What Exactly Constitutes “Musicality”?

From the earliest days of Musical U, I was eager to try to bring this amorphous concept down to earth—because if we were going to help musicians to increase and expand their musicality, at some stage all the grand ideas described above were going to need to be translated into concrete, tangible, measurable abilities.

We came up with a list of 15 specific musical skills. These are things which someone who “is musical” tends to be able to do and, contrariwise, which tend to make someone feel unmusical (or “untalented”) if they can’t do them.

Some musicians will draw from all 15 of these skills to express their musicality, while others achieve a deep connection with their music without having developed all of them. Which skills you choose to develop will depend on your own musical desires, something we’ll explore more fully in the next chapter.

As you read through the list below, please keep in mind these two important points:

• These all represent ways to tap into, nurture and express an innate musicality you already have inside you.
• Every time you read the word “musician” in this book, we mean you.

Even if you’re like many who consider themselves only a “music learner” or “hobbyist” and would shy away from calling themselves “a musician”, please know that for our purposes, every person on the planet is already “a musician”. Everything else is just a matter of degree.

We’ll talk more about that principle of “Universal Potential” in the next chapter. For now, just be open to these being possibilities for you, even if right now they seem beyond reach based on your past experiences.

So here (in no particular order) are some of the skills we believe are important parts of musicality.

Talking music

Have you ever listened in to a group of musicians talking and been completely baffled? However experienced you might be in music, if you go outside your chosen genre or your normal musical environment, it’s easy to quickly get lost in a jungle of terms and phrases which are new and confusing for you.

Learning the “jargon” or “slang” used by musicians is an important aspect of musicality, as it allows you to easily understand and communicate with other musicians. Although it’s possible to collaborate musically without spoken words, it’s a lot easier if you are speaking the same language!

An extra benefit is that learning new vocabulary almost always means learning new concepts too, so making the effort to study up on new music jargon extends and improves your musicality by broadening your overall understanding of what’s going on in the music you hear and play.

We’ll introduce musical terms as they arise throughout the book, and Chapter 5: Active Listening will show you how to start expanding your musical vocabulary in an exciting way that’s directly connected to the music you hear and play.

Singing in tune

Being able to sing in tune is an important skill for any musician, not just those who consider themselves “a singer”. It might not seem like a prominent part of musicality, but just think about the opposite: can you imagine yourself thinking someone is really musical if they always sing out of tune?

You don’t need to have a phenomenal voice to be an excellent musician, but you do need to master the basics, specifically two skills called “matching pitch” and “vocal control”. This allows you to use your voice as a tool to train your ears and to communicate with other musicians.

Your voice is your natural first instrument, and it’s the instrument you always have with you. So once you learn to sing in tune it’s an easy and natural way to express yourself in music and show your musicality.

Chapter 4: Singing will provide everything you need to start singing confidently, reliably, accurately in tune—even if right now you think you’re “tone deaf”.

Having good rhythm

Like singing in tune, having a good sense of rhythm is something musicians often take for granted—but you really notice when it’s missing!

There is a basic level of rhythmic ability which all performing musicians must have, and which is normally taught as part of instrument lessons. This includes the true fundamentals like finding the beat and clapping in time (more on that below) but it can also extend to true rhythmic mastery and fine-grained accuracy.

This is actually a large part of what sets a “good” musician apart from a “great” one. When we’re shocked by the high degree of musicality displayed by a performer on stage, it’s often the rhythm, whether we realise it or not, that has caused us to be impressed.

To reach a basic level of musicality you need to master rhythm fundamentals, and to truly refine your musicality to a pro level you need to upgrade your sense of rhythm even further.

We’ll be learning about developing your sense of rhythm in Chapter 13: Rhythm.

Keeping the beat

There’s one specific rhythm skill that stands out as vital for good musicality: can you find the beat? Can you clap along with it and keep in time?

You only need to go along to a rock concert to see this one in action. If you see 20 people clapping along in time with the band, and one person who seems to be in a world of their own with mis-timed claps all over the place, which one are you going to judge as having limited musicality?

The surprising fact is that even quite experienced musicians occasionally have difficulty with clapping in time. They may be great at playing back complex rhythmic patterns on their instrument, and they may even have mastered rhythm notation, but ask them to clap along with a pop song, or to keep time while someone nearby is clapping out of time, and they may well struggle!

That can be embarrassing for someone who considers themselves to be musical, which only proves its vital importance. So it’s worth paying attention to this simple but fundamental aspect of musicality. We’ll lay a firm foundation for this in Chapter 12: The Beat.

Understanding Music Theory

Music theory may not be a favourite topic among musicians, but it’s a vital one! Although the “talent” definition of musicality might lead you to believe you can be truly musical even with zero understanding of theory, that’s not actually true.

Even the greatest self-taught musicians who claim to know no music theory actually do know a great deal. They may not know the traditional terminology or have taken any formal theory lessons, but through sheer experience and exposure they have actually trained themselves in all the core concepts covered by the term “music theory”.

My favourite example of this is the Beatles, who are often cited as a demonstration that “you don’t need to learn theory”. After I interviewed several professional experts on the Beatles, I found their conclusion was unanimous: the “Fab Four” knew music theory inside-out. They simply learned it through experience rather than from a textbook. The words they used might not have been the official, “correct” terminology or the traditional ways of explaining theory concepts, but they had a deep, hard-earned, learned-intuitive understanding of “how music works”.

Studying music theory directly helps us more quickly gain that deep, intuitive understanding of how music works.

Although it’s traditionally taught in a dry and boring way, music theory does not need to be dull. In fact, by combining it with listening skills like we do at Musical U, or teaching it in an interesting and engaging way like some modern educators do, it’s possible to make the learning of music theory just as enjoyable as music itself.

So don’t shy away from it, even if you’ve had bad experiences in the past. Brushing up on music theory can be a fast, fun and impactful way to improve your musicality.

You’ll find that the way musicality is presented throughout this book naturally develops your understanding of music theory along the way.

Reading notation

If you want instant access to a vast library of the music which has moved the world for decades and centuries, there’s nothing which compares to traditional “score” notation.

Or is there? If you’ve mastered playing by ear, you might think that reading from score notation is redundant.

In fact, reading notation is a valuable complement to play-by-ear skills. For example, it allows you to quickly and directly play new repertoire, even without having ever heard it. This is common in the world of jazz where musicians often have to “sit in” and play directly from a lead sheet (see also “lead sheets” and “jamming” below). It’s also very valuable for singers, who may need to sight-sing from written notation in a choir.

Learning to read music also allows you to practice Audiation (imagining music in your head) which unlocks extra practice time in your day. You can’t play your trumpet on the train to work, but I’ve often seen musicians on the London Underground reading through sheet music, and I’m sure using the “mental play” technique covered later in the book to practice their technique and work out performance choices.

There’s a reason that score notation is still being used throughout the music world today despite dating back hundreds of years. It’s simple, versatile, and endlessly useful. That makes it a vital skill for modern musicality, just as it was in the age of Beethoven and Bach.

Chapter 3: Audiation and Part II of this book will help you make the connection between written notation and the corresponding musical sounds.

There are two special cases of reading notation worth mentioning:

Sight-reading music

Most musicians read music notation slowly and carefully, as they learn to play simple pieces on their instrument. In most situations this is fine. You can gradually take the time to work out the notation, note by note, and then play it on your instrument.

However, there is a higher level of reading notation, which is being able to “sight-read” it. This means that you directly play the music from the score, with little or no preparation.

It’s normal to find sight-reading challenging, and generally a musician will only be able to sight-read music which is a few notches simpler than the music they play in their learned repertoire.

However, by making sight-reading part of your musical training you can develop this very useful ability: to pick up a new piece of music and play it immediately, even if you’ve never heard it before. That’s a pretty impressive demonstration of musicality!

Playing from a lead sheet

A “lead sheet” is a simplified form of written notation, typically providing just the score for the melody, lyrics (if any), and the chord symbols for the harmony. It can allow a whole song to fit on a single page or two.

Lead sheets are most commonly used in jazz music but are frequently found in pop and rock too, since they allow for literally hundreds of songs to be included in the same printed book.

To play directly from a lead sheet requires a combination of musicality skills, including improvisation, music theory understanding and (if performing in a group) jamming.

If you can read score notation and you have a basic understanding of music theory then the literal act of reading a lead sheet won’t be too challenging. But you might find that trying to create a compelling performance as you read the lead sheet actually stretches you in new and interesting ways. It’s also a great tool to add to your toolkit, increasing the range of musical opportunities you are prepared to participate in confidently.

Writing music

Once upon a time, composing music went hand-in-hand with being a musician. In the Baroque era, any serious performing musician was expected to be fully trained as an improviser, arranger and composer too. Over the years we’ve lost this association, and now divide the world of musicians into those who are “composers/songwriters”, and those who only perform what others have written.

To feel truly free and confident in music though, it’s vital to be creating your own musical ideas.

One way is through improvisation, conjuring up new music in the moment. The less high-pressure way is to sit down and try to compose your own musical creations, whether that’s a simple melody, a whole song, or a fully-fledged orchestral arrangement.

Learning to write music pushes your musicality to new levels in a number of areas and (like jamming) it can be a great showcase of what you can do in music.

We’ll explore songwriting and composing in Chapter 16: Songwriting.

Writing notation

Once you’ve started creating music, where does it go? In the modern age, it’s so easy to record ourselves performing music, or to grab an interactive app which lets us jot down musical ideas in a simplified visual representation such as guitar tab or a “piano roll” display.

However, there is still great value in learning to write traditional “score” notation. It gives you a deeper understanding for reading music notation (as covered above) and it’s the most universal written form of Western music. This makes it an important part of musicality, for your understanding of theory and ability to communicate musical ideas.

Don’t be intimidated! Although musical notation can become complex (which is actually one of its strengths) it can also be very simple. Once you’ve learned a few basics you’ll soon be ready to start jotting down your own musical ideas in score notation.

In Part II of this book you’ll discover the mental models which make it easy to translate from sound to symbol and vice-versa.

Improvising

Another important part of creating your own music is Improvisation, where you express your own musical ideas without prior planning. Of course that doesn’t mean to say you haven’t prepared!

Improvisation is a learned skill, and you can train your ears and learn creative frameworks which make it easy to conjure up your own ideas reliably. With that preparation done, each improvisation can be original and unique, created in the moment.

Of all musical skills, Improvisation is perhaps the most intimidating before you start to learn it. Fortunately, learning to improvise doesn’t have to be challenging. The Expansive Creativity framework you’ll learn in Chapter 15: Improvisation provides a “safe space” to continually extend and improve your abilities.

Once you start getting the hang of it, Improvisation becomes a fun and powerful way to regularly push the boundaries of your musicality and it’s a particularly effective way to increase your musical confidence.

Playing by ear

This is perhaps the most prominent skill people associate with musicality. When you see a musician who can easily pick up their instrument and play any song or piece of music they’ve just heard (possibly for the first time), without the need for sheet music, a chord chart, or any kind of practice time to learn the piece—now that’s musicality! Right?

This skill can be so impressive that it is one of the primary causes of people believing that musicality must be an innate “gift”.

If you don’t understand how Playing By Ear works, then it can seem like you would need a mysterious “talent” to do it. Fortunately, once you learn how to play melodies or chords by ear the mystery dissolves and you realise that (like all other aspects of musicality) this is something you can learn for yourself.

We’ll be showing you how to learn this skill in Chapter 14: Playing By Ear.

Jamming

From the outside, a musical jam session can look like the pinnacle of “being a natural”. A bunch of musicians, each with their own instrument, all sit down together without preparation, and produce coherent, great-sounding music on-the-fly. How do they do it?

Jamming is actually a combination of several other skills, including Active Listening, having good Rhythm, Playing By Ear, Improvisation, and talking music. It’s a great representation of the versatile skills covered by “musicality” and joining a jam session can be an effective way to put your own musicality to the test and help you to reach new heights. Not to mention being a lot of fun!

Especially if you’ve been struggling in the classical world of endlessly trying to perfect repertoire, or slaving away privately in your bedroom for years, learning to jam can bring a new freedom to your music-making that you never knew was missing.

Performing live

It may or may not be one of your musical goals to ever get up on stage and wow a crowd, but it can’t be denied that performing music live (whether to a stadium audience or just to your cat) is a key part of being musical.

It might be playing a new pop song by ear, improvising a rock guitar solo, or carefully performing a piece you’ve practiced a thousand times. However you choose to express yourself musically, learning to do it in a live situation for an audience, where it is framed as a one-off performance to please the listener, rather than a loose play-through for your own enjoyment, is an important skill to develop.

It can be scary, especially when performing something new or when the opportunity is big or exciting. You’ll have to draw on all aspects of your musicality to ensure a great performance.

Fortunately there are concrete ways to gradually improve your Performance skills and make performing a joyful, natural part of your music-making. We’ll share a powerful framework for this in Chapter 18: Performance.

Knowing your instrument inside and out

Learning to play an instrument is perhaps the most obvious defining characteristic of “being a musician”, and it’s a common trap to consider this the only thing you need to do. Of course, as we’ve been exploring, there is much more to musicality than just instrument technique.

Supposing you’ve already got the hang of playing an instrument. Is that all there is to it? Actually, when it comes to musicality, you need to take it a step further.

Speak to someone who is clearly “very musical” and they won’t just have mastered playing advanced pieces of music on their instrument. They will be able to take advantage of every playing technique the instrument offers, so that they can most fully express their own musical interpretation in each performance. They will likely be able to tell you about the history of the instrument and the different models available and their pros and cons. In fact, they will probably talk your ear off once they get started!

This passion for your instrument is a hallmark of devoted and accomplished musicians, and knowing your instrument inside and out is an important part of musicality.

Tuning your instrument by ear

Another skill which is easy to overlook in the modern technology-assisted age, tuning your own instrument by ear is still a valuable skill for a musician. Again, consider the opposite: would you think someone was highly musical if they were completely unable to get their instrument in tune when their digital tuner ran out of batteries or went missing?

This is really a proxy for “having precise pitching”, which also features even more prominently as part of singing in tune.

You don’t want to be wholly reliant on technology for your music-making and it can be a painful experience to inadvertently be playing out of tune. So taking the time to learn how to tune up by ear is a great way to hone your pitch sensitivity and that improves your tuning throughout your musical performance, not just while you’re literally tuning up. * We can probably let pianists off the hook on this one, given the far deeper skill involved in piano tuning!

Playing more than one instrument

We’ve already said that musicality means much more than just learning to play an instrument. This is demonstrated clearly by how we associate multi-instrumentalism with musicality.

If we hear that someone plays three instruments, we don’t just think they’ve done three times as much music practice as someone who just plays one. We start to imagine that they have some inner ability in music which allows them to learn instruments more easily than other people.

This is because there are certain aspects of learning to be a musician which carry across from one instrument to another. Specifically, it’s all the “inner skills”, which constitute musicality.

All of your listening skills (including those which enable playing by ear, improvising and creating your own music), all of your performance skills (including playing from a lead sheet, jamming, and musical confidence), and all of your knowledge and understanding (including knowing how to “talk music” and understanding the theory) can be transferred from one instrument to the next.

This means that although the physical movements for a new instrument may all be new to you, learning a second and then a third will come much faster than the first. In fact, the more you’ve developed your musicality, the easier it will all be.

Learning multiple instruments isn’t just about impressing people with how musical you are. It’s a great way to:

• Learn theory in a more versatile way
• Develop more robust and reliable listening skills
• Be able to collaborate in more varied situations
• Explore new genres and traditions of music
• Improve your musicality more fully and faster

You might worry that taking up a second (or third, or fourth!) instrument will slow down your progress on your main instrument, but many musicians find the opposite is true. Because it stretches you in new ways while honing your inner musicality, it will likely help you to become a more proficient and expressive musician on your main instrument as well.

So what does “musicality” mean to you?

Using a catch-all word like “musicality” is helpful because it’s simple and captures the spirit of what we’re all pursuing as musicians.

There is another advantage too: its broad generality also makes it adaptable.

This means that your musicality can be different from somebody else’s. As all the examples above prove, there is a huge variety of ways to “be musical” and each musician has a different combination of current strengths and weaknesses.

Each apparent “weakness” is really a new learning opportunity. So your present musicality and the future of your musicality training are both 100% personal to you.

The 15 skills of musicality listed above can serve as a kind of “checklist” for you. Along with the H4 Model and Big Picture Vision which you’ll be learning about next, having these in mind can help you continually refine, extend and improve your own musicality.

As you were reading through the list, some probably stood out to you and made you think “Wow, I’d love to be able to do that”. You can!

Everything we’ve mentioned above is a learnable skill, and as you’ll be discovering in the rest of this book, many of them are much easier to learn than you might have expected.

Whatever your next steps might turn out to be, I hope you are now seeing musicality in a new light: as a collection of exciting musical skills, all of which are available to you to learn, and which can be combined in your own unique way to define your own musicality.