Music is a language and it is possible to express yourself fluently with a clear understanding of its tonal and rhythmic “vocabulary” and “syntax”. Unfortunately, current teaching of practical musicianship and musical literacy emphasises theory and audiation as the tools for gaining fluent skills, which causes mental overload and confusion for most people.

Musically Fluent offers a very simple model of how music works. With training, students can develop their moment-by-moment focus on this model and let go of the habits of audiating and overthinking. This skill of focus and letting go is more a meditative than a cognitive one, and the practice is rather Zen-like, as it requires both mental rigour and childlike expressive freedom. Provided that students take on this attitude, the rewards are enormous.

This course is for all kinds of musicians. The rhythmic side can be practised by clapping or tapping and the tonal side uses keyboard and vocal musicianship as its basis: keyboard literacy is the best way for a musician to be fluent in the rich and complex tonal language that we use in the world today.

It is a foundation course. Once the core skills are laid down, any genre of music will be much easier to understand and practise, whether performing, improvising or composing, whilst theory of music becomes easy and fun to study, as it feels more like the icing on the cake than the cake itself.

The course is currently in development and will be ready for new students to apply very soon.