in with that idea that are just absolutely excited that they’re writing songs. They’re writing lyrics for these songs.

And not only that, but they are outsourcing some of the technical aspects by collaborating with others. So this gives you an opportunity to collaborate with other people, to write music for other people to play. And I’ve got to tell you, there’s something that is so satisfying when you hear someone else playing your music.

And that’s another part of the power of the Next Level community is that people can get together and you can have these kinds of friends. And you can make a community like this if you’re not Next Level, you know, get together with friends, create something together or write something. Write a piece of music for your friend that, you know, plays the tuba, or write another one for your friend that plays the saxophone, even if you don’t play those instruments. Collaborate, get together.

And it’s so wonderful and so satisfying to really create your own music. And a lot of times, all those, all that baggage that we had about those big pieces that we never seem to quite get a hold on or that we can’t play anymore, just seems to evaporate because we’re actually creating something new.

Christopher: I love it. Fantastic. That was a whirlwind tour of creativity and repertoire and community and collaboration.

As always, this has been a total delight. Thank you all. It’s always fascinating to hear the variety of interesting stuff that’s going on in your coaching sessions each week.

So thank you all. And we’ll see you next time on another Coaches Corner. Cheers!

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | YouTube | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!