Every aspect of music is personal.
A good performance depends on the player’s personal interpretation of the music. Enjoyment, for the listener, depends on their personal response to the music. Which in turn is informed by personal musical taste and experience.
And in the same way, learning to play a musical instrument is a highly personalised experience. In this post we’ll consider why that is true, and what it means in practice.
In this post I am going to share a simple trick that will help prompt you to compose and improvise your own music.
This also provides an excellent strategy for helping more advanced students develop their creativity, and move beyond written music.
When making up our own music it’s useful to have a “trigger” that helps get things started – or perhaps a set of “rules” or self-imposed limitations within which we will work. Far from limiting our imagination, this can stimulate our creativity as we explore the boundaries we have set ourselves.
The Eight Chord Trick can be used in exactly this way.
