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Principle 10: Learn to Move, Dance and Express Music With Your Body

As we have covered before in Principle 5 as well as other lessons, music is more about feeling than hearing or thinking. So ask yourself, where does music live in you? In your mind? Your heart? Hips? Ears? Hands? Feet?

The answer is that music affects the whole body. While the brain does indeed light up like a Christmas tree when we play music, so does our entire body if allowed to freely react to the music. Toes want to tap, hips want to sway, heads want to bob, fingers want to drum, booties want to shake. It’s in our DNA.

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Principle 8: Practice With Music for Fast Development

The standard music education practice model of solitary repetition is ineffective, painful and boring. Imagine if we learned our language this way, our parents telling us, “Now go into that room over there by yourself and say these words and sentences over and over again until they are perfect. You need to do this every day for a minimum of ____ hours.” It would be a slow, difficult, unhappy and boring process. Also we would not learn to speak very well no matter how much we “practiced” this way.

Practicing does not have to be a mind-numbing process of sitting in a room alone playing something over and over until it’s perfect. Instead, we can bring music into the practice room with us and make it much more fun and effective.

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Principle 4: Find and feel the groove before you play

I believe that the groove is the most important element of music. What is the groove? The groove is something you feel, not hear. Groove is a combination of many elements, especially the rhythm, sound and feel of the music. We must find and feel the groove when we play, especially when playing with other people. It doesn’t matter how well we are playing individually, if we don’t play in the groove it won’t sound good. Conversely, if we play with the groove, we will sound much better even if we aren’t playing something amazing.

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AcouFunkture EP “Momentum” Release!

Hong Kong based band AcouFunkture is pleased to release its second EP of original music “Momentum”! Featuring 4 songs written by AcouFunkture frontman Richard Kimber and produced by Farley Sangels at Lamma Studios, “Momentum” was quite fun to make! For more on this band please visit: https://www.acoufunkture.com/ People have been asking about the creative process, so …

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