A heartfelt welcome to everyone who has recently joined our school community. It’s wonderful to have you here. Wherever you are on your musical journey, I hope this becomes a place where you feel comfortable learning, asking questions, sharing your discoveries and simply enjoying music. Please feel free to introduce yourself below and tell us a little about your musical journey. And remember, you’re always welcome to reach out at any stage. Welcome to the community. ❤️🎶

Learning music is so much easier when you have someone to ask. That’s why I’m introducing a new weekly feature inside our community… 🎵 Ask Mat Every Friday, I’ll answer your music questions. Whether you’re learning piano, guitar, bass, ukulele, drums, singing, or any other instrument, you’re welcome to join in. You can post: 🎹 Videos of your playing 🎵 Recordings you’re working on 📖 Reading music questions 🎼 Chord charts and lead sheets 👂 Ear training questions 🎵 Music theory 🎹 The Easy Key Method Or anything else that’s helping—or frustrating—you on your musical journey. Simply leave your question, video, recording or photo in the comments below throughout the week. Then, every Friday, I’ll personally jump in and answer as many questions as I can. No question is too simple. One of the wonderful things about this community is that we’re all learning together. Feel free to help each other in the comments as well. You never know—your question might be exactly what someone else needed to hear. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re working on. Let’s make some music! 🎶

When learning music, we often look outside ourselves for the answer. We look at the piano keys, the fretboard, notation, chord charts or the Easy Key. These are all valuable guides—but they cannot hear the music for us. The instrument produces the sound, but the music is heard within. Before playing a phrase again, pause and remember its sound. Rather than immediately searching for the correct key, become quiet enough to hear the music inwardly. Then allow your hands to express what you already hear. Today’s lesson explores this through the flavours of four basic chords: 🍞🍯🧈 Major — warm, bright and balanced 🍞🍫🧈 Minor — deeper, bittersweet and reflective 🍞🍫🌶️ Diminished — tense, unstable and full of movement 🍞🍯🫙 Augmented — mysterious, dreamlike and psychedelic These flavours are not rules. They are playful invitations to listen more deeply and discover what the music awakens within you. Close your eyes and play a chord. What does it taste like? What colour, feeling or image appears? 🎹 Continue with the complete Chords from Flavours lesson here: https://www.skool.com/mat-creedon-school-of-music-4248/classroom/ed6b5f18?md=9e819d8b1a10450a87daa0e18e0f6dac

Today, I’d like you to listen to a note without immediately trying to name it. Before deciding whether it is C, F♯, 3 or ♭7, notice how it feels. Is it sweet? Dark? Sharp? Warm? Does it feel stable, or does it want to move somewhere else? We often approach music by trying to identify and categorise everything we hear. But a name is not the sound itself. It is simply a label we place upon the experience. Today’s full lesson explores a completely different way of learning music. We give every note a flavour and then combine those flavours to create chords, scales and musical sandwiches. A major chord becomes bread, honey and butter. A minor chord becomes bread, dark chocolate and butter. Only one ingredient changes, yet the entire experience is transformed. Today, take a moment to taste music before you name it. Listen to one note in relationship to home and ask: “If this sound had a flavour, what would it be?” There is no wrong answer. The purpose is simply to experience the sound more directly and develop your own relationship with it. 👉 Explore the complete lesson here

Most of us practise because we are searching for perfection. But perhaps perfection is not something waiting for us in the future. Perhaps this moment is already perfect as it is. When you play a musical phrase, you either play it correctly or incorrectly. Another way of putting it is that you played it perfectly correctly or perfectly incorrectly. Either way, the phrase has given you a perfect demonstration of where you are right now. The mistake is not interrupting the lesson. The mistake is the lesson. If a movement feels clumsy, allow it to feel clumsy. Becoming frustrated or tense will not give you greater control. In most cases, it will make the movement feel even more awkward. Instead, find the exact point where the phrase feels most vulnerable. Narrow it down to the smallest possible movement—perhaps only the transition between two notes. Then repeat that tiny movement while breathing slowly in and out through your nose. Place most of your attention on the breath and slightly less attention on controlling the movement. This is practice through meditation. You are not forcing your body to obey. You are patiently allowing an unfamiliar movement to become part of your natural musical language. From relaxation comes calm. From calm comes control. From control comes effortlessness. From effortlessness comes fluency. Today’s Practice Choose one small musical movement that feels uncomfortable or clumsy. Practise it slowly for at least three minutes while consciously breathing through your nose. Allow the movement to be exactly as it is without judging it or trying to force it into submission. The movement may be perfectly clumsy today. Let it be. Breathe with it. Listen to it. Learn from it. In time, it will no longer feel like something you are trying to play. It will simply become part of the way you speak. You can explore the complete lesson here: Perfectly Clumsy — Read the Full Lesson