This book is written for any and every person who is passionate about music and devoted to their pursuit of their own musical potential.
If you’re like many of those who find their way to us at Musical U, you might not currently identify as “a musician”. You might think of yourself as “a hobbyist” or “someone who just messes about with music”, while reserving that title “musician” for those who’ve attained a high level of skill, or make music their profession.
It’s our firm belief at Musical U that anybody who makes music is, by definition, “a musician”.
As you read through this book, try out some of the suggestions, and start discovering all that is truly possible for you in music, I hope you will naturally begin to take on that identity of “being a musician” more and more.
For now, just know that any time we use the word “musician” in this book… we’re talking about you :)
This book has been written with the adult learner in mind. Our rule of thumb at Musical U is “16 years and older You’ll find a link to a fascinating analysis of this in the Additional Resources. “. Everything we cover can certainly be used successfully with children, but will need thoughtful adaptation.
If you happen to be a music teacher, I hope that the material will prove interesting and useful for your teaching, and perhaps your own musical growth too. Please know that although I will make various critique of the status quo in music education, and the way things are “normally” done, I would never want that to be seen as criticism of any individual teacher. I have nothing but enormous respect, admiration, and deep appreciation for anybody who devotes their life to music education. Any gripes I might have are purely about the limiting traditions which have been passed down. I also recognise (and am very thankful for) the large number of teachers who do make musicality an integral part of their teaching, some of whom you’ll find mentioned by name in the chapters which follow.
I would also like to acknowledge up front that this book has been written with a focus on Western music traditions, originating in Europe and the Americas. The notation, theory, and examples we’ll refer to are common in countries such as the United States and U.K., but of course things do differ country-to-country, and there are vast and wonderful music traditions which exist independently of those. If, for example, you are more focused on Chinese or Indian music traditions, you may find that plenty of the material presented here is still interesting, relevant and applicable for you—but in publishing a book globally, I think it’s important to make clear that any words like “normally”, “the average musician”, “most styles”, etc. all take this focus for granted.
Tak Courag
When I was growing up, we would occasionally pass a particular building in London. On its large wall were the remains of what was once a big, painted advertising slogan.
Over the years, time or industry had worn away the last letters of its two words, and it now read:
TAK COURAG
It always caught my attention as we passed in the car, and somehow my young brain still knew what the words must once have been. Each time we’d drive past it, I would feel a little uplifted and encouraged. “Yes,” I would think to myself, “I must tak courag.”
This nonsense phrase has been with me ever since, and I still hear it in my head when something causes me anxiety, or I am faced with a daunting situation.
As we continue in this book, you will be faced with many topics and invited to try activities which may provoke slight anxiety, or feel daunting to you. It will be all too easy to let that turn you into a skim-reader, or let go of your original intention to follow through, and actually do the things taught in these pages.
It is going to take courage to succeed with this book.
Not because developing your musicality is anything to be scared of—but because, as Marianne Williamson put it so well in her book A Return To Love:
“Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
And so I offer this phrase to you as an odd, but perhaps memorable, mantra. As you read this book and put new musicality practices in place, any time you feel resistance, get nervous, or your “inner critic” tries to make you play small and stay small: Tak Courag.
What This Book Can Do For You
Finally, a word about what you can expect from reading this book. On the front cover, under the title Musicality, you’ll find the tagline:
How you too can learn music like a gifted prodigy,
Unlock your musical instinct,
And unleash your inner natural.
When I wrote those words, I could almost hear the backlash from critics and cynics. Those are bold claims to make! If those things were even possible for the average musician to achieve, how could a book possibly make it happen?
Rather than dilute down the promise of the book, I decided to stand firm. Because these claims aren’t wild speculation. They are the results we’ve seen, across thousands and thousands of average, everyday music-learners of all kinds here at Musical U.
So while I can’t promise that by the time you reach the end of this book you will be a prodigy, feel your musical instinct, or seem to others like a “natural”, what I can promise is this: in the pages which follow, you will find all the information, explanations, methods, and guidance you need, to achieve all of those things in your musical life.
If you give this book your full attention, and you put its methods into practice, you will be astounded at what becomes possible for you in music.
And while right now that will make you the rare exception among musicians, who appears to others to have been blessed with magical, mysterious, natural “talent”, it is our deepest hope here at Musical U that one day soon, everything we cover here will be a normal part of what “learning music” involves. And that these outcomes, which right now sound too-good-to-be-true, are the norm rather than the exception.
You can be a part of making that change happen, simply by developing your own musicality. This book will show you how.
I’m glad you’re here.
Let’s begin.