This Musical Identity Shift Changes Everything (Coaches Corner, Episode 1)

Christopher: Welcome back to Musicality Now! I have been having so much fun this week with these new daily livestreams, and thanks to everyone who’s been sending in feedback and supporting the reboot of the show. I need to remember to hit live on Instagram to get it going over there.

And just to say, if you’re watching the YouTube video replay or listening to the audio podcast, I’m kind of chopping bits at the beginning and end. I don’t want to bore you guys with a lot of “hey, we’re live. What’s going on?” stuff. But just to let you know, you will be missing out on bits and pieces from the beginning and end if you’re not tuning in live. So I do really encourage you to come along. Join us live each day if you can.

We’re on YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Instagram Live, and – TikTok don’t like us, so we’re not on TikTok Live, but maybe one day in the future. The feeling’s a bit mutual, so that’s fine.

So welcome back to the show! Today we have our very first episode of Coaches Corner. This is a really fun series. We’ve actually been recording for a little while now, but not yet publishing, and I’m super psyched to share the first one with you today.

So before we dive into that, I did just want to say a word or two about the background, the context for these Coaches Corner episodes, because I know this might be the first time you’re joining us, or it might be the case that you’ve been a podcast listener and we haven’t been updating you for a year or two or three. And so I wanted to just kind of set the scene by explaining what Next Level is and what Coaches Corner is, so that when we dive in, you know what we’re doing.

So Next Level, in a way, has been really late in coming. We’ve been doing what we do since 2009, but it’s only in the last 18 months or so that we’ve offered something like Next Level. And what it is, in a nutshell, is a one to one coaching program for everything we specialize in here at Musical U, and we held off doing it for a long time because I didn’t want to do it unless we could nail it.

And the result was we made a membership site, we made courses, we made info products, we made apps, we made all kinds of solutions, but we weren’t offering that opportunity to get one to one with someone who could really go deep with you week by week and help you get where you want to go. And so it took us a long time to pull the trigger and offer it, but I’m really just, like phenomenally glad we did because once we were ready to, we were able to put together something truly special.

And these Coaches Corner episodes are going to give you a little glimpse into the program. They’re not here to promote the program or to persuade you to join. They’re really here to kind of give you a peek behind the scenes and draw out from that program some of the very best ideas and tidbits that can help you in your musical life and to explain a little bit about what’s going on there and why it’s so different.

There are two types of coach. And when I say the word “coaching” or “coaching program” or I introduce our Next Level “coaches”, what I found is that people interpret that in one of two ways.

One is they think about a life coach who helps you get clear on your goals and your aspirations and then make a plan and then helps you, you know, over time to follow through and achieve what you set out to.

The other type is a sports coach, like a tennis coach or a soccer coach, who’s going to be coming with a lot of domain expertise and they’ll be able to tell you, oh, this isn’t quite working right. Try this exercise instead. And they’re going to kind of guide and shape the way you practice and the way you develop your skills.

And what we’ve created at Next Level is really rare in my experience, particularly in music education. I don’t know, I don’t think I know of anyone else who does what we do. But the crux of it is to combine those two types of coaching because even inside Musical U membership, where it’s more of a very supported DIY approach, we really found that kind of life coach, as it were, aspect of it is critical, like the goal setting, the planning, the accountability, the support, the follow through.

Like, you will not get the same results unless that’s part of your training. And at the same time, we are the world’s leader in musicality training and superlearning. And so our coaches bring a lot of that domain specific expertise, too, in terms of like, “oh, I can never recognize this kind of interval” – “Here are 17 things you can try. Here are the ways we know will work”.

So our coaches combine those two types of coaching and what it creates is this really exciting experience.

And anyway, I don’t want this to turn into a pitch for Next Level coaching. That’s not what this is. About, but just to kind of set the scene for you in terms of what’s going on inside that program.

And like I said, you know, we really have two areas of speciality these days at Musical U. One is the musicality skills, the inner skills, like recognizing notes and chords by ear jamming, improvising, writing your own music, performing with confidence, having good rhythms, singing in tune, that whole bundle of skills. And then the other area is superlearning, which Gregg Goodhart helped us pioneer in the music market and come up with really novel solutions for.

We’ve taken that and run with it for the last few years and really turned it into something very unique and in particular, combining it with our musicality training.

So even though there are those two strands, they’re not separate areas. All of our Next Level clients are working with both of those things, day in, day out to really get great results fast.

And so the upshot for you is that in these Coaches Corner episodes, you get the chance to hear from several people who are every day coaching regular, average, normal musicians and music learners of all kinds and really in the trenches, helping them troubleshoot, problem solve, both on the kind of mindset and motivation and enthusiasm side, on the planning side, and on the concrete, nitty gritty, how do I get my fingers to do what they’re meant to? How do I get my ears to do what they’re meant to? How do I unlock that next level of achievement for myself in my musical life?

So I should make mention of our upcoming live session. That’s another opportunity to pull some of the goodness from inside Next Level and bring it to you because, you know, 18 months into the program, the I don’t want to say the majority, but a huge proportion of the successes we now see at Musical U are happening inside that Next Level program.

So our team, every day are sharing – we have this platform for communication in the team called Slack, and we have a particular area where we share wins, we share successes. Our members are having to kind of inspire and motivate us in the team and share what’s working well. And so many of those now come from Next Level coaching.

So as time went on, obviously as the head of the company, I was delighted by that. But at the same time, I became really aware that it takes a long time for the new stuff we’re developing inside next level to kind of trickle down into other material. So for us to turn it into a new membership module or a new course or something, that’s going to take a fair while.

And so it was starting to nag at me that we weren’t bringing that to you sooner and we weren’t able to share some of these new ideas, new concepts, new new techniques that were being developed in Next Level with our wider memberbase and our wider audience outside of Musical U.

So that was really the genesis of this Coaches Corner idea. I said to our coaches, “it’s a bit weird, but could we just get together once every couple of weeks and I’ll quiz you on what you’re up to in coaching?” And that has been, it’s turned into one of my favorite things I do at Musical U to get together and have the chance to pick their brains like that.

So we call it Coaches Corner. It’s your chance to get in a corner with our coaches and hear what’s going on. And I ask them always to try and come up with something very concrete and tangible which anyone can take and run with, and to share it in quite a short and punchy way.

The result is these sessions which are typically ten to 20 minutes long, featuring three to five of our coaches and they each share one nugget you can take and run with. So I’m hoping, I’m expecting these to be super valuable and super fun for you the way they have been for me. And the first one is today.

You might have seen little bits of these going out on our social media in recent months we’ve been publishing short little clips which give you a preview of the kinds of stuff they share. But this is the first time we’re going to be publishing one of these full conversations with the coaches and I am so pleased to have the chance to share this with you. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do and I just encourage you to latch on to something in this conversation today. Take it away, apply it in your own music practice.

And then again, come back on the 4th May, Saturday 4th May for the live training I’m presenting where again, we’re taking some of these new, juicy ideas from inside Next Level and bringing them to you so that you can apply them and you can get benefit from them, too. That’s it from me. Let’s dive in.

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Welcome to Coaches Corner, where I have the chance to get together with our Next Level coaches and hear some of the insights and experiences, experiences they’ve been having lately in Next Level coaching.

I’m joined today by Andrew Bishko, our head educator, and head coach. Andy Portas and Zac Bailey are coaches on the Next Level program, or some of them, anyway, and the idea is just to give them the opportunity to share some of the amazing things that are happening inside coaching because some of it trickles down into our other material and benefits all of our members.

But other things only really happen behind closed doors. And I’m always blown away on our team calls when I hear some of the stuff that’s been going on in Next Level coaching. So I wanted to have the opportunity to share that with you.

Andrew, why don’t you kick us off today? Share, what’s been going on with you in coaching recently?

Andrew: All right, well, one thing that I’ve noticed has been a big transformation with a lot of the clients is the move from being a musical consumer to a musical contributor. Now, of course, they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t wanting music education. And a lot of people feel, you know, they want to grow in their musicality, and they reach out to teachers, they reach out to Musical U, they reach out to coaching.

And all this is fine, but at a certain, and of course, we want to all be lifelong learners where we’re always learning, we’re always growing. But there’s a point at which we want to also be musical, not just consuming music education or music, just listening to music and things like that, going to concerts, but also having a say in the music, having something to say yourself personally, something to express or something to express in a collaboration or with interactions with an audience.

And that point, that sort of crossover point from being a consumer, where you’re always looking to other people to tell you what’s right, is it good enough? You’re always looking for approval, in a sense, from some external authority to being like, “wow, I have something to say here. I have something to add. I have something to contribute” is a really big shift that seems to open up all kinds of musical growth and confidence in one’s own musicality, where whenever we are learning music, there’s always going to be somebody who’s better than us or who has more skills or can do this better or that better or basically better means that we wish we could do it like them or, you know, but there is a point at which we reach where it’s like, I really have something important to say.

So an example, I have one client who went to a workshop in which she felt like she was really at the bottom rung in terms of the skill level that she was going to this guitar workshop at.

But then she went to the workshop and realized that she had something to add to say to some of the other members who were there who were very technically proficient, technically proficient, but she was also able to help them with their musicality and make contributions in that way and also what she played and what she was able to learn and grow herself. She felt like she had something to share and that people were receptive to her musically. Her input in conversations in collaboration with other musicians, but also her musical input.

And another situation is a guy who was in a band, but he always felt like he was the odd man out. He was like second string. He was on call and then suddenly it seemed like he was getting more calls and he found that he was having opinions about what was going on in the band and he was having contributions and ideas.

And he also realized the band actually played better with him than they played with the other bass player. They were more in the pocket, they were having more fun, more people were dancing. And he realized what he was doing and what he was giving to the band.

And that was a big aha moment for him in his confidence and growth and opened up all kinds of musical doors.

Christopher: Fantastic. I love that. Yeah. That shift to taking ownership and really feeling a bit of pride in at least some part of your musicality and that confidence to step forwards is huge, isn’t it? Perfect.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Christopher: And how about you, Andy? What’s been going on in coaching?

Andy: Well, I think one of the kind of things that I’ve found most interesting is how clients try and kind of fit in their Musical U studies alongside the kind of technical and learning, the practical applications of kind of making and playing music.

And I recently had a client who was, I suppose you say, struggling to find time to kind of fit this into a musical day. So we kind of between us sat and thought how are we going to best approach this? So the thing we kind of came up with was how can we make this doable in such a way that it’d be impossible not to succeed at kind of doing this, the musical modules.

So we decided that what we would do is say, right, all you’re going to commit to doing is just opening the website and looking at the module where you are. And that is your commitment for the day. Now obviously when you get in there and you see the work in front of you, you think, well, Im here now, I may as well do a little bit of this.

So what’s ended up happening is shes been kind of getting into Musical U modules been working on those for longer than just looking at the actual page itself and therefore making progress through the units. So rather than making that commitment of like Im going to do half an hour a day of this my commitment is to just open the website, look at that page, and then take it from there. And that’s been really successful for her.

And then she’s been able to kind of spend the rest of the day with that kind of smug feeling that she’s, she’s kind of, she’s done her commitment, and that’s it. So that’s been working wonderfully.

Christopher: That’s awesome, I love that! And it’s funny, isn’t it, how we sometimes need people to give us permission to do a certain thing. Like, it’s such a simple idea.

I think I read in a habits book one time the idea of flossing one tooth, where if you’re struggling to make yourself floss every day, just commit to flossing one tooth. And of course, once you’re there, you do them all. But I love that, the musical equivalent. And it’s great to hear she’s been having such success, just having that small commitment and letting it be however big it can be on the given day.

Wonderful. How about you, Zac?

Zac: Hey, yeah, I’ve been noticing something really cool in coaching recently, and that is the power of this really cool super combo of expression and reflection.

And I’ve noticed that when people leverage their heart and their emotion and tap into expression, they can get results in almost an instant that they may have thought would have taken them hours, days, weeks, months, or whatever to practice to get there. I had a client who came in and he had downloaded from the Internet all these two four bar rhythmic phrases, and then had little shots of the rhythmic phrases broken down into one beat rhythmic ideas. And he said, how do I go from this to playing something interesting and musical and cool, like doing an improvised solo? And I think he was looking for a systematic way to practice this to eventually be able to do that.

But what I did was I had him take these two beats of rhythm, this little rhythmic idea, and I had him vocalize it. And then I had him vocalize it with different expressions. I say, say you’re trying to work on something.

Someone barges into your room and starts yelling at you. How would you vocalize this rhythm? And then he did it. And then I asked him to reflect on that, and I was like, how did that expression change what you do with the rhythm? And he noticed that he accented different notes.

His note length changed. And then I had him do it. I was like, pretend you’re just relaxing on the beach.

You’re laying there, it’s a cool breeze. How would you vocalize this rhythm? And then he did it. And I had him reflect on that.

I said, how did that affect your rhythm? And he noticed, oh, his notes were a little bit more laid back. They’re a little bit longer notes, and more connected and smooth. And so I was like, there, you just made something interesting and musical with that rhythmic idea.

And he was like, oh, that’s. That’s really cool. So tap into that expression and just leverage different emotions, and you’re able to make cool musical things and awesome.

And I had another client who was telling me that they got into this, this. This flow state. They didn’t call it flow state, but I was like, you got into the flow state? They were performing a song, and they said it just flowed out more than ever, and they weren’t really sure what was happening. Their hands were just moving, and it was just flowing. And I asked them to reflect on that.

I said, how did that feel? What was going on there? And they talked about how they were just really connected to the emotion of the song and what the song means to them and just letting it flow. And then I also. I asked them to really remember that feeling and also the feeling of satisfaction that they had after they played.

I said, how did it feel when you were done playing? That felt so good. It felt so free. And I was like, what if every time you played music, it felt that way? And they were like, wow, that would be so cool.

So I was like, you know, leverage that experience, leverage that reflection so that you can attach that feeling of satisfaction and success to everything you do musically. And so that’s the power of the combo of expression and reflection to really make something cool happen right now with the. By tapping in the expression and then leveraging the reflection to really own that and make it a part of you so that you can carry it forward and the rest of the things that you do.

Christopher: Terrific. That’s awesome. And, yeah, as always, I’m just blown away by how you guys manage to draw on such a breadth of experience you each have and use it so creatively to meet our coaching clients where they are and really facilitate that next step forwards for them in their musical journey. Fantastic. This has been so much fun.

Thank you for taking the time, guys, and we will see you again very soon. Cheers.

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