How To Crush Complexity: Part 3/3

Hello, and welcome back to part three of our training on How to Crush Complexity - So That Music Comes Easily.

Huge thanks to all of you who have been watching these videos! We’ve had several hundred watching right away as each is released, and now well over a hundred of you have introduced yourself and gotten involved in the comments on each video,

It’s been fantastic to hear about your musical lives and how this stuff is resonating with you.

So big thanks for getting involved there and making this so much fun

---

In the first part of this training we talked about general complexity in your musical life and the overwhelm it can cause, and I shared the techniques that can let you quickly squash that overwhelm so that you can focus in on what really matters and make steady progress.

And if you need to go over any of the details and remind yourself there, remember I have given you a full transcript of both videos as well as a helpful handout you can download for more information.

---

Before we go on I’d also like to remind you of something I said at the start of the last session. That what we’re covering here isn’t just “one more thing” to learn in your musical life. This is the one thing - which can make everything else easier or unnecessary.

---

So last time we were talking about how mental models are what makes the difference between the average struggling music learner and the “natural” or “talented” musicians for whom it all comes easy.

---

How there’s been a step missing in how you’ve built up your mental models of music and in fact it’s the first step: the foundation.

---

Put that foundation in place through some new and more suitable mental models - and everything else will flow much more easily. I introduced you to a couple of examples, solfa for pitch and rhythm syllables for rhythm, and we looked at how they transform the way you hear and understand music, so that skills like playing by ear, transcribing, improvising, sight singing and more all become like second nature to you.

In the comments on the last video Lawrence compared it to the “Search for the Lost Chord”. And Kathryn described it as being the equivalent of physicists searching for the one “Theory of Everything”. I loved both of those comparisons.

---

But we were left with a challenge: once you know the new concepts, how do you actually learn the skills that go along with these mental models, and how do you start applying them to real musical tasks?

That’s what we’ll be covering today.

---

So first things first: you could just take away this idea of "the right mental models" - and find specific tools like solfa or rhythm syllables that are a better fit for the thing you’re trying to do.

For example:

• I want to play melodies by ear

→ Therefore I will learn solfa

→ Lots of solfa exercises

→ Now I can recognise pitches by ear

→ Now I can play melodies by ear

• (kind of)

So this kind of works. You can tackle each skill and learn each isolated mental model and treat it all in the traditional ear training way: exercises and drills to learn core skills, then go out and try using those core skills to do the thing you really care about.

The trouble is - although our new and better mental models will fix some issues, they probably don’t fix them all.

For example, solfa is superb for nailing that problem of “Key” - but in itself it doesn’t immediately solve the problems of Arrangement, Length or Speed. It helps, but you can still find yourself struggling with those if you learn solfa in this very drill-based isolated way.

---

And what’s worse is that there are probably a few different skills you want - and a range of new mental models you’ll need.

So once you go down this path a few times, you end up with a bit of a mess.

---

A hodge-podge of tools and techniques that sort of fit together to do some things you want to.

And to be honest, that’s looking a lot like the jumbled mind we started out with, right? Where everything feels like hard work and each task still seems a bit too complex. It all seems a bit overwhelming.

---

This definitely doesn’t look like the “musical mind” that we imagine the natural musicians must have.

So how can we build an all-in-one “musical mind” that can handle everything in a clear and coherent way?

---

How can we build the connections between notes you we:

- Hear

- Imagine

- Read

- Write

- Play

We’re talking about: musical literacy and musical instinct/intuition

---

Well, if we lay out a bunch of these skills we’ve been talking about:

Playing notes by ear

Playing chords by ear

Understanding Rhythm

Improvising

Transcribing

Composing

Sight-Singing

What do they all have in common?

What’s in the middle of all this?

The answer, simply enough, is: music.

---

What if instead of studying each of these in a scientific kind of a way, with drills and exercises - we studied them all in a musical kind of way? With songs and musical examples?

What if we started our learning from a song - and then explored how each of these things applies, and how to understand each aspect of the song in our mind?

This kind of “song-based learning” sounds pretty cool, right?

---

Well, there’s a catch. We talked already about the problem of using the music we love.

If we just pick a song we like and try this - we’re going to be swamped almost immediately by Key, Arrangement, Length, Speed, and a bunch of other things that put us out of our depth in one or more of the things we’re trying to study.

So what can we do instead?

---

We need a set of simple songs. Songs that are like the music we love. But simpler - in each of the ways we need to simplify to make acquiring our new mental models smooth and easy.

We need a big library of songs of various kinds and complexities that we could use to build our step-by-step training.

In fact, we all have access to just such a library.

It’s called folk music.

Now if you’re like me, “Folk” has always just been a genre. To me it conjures up wonderful-sounding Irish and Scottish music with twangey accents and traditional instruments and moving lyrics.

But fundamentally “folk music” just means “the music that society has ingrained in it”. There’s Irish and Scottish folk music that you’d find in the “folk” section of a UK music shop (if those still existed). But there’s a huge catalog of American folk music, and folk music from every country, in fact.

What’s great is that these are typically really excellent music. Not necessarily complicated, in fact some are incredibly simple, which is ideal for our learning. But they stuck in society’s memory because they were musically effective - they cut right to the core of what matters in music. Melodically, rhythmically, harmonically, even with their lyrical content. So folk music is kind of the heart of all the other genres, and that makes it an amazing choice if we’re building ourselves a new foundation.

---

A quick side note at this point, because I know that as soon as I said “song” a minute ago rather than “piece” or “track” some of you instinctively lit up - because you’re a singer. And some of you might have shut down, thinking “I don’t sing”.

I won’t go deep on this. But I did just want to mention: it’s “songs” because whether you consider yourself “a singer” or not, your voice is the #1 most effective tool for training your ears and internalising new mental models of music.

It gets you away from all the instrument specifics and lets you express, develop and experiment with musical ideas out loud as directly as possible.

And you don’t need to be a “good” singer. In fact you need exactly one singing skill: the ability to sing in tune. And that’s something that can be quickly learned, even if you’ve always considered yourself “tone deaf”. If you want more info on this please shout in the comments, because we can clear this up for you fast and it’ll give you a powerful new tool for developing your new foundation.

---

Now you’re probably already thinking to yourself: “That sounds neat. But how do you find all those folk songs, how do you figure out how to learn the skills using them, do I have to figure all this out from scratch myself? This approach makes so much sense, surely someone’s figured this out before.”

And it turns out that they have.

It turns out there's actually a musicianship training method dating back over 100 years that takes exactly this holistic approach to putting a solid foundation of mental models in place, all using song-based learning with folk songs.

Now I’m hesitant to name it and show you the details - because it has a funny-sounding name, and being 100 years old, there are assumptions that come along with that. You might immediately be thinking “outdated”, “hard to understand”, “not relevant to modern life”, and so on, whether intentionally or just subconsciously.

But just like I said about folk songs - some things have stood the test of time because they tap into fundamental truths that don’t chance. And with a little bit of polish they can be just as useful today as they ever were.

---

Think of Beethoven's Fur Elise [SING]

Or Michaelangelo’s David.

Even the Bible. We’re probably not going to read it in the original Greek or Hebrew! But whether you’re Christian or not, it can’t be denied that reading a modern translation provides fascinating learning and principles that 100% apply to modern life.

Things which have stood the test of time have done so for good reason - and their age shouldn’t put us off learning all we can from them.

---

So this strangely-named 100-year old method I mentioned - it originated in Hungary in the early 20th Century with a Hungarian man named Zoltán Kodály. He believed that music belongs to everybody - not a gifted few, or just those who can afford serious training. He developed a new approach using folk songs to teach the fundamental mental understanding of music, the musical instinct. And this quickly spread throughout Hungary, equipping every schoolchild with a natural understanding of music and ability to express themselves musically with their voice.

---

Despite being so successful in Hungary in the first half of the 20th Century, clearly it didn’t go on to become the dominant approach to music education worldwide. Why is that, if it’s so effective?

Well, that's a story for another day, but suffice to say that for reasons of history and politics and the established institutions of music education, its impact has been limited in a way that's frankly tragic - because of the immense potential it holds for any musician in any country or age...

---

The thing that put Kodály on my radar was that I kept hearing about it over the years, and it was often given kind of a legendary status. “Oh, such and such amazing musician - well they’re Kodály-trained.” So I finally looked into it properly myself to see why it had such legendary status among serious musicians.

I took some private one-on-one lessons with one of the top instructors in the UK and it was really interesting… I remember in my first Kodály lesson, I found myself thinking "this is all very basic" - because I knew notation, I was comfortable singing, I even knew a ton of aural skills stuff like intervals and so on.

But in the course of that lesson I came to realise this was a whole new way of approaching music. And by the end I'd done some things with those simple concepts that were actually pretty powerful - like improvising my own melodies to fit a form, like tapping one rhythm while I sang another, and so on. And I came away thinking "Oh, wow, this is actually really fundamental and powerful".

It took me a while longer to click that this wasn't just an alternative - it was, in a lot of ways, the missing foundation that all the other stuff I'd learned should have been built on.

Later on I went on a 3-day intensive course where I was surrounded by Kodály instructors and students. And that was fascinating because I got to see the impact it has. These people ranged from amateur musicians, to teachers, to professional musicians playing in national orchestras.

---

Now I’ve been in tons of situations where musicians get together to learn or perform. And what stood out the most on that Kodály course was the incredibly different atmosphere. These people all had an ease and delight in music. The skills and viewpoint that Kodály training was equipping them with - it just let them enjoy music.

So please forgive the overly cheesy photo - but this really was the spirit there and it was remarkable.

There wasn’t that competitiveness or insecurity or one-up-man-ship that’s so common when musicians get together. And they could do some seriously impressive things, in terms of collaborating, creating, playing by ear, and so on. But it was really the spirit that jumped out, the way that having these new mental models let them feel a confidence and ownership in music that just made it all a joy.

---

Last year I interviewed a chap called Jimmy Rotheram for the podcast - he had adopted the Kodály approach in the UK primary school where he teaches music. And not only did the kids transform musically, it had such a powerful effect on their minds that their school went from being literally among the worst in the country, to being rated in the top 1% of schools nationwide for progress in reading, writing and maths.

Talking to Jimmy what clicked in my head was that Kodály is super successful with children - because it starts from the very basics and gives them the right mental models.

But it’s not just “so simple even a child can understand it” - I’d say it’s “so simple even an adult can understand it”!

Like we’ve been talking about - this can be the foundation you’ve probably been missing. But for reasons of history and politics it’s mostly been hidden away in children’s music classes and niche communities with in-person training.

---

So I wanted to make sure you knew about Kodály, and how it is a great way to bring together everything we’ve been talking about in a clear and holistic way.

In the real world it’s not easy to get Kodály training. And it’s certainly not cheap, I paid several hundred pounds for that 3-day course, for example. And it was well worth that investment.

But it left me grappling with this weird situation where I was providing affordable musicality training worldwide through Musical U - and proud of what we’d built there. But I had discovered this super valuable missing piece - that was mostly hidden away in the real world with prohibitive prices.

---

So we started to borrow bits and pieces of the Kodály approach at Musical U.

And we found they were quickly becoming the most useful and effective parts of our training system.

So we decided to go all-in.

---

You’ve already heard me mention the brand-new 6-week musicality course we’ve been hard at work on, and this is what I was talking about. Providing this holistic, song-based learning of the foundational mental models you need to develop a “musical mind” - and doing it in a convenient, bite-sized way with full personal support.

I’m super excited about it! I can’t share more details just yet but we’re actually going to be releasing it later this week.

As I put together these videos for you I wanted to make sure I gave you all the information you need to be successful. But if possible I also wanted to provide a way to make it really easy for you to go ahead and take the next steps...

So because you’ve joined me on this training I’m going to be emailing you with a special opportunity to be among the first people getting access to this new course. It provides exactly the kind of training we’ve been talking about in a convenient, bite-sized way that makes it easy to put in place that missing foundation and develop a “musical mind”.

If you’re excited about the kind of approach I’ve been sharing with you in this these training videos and you’d like an easy way to go ahead with it and experience this kind of transformation for yourself - you won’t want to miss this.

Now because of the way we’ll be supporting people through this there are going to be a limited number of places available.

So keep an eye out for my email and your chance to get in on this exciting new training course.

---

Until that email arrives, please post a comment and let me know what you think of this holistic, song-based approach to putting a new foundation in place. And if you have any questions about anything we covered - now’s the time to ask!