School of The Rock™

Develop Your Musicianship               

Written by Paul D. Race for SchoolOfTheRock.com™

 

Are you a musician?  Musicians don’t play notes or sings songs. They dig deep and do whatever it takes to play better, sing better, and eventually write better and perform better. 

A host of dumb movies about music have left the impression that you get “good” by learning to “feel it in your gut” or “rage against the man” or some such.  The truth is that you get good by paying attention and working hard.  Taking lessons when you’re young enough for them to soak in is good start.  Learning at least basic music theory will give you a big jump-start as well.  Yes, you have seen folks with no “formal” training who nevertheless got very good at what they do.  What you don’t know is how many hours they sat across from someone who knew their stuff, learning everything they could before they ever took their first step onto the platform or into a recording studio.  If your uncle is B.B.King or your mother is Carole King, you may have all the “built-in” instruction you need to get started.  But if you didn’t grow up in a musical family that showed you how to hold a guitar before you learned to walk, and you’re serious about a career, or even a decent avocational experience in music, you’ll probably have to pay someone to show you what you need to know. 

The rest of the articles in this section are going to consist mostly of me telling you that you have to do hard stuff that isn’t always fun at the time but will pay huge dividends in the future.  Suck it up.

Note:  The “Independent Christian Musician” articles we have so far are largely “placeholders” where we hope to plug additional resources in the future. In the meantime, we wanted to make the resources we’re currently aware of available.  So some of the “articles” are largely lists of resources we think you will find helpful. If, as you peruse these pages, please feel free to use our contact page to let us know what else you’d like to see here, or if you think we’re missing the mark in any way.

Our articles on developing your musicianship include the following topics.

• Learning an instrument you can accompany yourself on, especially guitar and/or piano.
• Developing your voice.
• Learning basic music theory.
• Developing your songwriting
• Exercise Professionalism, which largely means working hard and learning play well with others.  As a “Christian musician,” you should exemplify graciousness in all you do.)

Discussion Forum:  We have started a thread in our SchoolDontRise.com discussion forums about this topic.  At the moment, Paul is contributing the vast majority of comments on these forums, but a lot of people are reading them, so we wish very much that you would sign up and join in on the discussion.  Feedback, corrections, additions, etc. are all welcome. 

• The forum for “Develop Your Musicianship” topics is here.
• The form for signing up so you can contribute is here. 

As always, please contact me with corrections, complaints, clarifications, etc.  If your response is responsible, I'll try to include it in the "reader response" section below.

God bless,

Paul

SchoolOfTheRock.com