Musicianship Mastery with David Lane

It's graduation season!  30 years ago, host David Lane graduated from high school.  Like so many adults, he's learned quite a bit since then, with some lessons harder than others.  From advice about practicing his instrument, finances, health, marketing, networking, and more...here are 30 things he would tell himself 30 years ago if he could go back in time.  If you're a high school graduate or st...

On this episode, we take a look at composing the score for a big-budget documentary series such as Prehistoric Planet, currently streaming on Apple TV+ with a 2nd season due to come out soon.  Series composers Anže Rozman and Kara Talve talk about working at Bleeding Fingers Music with Hans Zimmer, collaborating with each other in creating the score, and everything about the process from spotting...

Episode 21 is a brief challenge to be mindful in your decisions, understanding that choosing to do something means that you're choosing NOT to do something else.  Sometimes that something else you're NOT doing is practicing challenging music or technique, or composing, or doing something that feels like work, but you can apply this to any decision you make in life. Today's episode is sponsored by...

Dr. Frank Lehman, film music scholar and professor at Tufts University, returns to chat with David Lane about a score that is often lauded as the greatest of all time, The Empire Strikes Back composed by John Williams.  This episode is a discussion along with musical examples of the themes, harmonies, and orchestration choices that make this a masterpiece, along with a comparison to the 1st Star W...

When it comes to practicing music well, there may not be any better incentive than the power of residual effects.  For example, when you learn how to play a 2-octave scale really well, you've not just learned it for that one time.  You've learned it for the next time you need it and will at the very least be a lot further along when you come across anything similar.  Much like saving or investing...

This is the first of what will be many episodes in the Instrument Spotlight series for The Musician Toolkit, occurring once every few months.  This series is for anyone wanting to choose the instruments as either a primary or secondary instrument, as well as to inform composers and arrangers about the capabilities, challenges, and limitations of such instruments.  Kania Mills is an active performe...

Not every music student or even professional musician has explored classical music, much like not necessarily every classical musician will know something about jazz or any other genre.  However, each genre has certain pieces that one should know from each genre regardless of your preference.  These are 25 of many possible choices, not necessarily "the best", but some pieces you should recognize b...

One of the great ways to learn how music works is to study written scores.  There are different ways to approach this but, in this episode, we're mainly talking about orchestral scores and improving the knowledge of harmonies, orchestration, development of melodic material, ear training, and more all directly from existing pieces of music from the composers themselves. Our guest is Andrew Callo, a...

David Lane was recently asked, "What gave you that idea?" in regards to this podcast.  In this episode, he offers some insight into when he noticed these traits of musicianship, and how it developed before becoming the basis of this podcast.   From this episode, what most resonated with you, or what do you think I should have included?  Let me know by telling me directly at  https://www.speakpipe....

It's hard to truly understand the full expressive power of music unless you sing.  This is true especially if you're primarily an instrumentalist.  Depending on your instrument, you might be missing out on a chance to sharpen your skills of intonation, tone, breath, vibrato, and expressive details that some instruments lack.  More and more, innovative instrumental teachers include singing in their...

It took 13 episodes since this podcast began with the premise of exploring 20 tools of musicianship that every musician should have in some proportion.  Finally, there's a 21st tool to mention: the skill of active listening.  This is different than passive listening, a fine activity where you just enjoy the music, but it is essential to becoming a great musician!  In this episode, we review listen...

The ability to practice well is an important tool for every musician.  So why not put that skill to use on useful aspects of your life other than music?  Here are 10 things you can practice to improve that will either make you more efficient with your time, leave you better prepared to do the important work, or improve your relationships and your marketability as a musician.  If you want to be a s...

If you're a performing musician who uses sheet music, sightreading is one of the skills that you want to prioritize in developing, so this is the first of many times that this podcast will likely talk about this tool.  Erica Sipes is a pianist with a live show on her channel called Sightreading Maverick.  We touch on some of the physical tools needed to sightread well, but primarily we talk about...

When it comes to practicing music, sometimes the problem is that we don't always know what the process feels like when practice is good.  There are actually two halves to the practice, and not recognizing this leads students to occasionally either mistake the halfway point for the finish point or to rush the process in a way that the prepared piece is sloppy.  Listen to learn the 2 phases of pract...

There's nothing wrong with being average at anything.  As I once heard another podcaster say, "Most people, on average, are mediocre at most things".  To go from average to good takes some effort, but it's a smaller and seemingly less daunting step than to go from good to great.  If you're stuck on being average or good as a performer, one or more of the 7 reasons that are mentioned in this episod...

John Williams recently celebrated his 91st birthday.  He's rightfully considered the most popular and perhaps the greatest film composer of all time!  His too-many-to-list credits include Jaws, Star Wars I through IX, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones series, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  What are the tools of John Williams' craft?  What are some of his composi...

Creating music on acoustic instruments (ones that don't require electricity to produce the sound) are operating on properties of physics.  Sound waves have attributes, and each pitch on an actual instrument is producing multiple sound waves at once, with the fundamental (the sound you actually hear) and overtones, which create resonance.  Overtones are inaudible unless you isolate them, which you...

Whether you're a student pianist or you're already accomplished when it comes to classical music and reading fully notated scores, it's a different experience to take a lead sheet (with just a melody line and chord symbols) and perform it with accuracy, creativity, good voice-leading, and then add some improvisation.  But if you're a well-rounded musician, this world shouldn't be intimidating. Fed...

There are dozens and dozens of genres, but there are really 2 ways of learning music (with small variations of each).  One way can be helped by strong skills of sight reading, knowledge of music theory, and the ability to read written rhythms.  The other way can be helped by a well-developed ear, improvisation skills, and great applied knowledge of music theory.  I call it the Classical vs Jazz ap...

Most aspiring composers have narrow goals, seeing film (or video game) music or being a concert composer as the way to go, but if you can create music on paper, you actually have many options to contribute original music and add at least some income in the process.  One of those ways is composing for publication that is marketed to schools and churches: music for school bands and orchestras, music...

It's such an easy thing to do.  You're impressed with a great musician or other artist, and you talk about or get to compliment them, and out comes this word that seemingly everyone uses as a 1st choice...and that word is "talented".  Talent is certainly worth having, but it shouldn't be THE quality that gets the praise.  To quote the title of Geoff Colvin's wonderful book, Talent is Overrated , i...

When you work on music, there's so much to think about: rhythm, notes, fingerings, dynamics, articulation, tempo, and so on.  If the piece challenges you, and you're having trouble getting better, you may be trying to do too many things at once.  Hint: 2 things is too many things.  This episode offers 20 examples of how you can reduce your practice challenges down to 1 task. If you have a practice...

Welcome to The Musicianship Toolkit with David Lane!  This podcast is dedicated to helping you improve your craft of musicianship.  First, we need to discuss what goes in the toolkit.  The skill of sight-reading, the ability to play by ear, the ability to practice effectively and efficiently, knowledge of music theory, and 16 more tools will be introduced here.  Give yourself a rating of 1 (poor)...

Is it your goal to become a great musician?  Are you already a working musician, but want to strengthen your craft?  Are you a music student with strengths and weaknesses, and not always sure how to address that which needs improvement? Do you need to learn how to be a better sight-reader?  Do you need help playing by ear, transposing, or memorizing music?  Do you sometimes struggle to know how mu...