Building Your Musicality Bridge (Meet the Team, with Zac Bailey)

Christopher: Welcome back to the show! I am really looking forward to this one. It’s one I’ve been looking forward to for about a week now since I got it in the schedule.

It’s our next meet the team interview with none other than Mr. Zac Bailey, @ZSonic as he’s known around the membership site. Zac is one of the most insightful and inspiring and creative people in my world. He’s always a source of positivity and energy.

I was joking to him before we kicked off today that it’s a bit late in the day for me right now because it’s a bit later than our normal livestream time. And he was like, don’t worry, I’ll bring the energy. I was like, I know you will.

Welcome to the show, Zac. Great to have you with us.

Zac: Oh, thank you, Christopher.

I’m super excited to be here.

Christopher: And it’s crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed you before.

We’ve done an interview with you on the website, and obviously you’ve been on Musicality Now before with, like, team roundtables, and we just started doing the Coaches Corner episodes, so people will be familiar with your voice, no doubt. And also, you’re all over the place in the members site for years now, so our members know you very well.

But I’m so excited to have you as our second Meet The Team interview because you’ve become such an integral and invaluable part of the Musical U team, and it’s been so much fun to watch your role grow over the last five years, I think, now, and I’m looking forward to digging into that a bit with you today.

If I may, I’m going to start with my favorite first question, and I know you’ll have a good answer to it. What does musicality mean to you?

Zac: I love that question. And we could probably spend the whole podcast, just me talking about what musicality means to me.

But, you know, I think of it as a quality. It could be a state of being, but I also think of it as an ability, right? Maybe even you could call it a power. And it’s not so much like a superhuman ability.

It’s more of a human super ability. That’s how I think of it.

But essentially, to understand what I think about musicality, what it means to me, I have to understand how I think about music, because music comes and then you have musicality, right?

So music, to me, has sort of two states of being. We can think about music in two states, and there’s unexpressed music, and there’s expressed music.

So, unexpressed music might just be, like, the desire to play, or you have musical ideas inside you, or maybe there’s a melody in your head that might be unexpressed music, and then expressed music is music that’s out there. Other people can hear it.

Either you’re performing it live or it’s recorded, or it’s some kind of music that other people can experience. It’s out there.

So, to me, musicality is the ability to allow music and to come from unexpressed to expressed.

So it’s sort of that connection between those two states of music and being able to access that connection.

So, musicality is allowing this unexpressed music to flow out and become expressed. And musicality practice is when we build a bridge between those two areas.

And when we start building that bridge, it might be a rickety wooden bridge. Like, one person can walk apart, and it’s your idea. So the person walking across the bridge is your musical ideas coming out into the world.

And at first, you might just be, like, really? Like, careful. Like, these slats are breaking. I don’t want to fall into this ravine below, but I’m going to carefully go across this bridge slowly.

And then over time, as you develop more musicality skills and do more musicality practice, you build a stronger and stronger bridge until you’ve got, you know, a Golden Gate suspension bridge, and your musical ideas are just flowing and flowing and flowing. So that’s, that’s essentially musicality to me.

It’s the ability, is musicality. And then there’s musicality practice, which comes into your skills in order to, like, access that ability.

Like a superhuman ability is strength, right? That’s an ability. And then a skill might be, like, being super accurate at throwing cars. Like, I can, I can throw cars into a perfect stack would be, like, a strength skill.

Christopher: Awesome. I love how well that aligns with our Pillar Belief of Musical Inside And Out.

You know, that flowing of music from inside you out into the world. And it also reminds me of something wonderful you said in a Coaches Corner episode. I think it’s one I was just checking the edits for. I don’t think it’s the one that went out yet.

But you were talking about one of your clients in coaching who wasn’t sure they had music inside them, and you were explaining how that desire to make music, that love of music, that passion you have for music making, means you have music inside you, right?

Zac: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

There’s an interesting concept that says you would not desire to do something that you were not able to do. We don’t generally desire to do crazy, fantastical things that are impossible. We generally desire things that are actually possible.

And when we desire those things, that is the power wanting to come out. So, musicality, to me, is also the energy. When you experience music, you feel something.

I like this. You feel that energy inside you when you experience music. And to me, that’s music speaking to the music inside of you.

And that energy that desires is the power to express.

That’s why I like to think of music in two states. So we think of, oh, I’m not making music. I don’t have music out in the world, so I’m not musical.

But if you feel the need, even if you haven’t ever sang or haven’t ever played an instrument or haven’t ever recorded or anything, but you feel a need or even just a curiosity, you’re just kind of interested in it. That is. That’s the power right there.

That’s the unexpressed music. So we can, through musicality, we can develop the ability to express that music and allow it to come out.

You can take ownership. Say, yeah, it’s in there. Okay, I’m gonna say maybe I haven’t let it come out yet, but it’s there.

I’m interested in it. I’m curious about it.

Christopher: Beautiful. And, yeah, I’m definitely gonna have to rein myself in, because, as you say, we could just stay on this topic for a few more hours. And I always love the way you come up with creative analogies and insights and range from the profound to the very practical. I think it’s something that’s very characteristic of you and how you communicate that adds a lot to the way we talk about these things at Musical U.

I’m sure people are wondering if they haven’t heard much of your backstory before, like, who is this sage of musicality, and where did he come up with this deep insight? Tell us a bit about your musical backstory.

Zac: Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Well, it’s another thing, like, how long do you have? You want to do a whole other podcast on that? Because I’ve always just loved music.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love music. Both my parents listened to a lot of music. They both had vinyl record collections, and I loved their CD collections, and I loved listening to them.

And both my parents had completely different tastes in music. My dad was a person who’s always listening to underground music and listening to new things. He never was sticking to one genre. He was always listening like all kinds of just crazy new music.

I heard about all kinds of new genres and styles from my dads taste in music. And so that just really made me very curious and open and just, I always love sounds, always love music.

And I never was like, I love rock music. I mean, there’s been times in my life where I’m like, yeah, I’m feeling this style a lot, but it’s always just been about music. And so that openness was instilled in me at a young age, and I would always love dancing as well.

One of my earliest memories is going to a Paul Simon concert. It was a graceland tour. So it’s like late eighties, I was like five or six, and I had a dance contest with my dad there.

And we asked these ladies that were hanging out around who was the better dancer. I went up and asked him a little, hey, who’s the better dancer? Me and my dad are having a dance contest. Who’s better? And of course they chose me as a little kid.

I’m a cute little kid. Who’s a better dancer? Of course they’re gonna choose me. But I was like, yeah, I’m awesome at this.

So that’s sort of like, at an early age I had this like, just vibe of like, I love music, I love all these sounds. I just want to openly, freely explore this.

And also like, I’m awesome at this. I guess you could call it delirious because, you know, maybe I didn’t know how good I was. And didn’t really have any dance skill or any musical skill at the time.

And it’s interesting because sometimes people say, oh, you’re really, music seems to come really easily for you and you have all these skills and creativity. And it’s funny because musical skills… So that’s, that’s why musicality is the ability, but also the skills. And so the ability I had, that was easy for me, but the skills were not easy for me.

The skills took a long time. I played a lot of different instruments, didn’t progress very far. I ended up finding DJing.

So instruments, a quick rundown of all instruments I tried to play before. I started in Kindergarten with violin, and I didn’t stick with that. And then I went to piano for a while. I did some harmonica, did some bass, tried some guitar, piano. Did I already say that? Various other random things. And I never would stick with them. And it was hard.

And I was like, man, I can’t even choose. I didn’t want to choose one. People said you had to choose one. You got to be a guitar player. You got to be a piano player. And I was like, I can’t just choose one. And also, these are all hard.

So I found DJing, and I was like, oh, DJing. I can do any instrument.

So with the turntable, I got this lesson from QBert, who’s a big scratch DJ. He’s a legend. He’s amazing.

And I took some online lessons from him, and he said to learn everything you can about music and apply it to the turntable and pretend your turntable is, you know, saxophone, or pretend your turntable is a piano and pretend your turntable is a drum. See what you can do with the turntable. Thinking about it as all these different instruments.

And that was really exciting for me because I was like, oh, I don’t have to pick just one instrument. And with the turntable, there was something about it. I just got it.

Like, when I started getting into scratching, I was like, I just. I just get this. A lot of people are like, this is really hard. I don’t know how to do this. But it’s so simple. You just move your hands back and forth on the record and make rhythms, but you got to have ideas in your head.

And that’s what I had. I had ideas in my head, so I just started letting them flow on the turntable.

Christopher: And if anyone listening or watching doesn’t know what scratching is, can you just explain, like, how does a DJ scratch? What does that sound like? How does it work?

Zac: Yeah. Yes. Excellent question. So I got a vinyl disc right here.

This is just a normal vinyl disc, but it has been printed with the scratch DJs in mind. But essentially, and I didn’t have these kind of scratch specific discs. This is, like, made for a DJ that scratches, and it’s got samples on it, it’s got sound.

So these little bands, they’ll have, like, a series of sounds, and you can move. Essentially, you just put the record on. It’s like a normal turntable.

I got a turntable right here. Just put the record on. Normal turntable.

It plays. It makes sound just like a normal record. But the difference is, when you scratch, you move it back and forth.

So say I had a sound that was like, “yes”. Then I might have it play forward, but then I could pull it back, so it’d be like, “yes, zeeeh, yes, zeeeh, yes”. Right? And then I can start making rhythms.

I could be like, “yes, yes, zeeeh, ye, ye, ye, yes, zeeeh”.

Yeah. And so you start making rhythms with a pre recorded sound. So essentially, it’s taking a pre recorded sound, any pre recorded sound on any record, and rather than saying, oh, it has to move forward and play forward and we can’t touch it, actually, you do touch it and you move it back and forth and you make new rhythms.

So it’s essentially just making rhythms with your hands by taking a pre recorded sound and moving the record back and forth, because you can move it forward twice, three times, you can move it forward and backward. Difference amounts by, like, using pauses in your hand. So that’s getting a little more technical and complex.

But essentially, you just move a record back and forth and you make rhythms, and it’s. Yeah, it’s really, it’s really quite simple and awesome.

Christopher: Thank you. And I’m sure that starts to open up people’s minds to how a turntable could be an instrument and how, like you say, you could take ideas from other instruments or music or musical skills and apply them on the turntable. So where did things go from there?

Zac: Yeah, so I started getting, why got in the turntable and then I got, I was also into rapping. I’ve always been into rapping since I was… That’s like, another part of the story is the first rap video I ever recorded was with my cousins. Again, it was probably like, I thought, that’s my aunt. I think she still has, like, the video from the camcorder, the home video from back in the day, like, late eighties, we did a rap music video.

So I was in a rap from a young age. I liked Yo MTV raps, and I liked In Living Color because they had rap artists on there.

So I was always into rap. And when I got into DJing, I was also getting into rap. And I wanted to make my own beats.

And so I started learning how to make my own beats. And I started getting more and more into learning about music because, like I said, it was like, oh, because QBert said, learn as much as you can about music and apply it to the turntable.

So I started learning about music theory and stuff because I was making a lot of beats and I was chopping up a lot of samples, and I was really good at that, at, like, taking other people’s samples and making new things with them.

And I got to a point where I was like, I want to make my own things. Like, what if I made the songs that people could then sample? So I wanted to get into, like, you know, making music in a way, with. With, like, melodies and harmonies, and I didn’t know anything about that, and I started studying that, and I got obsessed with it.

This was before I found Musical U. I was studying all the theory. I got really obsessed with music theory and learned a lot about it.

And I’m pretty logical. I’m good at memorizing. So understanding the logic, the math, and being more memorized, like, scales and keys, chords and stuff like that was easy because I’m just good at learning.

I’ve always loved learning, but I didn’t understand how to make music with it. And it was frustrating because I would try to, like, okay, well, let me take these scales and these chords I learned and try to make a beat with it. That’s cool.

And it just wasn’t coming out. It wasn’t flowing. I didn’t know what to do with it.

And, yeah, it was frustrating. It’s like, for a few years, I was trying. I was struggling with, like, connecting this music theory, and I thought that’s what I needed, too.

I was like, man, why aren’t my beats satisfying? I need to learn music theory. So I started learning music theory, and my beats still weren’t satisfying. And, yeah, it was rough.

And so I found Musical U, and I loved it. And I started that once we got through the Foundations course, and I started being able to use my voice in a way to bring out these ideas.

And QBert even said this on one of his lessons. He said “say it before you play it”. But there wasn’t a lot of other explanation as to, like, what that means or how exactly you do it or how you develop that skill.

It’s a great idea, and I agree with it. You know, I like to say “know it before you flow it”, or “speak it before you tweak it”. But I didn’t really know that about, like, that process and that bridge building part of it, from the musicality to the musical skills.

And it was frustrating. So, like, I got kind of good at the turntable. Got really good at the turntable, but I didn’t feel that I was good at music.

And even though people told me, like, oh, you’re really good at music, why aren’t you famous? And I just felt like an imposter because I felt like I didn’t understand music.

So now, like, fast forward, I’m feeling amazing about myself, and I’m an artist.

You know, I got music out. I perform live. I love it.

I got more music coming out. Like, I’m really feeling myself in my music and just having a lot of fun allowing this music to flow now.

Christopher: Fantastic. Well, in a moment, I want to circle back to that Foundations experience you mentioned and pick up the story of your work with us at Musical U. But just tell us a bit more about what you’re up to these days with your ZSonic project, the kind of music you’re making. And I think we have, I don’t think it’s an exclusive broadcast, but I think we have permission to play your latest music video, which is super exciting. Tell us what you’re up to these days.

Zac: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Writing a lot of music, exploring a lot, and actually have a little team.

You know, I got my partner, Heather, she’s our creative director. And I got my friend Aaron, he is our graphic designer. And actually, Aaron’s getting more into writing, too, because we recently come up with this, and this is, like, not, not official. No official announcements. So, like, you guys on this livestream are the first to really even hear about this idea. But we’re going to be working on a musical variety show, and so I’m super excited about that because we have been releasing music.

As you said, Christopher, we had a music video come out recently that’s pretty awesome. And a lot of people really loved it. And it was sort of like, you know, I wrote a song, I produced it, you know, I released it, marketed it, mastered it, did all the things, but it’s just one song.

It was just one single. Right? And I was like, I wanna go bigger now. So I was like, okay, team, we’re gonna do this musical variety show.

So it’s kinda crazy. It’s something that I’ve kinda always wanted to do, and I kinda thought like, oh, I gotta, like, build this career, and then I can start this show. But then I realized, you know, I wanna do the show, let’s do the show.

That’s the thing. So I’m gonna build this musical variety show to sort of have, like, a livestream, fun thing, to, like, debut new music videos, and maybe also feature other people’s music videos, have, like, comedy sketches and live performances and stuff. So pretty excited about that.

Yeah, man.

Christopher: Fantastic. Awesome. And yeah, if you’re listening rather than watching, you’re going to miss out on this video right now. But we’ll have the link in the show notes. I definitely encourage you to go watch it.

It is visually remarkable, and really, a lot of your character, Zac, and a lot of the style you have in the ZSonic project is beautifully exemplified here. I won’t say more than that. Let’s roll that video and let people enjoy your music for themselves.

[ VIDEO ]

That was Funk Romance by ZSonic. And the web address is zsonic.party – if you go to zsonic.party in your browser, we’ll have the link in the show notes, you can watch that video. You can get access to a bunch of Zac’s music, too.

And just, yeah, so impressive. I remember when you shared that with the team. I was like, wow. Like, writing, rapping, singing, dancing, video production, scratching, all the arrangement, all the production. Like, that’s a, that’s a big project.

And it’s so impressive for one person. And you obviously have help from Heather and Aaron, but still, like, that’s an impressive skill set you built.

Zac: Yes. Thank you. And check this out. This is the actual shoes. Love it. So you saw Heather in the video. She was dancing with me. That she’s also the creative director and she made these shoes. So it’s pretty smart.

Christopher: I presume you wear those on a daily basis.

Zac: I have to… Yeah, I just found this. No, actually, you know, I thought about putting them under glass and, like, putting them on the website and selling them for like $5,000 or something.

Christopher: Nice. So let’s circle back to when you popped up in the Foundations course. Because I remember I was thinking about it this morning, like, there were two things that were really distinctive about you. And one, I think people can probably guess from having just listened to or watched Funk Romance. And if you weren’t dancing along as you listened, you’re crazy.

But, you know, I talked in a video this week about how at Musical U, we always have to be careful because if we mention one instrument or one style, it alienates anyone who doesn’t play that instrument or that style. And obviously, inside Musical U, we have this incredibly diverse group of musicians playing every instrument and style imaginable, all different ages and abilities and so on.

But I have to say, even amongst that, even amongst, like, the mountain dulcimer players and the blues harmonica players, when you showed up in Foundations and you were like, yeah, I’m primarily a DJ, a scratch DJ, I was like “interesting! I wonder how this is going to work out”. And so I think that was definitely remarkable.

And I admired. I remember admiring at the time that someone who was in that world that is typically not super in touch with the traditional classical music theory or the kind of ear training we would be working on at Musical U, I really admired that you were exploring that side, too.

And the other really distinctive thing, and I think I said it to you at the time, I certainly said it to you when we interviewed you for a position with the team, was your attitude and your energy.

And, you know, you were showing up. That first group of Foundation students were amazing. Like, that first cohort was kind of magical, but you definitely showed a supportive and creative and excited energy throughout that six-week course that made you stand out.

And I’d love to hear a little bit about how that method landed with you. I don’t want to spend too much time on it, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. But I’m just curious to know, if you look back now, what was interesting or useful for you from the Foundations material?

Zac: Whoo, that’s… That’s a good, good, good question.

I love that question. And I’ve got a whiteboard right over there. It’s got some beat blanks and rhythm syllables on it right now. So I’m, I still use it. I love it.

At the end of… When I finished the Foundations course the first time. And actually, I’ve gone through it three times. And for anyone out there, that’s like, any members that are doing it or struggling with it: it was hard for me. Especially the solfa part. The olfa part was hard for me.

But one of the really cool things that was very helpful was before I did the Foundations course, I thought playing by ear was just like, melody. Like being able to hear a song and then being able to, like, play that song on your instrument or sing it or whatever.

And I never considered the rhythm aspect or the beat aspect, the pulse. So being able to tap in, to find my way into playing by ear through finding pulses and finding the rhythms was really like ear opening and brain opening for me. I loved that.

And also the fusion. So it’s integrated, like, it’s a holistic, like, musical experience. Because Foundations taught me how to listen. It taught me how to express with my voice. It taught me how to, like, tap these beat blanks and clap the pulse and clap the rhythms and. And sing melodic contours and sing solfa and all these different tools.

And then also to take all those tools and be able to, like, transcribe a melody. And then, like, improvise with those ideas and compose your own thing.

And it was all in this flow. And you could do all that in, you know, one session, 10, 15 minutes. You. You listened. You transcribe a melody, you improvise something, you compose something, and it’s like. That is, like, super powerful and something that I continue to integrate in my life.

At the end of the Foundations course, and someone asked Anne on a Q&A call Anne Mileski, shout out, she’s amazing.

They said, you know, “what do we do now that the course is over?” And she was basically like, “don’t stop practicing. Keep using these tools” and I haven’t stopped.

So if Anne hears this, I never stopped.

Christopher: Awesome! I will make sure to send her the link. She’ll be glad to hear that.

And so you stood out in a really good way. And generally, I would say we have very high standards for our team at Musical U. And most of the time, we hire people because there’s a clear need and we figure out the job spec and we put out and we get applicants and we interview and so on.

You were the reverse. You’re one of only a couple of where the exact opposite happened, and we spotted you, I was like, “he should be on our team. Let’s find where he could go.”

And so you joined the team initially, just doing a little bit of member support work, right? Tell us a bit about how your role has evolved from there over the last five years.

Zac: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it’s evolved.

It’s been awesome. I’ve loved every minute, and, yeah, it started just like, you know, just a little bit of member support, I think replying to people in Foundations, because that’s essentially like, I was already as a student, I was, like, putting replies in there every day. So I was kind of doing what I was already doing, but from a more authoritative perspective, doing a little replies, and then got into doing, like, I believe, the podcast shownotes and, like, putting the podcast shownotes on the website and got into some, like, customer service stuff and social media.

I think before social media or before customer service, I was, like, helping post to Facebook and doing social media stuff, and I got into customer service stuff. Also helped a lot with implementing a lot of the courses and the Living Music program, that was a big thing. Helped implement that and did a lot of audio stuff, too.

Made a lot of audio tracks and did a lot of things. I remember at one point, like, at the beginning, I was like, I was just doing whatever anyone asked me to do. That was kind of, that needed to be done.

And at one point, I told Adam, I was like, and I’m doing all these things, but I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, what’s my role? I have all these duties, but I’m not sure what my role is. And then Adam was really great at, like, finding where people fit really well, and he’s like, member support, that’s your thing, right? That’s what you love. That’s what you like to do. And I’m like, yeah, that’s what I like to do.

I love the member support. I love connecting with the members. So Adam started shifting me more into doing more and more stuff with the members. He kind of, he started taking things off my plate, like the social media and the customer service, and the team started growing, so we had more people to do that stuff.

So I started focusing more and more on the member support, and that’s been really amazing. And then through that, I’ve evolved into the Head of Member Success, which has been awesome. So I just, I love, you know, connecting more and more with members.

And I remember I also started doing calls. I remember the first time that I was asked to, like, host a Resident Pro call. I was really nervous, like, hosting,
I think it was maybe Steve Lawson, because Steve is really cool. So they’re like, “yes, Steve. That’ll be a good one for Zach to get started with because Steve’s pretty cool. He’s chill. It won’t be hard”. But I was really, really nervous to even do one call! And now I do calls all the time, and I love it. I love doing calls.

And since then, I’ve become a Next Level coach, too. And I remember it was probably maybe, like, I don’t know how long ago, maybe two years ago, when you first asked me, Christopher, like, would you be interested in being a coach? And I was like, yes, but I’m like, yes, but I’m terrified of that.

That sounds crazy. I don’t know if I could, if I can do that. But, yes, I want to do that, because that’s another thing I got from Adam, was Adam was always stepping up to challenges. He said one time, if Christopher is asking me to do something, it’s because he knows that I will grow into it and be awesome at it.

And even if it’s terrifying to me, I’m gonna say yes and accept the challenge. So I was like, yeah, accept the challenge. Let’s do it.

So now I’ve been a coach for, like, a year and a half with having clients, and at first I just had a couple, and I was like, oh, I’m scared of having a client. And now I got a lot, and I want more and more, and it’s amazing, and I love it. And I’m just having a lot of fun with all the members, Next Level members, you know, Musical U members, all of them, doing calls.

It’s fun.

Christopher: Fantastic. Yeah.

And I think we definitely take a slightly unusual approach in the team in terms of finding where people fit. You know, we have this internal core principle of “ease and joy” and the philosophy that we really should all enjoy our work. And so, you know, when Adam was helping you filter your tasks, it was coming from that perspective of, like, what’s easy and joyful for you.

We know you can do all these things. You’re great at all these things, but what would be the ideal? And I think it goes hand in hand with the growth mindset. I guess.

And I loved… We talked about this on a team call recently. We were talking about the core principles, and “investing in yourself” is one of our principles on the team.

And we were talking about growth mindset. And I love your way of putting it in terms of your level. Can you share a bit about that? How do you think about growth and taking that next step into something bigger?

Zac: Oh, wow.

That’s a great question. Another question where we could do a whole episode. But, you know, another thing that Adam told me is, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions.

So the question I’m asking myself is, how am I? Like, how am I growing? How fast am I growing? And then second question is, is there a way I can grow faster? Who can I ask for help? What can I do?

So to me, there’s only one level, and it’s leveling. Stay leveling is the only level. That’s one of my, one of my personal mantras. Stay leveling is the only level.
I don’t believe that anyone is on a higher or lower level. I believe that you either intentionally are growing or you’re not. But either way, you’re growing in some way or another.

We all grow and change in our lives, whether we notice it or not. So growth mindset is like, to me, putting deliberate intention into growing and asking myself that question, how fast am I growing? How can I grow faster? So, if it’s with a specific skill, how fast am I growing? With my, like, my jamming, that’s what I’m working on right now. I’m trying to get my jammer core, musicality core leveled up. So it’s like, how fast am I growing at this? What can I do to grow faster? And that’s. That’s, that’s really it.

And I’m an implementer, right? So the rate of your growth is directly related to the rate of your implementation. So as soon as I learn something, I try it out, and then I go and tell other people about it.

Like, I learned this thing, I’ve always… That’s another thing I’ve always had throughout my life, and my parents were really awesome. My dad was really great, too, about hearing everything that I learned.

So every time I learned something new, I would tell my dad about it, and he would be excited to hear about it. So that is, that’s a big part of growth mindset, is you learn something, go play with it, then go tell other people about how it went.

And that’s kind of like a cycle that I’ve always been in and it keeps me, keeps me growing.

Christopher: Fantastic. Yeah. And I think, you know, when we hire for Next Level coaches, it’s always that combination of kind of domain expertise and the coaching experience and coaching mentality. And I think the way you talked about that just now will give people an idea of why you’re such a fantastic coach and facilitating that growth and encouraging your clients onwards.

Those, I think it’s fair to say those are the two major focuses for you these days.

Head of Member Success, overseeing all of our member support and that side of things. And Next Level coach. If you had to pick one thing, what’s your favorite thing to do in your work at Musical U?

Zac: Oh, man.

Like picking between those two specific roles?

Christopher: No, anything at all.

Zac: Oh, okay. Yeah, well, yeah, well, I love learning and I love, this is my favorite thing.

And maybe, maybe people, I love hearing sounds from other members. I love when other members share recordings. I love doing like Performance Practice calls or any calls where people are playing in my Next Level coaching.

Like, I want to just jam. I want to play. Like, I’m happy to talk and pontificate and think. I obviously like to think. I like to learn.

But my favorite thing to do is just have fun, play music. And I love when other members are playing music.

When people share recordings on the, on the site or people jam on a Next Level coaching call, or people come to the Performance Practice calls and share recordings or play live, or they share a little something on a drop-in call.

Any time someone like, gives me the gift of music, I love experiencing music. So any time someone shares their music and I, and I get, I get to be blessed to hear it, then I love that.

And I especially love if it’s like, it doesn’t even have to be quote unquote music. It could just be sounds.

It could be noises. I love hearing people’s sounds and noises. I think sometimes people don’t believe me, but I genuinely love all sounds.

Like even the crazy dog barking sounds that wake me up in the, in the morning. Sometimes I won’t, I won’t lie, sometimes they’re annoying and I get mad at them. But then, you know, I was like, oh, you know what? It’s actually kind of cool.

They got like this. Dogs over to the right, dogs over to the left are kind of making this rhythm right now. And I can get into this.

Okay. It’s much better to wake up getting into a jam than it is getting into a jam. So musical jam rather than a, than a mental frustration jam.

So jamming. I love hearing people’s music. I think.

Bottom line, I love it when members share music, and I get to experience that. I think that’s my favorite thing.

Christopher: Fantastic. And last question then. Can you share one weird or unorthodox or surprising way of developing your musicality that seems like it shouldn’t work, but does?

Zac: Yeah, yeah. I have actually a really fun answer for this, and I got it from our head educator, Andrew Bishko. Because before I became a Next Level coach, you know, I was, I was training up to be a Next Level coach.

Andrew was training me, and he gave me this thing of singing songs to my cats. So singing, and especially I wanted to be, I was like, I want to sing like an R&B singer.

So he’s like, Andrew’s like, “sing R&B songs to your cats then”, because he’s like, “what do you do?” Because I was already sort of singing little stupid songs on my cats, and so he’s like, “just sing R&B songs to your cats then”.

And I started doing that. It was surprisingly, I was like, hey, this is fun. I can actually do this. And I think that the reason it works… So if someone else wants to, like, have a tip, and you’re like, I don’t have cats. I don’t have cats to sing to.

You could sing to your dogs or your plants or anything. But the reason that it works, I think, is because it’s simple, it’s fun, and it’s frequent.

And I think those are three little, three boxes you can check if you want to, like, have a really effective musicality practice.

Make it simple, make it fun, and make it frequent, because I would just, it was random. I’d sing little songs for, like, a few seconds or whatever here and there throughout the day.

And another one of my mindsets is “if you stay connected, you don’t have to get connected”. So that that connection between the unexpressed music and the express music is a connection.

And honestly, once you build that bridge, it’s there. You don’t have to build it again. Once you know about it, it’s there.

So then all you have to do is walk across it as much as you can and, like, notice things like, oh, maybe I can shore up, maybe I can add a fresh piece of wood right here. If it’s a rickety wood bridge, maybe I add a nail, maybe nail in a little something here.

That’s sort of metaphorical.

But as I’m singing R&B songs, to my cats, I mean, that’s essentially what I’m doing to my musicality bridge. It’s shoring up little, little weaknesses and just strengthening that connection.

And so if you stay connected, you don’t have to get connected.

Christopher: Yeah, “Singing R&B songs to my cats”, that is not something I was expecting to hear, but I love it. It’s awesome.

And it reminds me, like, we don’t have cats, but there was this moment with my kids, my two girls, where they started making up songs spontaneously, and I guess all kids do it to some extent, but there was something about the way they were doing it, like it was quite intentional and structured.

And I realized it’s because I did what Anne told me to do. Anne Mileski that we referred to earlier, she was like, you know, just. Just sing a lot in the house. Because I was trying to get her tips for, like, bringing the Foundations stuff to kids. Obviously, Kodály started off with kids, but I didn’t want to do a lot of, like, lessons with them. And she was like, just sing a lot. Whatever you’re doing, sing about it. And I did, and it kind of, like, it came out.

I don’t think – I might be wrong – I don’t think your cats are singing R&B back to you. So you won’t have the same experience I do!

But that was really interesting to me to see how that kind of daily immersion in music like you’re talking about, not only was it good for me for staying connected, but it did transfer to them, and that was really fun to see.

Zac: Yeah.

Christopher: Zac, as always, I could talk to you all day, and I love hearing you, as you put it, pontificate as much as you can. Tell people where’s the best place to go if they want to hear more of your music, if they want to get the latest news.

I mentioned one link earlier.

Zac: Yeah, absolutely. Like, that’s it.

Like, you can go to zsonic.party. Zsonic, one word and then dot party.

It’s not.com or dot-you-know, because when I found that URL is like, oh, I can buy zsonic dot party? Put in the cart. I’m getting that one.

So zsonic dot party.

And, yeah, you go there, if you sign up for my email list, you’ll get some updates.

And it’s gonna be exciting because, you know, like I said, I got the musicality variety.

I just said musicality variety show, but, yeah, musicality variety show. Musical variety show. It’s going to be good.

And yeah. So zsonic.party. Sign up for the list and you’ll have all, you’ll know all about all the awesome things.

Christopher: Perfect. Well, we’ll have that link in the shownotes, of course. Zac, thank you so much for taking the time.

This has been a blast and I look forward to having you back on the show again. In fact, you’ll be back on the show again inadvertently tomorrow for Coaches Corner, we’ll have episode two where you’re featured.

But I look forward to having you back with us live again very soon.

Zac: Awesome. Thank you, Christopher. It’s been a pleasure.

Christopher: So tomorrow I’ll be back, as I said, with our next Coaches Corner episode and also our live training “Discover your musical core”

Zac actually gave you a little sneak peek there of what one of the cores might be and what you can discover in that session.

It’s all about discovering your musical core, who you are, who you want to be, how you can become the musician you want to be. You can just about still register at yourmusicalcore.com if you’d like to join me for that, it’s going to be a really good one.

I had some people asking in the members site about a replay. We may or may not provide a replay. It really is designed as a live workshop experience where we go through this stuff together.

So if you can attend live, absolutely attend live. If we do do a replay, it will just be to people who registered. So either way, if the time doesn’t work for you, you’re going to want to go and register at yourmusicalcore.com.

That’s it for me. Be back tomorrow for Coaches Corner. See you then!