How to learn music quickly and thoroughly

Intro

This post is intended for musicians who often need to learn and/or memorize music quickly.  Any working musician is required to learn a steady stream of new music for his/her gigs, and it’s often necessary to learn material simultaneously for multiple gigs.  By developing a focused and efficient method, one can learn music quickly and thoroughly.   Knowing the music inside-out will make you comfortable and confident on the gig, which is recipe for tapping into your best musicianship & deeper creativity…. achieving this on the gig is the name of the musician game.

Before we begin, two very important thoughts:  

To learn music in a short amount of time, it’s necessary to put other distractions on hold.  CLOSE YOUR INTERNET BROWSER.  Put your phone on silent mode and place it in another room.  Don’t deal with texts, emails, and internet while learning music- it will save you time and improve the quality of your learning session. Seriously.

It’s best to learn music on a song by song basis.  If you must learn 10 songs, learn one at a time.  Do not start listening to the second song until you’ve learned the first.

Ok let’s get to it:  

STEP 1:  Just Listen

Before you tackle the analytical thinking about melody, chords, form, groove, etc it’s SUPER important to just listen to a song!  Focus on the the lyrics, the mood, the feelings it evokes, the ‘vibe’, the sound.  Dance to it.  Be a listener, an appreciator of music instead of an analyzer and judge of it.  Let your intuition do the listening,  If you’re tight on time, listen to the song ONCE with this mind set.  If you’re not cramming, the more you listen in this mind set, the better!

STEP 2:  Chart it out

Once you feel that you have a soul-based understanding of the song, it’s time to look under the hood and discover the structure and order of this piece of music.  This can be done with an instrument in your hand or without it, up to you.

The idea here is to put the song on paper.  You don’t need to know how to formally write music to do this.  I encourage you to develop your own short-hand version of writing charts for yourself.  The shorthand chart exists to give you key information about the song (groove, form, tempo, chords, breaks, hits, intros, endings, etc.).  The attached photo above is one of my shorthand charts, and it shows my charting method that I’ve developed over the years.  The chart IS something that you’ll be able to read at the gig, but the goal is to play the gig without charts.  The chart is a KEY step to learning music because it allows you to VISUALIZE the song.  So much of playing and creating music is based on shapes.  I’m not trying to be philosophical here, but factual.  The brain uses shapes, images, and visuals to interpret and remember music.  When you’re at the gig playing the song chartless, you’ll may notice that you visualize your shorthand chart to ‘see’ what’s coming up next in the song.

STEP 3:  Commit it to memory

Now that you understand the nuts & bolts of how the song operates, it’s time to put all of that information on the chart into your brain.  You can do this by listening to the song and following along on your chart.  Take a minute, without the song playing and memorize the chart… then listen back without the chart and visualize what is happening in the song as you listen.  You’re now bridging the gap between your intuition, analysis, and memory.

STEP 4:  No more charts

It’s now time to cement the music in your mind and body.  Pick up your instrument and play through the song with the record.  If you fumble, stop and figure out what is giving you trouble.  A chart can be a crutch, and many times you won’t realize how well you actually know a song until you’re unable to follow your cheat sheet.  It may seem that your conscious understanding of a song is the true measure of how well you know it, but the subconscious mind and intuition absorb information in a way all their own.  Playing a song down will show you what you’ve absorbed.

STEP 5:  Full circle

In order to play newly learned music with deep inspiration, you must hear it as you did in Step 1… as a curious, non- judgmental listener.  After you’ve digested the song, casually listen to it.   Play it during your commute, when you’re doing the dishes, or cleaning the house.  This pushes the song deeper into your subconscious and intuition, and will give you easier access to that ‘magic’ we chase as artists.  When music is played from this plane, it is charged with self-expression, soul, and excitement; exactly what both you and your audience are looking for.

Past lives and reincarnation for the realist

If one is a believer in past lives and reincarnation, this is something that the believer has to actually FEEL in their soul and body.  As an intellectual concept, it doesn’t really work, because it doesn’t make sense to the everyday thinker’s brain.

Those who have never “felt” the belief of it will either think it is a load of crap, or they will admire the idea from a distance (which doesn’t prove all that useful).  It can be tough to know how to begin embracing such a far out concept if you weren’t introduced to it when you were young.

The truth is that past lives ARE imbedded in your deepest core and express themselves through you in every way. Your intuition makes you do things and make decisions based on a miraculous repository of information and experiences of your ancestors. Not just your human ancestors, but your more ancient animal ancestors… And while we’re at it, their plant ancestors. These ways of thinking and your actions stem from the information and experiences of these past lives and predecessors. Your ‘play book’ is in your genes. Your genes are the past lives of your ancestors.  Your past lives provide you with your mental operating system, hard wired into your brain. It is not completely fixed- your brain is malleable to learn & adapt to experience. Your mind and subconscious are actually millions of years old. Billions, actually.  Past lives are not somewhere way off in the sky, in another dimension. They were right here on Earth, from another time, before you.

Looking at it in this light can be a way to feel the concept emotionally, understand it, and believe it.  The feeling it produces is one of connection to our fellow humans, all of whom share common past lives and ancestors.  It is also a bridge to the past, transforming it into a living and breathing reality of the present.

Josh Giunta is an NYC based music producer, drummer, and recording engineer.  Follow him on Twitter at @LoveScienceMusc

Think like a scientist and be happier

So… How does a scientist think?  In a nutshell, scientists only draw conclusions based on FACTS that are proven to be true.

We often make decisions about people, ourselves, and our course of action based on complicated, unexplored emotions and empty speculations.  A lot of this happens subconsciously.  We can bring these processes out of the subconscious and make better decisions if we use some mental tools that scientists use everyday in their line of work.  Here’s a few ways using the scientific method can improve your life:

1. Acknowledge a problem and decide to solve it.  

A lot of times we don’t tackle a problem we have because we don’t know how to solve it.  We THINK we don’t know how to solve it, so we don’t even try.  Usually, once you decide to solve a problem and think about it for a little while, you find that the problem is not as scary as you initially thought it was, and also not as difficult to solve.  If it IS difficult to solve, it can be a load off of your shoulders to breakdown all of the parts you need to look at in order to solve it.  It is a huge relief to UNDERSTAND a problem, even if you don’t know how to solve it.  

2)  Being able to distinguish knowledge from emotions.

To solve certain obstacles, you need figure out how you feel about something (as in a relationship).  Other problems are better solved without emotions (like how much you should quote for a project you are budgeting).  It’s good to have the ability to distinguish between emotional interests and facts.   One is not more important than the other, but often they are bound up together and indistinguishable.  Being able to separate them helps you solve obstacles.

3) Identify and admit when you DO NOT know something.

Not knowing things is perfectly ok.  It’s great, even.  A lot of power and knowledge can be gained from being upfront about what is beyond you.  The quicker you can acknowledge that you do not know something, the quicker you can be on the path to learning that same thing… or not learning it if you choose.   Knowing that you don’t know something is honest, and honesty makes for a clearer mind.

4)  If a problem solving method doesn’t work, try it again differently.

The scientific method establishes a routine of problem solving.  If you get to the end of a problem solving process and it didn’t get solved… try it again!  You’re actions the next time around will be better informed and you will have learned something.  Science establishes a mindset for continual, energized problem solving.  Life will continually serve you issues to solve, so it’s the perfect pairing!

A story from space:

I will conclude with a wonderful story from the Col. Chris Hadfield book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth that embodies all of the above points:

On one of his missions aboard the International Space Station, Chris and his crew of two were abruptly awoken in the middle of their sleep by an alarm system on the ship.  The specific alarm was usually activated if there is a fire or structural damage to the ship, both of which could be catastrophically BAD for the safety of the crew. Being awaken by such an alarm would certainly trigger immediate fear and panic in many people.  Scientific thinking, allows its user the choice to side step this emotional auto-response and function more wisely, allowing one to make better important decisions quickly.  The first question they asked was not “Are we going to die?!” but “What are the possible causes for the alarm to sound?”

The 3 drowsy astronauts immediately rose out of bed to investigate the cause of the alarm…. all 3 crew members were completely calm- no one became anxious, nervous, or forecasted certain doom.  Astronauts are trained to ‘work the problem’ and remain centered and focused on the task at hand, no matter the severity or uncertainty of the issue in front of them.  The astronauts sat down and immediately got to work, checking all the computer systems, and monitoring the modules of the space craft.  After a thorough investigation of all possible causes for the alarm, they discovered that a short circuit had caused a false alarm.

We are emotional beings afloat in world of mystery and the quantifiable… thinking like a scientist can help with both