Lesson 5: Do Not Pigeonhole Yourself

Do Not Pigeonhole Yourself

Have you ever heard guys who go "I'm a ____ musician, and am too good for ____!"? I'm pretty sure all of us have heard that line somewhere before. I've spoken it myself many times when I was younger when I thought that classical music and jazz were superior to everything else (unconsciously actually, if I knew I was doing that I might've hated myself).

The Superiority Complex

It is natural for people to want to be part of an exclusive bunch or do something that they think is "superior" to the rest. That's because of the fact that there seems to be some kind of hierarchy in everything that we do in life - most people believe that being a doctor is "superior" to being a lawyer in terms of nobility, though I know for a fact that isn't true; being financially rich is always better. The list is non-exhaustive and in every field in the world there is such thing as a superior person/career/position/ability/whatever.

This gives people the wish to tag themselves with terms such as "lawyer", "doctor", "banker", "socialite" and feel good about it. It's what they identify themselves as, and they try very hard to live up to it. Just to upkeep one's image, many people go to great extents to make sure that they fit the image, often trying to change characteristics of themselves, following particular trends religiously, and more importantly needlessly spend lots of money to maintain the image. For musicians, many pick up drugs, destructive lifestyles, practising habits, snobbishness, and a whole range of unhealthy things for their bodies and their minds in order to keep with the image that society has of their ideal self.

Isn't that tiring and painful?

That was pretty much a rhetorical question. Many of these expectations are either unrealistic or often misguided. We try to hard to mimic what is only a portion of the image - the doctor who's always kind and warm and never wrong; the lawyer who fights for justice and earns barely enough to eat, or sells his soul for a great income; the banker with a high income high expenditure lifestyle who does not need to sleep and wines and dines at the highest end places; the musician who takes drugs and mulls over people not appreciating their music and therefore they start self-destructing; and as again the list goes on. The actions and ideas above are due to the images that we assume is the role of our ideal self, and it ends up killing us spiritually, financially, and physically. It trades our true sense of self-esteem (ie accepting yourself) for a false sense of identity of what you are not.

How about try being yourself?

The overwhelming effort one takes to pigeonhole oneself can easily be channeled into being the best version of yourself, which is far more rewarding and effective. Everyone has different experiences and the whole interplay of the same factors, whether be it environment or habits, will affect everyone differently. And the beautiful part about humanity is that completely mimicking only results in an inferior version of the predecessor, purely because it's always going to be following the original, never exceeding the original.

Why being yourself is better

You can't change your basic fundamental self in some sense, we all come with inherent values and morals that were shaped by the way that we were brought up, as our brains are wired to be different. You can change the way your values, such as helpfulness, optimism, etc, and package them in a different way that is healthier (mentally, such that you can be happier), but you can't really change their presence. So the best way is to adapt your skills and values such that it becomes uniquely yours. There's no true basis of comparison when something is genuinely and uniquely yours, and is the best of yourself, for you will be the expert of your own ideas, sounds, skills or taste. So there's no such thing as being truly "superior" other than being "more of yourself" (that's of course my view).

The Most Important Questions

Some tips on how you can start really finding out whether you're pigeonholing yourself:

Are you doing some things you yourself think is not-exactly-wise because you think that fits the image of what you want yourself to be but you can't come to terms with it?

Is your aim your own, or directly lifted off someone else?

Is there someone, or some people, you worship and can see no flaws in?

Do you feel you're superior to everyone else because you are a ______ (label)? Do you feel like therefore you can't connect with others because they're inferior?

If the answer to any of the questions is yes, chances are, you are likely to end up pigeonholing yourself if you haven't already done so.

How To Fix It?

Steps to take would be to ask a billion and one why's to everything that you are aiming to be. Such as, "Why do I want to be ____?", "Why do I like ____?", and at the end of it you will have to find out whether you've been honest with yourself and see what you're truly about. At that time can you distill what is it that you want. The process is often tedious and painful, and probably take a lifetime because we have many areas of ourselves that we never knew existed. However the concept is simple, but it's difficult to achieve as it requires strong reflection, which incidentally wasn't a strength of mine either.

In music, you have to do this repeatedly before you can find the sound you want to achieve (ie something of your own). And through music appreciation, you can also find ways to appreciate how people are different, and how great art comes from people who choose to be the best that they can be even if they're in an anguished state, as they are honest to themselves and the art (even if they might not be to everything else).

That's why art is beautiful.

Lesson 4: Lessons Shared On Pulse-Based Music Education

My whole drive to do music education and my whole idea of coming up with Pulse is something of a personal journey for myself. My love for music keeps me alive and gives me perspective, but my love for mental health is guiding me to my true dream - happiness through honest, sincere connection through the medium of music, for everybody. It was these two passions that gave rise to this singular passion - Pulse and its effects on people. So you can view Pulse-Based Music Education on several different levels: on a musical level, on a technical level, on a psychological level, on a humanistic level; and they're probably all be correct for this is the reason why such an idea even spark.

So what has this got to do with anything? Pulse-Based Music Education is in its infancy stages and not going anywhere yet, so why am I saying so much? Simply because I want to share my vision who anyone who wants to read this too. =)

Lessons learned in music are not often exclusive to music alone; often times the source of the problem when we're playing music is not really a "musical" one, but instead a mindset issue, a psychological issue. So in the same breath, I'd like to also argue that great music is usually created from people who either actually made effort to deal with their own personal problems or made the effort to come to terms with one's weaknesses and strengths and to accept them. There were many great musicians with a wreck of a personal life, but that's actually where the grit in their stories when they create music comes from; they embraced their predicament and expressed it through their voice in music, rather than putting another front when they played music. This vulnerability and honesty is what gets people to connect, much like how we like to share stories of vulnerabilities with our closest friends and family; that's what makes art art, and the struggle to improve is also a great story to be told.

The fact that one is able to fully share one's true vulnerabilities, through whatever means of art, is cathartic, and is highly therapeutic to a person. At the same time, this release of emotions is precisely what keeps people attracted to the arts, where imperfection is perfection, because it is human. Pulse has one of the explanations as to why human emotions in the crowd greatly affect the abilities of the musicians to speak honestly through their music; and it has nothing to do with pride, instead the common Pulse that is generated by the musician and even the audience (such that if they're not matched the meaning is often lost) gives the energy and the experience to everyone, dictating what the final experience might be.

That can explain why a music performance can be life-changing to a "non-musical" person - it touches the very depths of a person's emotions and shares a common thread with him/her, but in his/her own perspective. That is the power of our auditory experiences when we listen to great music. That is also why we should always go to a performance with positive outlook and a willingness to let go of oneself to truly enjoy the music if we want to truly appreciate a performance.

So on the same line of thought, the pretense of a performer can greatly affect the crowd as well. As this is a public blog, I will reserve my (rather subjective) take on some particular types of music that are detrimental to a person's mental wellness by putting up false fronts, and everyone can get in on it, causing a mind-heart rift that will persist if one immerses in the music for too long. But this is for another day. =)

Back to the idea on why I wrote this post as well; the aim is to share why I'll be sharing a lot of personal life lessons that I hope will inspire and/or create discussion regarding personal growth and acceptance, as well as ways to a more mentally stable self. They will be covered during courses by me, or future license practitioners of this education system, but more importantly, they will be contextualised and repeated here, as many life lessons benefit from repeated learning.

Hope you will enjoy reading this blog. =)

Lesson 3: Overview of Pulse-Based Music Education

Overview of Pulse-Based Music Education

Definition

Pulse is an innate, inaudible structure to music, organised by the factor of time, to lay the foundation on which the harmonic, rhythmic and melodic ideas are presented. Pulse-Based Music Education is a system in which this phenomenon is explained and shared in words such that it is comprehensible through a formal language.

Objectives

Bring consciousness of Pulse to everyone, such that everyone can enjoy the true joy of music.

Create a community appreciators, musicians and educators together to share their joy of music.

Use Pulse and inspiration as a tool for self-improvement and arts appreciation.

Pulse as the foundation of a new type of therapy approach to be used for mental wellness.


Pulse Classification

Pulse Unconscious
A state where one is unaware of Pulse (i.e. unable to pinpoint location, tempo and logicality of Pulse) and the ability is thus dormant. Most people actually do not belong in this category because as long as you can genuinely dance with some sensitivity to the Pulse and/or play music to a certain degree, you probably are sensitive to Pulse despite not knowing it.

Pulse Conscious
This, of course is a rather large classification on its own, with three different levels. They are a continuum all the way from Pulse unconsciousness to Pulse generator. We have varying levels of Pulse consciousness for different types of music and sounds, and it is normal to have even Pulse unconscious to a particular genre of music.

The three levels are:

Pulse-sensitive - a state where one can identify where the Pulse is when listening to music.


Pulse-dependent - a state where one can depend on another person, the strongest Pulse generator, for reference of the Pulse, when playing music


Pulse-generator - often the source of energy and time for the band, the Pulse generator is a person who indicates the Pulse with or without playing notes (remember it's inaudible, though usually it's through indication through playing notes). A band full of Pulse generators is the stuff of legends, with plenty of legendary bands and musicians to cite as great examples, across genres.

Note: Not every member of every legendary band is a Pulse generator, which often explains why when a band breaks up the individual parts are not always ending up with great music thereafter.


Method of Teaching/Learning

Pulse-Based Music Education Programme believes in using the powerful effects of positivity and inspiration to approach education and sharing. Conceptual learning and experiential learning are the two critical foundations of Pulse-Based Music Education and will be carried out simultaneously through discussion, examples and experimentation.

Rote-learning as a modality will be used sparingly as it is a useful source of muscle memory as well as theory knowledge, but will always be paired with the other two modalities for more efficacious and contextual learning.

The courses will always begin with music appreciation, regardless of target audience's abilities and experience, as the root of learning in Pulse-Based Music Education is appreciation. Of course, the level of difficulty would be moderated to abilities of individuals in the class.

The aim for Pulse-Based Music Education is to be able to bring out individuality in the context of a community, i.e. honest opinions and discussions regarding relevant topics and healthy discussions. This is to allow free-flowing of information between different people with different ideas to come to understand and allow for understanding.

More importantly, for those who are simply music lovers who want to learn more about Pulse, the classes will be gearing more towards exposure and experience of various life-like music performances (ultimately) such that you can understand the joys of the art and have a new facet to your life. The Programme aims to help you find your personal favourite artists/bands/genres such that you can find connection with someone communicating with you through this beautiful medium, across cultural and geographical boundaries. Also, it also aims to give you a wide spectrum of experiences to enrich your life.

As for homework, there will definitely be. You'll be tasked to enjoy music, and expose yourself to a variety of different sounds, genres and styles; and that is the key to Pulse-Based Music Education - enjoying and appreciating a variety of sounds in music. =)

Lesson 2: What Is Pulse?

What Is Pulse?

Pulse, in music, is a phenomenon no different from Pulse in our bodies. It is the basis on which music is structured upon such that one has the freedom to express. As with everything else, music requires a universal structure which is the foundation behind every note played or sung, or every moment silent, in order for it to have a semblance of logicality or continuity that allows the music to be perceived much like a language as well as an art. Just as much as you can't write literature without sentences, you can't express music without Pulse. (This statement might incite some people to accept a challenge to create pulseless music, which challenges even our innate rhythmic senses)

Pulse doesn't refer to obvious, repetitive, strict time that is always 4 crotchets to a bar or even 23 quavers to one. Instead Pulse refers to an intrinsic organisation of time that all humans have, as in the basis behind our ability to dance to music and feel a structure and passing of time through music. Even "free time" is done best with a strong sense of Pulse behind it, such that if you can sense the Pulse from the start to the end there is always a constant rhythm going behind which is the Pulse that might be grouped in different ways according to the logical flow of the musician.

Another critical factor of Pulse is that it is ideally an inaudible sense of time, meaning that no notes would ideally be played precisely with the Pulse but instead around it. This defies most conventional idea and is probably the crux of what Pulse is all about. Think about it: Our bodies contain a heart which pumps pretty much steadily for most of the day depending on your mood, activity and many other factors which affect our heart rate. However, do we ever physically feel our pulse most of the time? If you do, I would suggest you see a doctor regarding palpitations. Our perception, our movements and our thoughts are actually running in relation to the Pulse. We think faster when our heart rate is sped up (and vice versa), and we do things slower as our heart rate slows down (and vice versa again), but we would never thinking and moving exactly as our body's Pulse does, if it does it'll probably cause awkwardness, robotic movements and weird sensations (which is why if you always feel your heartbeat there's something wrong). Being organisms, humans are meant to be organic and fluid, such that movements are gradual rather than step-based. It is the same with music, when we play music that is always on the Pulse, it basically becomes robotic, because it is like moving together with your own body's Pulse.

Before the advent of technology, due to the fact that there was no such thing as digital or robotic, music was made mostly with a strong sense of Pulse but never on it. Live music never aimed to be on the Pulse despite the metronome and the over-dependence on it because there were no sounds and music that was on the Pulse. But don't take my word for it, feel the difference when you listen to these two famous pop songs done differently.

Case Example 1
Sara Bareilles' Love Song - Studio Version


vs Sara Bareilles' Love Song Live At Abbey Road


Case Example 2
Bruno Mars' Nothin' On You Studio Version


Bruno Mars' Nothin' On You covered on YouTube


Can you feel the difference in the emotional texture and the groove of the music? One was basically on the Pulse and the other was somewhat around the Pulse especially for Sara Bareille's live version, and the vocals of the guy who covered Nothin' On You.

So, in summary, Pulse is the organisational structure on which musical structure, complex or simple, is built upon. It is the basic building block - not harmony nor any strict rhythm. It is an inaudible component of music that gives direction to the music and allows music to spring forth but when the Pulse becomes audible (or simply that the music/notes are all on the Pulse), very often the music would end up being robotic and awkward.

This is a simplistic and rather directive way of describing Pulse as like most things, a short overview is unlikely to completely explain the full idea behind Pulse, therefore if you're interested, feel free to explore further into this blog for more ideas on Pulse-Based Music Education. =)

Lesson 1: What Is Pulse-Based Music Education?

What is Pulse-Based Music Education about?

There are so many music education programmes out there, ranging from classical violin to rock guitar, from theory of music to instrumental technique, from operatic vocals to extreme death metal shred bass, and each of them further one's aim to go deeper into one's own niche and expand one's ideas within the area which they love or simply want to learn more from. All of them try to equip the eager student who desperately want to evolve from a young student to a genuine musician, who gets one of the best jobs in the world: to earn a living doing what you love.

Pulse-Based Music Education's aims are no different from most of these programmes; the aim is to help students reach their dreams of being a musician. However, the music education programme does not only cover music students or musicians, it also includes the everyday music aficionado that wants to delve deeper into this beautiful world of aural artistry and understand how the music makes us move, so that we can extract more pleasure from every song that we listen to, and to further the deep interest in this wonderful art. Pulse-Based Music Education is an education programme to rekindle passion for music, as well as to revolutionise one's way of thinking, feeling and experiencing music, while serving to help you find your individual preferences and sound, empowering you to be more of the best version of yourself, musically or not.

The programme aims to give different skills to different groups of people:

Music-Lovers

The world is constantly flooded with music nowadays. From the stereo from the car on the street, to the lounge music playing in the background in the departmental store. Of course, the most important music that everyone would rather listen to the most is the music that they have in their MP3 Player that stores their treasure trove of their favourite music. Every music lover has his/her favourite artist, favourite track and probably a different playlist for a different mood.

Would you want to take your music appreciation to the next level? The programme will expose you to an array of new listening experiences and share a new, engaging and fun approach to listening to music which will allow you to take your appreciation of the music, regardless whether it is modern or classical, simple or complex, to a whole new level. It shall allow you to understand what it is about a band, a singer or a genre of music that appeals to you so much, and allow you to appreciate other genres that other people around you like, further understanding their preferences and characters by proxy.

Another great opportunity offered by the programme is to help you find the artist/genre/sound that fits you the most. The system aims to help you abolish all pre-conceived notions about a genre, an artist or a particular sound and instead build a strong foundation to explore emotions and ideas channeled through the music without much work other than simply listening to the music through a new lens.

Pulse-Based Music Education is a means of heightening one's senses for music, without having the hassle of learning the intricacies of music theory and formal education that bog down rather than enlighten if done before one is ready. What is taught is actually a very primitive way of sensing music: by its pulse; and from there we can learn to interpret and understand music in vastly different ways that we've ever done before. It will also enhance your learning if you were to ever pick up any instrument in the future for fun, shortening the process required to be proficient enough to create the music that you want, simply because your musical senses would have been developed.

The next few posts for you will give you an insight more into this idea.

Music Students

Feeling a musician's block for the longest time? Unable to improve your own musicality despite following your teacher's every word, and spending many hours practising your instrument? Or are you really good at playing but find it hard to find real joy out of playing music anymore? There are many other things that music students, and musicians, suffer that affect the quality of their music and the ability for them to truly express themselves. These are common things that afflict many of us as it's just as much a personal growth issue as it is about learning the ethereal parts of music that can't be easily quantified by words.

Well, at least what used to be ethereal parts of music, because the idea behind pulse is a means to actually explain the phenomenon of musicality. It does not fully explain everything in music, but it serves a template to analyse and appreciate music on a details-based level, for you to make the further analysis on the other elements of music. The first part of any musician's journey, and arguably the most important part of his/her entire journey is musical appreciation; without it most of the time musicians flounder and often fail to express anything meaningful in the music. You have to start as a music lover before you can be a musician; you have to be a fan of music, any type of music, before you can start creating your own. And Pulse-Based Music Education is helping you achieve your musical aims by providing you the resources to revolutionise the way you perceive music and its role in your life, and how to make use of what the masters had to turn into your own - not just the notes and the compositions, but their energy and their expressions as well.

No matter what level of playing a musician is at, Pulse-Based Music Education aims to help you explore your ideas on music and find a community of people who are as eager about music as you to find your direction in music with a supportive environment. Another thing that Pulse-Based Music Education aims to do is to use fundamental principles to help you achieve your personal sound and ideas to the maximum of one can be; i.e. as a choice but not completely due to limitations. Pulse is a very personal and strong motivational force one can utilise purposefully to produce a more personalised sound rather than that which is an exact copy of another person or independent of your current scenario. The most important question in Pulse-Based Music Education is whether you are expressing the best you can, not anything else.

Music Teachers

There's this one thing which most music teachers have to admit - it's hard to teach musicality to students. It's like this elusive thing that everyone's working hard to get to but very often can't reach due to a host of reasons. Another thing that is difficult to explain is how this elusive thing appears in a person's playing and how we can reach it. Can we quantify how this person plays this phrase in a more musical manner than another person? How do you put words to something like this which is almost impossible to explain in words? Pulse-Based Music Education intends to break that cycle and bring to you the ability to talk about musicality in a structured and logical way, without taking out the beauty and subjectivity in music.

Another point that I believe many people will agree with is that teaching music as a career is hard. Many-a-times the students are not inspired and unwilling, or unable to improve because of various reasons. It becomes a slow and draggy process where every time you meet your student there's barely any improvement, if any, and there's barely energy for you to carry on. What is it that keeps the best teachers going, and create so many wonderful students along the way? And how is it that they can love their job? There is one word which can change all of this - inspiration. There are teachers who whip their students into shape, there are teachers who magically lift their students to a higher plane of playing by constant encouragement, and there are those with a few simple words of wisdom drastically change a music student's life for the better. They all work, but are very dependent on individual, because no matter what method you choose, if you don't learn that important aspect in education, your results would vary. It would vary because different students will be intrinsically motivated at different levels, but if you were to base whatever methods you have with inspiration, you're bound to get somewhere. An inspired student will be far more inspiring to teach than a student who drags himself/herself into your room to go through same few things again.

Pulse-Based Music Education aims to reduce the difficulty of both aspects of teaching by providing a new set of analysis to allow yourself to explain things which were previously difficult to explain, as well as showing you ways of inspiring students, and yourself, through simple daily measures that one can take to keep the momentum going. It is a course specially tailored for individual strength of each participant, and prescribes no fixed method to deal with inspiration, but instead "what works best for you" in a package.

That's the introduction to Pulse-Based Music Education. In Lesson 2 I'll start covering what Pulse is all about.