Hi this is Katie Wardrobe and you're listening to the Musicality Podcast. Ever
wondered why some people seem to have a gift for music have you ever wished that
you could play by ear sing in tune improvise and jam you're in the right
place time to turn those wishes into reality
welcome to the Musicality Podcast with your host Christopher Sutton insight
this is Christopher founder or Musical U and welcome to the Musicality
Podcast today I'm talking with Katie wardrobe the founder of Midnight Music a
site I have followed for several years because it is the go-to place to learn
about cool new music to land websites and get insights on how they can be used
in music education Katie runs hands-on workshops she presents regularly at
conferences in Australia and overseas and she offers online training and
support to music teachers all over the world through her music technology
professional development community the midnight music community she is also the
author of studio sessions a keyboard and Technology program for middle school and
she's the host of the weekly music tech teacher podcast one thing I've always
admired is how katie is always able to find interesting and creative ways to
use new music websites and apps for practical teaching purposes I loved
having the chance to pick our brains on how best to use music tech in education
as well as learning a bit more about her own background and what led her to
having such a creatively focused perspective on technology in music
education in this conversation we talked about how growing up as the daughter of
to music teacher parents impacted her early music education and whether she
believes it was nature or nurture that led to her becoming for music teacher
herself we talked about her opinion on whether easy music making technology
reduces or even removed the need for spending time learning
music in the traditional way she gives her top suggestions for free online
tools you can use today to develop your musicality in fun and interesting ways
this conversation is packed with useful ideas for self-taught musicians and
music teachers alike and I know you're gonna come away with at least one but
probably several cool new ideas for using technology in your musicality
training my name is Christopher Sutton and this is the musicality podcast from
musical you welcome to the show Katy thank you for joining us today
thanks for having me it's great to be here so I'd love to start out by hearing
a bit about how you got started in music when did you first start learning and
and what did that look like for you I've had a really very musical background
because both of my parents music tapes so they uh they were actually you know
both of them 73 I think at this stage and they are still teaching even though
they're both in theory retired like I think they just can't give it up but
grew up with lots of music you know all around me all the time and they're both
conductors and accompanist and do a lot of playing and singing and you know
instruments and and whatever but started learning piano formally at the age of
five and then took up other instruments along the way which was really good but
but we really had a lot of singing around you know from a really early age
and me and my brother used to get dragged along to choir rehearsals
actually as kids that my parents are both involved in and we just have to sit
in the corner playing you know with Matchbox cars and Lego and stuff like
while they do that and so that was like a full immersion I think from a really
girly age mmm I know a few families like that where both parents are professional
classical musicians of one kind or another or music teachers and it does
seem like there's a real correlation with the kids going into music in a
serious way - do you think it's a nature or a nurture thing is it because you had
that genetic background that you were inevitably gonna go into music or was it
that full immersion that did it you think I really think it's the emergent
thing I mean a lot of people say to me oh it's you know
I guess that they say oh of course you would have ended up being a musician and
my brother as well and I mean I think that's true to some degree because we
were so surrounded by when we were growing up but I really do think it was
simply our exposure to it I mean if some other kid had come along with us and you
know been around at the same time and and had music all the time I really
think that that they would have ended up in the same way and we were never forced
to go into music it was just but it was just there and it was such a big part of
our lives I think we were always going to both be musicians maybe my brother
and yeah I do think it's I think it's more the nurture thing that's gonna be
which is a nature rather than nature yeah and so you started piano at age
five what did the next five or ten years look like for you for learning music
piano was great I really loved during piano and I felt from it really you know
my piano teacher would play the next few pieces that I could choose from to learn
and and each year I thought wow I'm gonna sound so good when I can play that
one and you know even I was even thinking that it you know aged six or
seven and probably the pieces were so simple but I was so excited because they
they were by really famous people like Mozart and Beethoven and so on and then
after that I did learn cello just for a little bit from it for about a year when
I was in grade five I think that I really did not like my cello teacher so
I gave that up which has been said if I'd kept going it would have been a
really great thing and but so that was you know primary school age and then
later on picked up and I started playing woodwind instruments really so alone
oboe and later on the scene I secretly learnt bassoon for a bit my my oboe
teacher didn't know that because I had access to instruments at the school I
took a bassoon home you know I thought I'll just have a go and and so I got
that cuz you know access through my parents because I were both teaching at
the school that my brother and I were attending and took the bassoon home for
abuse and my oboe teacher said and something something's not required right
your embouchure you know it's not so good and I think he kind of realized I
was secretly playing the bassoon and he said you have to make a choice one or
the other it wasn't so good that's tremendous what
a musical rebellion I think I pursued it secretly and the reason I took it out
was because the only the same player at the school actually left and leaving the
school with no bassoon players and there was two oboe players me and this other
guy and so I thought you know I want to be the only one in the school doing
something so I took the best thing enough at that time so it sounds like it
was quite a traditional formal style of music education was there anything else
that was more formal or instinctive or relaxed for you in terms of exploring
your musicality I think this the singing part of everything was a really great
way to to learn and play and that sort of thing I mean we were singing from an
early age you know that I mentioned that both parents were involved with choirs
and that sort of thing and you know we were brought up with a very classical
music background and totally about music reading really and so we you know me my
brother a good at reading music and sight reading and that sort of thing but
that was that part of it that we started playing you know on our own and I think
it's that you know improvising and having a go at stuff that that became a
really good part of things and yeah the the singing part though I think was was
just really great maybe my brother used to play at home even on the piano and
kind of muck around together a lot and I think that was a massive part of just
exploring musicality we we used to play at the time it was what's that Richard
Marc isn't rich a mark song wherever you go wherever you go whatever you do that
one I will be right here waiting that song I used to play that on the piano
it's very easy to play and my brother used to come along and he would play as
well he wasn't even a pianist but he would play it a semitone
apart from where I was playing it on the piano so he would put his hands kind of
over the top of mine or an octave higher on the other Keys like the white keys
instead of the black keys or vice versa and we used to play it like that and my
mum would be cooking in the kitchen and just screaming at please stop make it
stop just but we did a lot of experimenting where
my brother and I think that was a great part of actually just learning music and
getting better at things because we just explored stuff we just we just had fun
with it and I taught him piano even though he's not he's a drummer and so he
plays piano at the time he was playing the piano with his two first fingers
kind of like drumsticks and he was amazing at doing trills and things he
would do like a like a drum roll which was the trill on the piano crazy stuff
it but that's how we we did a lot of playing and learning at that time and
yeah we just had a lot of fun with that I think mmm that's wonderful I think you
were lucky to have a sibling like that because I think a lot of children who
had the kind of education you had in terms of your official education don't
necessarily find that opportunity to to explore that other side of things yeah
yeah I really think that's a big part of it is just kind of mucking around in it
and having him there all the time to do that I mean by both my parents were
obviously there and you know we made music together one really early memory
actually is of us recording I was born in England so my family's from England
as well and we recorded a like a version of happy birthday for my art in England
and we recorded it in four-part harmony so my brother was only about five at the
time and he sang the melody and I sang the alto packs I could hold the alto
part and mum and dad sang the tenor and bass parts and and we recorded it and
sainted off I really wish I had a copy of that recording I think it went on a
cassette tape at the time overseas and were there any big discoveries for you
as you did that exploration with your brother
were there any kind of insights or breakthroughs that helped you turn into
the musician you are today who I would think of as a very creative and
expressive kind of musician and music teacher yeah I think I always still
consider it's that very stereotypical issue of being brought up a classical
musician and reading music a lot and not improvising as much I actually realised
over time that my brother was heading more into kind of jazz music and he
learnt you know fairly early on you know well
ten years he learnt kind of like scales like the blues scale and and he could
play them quite fluently even on the piano which wasn't his instrument very
annoying and he kind of based a lot of what he was doing on that and moved more
into that improvisation type style which I found a real struggle you know real
struggle I'm pretty good actually at playing from a chord chart I can
improvise in that way I can play from a chord chart quite easily and make up you
know whatever on the piano to go along with the song and that's really good but
just sort of that free improvising like hey do a solo for the next day that sort
of thing freak me out I would like pre organize it would get
out ahead of time but he could really easily do that so I kind of realized
that was probably a good way to go and both of my parents were just not quite
into that jazz improvisation stuff I felt like it was a forbidden type of
music when I was growing up even though they never said that I'm sure they would
have not minded at all if I'd gotten down that road and later on I developed
this love for jazz and I think it was you know we had sort of done it earlier
and being able to improvise and and to kind of get there the gist of that being
you know being fluent in all those different scales and modes would have
actually helped a lot so it's something I'm kind of working a bit more on now
which is a good thing and outside of the kind of instrument technique and lessons
and passing exams that you are presumably doing what what were you able
to learn or teach yourself that let you follow your brother a bit or let you
feel a bit more free and creative and and play by ear or do that side of
things I think just playing at home by yourself and you know just having that
time I used to love it when everybody went out of the house and I had a couple
of hours by myself at home because I think I felt a bit self-conscious
mucking around in front of other people and I wanted the freedom to do that
without anyone around so I spent a lot of time transcribing songs that I like
to hear on the radio so you know I'll show my age here but growing up you know
in the late 70s and 80s you know it was Billy Joel and Elton John and listening
to those people and just kind of thinking I really want to play that
Billy Joel song so I actually listen a lot to the recordings
and and just sit at the piano and work them out and those days you didn't have
ready access to recordings like you do now so you either had to go and buy the
entire album which was expensive or the single but only if they had a single
version of it you know to buy or you do what most of us did which is listen to
the radio with a cassette tape poised to record at any time and as soon as the
song came on you just hit the button and record the song and keep the coffee on
your cassette did a lot of that and just play it along with songs and watch them
out and I think I realized from an early age that because I'd grown up in that
sort of environment I could work out the nights and work out the chords of a song
and that was so much fun I still love doing that even today I've done a lot of
transcribing for people like professional transcribing jobs writing
down you know what I hear and putting it in citation so that other people can
play of it I always found that really fun and I think that's one of the
biggest things that developed my you know musical ear really and yeah just
just mucking around with it and and seeing if I could work out what to do
and how to do it and how that person was doing it on the recording so much fun I
think for a lot of musicians who are trained in the note reading classical
way that kind of transcription challenge can be a bit overwhelming because they
feel like any note is possible was there anything that helped you get
better at it quicker or that kind of made it more approachable for you given
that you had that kind of tree in your background yes tightly I think it's the
realization that you're in a key so let's say you're in G major and so
instantly you kind of most of the time and it's not true for everything for the
entire song all the time but you know if you're in a key like G major you you
kind of go well those are the notes that are the most likely that are going to be
in the song and the melody for instance and also those are the most likely
chords you know if you if you get quite familiar with the the tonic chord of G
major is G major and then you know the five chord is D major and so on you know
especially pop music or jazz you know it's fairly predictable
that the chords are going to be based on those things so I used to trade it like
a puzzle like a process of elimination and if there was a chord I couldn't work
out I would go well in G major I've probably got these main ones at my
disposal and so I do all the the ones I could hear really easily and then I'd
fill in the gaps with that and that realization you know that that
everything's based around that tonic key for the most part and of course there's
so many exceptions to this but you know for a lot of music it really is based
around that time it key it's just so great and I had this realization in my I
think my chains where we decide singing and and playing and so on that that
whole system of using Roman numerals and you know I grew up learning sort of
sulfur as well so you know dough and so and using that system of basing
everything around the tonic just made so much sense to me and I don't understand
the people who use the fixed dough system you know in sulfur where C is
dough no matter what key you're in just doesn't make sense or some system of you
know analyzing music and it it's just so much easier when you know that that
system and it doesn't matter whether using sulfur or numbers it's all the
same you're just labeling it with different
things but to know that the one chord is this and the five chord is this and the
the four chord and so on that just it was like this massive light bulb moment
I think going off and and I felt like that's the way for me that was the way I
could sight seemed quite easily so if people put music in front of me I could
actually fairly easily sing it straight away even if I didn't
know the song because I would relate everything to the tonic and the you know
the the main note of the scale sounds a certain way in that key and then the
five sounds a certain way and so I could sort of pick out the notes that way and
it's not an instant process but over time you know you find you get better
and better at it if you keep practicing so it's a good thing I love hearing you
describe that because I can relate to it so much and for me unfortunately was a
much later discovery and you know these days that musical you that's very much
the approach we use we have moveable dough's sulfur for the relative pitch of
gnomes and we here do them do the Roman numeral
cord system for the one four five and six and it's just it's astonishing to me
even today how much that's missing from the traditional classical music
education and yet you know I still find it hard to believe that I managed to get
through ten or fifteen years of instrument lessons and getting very good
at reading music and passing exams without anyone really getting that
across to me that you know this is why the key matters and this is why these
chords go together and you know if you are going to try and transcribe
something it's not any note as possible you can you know infer an enormous
amount just from the keys bribed yeah III don't understand that I had the same
experience nobody really talked about any of that growing up and there was
it's sort of tiny bits of that information along the way but it was
never connected and no one yeah no one presented it as a thing and just that's
you know that sulfur thing you know growing up I had some koto training and
and to me that's one of their strong points is that they do relate everything
to the key and you find it like I find that certain chords in a key have
qualities about them so there's a certain feeling about the five chord
because it wants to go back to the one you know and and there's a certain
feeling about the four chord or the two chord and and but that's kind of harder
or longer to pick up but the more you listen and the more you think about
those things it's much easier to work out and you know when you're listening
to a song if you're towards the end of a phrase you know you're not on the tonic
yet what's the next likely chord that it's going to be just before the tonic
and it's usually like the five chord and you know once you know those things it
really is a process of elimination you know I find friend transcribing the
other thing I found with transcribing is a lot of the transcribing others to him
because I was singing I really I was in an a cappella group or two or three and
there were hardly any Arrangements for more popular songs at the time you just
could not buy them so I started doing them myself and transcribing recordings
of acapella groups that I found who were doing more popular music and and so when
transcribing you know at least to the person singing the top part and
the middle part and the bottom part it's often in four or five parts and so you
kind of end up picking out each line as you go and listening through to that one
line but I found that even if there was a section where I couldn't really work
out what the chord was or what the not all of the notes were at that time I
would go well I can definitely hear this note in the top and I can definitely
hear this note in the bass and once you've got two notes it's much easier to
fill in the gaps and go well the other two notes can only be this we saw this
and it's that process of elimination that that's really that was a really
good realization from that point on that is one of my favorite activities in the
world is listening to a cappella music and just trying to really tune into the
different voices I think it's a phenomenal exercise for waking up your
ears and developing your appreciation of that kind of thing you know what is the
progression what types of chords are being used and where is the melody at
any given time yeah absolutely and I think you know you and I've talked about
this in the past that you know listening and listening with the purpose is always
a really really good thing and just picking out different parts I still do
it on the radio now you know driving with my kids and kids are aged 11 and 12
and even they do it too you know my my eldest son I look over at hue Monday and
he's miming some piano part which I hadn't even really picked up consciously
myself you know in some song that we were listening to and I was like oh yeah
I can hear that - yes you know and he obviously he's actively listening to
certain parts - and I just think that's a great exercise and sometimes if I'm
hearing the same song a lot you know you get bored with the same songs if you are
forced to listen to something over and over yeah I do I picked out okay let's
do the guitar part this time or let's try and hone in on the bass part and if
I focus I always think of it as and kind of like focusing like a camera lens
focusing my my ears on a certain thing and yeah becomes much easier over time
that has been my saving grace lately my daughter is about to and is very much in
the mode of needing the same song again and again and there's only so many times
you can hear that theme - Princess Sophia before you
needing something else to do do you do you do what I do which is seeing how
many parts and things I make up how many parts to go with the melody definitely a
good option so I'd love to unpack that a little bit because I think what you
touched on there is one of these things that if you see a musician do it or you
hear them talk about you know can you hear that amazing bass riff or you know
when they mentioned something you were oblivious to it's easy to say oh they
just have amazing ears they're a better musician than me but clearly this was
something you've worked on and that you actively bother to do can you tell me
more about that and and what someone listening can think about if they're
intrigued to kind of dig into music with their hearing this way yeah and I do
think it's a learnt thing I think it's and I think for me it's often
remembering to do it you know you can you can just like all day long you'll
hear different music you know when you're walking around and driving and
you know with the friend and in the shopping center of it you know you can
really you can consciously remember to try and listen in a different way just
with active ears or or whatever you want to term it I actually had my brother was
seeing a girl for a while and she was around me and my dad and my brother a
lot and she said to us at one point I feel
like I'm missing out cuz you guys seem to listen and hear music in such a
different way to me and we all said no no no we're not you're not missing out
at all we just happen to listen to it in a different way to use it you know - the
way you do so so we started saying to her you know can you hear that little
training sound at this point and that's the guitar and and so she started to
pick out different parts as well but that that for me is you know I think
that one of the best things altogether and just just picking out consciously
picking out apart and you can sort of say okay there's a cowboy part in this
in this song and just to have a listen to that and and follow it all the way
through and sometimes you'll lose it sometimes I may not even be playing
through the whole song you're like where did it go but I think just listening to
it and and doing that as a regular thing and you know I make a point in the rap
and the car trips and that sort of I don't even drive that much I keep
bringing car trips up but it's the time where I
have music on in this we have a certain amount of songs between here and the
boys school where I drop them off and we know that the truth has been bad the
traffic's busy if we get through five songs instead of four we're like okay
it's a bad day that we go to and we each take turns in choosing songs which is
nice Eminem's featuring heavily for my elder
son so there's not a lot of musical musical interest in that that the lyrics
are amazing and it's all about the lyrics and the rap obviously that the
musical part you know that's what I hone in on and actually this is an aside but
actually remember a few weeks ago saying to my son man this songs so repetitive
and he just looked at me in horror and said how could you say that and I
realized that it's because of the way I was listening to it it was me listening
to the musical back backing which was completely repetitive it's the same
eight bars for three and a half minutes and you know for him he was listening to
the lyrics and the wrath and I thought that's that's what his ears are tuned to
at this point in time and and he loves you know the the expressiveness of the
lyrics and I thought yeah really made to take a step back and you know look at
myself and actually actually do that where I listen to something different in
each song so so yeah I'd like to do that I like to pick out chord sequences in
song so I'll listen and try and say the chord names along with the song as I'm
listening so this is called one check out five check out for two chord five
chord one and so on as I'm listening and I think that's really good practice if
you want to get into transcribing things or working out what the baseline is for
a song or working out what the chords are a guitarist and yeah it's such a
great thing to do I think there have been some really interesting brain
studies in the last decade where they use MRI and fMRI machines to try and
figure out do musicians hear music differently and one of the major
findings has been yes you know if you have some musical training you hear
music essentially with the left side of your brain the analytical side where
your average layperson in the street it wakes up the right side of their brain
and they're just appreciating it as a casual listener and when I heard that it
made so much sense because I'd spent some time doing what
you just described you know actively analyzing and you know that makes it
sound very boring and dry it's not at all it's kind of like an amazing
adventure playground that you get to explore but it is that part of the brain
that's trying to figure things out and trying to pay attention and and listen
for detail and I think it you don't need that much musical training to wake up
your brain in that way no I know I love those examples you give in the car of
you know you don't need an instrument you don't need a computer or a tablet
you can just listen and give yourself those little challenges or ideas for
what you could listen for next yeah you found useful any other activities you
tend to do when you're when you're just trying to listen actively I think even
just even practicing like often when when I say you know to pouch other
people I I listen and pick out chord sequences in song that sounds
overwhelming and it would be if you were just starting out and and even just
peaking out and if you have an instrument handy you know so maybe not
while you're driving in the car if you have an instrument handy or even your
phone with an app that can help you identify a specific time and peach just
even identifying what the the tonic the key of the song is that can just be a
really good exercise I know lots of people struggle with that when they
start out and I've seen lots of discussions on on you know like online
forums and comments on YouTube videos and people saying how do you work out
that you know what key the song is in and and then someone you know the person
who's made the videos they're trying to explain it and and I mean there's you
know different approaches but you can always sort of think what's what's the
the the notes that you're drawing back to you all the time or what what does it
end on or start on that's often a good clue it's not always that you know every
time but that's a good place to start and that was one of the things that was
included in the exam system that I did growing up I did for Australia we have
the AMA be so Australian music examinations forward and a lot of us do
those exams over time and they have a little ear training section which is
like an add-on at the end of your exam after you've played your piece
you'll have to do some air training exercises with the examiner they'll test
you on a few things and a lot of teachers don't emphasize that part of
the learning for the student who's going to take the exam which i think is a big
issue at times because a lot of students go into the exam and then freeze at that
parks I haven't had that practice all along but one of the things is you know
in the early days they play a little piano thing it might be just like four
bars and they stop just before the last night and then you have to sing the very
final note which is usually that's the key of the song the tonic night and even
just doing that is a really good exercise when you're starting out then
yep saying that the chords out loud in the car is a good thing if you can the
hard thing I guess is you can't really check it while you're driving but anyway
that's lumping and just choosing a little short rhythm I think one of the
things I found growing up with transcribing is people can often pick
out pitches more easily or more quickly they pick up that part of the process
more quickly than the rhythm and I think the rhythm the rhythm to me is like I
love the rhythmic aspect of transcribing and writing down you know what I'm
hearing and that's always the thing I do first
so and another know a lot of people teach this you know if you if you want
to notate something you just write the rhythm down first the pictures are kind
of easier to fill in the gaps afterwards and so I will often pick out just a
little rhythm for practice and write that down and and then just compare it
to the original song and if you not able to kind of work out and compare the two
and work out whether you what you've done is accurate if you can put it into
a notation program that's a really good way of what I call proof listening
someone else came up with that term it's like a regional out of line but if you
put it into a notation program and play it back the the notation program you can
really easily at that point say oh yeah that sounds the same as the rhythm I
wanted to transcribe or that sounds completely different I'll I've got it
utterly wrong it's like it's a really great way to just do that quick
comparison so I often do it you know just one
or two hours of music and if you do that fairly regularly it's how you just get
yeah just get much more into it very cool so we've hit on there what is
I think unquestionably your main expertise you you host the music tech
teacher podcast and at midnight music you very much specialize in how to
leverage technology to make teaching and learning music easier and more fun and
and really make the most of it and it's a slightly controversial topic I think
and maybe that comes from this traditional system that a lot of
teachers are resistant to change or apprehensive about introducing these new
tools but to me at the heart of it there's a really big question of whether
technology is enabling better music learning or actually removing the need
for music learning if we take something like that example of notating a rhythm
if there are apps that make it easy to figure that out or to you know auto
generate a rhythm for you is there still a need to learn the skill
of doing it yourself where do you stand on that yeah I totally think they still
need to do it yourself I think that there's there's a couple of different
things there's you know when using something like GarageBand which has a
loop library and and so on you know people are like well why would
you bother learning how to compose you can just drag a whole stack of loops in
and and use that and you can but if you've ever done it you can make
something that sounds really really bad very easily and you still need to know
about a good form you know how to how to setup a good song good form you still
need to know how harmonies work with one another because you can pick loops in
the loop library which do not match at all and if you've ever done this with a
group of students you know particularly say let's say you know teenagers they
will drag in as much as possible at all times and therefore it's good to let
them do that because then they listen and they go this sounds really crap and
it does not sound like the top 40 song that I really wanted it to they and then
they have to learn that a good song does not have six strum parts you know a good
song probably just has one drum part and maybe some other
percussion on the other track but really it's very limited and using lots of
different chords in one song is probably not going to make it sound good using a
limited number is going to make it sound better and how the melody flows and
stuff so I think you really do need to do that and the one thing that people
say to me over and over again and this is you know specifically to do with ear
training is along the lines of that transcribing thing so you know there's
software now where in theory you can open up a recording a waveform or of an
mp3 and into some software and that it will churn out notation for you now
there's a number of software companies that do this and it is getting better
over time but it still does not give you this amazing results you know the
technology is just not there particularly if you're wanting to
transcribe multiple tracks multiple parts you know it generally speaking
it's it's like it can do sometimes a single melody a single line so people
have dreams I often get asked you know is there technology that will allow me
to bring in you know name the top 40 song of the moment and it will spit out
parts for me to give to my band members to play and the answer is no it won't
and if it does they're probably going to be incorrect and so you're going to need
to go through with your good ear training skills and go through and
correct things anyway and you know that I just think there's no substitute for
for those ear training skills and the compositional kind of skills as well so
using the the software I mean there are I think there are some aspects of
software which help help you and maybe take away the need for a teacher at all
times I mean I I love ear training software where you need to be drilled
you know it's all about practice and doing it frequently so you need to be
drilled on certain things so reeds make examples you know for one thing you
might need to listen to many really key examples and notate them or tap along
with them or keep the beach with a rhythm or something like that
to have someone sitting there with you for three hours you know a week it would
be nice but you're not going to always get to do that so having software that
can do that for you it's brilliant I mean it's great so in that way the
teacher is made a little bit redundant because the software can drill for you
all of those exercises that but that's a good that's a good use of the software
I'm sure most teachers would be happy to be back made redundant in that instance
and not have to play examples all day for people I've loved that over time the
the ability for for anyone students adults Chi to do ear training on the go
you know with a like with the technology today you can on your iPad or your phone
or your laptop have software that will allow you to practice those things it's
amazing it's so great I had a teacher friend who before the days of apps of of
iPhones and then I've had kids that she was teaching had iPods at the time so
they had something that they could listen to while they were on the train
or the bus and she made for them she recorded a whole stack of of year
training exercise so intervals for instance and she in the exercise she
would I think play the interval a couple of times and then leave a gap on the
recording for them to guess what it was and then she would say the name of it so
they could compare their answer and she said that the improvement in their
grades that that in that year the first year she did it was amazing like it just
it really increased their their success levels and it was because they could do
it anytime they could sit on the train on the way to school and do it or on the
way home and yeah and she said it was just such a better use of their time and
and then after that of course apps came along which just do all that for you
which is great and so the teacher doesn't have to set up their own
recordings anymore such a great a great thing that's come along that's a really
cool example I think to me you can just about make the case that maybe in the
future people won't need to learn to play an instrument and there are
increasing options for replacing that instrument skill but I'm a hundred
percent in agreement that the one part you're always going to need is your ear
and your ability to evaluate is this good or bad is the thing I've just
created what I wanted to create - even you know when we were talking
about active listening there to even conjure up in your mind what it is
you're trying to create requires a certain level of analysis and
understanding of music that you can then bring out through an instrument or
through a tool or through software whatever it may be
yeah absolutely I think also that just that knowledge of you know even if
you're trying to write songs knowing what the rules are in advert of commas
which you can then break down the track but if you learn those kind of rules in
the first place it it just makes your process a lot easier and then you can be
much more creative with it afterwards and yeah I think that's that's a really
good way you know again students you know when they are in software they'll
do that thing where they use lots of cords and lots of thing and often that's
a little bit too much and when you take a few things out it becomes better but
you need to kind of know why why you're doing that or how to do that and if
you've learnt that background of chord progressions and you know useful rhythms
even with rhythms things like filling in the gaps when you're creating a rhythm
yourself like often use those you know like an online sequencer which allows
you to build up a drum pattern for instance and you'll have a track for the
bass drum like each drum one for the snare and one for the hi-hat and if you
know that you know the kick drum is on one and you put the snare on two and
four pretty much then you can go crazy after that and and add stuff in but not
too crazy so at that point I often feel in the gap so I look at if you're using
one of those step sequences which has little boxes that you turn sounds on and
off in which are just fabulous I often go and fill in the gaps and that makes
and a really good sounding rhythm without you needing to know whether it's
crotchets or quavers that you're playing and even what beat things are on but if
you put a couple of things in place and then after that filling the gaps and you
know try and make it sound a little bit interesting you can do that quite easily
and come up with something cool and make your beats and all that sort of stuff
I've had to adjust my terminology over the years you know I used to like know a
beach is not the entire rhythmic pattern it's just the
you should but now I've come to okay the beat it's now like okay that's the whole
reef mcpadden you know the terminology based it's a ventilator guy i speaking
to on my own podcast Richard McCready who's a teacher in the States and we
were comparing you know we sounded like old people like we're comparing terms
that we've had to like let go over time because they've become commonplace a
capella is another one you know when you're talking about remix stems you
know if you want to get separate tracks for a song and then you're going to put
them together in your own way to create a remix and lots of people do these DJ's
and stuff and if you are ever looking for the unaccompanied vocal track it's
just the pure vocals on its own it started off being called the acapella as
in the unaccompanied vocal and then it got shortened to pills and so if you go
to a some websites and you click on the menu which is pills that's the way
you're going to find unaccompanied vocal tracks let it go that's a perfect
example I I do of them being referred to as the a cappella and for a track but
I'd not come across that vocabulary they say next oh you gotta say so next
website yeah it's a remix stems on there and it spills their menu that's a
perfect example of what I've always admired so much about midnight music is
you are always at the cutting edge and you are always totally tuned in to what
the latest tools are and what the latest technology opportunities are I'd love if
you could just share a few examples of what you would recommend our listeners
check out in terms of you know taking advantage of online tools to develop
their own musicality yeah it's funny because you know lots of people say oh
it changes so often you know all the time and how do you keep up with it and
it doesn't and I actually don't I don't make a massive effort to seek out new
information it kind of comes to me because that you know I mean Facebook
groups or whatever it is and often I'm not the person breaking the news and I
just wait for it to come someone will post something at some time and then I I
but I do make a note of it mentally and go right I've got to look that up or
check it out and and that sort of thing but but over the years I found really a
lot of the things that I use and that I recommend other people use have not
changed much it's the same websites or the same
software and yes they get updated over time but I still go back to the same
ones that I've been using for eight years now and they are still around a
few new things have come on board in that time and things that I love just
often really simple so there's one good groove pizza there's a the Department of
you know music department education department at NYU have some fantastic
things that they're doing and they're building free online music tools for
particularly for teachers and students to use but they're great for everyone so
one of theirs is called groove pizza and it's one of these online drum sequencer
tools and it doesn't test you on anything but it's a great place for you
to build up a drum pattern and I love this for just either exploring rhythm
yourself it's a great way to do it so you could do that thing where you build
up a pattern with a kick drum and a snare drum and it's only got three parts
so you're limited which is good but I love to suggest to people use that as
your accompaniment for when you're playing scales you know just put a
really basic drum pattern on and instead of playing playing scales or modes along
to a metronome which is to talk all the time you can have some funky rhythm
going and so I often suggest that and you can make it the tempo really slow
and then you know increase it over time and you can even export those little
drum patterns from that website you get an mp3 and wav file and therefore you
can save them somewhere you could save them on your laptop or put them onto
your device and take them with you there's lots of apps that will do that
too that just really really simple things there's a there's a really simple
and it's it's kind of almost silly there's a simple website you can go to
it's called got rhythm I think it's part of them like a concert booking venue
website I think they just made this little tool essentially it gives you
something rhythmic to tap your spacebar along to and at some point the backing
drops out so there's nothing at all and you need to keep the same beach going
and then it brings in the backing again and it says okay you can stop now
and you see was score on how accurate your
beat keeping was in the time that you know that it wasn't there for you to
play along with and that's kind of cool you instantly get a score like seven
hundred and thirty eight and and so straight away you just want to get a
better score so you go back and you do it again and it's it's a quick thing to
do but just to practice keeping a steady beat even when you're not playing along
to a metronome or looking at a conductor that's a really great thing to do
there's a few other tools I mean there's a number of year training tools out
there there's I mean so many nowadays and I really find the free ones aren't
the best option you know you I find it that the ones which you pay a little bit
of money for you're going to get much better results from those because
there's so much more flexibility and you can pick and choose and set up your own
exercises and customize them a lot so I really love aralia software fantastic
for ear training and the online Vita SATA music I never say their name quite
right but Seeger musics great to use it online log in and again they've got some
for free but then you can pay for extra and you know you're gonna get a better
experience you know keeping track of what you do and and that sort of thing
that stuff like that and not naming even there's lots of note naming apps out
there I've been a big fan of one called Star
Wars over the years it's a great one for for kids and adults as well it's got
this Star Wars space theme going on and a note flies in across the stave and you
have to identify it before it reaches the stay the the treble clef or the bass
clef or tenor clef and if you do identify it correctly it gets shot by
your spaceship so it's kind of cool and they even have a playing version like a
one where you play your instrument to identify the note so the first one that
I mentioned you press a key on your keyboard to say this is an A or an F but
the second one you can play your instrument and it picks up your
instruments through the microphone of your device and if you play a G and it's
a G the spaceship shoots the G for you so that's really good yeah there's a few
others as well but those are you know amongst the ones that I keep going back
to over time and they're around you know still around fantastic those
are really fun suggestions and we'll put links to all of those in the show notes
that was just a little taste though of the full range of things you recommend
and provide tutorials for on midnight music your website I believe you have an
ultimate free music tech resources guide yeah lots of those ones that I've just
mentioned are in there too so that you know I work with teachers most of the
time so the focus what I do is professional development for teachers in
using technology with students and and so I was collecting kind of free
websites and things over time and then I thought gee I've got quite a lot I might
put them into some kind of PDF and and so I did that and then the PDFs grow and
I think I did the first one back in 2012 or 11 or something and so pretty much
every year I've just updated it and a few things have died off for free
websites tend to die off more readily than you know apps where people are
putting money into investing and developing them properly not properly
but you know continually investing in them that the free ones a lot of the
free ones like I said around they've been around since those very early days
and they are still in that guide and I'll add new things along as they come
to you know across my laptop desk and just add them units year and remove
anything that's died off and but that's grown quite a lot now so yeah so useful
for any one teacher or not teacher it's a really good good sort of list of
things that you can use there which are all free awesome and I know we do have a
lot of teachers in our audience who I imagine feeling both inspired and maybe
even a little intimidated listening to this conversation and realizing all of
the opportunity that's out there to leverage technology but you know aside
from that list of resources not necessarily knowing where to start or
how to incorporate this stuff into their teaching you have an online community to
help people just like that the midnight music community can you tell us about
what's going on in there yeah and I think that's you mentioned knowing what
to do with it that's often the biggest question so you know lots of people so
teachers that I deal with say they are off
have thrust upon them a device that they're using with their students so you
know hey teacher we're getting iPads next year and and they're kind of like
okay and in my early days of doing these you know I started off really running
workshops for people and doing sort of software training and that sort of thing
it became very apparent that it was the not how to use the software it was more
about what to do with it with the students that there was the bigger
question you know you can pretty easily find software it straight up software
tutorials for anything online and YouTube and so on or read the manual if
anyone actually reads the manual apart from me
I do actually really a lot of time but it was more about yeah I can work at how
to use the software but what is the idea you know that I'm going to do with the
kids and how to do it in the classroom and make it meaningful and useful and
you you don't want to shoehorn technology in for the sake of it you
want to make it just a natural progression or my theory is to only use
it if it's actually helping what you're teaching and if it's not don't use it
like I just don't use it at all if it's better for you to play and seeing to
demonstrate that the concept that you want the kids to learn then do that
instead but often I find you can you can pretty much you know often weave it in
naturally into to what you're teaching and so my theory is always you know the
singing and the playing usually comes first but then you might want the kids
to become more conscious about the clapping game that you've just done with
them and therefore they might kind of work out will where do the beats fall
and where does the rhythm fall in a bar and so you might take that rhythm and
get them to sort of consciously work it out and this is where that conscious
listening comes in and then they might transfer that into that group it's a
online drum sequencing tool that I've you know mentioned earlier so I do this
actually exercise in one of my workshops we do the boom snap clap clapping game
which is a simple clapping game with just three sounds in it and then we work
out okay so we're how many sounds are there and where do they fall and in
which order and then we go to groove feet so and we recreate the boom snap
clap rhythm in there and that's quite nice and easy to do and then you know
the next progression to compose something to go with that so
a melody or perhaps to write a rap that goes over the top of the the backing
that you've just created so I love this idea of weaving things in naturally as
you go and I think when I started there was a lot of ostriches and teachers who
were like oh sure if I just ignore this technology thing it will go away and in
the early days when I was writing workshops there was access to technology
but it wasn't it wasn't a massive part of the curriculum but now it's man it's
mandated part of the curriculum you know teachers actually kind of have to
include it so so they're often looking for ways to do that and I've seen a big
shift in the attitude towards technology I think a lot of people have realized
that yes it actually can help and it can enhance what you do and there are some
great things you can do with technology that you cannot do without it and so you
know in that way it's a really good thing but like I said if you if it's not
working and it's not going to help then don't use but yeah so my own like
community is essentially the the thing I set up I started off running workshops
and then progressed into online courses at one point and I ended up with a whole
stack of different online courses and in the end I thought this is really really
hard because my audience is so sweet between Australia and the states and you
know other places in Europe to run an online course at a specific time that
works for everyone just it wasn't you know an easy thing to do and our school
years are also at opposite ends so here in Australia it's towards the end of our
school year we're about to hit summer we're finishing up for the year and in
the States for instance you know kind of halfway through their school year so to
run workshops or online courses that would work for everyone just it wasn't
it was a hard thing so I ended up having this online community and putting
everything in there you can access it at any time and it's such a better setup
for me and and everybody else as well and and so that's what we have we do we
talk about lesson plan ideas and there are software tutorials in there too but
it's always the focus is what's what's the thing you're teaching is that
songwriting or the blues or you know some reason make sort of thing are you
teaching how to do drum patterns and so on and so that's the big
yes and it's lots of fun amazing I think that's such a valuable problem to be
solving I'm really glad that you are out there helping music teachers in this way
because I feel their pain I know how frustrating it can be when they as you
say again iPad thrust on them or they can just see how cool it could be to
leverage technology but without someone to kind of walk them through some
examples and explain as you just did you know it can be a part of your syllabus
part of your lesson plan not the be-all end-all suddenly switch to technology I
think that's such a wonderful thing to be doing yeah and it's great I mean you
see things often I'm inspired by things I see online so and live looping is like
this passionate area I don't get time to do it very much but you know it's the
thing where you'll see like ed sheeran does this a lot he's I think he's latest
true you know show that he's taking around the world is it's basically just
him on stage and he can do that and have a full sounding backing behind it
because he's using a live looping pedal and he you know he'll play a little
guitar riff and that's recorded and plays back over and over and over and
then he'll layer on another part on top of that and he'll layer another part on
and that something something might be a rhythmic part and he builds up this
amazing backing just him onstage and lots of people are doing this live
looping theme and then he can sing the song turn parts on and off as needed
during the song and be his own one-man band and and I love this is and I've had
app which allows you to do this really easily instead of spending three or four
hundred dollars on a guitar looping pedal which is great there's an app
called loopy which I love and allows you to do this and it's been featured on the
Jimmy Fallon Late Show quite a lot so it's seeing things like that in action I
kind of like oh kids would love to do that I'm sure and so therefore I end up
creating a you know video tutorial for the teachers on how they could
incorporate these with students at all levels and on a really basic level but
then but the kids that are really into it can take it a lot further as well and
yes I'm offered inspire at multi-tracking our capella videos on
YouTube as well often get asked how do I how would I do that with my kids you
know those ones where you're watching and you can see the same person singing
eight different parts on nine on the screen and you can see them in
different boxes in the video and you know doing that sort of thing that
that's gonna be one of my upcoming tutorials is how you could do this with
students you know on a simple level it's not that easier to do that one but you
could do it I'm sure very cool well I love the insights you've shared today
both the musician in the car waking up their ears listening along to
the music teacher who is trying to do very specific technology oriented tasks
and I would highly recommend whether you're listening to this as a musician a
self-taught musician maybe or you're a music teacher definitely head to
Midnight music calm day you where you will find all the Katy publishers as
well as information on that community we mentioned thank you so much Katie for
joining us today thanks for having me great to talk to you Christopher unlock
your full musicality with musical you membership that was really cool
I have such respect for the way Katie took the formal training she started
with and then had the drive and dedication to explore some more creative
avenues and develop her musicality and now she's one of the main thought
leaders when it comes to using technology in creative and effective
ways for music learning Katie had an early start in music because both her
parents were in fact music teachers she started piano at age five and learned
several other instruments in her school days including a sneaky rebellious
project to teach herself the bassoon growing up with two music teacher
parents it was perhaps particularly likely that Katie would herself go into
music but in her opinion it was more nurture than nature being immersed into
the world of music with what gave her the training and ability to become a
musician and a music teacher herself more than it was any innate talent
although her music training was in the formal classical tradition she started
to explore the more experimental and creative side of music making and there
it helped her to have a brother who was in the same boat and happy to spend time
just trying stuff out I'm reminded of our preview
interview with dr. melody Payne where she talked about having a friend early
on in her music learning who was great at jamming and improvising and just
spending time together and experimenting and playing around with stuff went a
long way to helping her develop a more flexible musical ear
Katie enjoyed trying to transcribe songs from the radio like Billy Joel or Elton
John which is quite an advanced skill from young musician what stopped at
being overwhelming or too difficult for her was the insight that generally
speaking everything is based around the key the notes are probably from the
scale and the chord progression is probably going to draw from the keys
chords learning to think in relative terms interpreting notes in terms of the
tonic note and thinking about chords with the Roman numeral numbering system
really helped her to sight sing and transcribe music another big part of how
she developed her musicality was active listening learning to pick apart
music by ear this came naturally from her transcription practice trying to
hear the different voices present if you haven't already had encourage you to
check out our past episodes on active listening and on transcribing music
Katie gave several great examples of how you can usefully start listening to
music rather than just hearing it you can pick a particular instrument like
the bass keyboard or vocals and try to follow that through the track you can
try and hear and then sing back the tonic note if you've done some ear
training on recognizing chords then you can try and name the chords in the
progression by their number you can also take a short section and try to figure
out how you'd notate a rhythm being used for some of these you'd want to have an
instrument or notation software or a simple mobile app handy to check your
answers but other ones you can do purely with your ears and your brain Katie's
real specialty is music technology for education and I was really glad to have
the chance to ask her to share some of the tools she likes and which can be
used for musicality training Katie mentioned groove pizza a fun rhythm
sequencer that you can use to experiment with different rhythms
and get a feel for how to put rhythms together yourself she also mentioned the
got rhythm test for how well you can keep a beat she recommended Vita music
trainer and check out episode 8 of this podcast for my interview with theta
founder Steve Myers another suggestion was Star Wars which gives you practice
naming or even playing notes from traditional staff notation we'll have
links to all of those in the show notes for this episode
katie is really at the forefront of how to best use technology to aid music
learning and I love how she doesn't just recommend new tools or make suggestions
of what to use she actually lays out how to use those tools and how they can fit
into existing lesson plans and syllabus in a coherent and useful way she has a
lot of terrific resources available at midnight music calm door a you booth for
individual musicians and particularly for music teachers who want to better
understand how to leverage new technology in their teaching and of
course she has the midnight music community that we mentioned earlier
where she provides full training and support for teachers in this area I hope
you enjoyed hearing from Katie both about how she developed her own
musicality without relying on technology and also how she now uses and teaches
the technology that can be most fun and effective for accelerating your music
learning definitely go check out the midnight music website and try one or
more of the tools mentioned in this conversation we'll have links to all of
those in the show notes at musicality podcast calm thanks for listening to
this episode stay tuned for our next one where we'll be talking about grid
notation for rhythm as featured in groove pizza and another fun of music
making tools what is grid notation and why might it
be useful for your musicality to learn it find out in the next episode thank
you for listening to the musicality podcast
this episode has ended but your musical journey continues head over to
musicality podcast calm where you will find the links and resources mentioned
in this episode as well as bonus content exclusive for podcast
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