Sure, that sounds easy enough. Unfortunately, most people get Step 2 wrong. And god forbid I’ve met people who get Step 1 wrong as well, but that’s a different story.

Listening to music isn’t as easy as you might think. We listen to music while cleaning the house, driving a car, or sitting in the bus (for our more environmentally friendly readers). We often forget that you can just sit down and listen, putting all your concentration and resources to the music.

Learning about music and it’s intricate details is a long process. By regularly listening to real examples of published music, we can learn a lot. So here’s the secret:

Start having listening sessions.

And how does that look, exactly? Simple, sit down with your CD player, iTunes library, tapes or vinyl records — wherever you have most of your music. A great place for discovering music to listen to is MusicIP, they have some great discovery tools.

Now, pick any artist, album and start listening. Today we want to just scratch the surface o what you can learn this way, but try asking yourself the following questions:

• What instruments are prevalent?
• How many “parts” does the song/piece have?
• Are there unidentified sounds I’m missing? Synthesizers are often “overheard”.
• Could I play a part of this song myself?

Start slicing the song up, look at each member of the orchestra or band and his part in the piece. Ask yourself “How did they do that!?” and try to find out what makes these songs “cool”. What is it that I could use myself to be a good musician?

Soon enough, we will explore harmonic and rhythmic aspects, and delve deeper into the anatomy of music. Until then, stay tuned by subscribing today!

Post from: The Good Musician

Let me show you mine:

The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Louis Armstrong
Britney Spears
John Lennon
Mark Knopfler

Pretty strange mix there. I don’t even listen to all of them, and yet they populate some part of my mind.

That’s is the basis of personal branding. You have to give yourself a profile you’re comfortable with and which defines you as a person and as a musician. This doesn’t mean changing who you are, it just means drawing clearer lines around yourself (hence the word “profile”).

Everything you can do for your own brand is already with you, you only have to harness and package it in a smart way.

So Step 1: Who are you?

Where are you from? What are your roots?
Where in the world have you been?
What languages do you know?
What music did you listen to at age 10? Age 15? 20?
Are you religious?
Do you smoke?
What are your hobbies?
What is your political orientation?

You see, it’s not that easy to find out who you are. The questions could go on, and you will realize that you are someone unique and different. Try answering some of those questions mentally, then create a summary of what you think is interesting about you.

What would you write in your CV? What would you want to your Grand-kids to know?

I hope I got your mind churning there, stay tuned for more Personal Branding. Until then, be sure to subscribe or you might miss something!

Post from: The Good Musician