6. The Power of Musicality

Before we continue, I’d like to share a little behind-the-scenes info with you about Superlearning and musicality… because I think you might find that our experience at Musical U actually mirrors your own personal journey.

In 2020 we created our first training on musical superlearning, the course referred to earlier, which was called just that: Musical Superlearning. As far as I know, it was the world’s first online training dedicated to applying the principles of accelerated learning to music specifically.

But we almost didn’t make it.

The opportunity was clear. We knew these techniques worked extremely well, both from the scientific research and the team’s own experience using them. Not to mention the extensive experience of Gregg Goodhart, with whom we would be creating the course. So we knew we could offer something really valuable and impactful.

But I was torn.

Up until that point, we had been focused for over a decade purely on “musicality training”. I was worried this would confuse what Musical U stood for, or distract us from our mission.

What gradually dawned on me was that in fact, Superlearning was perfectly aligned with our mission. It was simply a different way of enabling musicians to debunk the “talent myth” and step into their own true musical potential. The focus was instrument skills and repertoire rather than the “inner skills of musicality”—but it certainly still fit the mission.

That satisfied me enough to go ahead and create the course, which proved to be a smash hit with our existing community of members.

But honestly, there was still something nagging at me for the following year or two. It felt like we now had two areas of special expertise: musicality and superlearning. They both helped the same kinds of growth-oriented musicians, so that worked out okay. But it always felt a little awkward to have essentially two separate training paths on offer.

It wasn’t until we launched the Next Level coaching program in 2022, and had a new opportunity to work one-to-one with passionate musicians who were eager to pursue both musicality and superlearning, that things finally clicked. We were able to formulate what we now call Creative Superlearning, neatly marrying the two worlds, and showing that the whole could be greater than the sum of its parts. Musicality training benefitted from Superlearning techniques, and Superlearning for instrument skills and repertoire benefitted from musicality-themed enhancements.

This was also finally the solution to that frustration which the original course had produced. Some of that was necessary and inevitable, because Deliberate Practice is more challenging than just coasting through a practice routine. But looking back, and comparing it with how we now teach Superlearning, it’s clear that a big part of the problem was the lack of musicality and the imbalance of the 4 H’s.

Even though the course did effectively accelerate learning, it still followed the traditional flawed practice model by focusing exclusively on Head and Hands. Incorporating musicality into our Superlearning practice fixes that.

We’ve already begun to touch on this in the previous section, with the idea of Creative Contextual Interference, as well as highlighting the danger of letting “music practice” be a dry, strictly right-or-wrong experience, where the outcome can only be music-reproducing robots.

In this section we’ll explore a number of ways you can enhance your music practice with musicality training, to both accelerate your learning of instrument skills and repertoire, and increase your musicality naturally along the way. I hope that as you experiment with some of these ideas, you’ll come to see Superlearning and musicality the way we now do: not as two separate areas, but as a wonderful pairing, with endless possible interplay between the two.

We’ll be giving several specific examples of musicality-enhancing (or musicality-enhanced) practice, but the main goal of this section is to further revise and broaden your concept of what “practice” can be.

The two major themes are enjoyment and creativity. The more ways you can find to make your practice more enjoyable and more creative, the more success you will experience.

• Enjoyment, because “fun is not the opposite of learning”. Making practice fun not only keeps your passion for learning music burning bright, boosting consistency and typically increasing how much time we dedicate to practice—it also helps keep us in a Growth Mindset and fully engaged with the learning process.
• Creativity, because nothing engages our brains quite so completely as being creative! When we approach practice with a creative mindset, we engage our imagination in a way that goes beyond simply repeating exercises and drills. Instead, we actively shape and transform the music we are learning.

One easy way to boost both enjoyment and creativity in any music practice is to focus on the expression, bringing out the emotions that you feel in the music.

Expression

Some of our definitions of “musicality” at the start of this book were really focused on playing expressively. The idea of making the notes you’re playing sound truly musical.

We’ll be going deep on this topic in Chapter 17: Expression, exploring what exactly it means, and what specifically you can do to bring a greater level of expressiveness to your playing by learning the “musical language of emotion.”

The challenge for a lot of musicians is that they have a sense of what they’re reaching for, in terms of playing expressively—but they haven’t been given any tools for getting from here to there.

Fortunately, even before arming you with the specifics of that dedicated chapter, which will help you find more success faster, you already have everything you need, right now.

If you can tell the difference between a beautiful, moving musical performance, and a robotic, artificial, basic MIDI-generated reproduction of a piece of music—then between Active Listening, Audiation, Singing and Deliberate Practice, you are more than capable of finding your way there yourself.

We just need to remove one big barrier for you.

That barrier is the idea that we have to learn the piece before we can be expressive with it. Musicians slave away in the practice room trying to get each note correct. And then finally, eventually, if time allows before the big performance, they try to “add more expressiveness.”

That’s how it’s often taught. And it’s another case where that’s okay—it sort of works, sometimes—but it’s far from ideal. Not least because many of us lose momentum or motivation with a piece before ever getting to that stage of “making it sound musical.”

Aiming to play the notes expressively can start on day one of learning a new piece. It can be part of every note you play, even during scales and technical exercises.

Your goal is to “find the music in the music”. Don’t let the dots on the page, or the recording you’re learning from, be just a set of instructions on what buttons to press when. Instead, always remember that our goal is to create beautiful, fulfilling, satisfying music.

Personally, I would prefer to hear “Hot Cross Buns” played slowly, elegantly and beautifully, than a lightning-fast rendition of a Van Halen solo which hit every note “correctly” but was devoid of any emotion. How about you?

When you really bring your attention to “finding the music in the music”, it’s a powerful form of Contextual Interference. To illustrate that, just imagine for a moment how much concentration and brainpower it would take for you to transform something super-simple like “Hot Cross Buns” or “Happy Birthday” into something which could touch a listener emotionally. Think about all the exploration you would have to do, and how much more deeply you would come to know those seemingly-simple pieces. Now think about how your inner instinct for playing expressively would automatically be increased by doing so.

In our Summer Series workshop on Superlearning, our Head Educator Andrew shared a beautiful example of this. He had spent a long time playing Klezmer music, where there’s a lot of expression and rhythmic elasticity. He then went back to playing Bach, and was stunned by all the musical depth and playing opportunities he’d been oblivious to before. His appreciation and instinct for expressive playing had levelled up, and he was able to feel the music in a whole new way.

There’s so much more “music in the music” than we’re typically aware of when solely focused on “getting the notes right”. When you start proactively looking for it, you’re going to feel that. Your audiences are going to feel it. And it becomes a wonderful tool for both increasing the beauty of your playing, and for accelerating your learning by serving as a new kind of Contextual Interference for you in your practice.

Improvise to Learn

If the word “improvise” in that heading just struck fear in your heart, don’t skip ahead just yet! Many musicians believe that they’ll need to master a whole lot of music theory and technique before they could learn to improvise. But the truth is that we can begin to improvise from the moment we begin to sing or play an instrument, and Improvisation can be an invaluable tool for Superlearning.

We’ll dedicate Chapter 15: Improvisation to this topic, and equip you with a powerful framework for gradually learning to improvise in a free and creative way that sounds truly your own.

For now, the key concept you need to know is that the assumption above—that you need to study a lot before you can improvise—can actually be flipped on its head.

Rather than “learn to improvise”, we can “improvise to learn”.

We’ve found this to be a staggeringly effective approach for our members at Musical U. Another way we put it is that “creativity is the vehicle, not the destination.”

When Improvisation is seen as an isolated skill to learn, it’s easy to get caught up immediately in worrying about which notes to choose, and how to make sure it sounds “good”.

But think about it instead in the context of Contextual Interference, as we’ve been exploring in this chapter.

When you’re learning a piece of music, try challenging yourself to improvise new and different notes for a measure or two. You don’t need to start from scratch and play something completely different, you can try just varying a note or two, here and there.

This immediately brings a wide range of benefits. For example:

• It helps you better understand which notes “fit” at that moment, and why.
• It reveals hidden insights into the music which can unlock greater expressiveness or fluency.
• It helps your fingers become more comfortable and versatile in the key (assuming you choose to stick to the notes of the key!)
• It helps you make your playing of the measures before and after that section more resilient (because you’re forcing your mental representation of those to stand alone, rather than relying on the measures in between—similar to starting playing a piece from a random measure rather than always start-to-finish, as covered earlier in the chapter).
• It increases how engaged and activated your brain is.

And on top of all that, you also get the chance to improve your improv skills. If you combine this practice technique with what you’ll learn in Chapter 15: Improvisation, you’ll really begin to appreciate the power of Creative Superlearning.

What If?

Improvising an alternative version of a measure or two is one example of a broader creative technique: asking “What If?”

With Deliberate Practice we’ve already got away from the traditional predetermined “practice routine”, and with Contextual Interference we’ve seen the power of playing something other than what’s written on the page.

What if we loosened things up even further?

What if we started each Deliberate Practice cycle with a creative “What if?” question?

What if that proved to be the key to truly exploring a piece of music deeply, while also learning it more swiftly than ever?

Hopefully you see the open-ended power of “what if” questions :)

Here’s a short list of example what-if’s which can help get you started:

• What if I played it as fast as possible?
• What if I slowed it down to a crawl?
• What if I danced while I played it?
• What if I only played every second note?
• What if I played it in another octave (register)?
• What if I transposed it to a minor key?
• What if I played it like a conversation between a dog and a cat?
• What if I sang or hummed it instead of playing?
• What if I kept all the rhythms and changed all the notes? (or vice-versa)
• What if I sang it like Frank Sinatra?
• What if I reharmonised it with minor 7th chords?
• What if I called my auntie and played it for her?

Remember, as with everything suggested in this chapter, you’ll get greatest benefit if you do it as part of an overall Plan-Play-Reflect process of Deliberate Practice. So don’t just blitz through a bunch of what-if’s. Take the time to Reflect after each one, and let that inform the next “What if…?” you ask and explore.

Direct Practice

A running theme in this chapter is to question the “should”s of music practice, and instead empower ourselves to design and direct our practicing. This can be daunting, but the rewards are tremendous.

What about the biggest question of all, though: “What should I practice?”

We already have part of the answer. Instead of a fixed practice “routine”, we should be thinking of a practice session as “I should spend time doing the Deliberate Practice cycle, focusing on what most needs improvement”. But even that statement included a “should” which you might, quite rightly, push back against at this point!

Direct Practice means to practice the thing that you really want to do. Even if that means focusing less time and attention on the things you “should” do. Whether that’s what our instrument teacher told us to work on, or the exercises included in a course we’re following, or even the practice recommendations made in this very chapter. To temporarily set aside what we “should” do, and instead allow ourselves to play what we want to is itself a valuable and powerful practice technique.

Beyond indicating what we should practice, Direct Practice would also have you practicing it in a way that was as close as possible to the actual experience you want.

For example, let’s say that your dream is to play a solo singer-songwriter gig, but you’re spending most of your time practicing instrument technique and cover songs. It might be better to do Direct Practice by focusing on your own songs, and even trying to duplicate the experience of performing in the venue in your practice space. Maybe get just the right stool, set up mics (or even just empty mic stands for now), turn down the lights, make a set list and play through it, complete with banter addressed to a picture of an audience you’ve tacked up on the wall, or even for a cat, friend, or family member.

The concept of Direct Practice doesn’t have to go this far to be highly effective as a guiding principle. Sometimes we hold ourselves back unnecessarily from playing the music we really want to because we think we aren’t “ready”, when in reality we could make great strides by diving in and giving it a good try.

Musical Dreams

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

What are your pie-in-the-sky musical dreams? A certain piece of music? Being a music creator? Jamming with friends? Playing shows? Composing a movie soundtrack?

If you followed the Big Picture Vision exercise in Chapter 2: Mindset, you should have a detailed, vivid and inspiring snapshot of the musical life you yearn for.

In the spirit of our “What If…?” exercise, what if you started trying to be that version of yourself now?

This may be an uncomfortable question for you to face! You may have even found yourself reluctant to write down your true musical dreams. Notice how this indicates the presence of Fixed Mindset, and possibly a complete lack of Direct Practice up until now…

You don’t need to go as far as we did in the singer-songwriter example above to start practicing being the dream version of yourself.

Something we often do inside Next Level coaching (which our clients are initially very suspicious about!) is to take a “dream piece” or a certain skill they hope to be good enough to tackle in a year or two, and instead have them start working on it right away. With the kinds of techniques you’re learning about in this chapter, even without personal one-to-one coaching from an expert, you can make far more progress than you’ve probably thought possible.

What’s interesting about this exercise is that it may genuinely be beyond you to master the entire dream song or piece right now, at least in any reasonable timeframe—but try this out, and you might be surprised how quickly you can get a short section of it under your belt, and how deeply rewarding and exciting that will feel. Don’t underestimate how valuable that is for your musical development!

We Could Be Heroes

Deliberate Practice teaches us to focus on minute details with greater and greater awareness of what we are doing. We may begin to notice the most nuanced micro-movements of our fingers or our breath.

Through increased contextual awareness, we may begin to also notice the shape and movement of our emotions and how they sync up with or hinder our musical expression. We have also begun to be aware of the vast unknown reaches of our brains and what they are capable of accomplishing—even when we are sleeping!

Reinventing our music practice is as much a change in mindset as a change in habits. When we begin to fully adopt a Growth Mindset, and we get a taste of Superlearning success, we might even entertain the possibility that we are so much more powerful than we know…

Building on the “dream song” exercise above, try another what-if: What if you played it like your musical hero?

Just Play

Consistency is important to our musical forward motion. Hopefully you’re starting to see that with the great variety of concepts and practice strategies in this chapter (along with the endless possibilities that open up when you can use these principles creatively and enjoyably in your practice) consistent music practice no longer needs to rely on a superhuman level of “self-discipline”.

As much fun as all this reinvented music practice is though, it’s important to remember that point about letting “practicing music” and “performing music” both blur back towards simply “playing music”, and to regularly give ourselves the opportunity to “just play”.

I love this anecdote from Victor Wooten’s book “The Music Lesson”:

“What instrument do you play?” I asked.

He turned and took a seat in the chair across from me. Laying his skateboard in his lap, he tucked his hair behind his right ear and took a breath before responding. “I play Music, not instruments.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, losing my imagined control of the conversation.

“I am a musician!” he answered. He placed his hand on his chest to emphasize his point before gesturing at me. “You are just a bass player. That means you play the bass guitar. A true musician, like me, plays Music and uses particular instruments as tools to do so. I know that Music is inside me and not inside the instrument. This understanding allows me to use any instrument, or no instrument at all, to play my Music. I am a true musician, and one day, you too shall be.”

Much of what we get hung up on in our practicing has to do with the technique of playing our instruments. The initial thing that attracted us to picking up the instrument in the first place—the music—fades, as our goals become more and more technical than musical.

We’ve all seen musicians who had lots of technical fireworks, but forgettable musicality. While there are others where the technique seems to melt away and we lose ourselves in their musical expression.

The Gateway

Technique is important because it helps us take the music we have inside and produce the sounds we want to hear and share on our instruments. But it’s only the gateway to the music. Too many aspiring musicians get stuck milling about at the gate and never truly make it through into the lush garden of the music itself.

That’s why this chapter so emphasises reflection and consideration of the creative and expressive aspects of music-making—whether we call it “practicing”, “performing”, or just “playing”.

It’s worth regularly dedicating either a whole practice session or part of every practice session to “just playing”.

Draw on the ideas presented here on Expression, Improvise To Learn, What If, Direct Practice, Playing Like Your Hero—or just go completely freeform, following your heart.

Simply play whatever you feel like playing, in the most enjoyable way you can imagine.

You might find you love the compare-and-contrast learning of recording a “normal” version and then your “really playing it!” version. Or you might like to remove even that expectation of yourself, and focus purely on being in-the-moment as you play. Either way, a “Reflect” step afterwards is essential to get the fullest benefit.

This is a perfect case of “fun is not the opposite of learning”. You’ll find that some of your greatest discoveries and breakthroughs may happen during the time spent “just playing”.