I was up at 1am today surfing YouTube and came across a How To Rap channel by ColeMizeStudios. Some of what I saw made me shout out loud because Cole Mize (pictured on the right) is a reminder that EVERYTHING IS DATA! Everything. Cole Mize brilliantly takes music and lyrics into data management and analysis mode. The result is a keen focus on being musical before everything else; before focusing on words, message, etc.
The first time I shouted was around 7:37 of this Structured Lyrics video when Cole Mize shows his “bar sheets.”
Here’s a screenshot from the video:
What does that look like? Excel, of course.
It also looks like the method I describe in other blogposts to explain how I’ve used Excel to help me understand and memorize song structure and chord progressions. (Excel for Musicians, and Music and Songwriting) Below is the image I used from Excel for Musicians:
In Cole Mize’s Structuring Lyrics video he’s explaining how he uses his bar sheets to create lyrics with visual cues for:
- How the the words in the lyrics hang together, and
- How the lyrics fit in the song structure.
The bold font represents the first beat of every measure in the song.
The yellow highlights help visualize where the rhymes are.
The beautiful part is that his method provides visuals for what he calls “anchor points” to keep the lyrics tied to the music. This solves a big problem in how music is learned and taught.
Typically musicians study their instruments alone. We take private instructions with a teacher who teaches our instrument. In my case, I’d bring my bass, sit with one other person who also played bass, and that person would teach me the bass line to a song I wanted to learn.
What was missing for a long time was direct explanation of “anchor points” where the bass line was attached to the song. I ruined a lot of songs–in public–by playing something super cool with no anchor to the underlying drum pattern. One time I was with my bandleader, listening to a recording of a show we’d done. My part was terrible, but I had no language for what was wrong other than “terrible.” That left me with no guidance on how to improve.
Looking back, the problem was that I was only focused on the chord changes and song structure. Being anchored in the song’s groove was never a concern. What Cole Mize does with rappers is constant reinforcement that:
- Songs have structure: intro, hook, verse, pre-verse, outro
- Music has structure: 4-count, 8-count, 16-count
and THOSE are what the rapper, the singer, the bassist … everyone in a band has to anchor to in order for the totality of a song to come across as coherent, listenable and danceable.
Go over and check out how Cole Mize breaks things down and puts it all back together. Over at his blog, he’s got a post on How to Memorize Lyrics. The method, in my eyes, is more ways of managing, dis-aggregating, aggregating and summarizing data. Ultimately, he provides structure and removes the fear of just plain memorization of a 3-minute song starting at the first word.
“STOP BEING SO ANALYTICAL! MUSIC IS ABOUT FEELING”
That’s something I heard a lot as a young musician. Some musicians insisted that studying music wrecks creativity and teaches the “right way” to play which leads to stiff, soulless music. Analysis would compromise their feel. However, what I found is that analysis provides a language and a way to re-create experiments and accidents that we want to later make deliberate use of. Analysis and study provide a way to communicate with each other. This isn’t about squashing creativity, it’s about having better control over what a musician wants to convey.
That happens by breaking our world down into components and seeing the bits as data that can be organized, rearranged, visualized, repeated, analyzed, etc. Without that, all we have is rote memorization, unnecessary mistakes, sloppy communication and meaningless statements like, “less is more.”
Excel happens to be my tool for analysis, and Cole Mize is the teacher I wish I had when I started playing bass.
My Word to Cole Mize
Brother, I really appreciate what you’re doing over there. You’re grounding young rappers (and experienced rappers who are struggling) in what it is to be musical … right from the beginning!
Wow! this is a really awesome article! not just because you talk about me but that’s really cool too 🙂 I admire the amount of work you put into all of your work. We have a lot of commonalities for sure 🙂 I can’t thank you enough for your write up and I sincerely appreciate all the love and support! It truly means a lot!! Wishing you much success in all your endeavors! Much love and respect! – Cole Mize
ColeMizeStudios Brother, you are so very welcome.
I’m preparing a show with ExcelTV and think it’d be great to interview you sometime before the end of the year. Let’s explore some of these commonalities and what it takes to make good rap.
OzData ColeMizeStudios ExcelTV Hey I like that idea! Just let me know a tentative date and time and well lock it in. The best way to contact me is via e-mail at http://colemizestudios.com/connect/
ColeMizeStudios I’m up in Seattle the next few days. When I get back home, I’ll get in touch via emal and we’ll make some stuff happen.
ExcelTV
OzData ColeMizeStudios ExcelTV Awesome sounds great! Wishing you safe travels and will talk with you soon! LET’S GET IT!! 🙂
Congrats brother like always you do a stand-up job learning alot.
This is a cool post, and I’m blown away by how great a teacher Cole Mize is. Really insightful to see him scatting to come up with rhythmically ‘insightful’ pattern first, rather than jumping straight into trying to fit words to the beat. Most of the crappy, bloated spreadsheets I’ve come across are the result of someone jumping straight into trying to fit existing approaches to the problem. Without thinking enough about what a great solution would look like. Will it be fast? Will it be easy to maintain? Will it be possible to scale/sustain? Will it be understandable? Will it be robust? Probably not, if you didn’t do the Excel equivalent of doing some scatting first.
Makes me think of the parallel in data of keeping that very important question “What does a good outcome sound like” first and foremost when you’re starting to attack something. Everything we do should be anchored back to that question.
A relentless focus on that end effect will lead to outcomes that you might not otherwise come up with if you just slip back to your comfortable tried, tested, and tired repertoire…be it words in rap or approaches in Excel. No innovation there. Just stagnation.
Great post Oz, and thanks for joining the conversation ColeMize.
Jeff Weir Thanks so much for all of your kind words! I’m truly humbled by them! I’m glad that you enjoyed this video and I think you may have just coined a new phrase “scatting in Excel” lol
I agree OzData brings some much needed flavor and personality to a topic that is usually presented in a dry and uninspiring manner. He truly has a passion for what he’s teaching and that most certainly bleeds through all of his content.
Thanks again Jeff Weir for all of your positive vibes and support! Wishing you nothing but the best in all that your do!
– Cole Mize
GarryShepard Thanks so much bro! As always thanks so much for all the love and support! I really do appreciate it and i’m glad my content has been helpful to you! 🙂
– Cole Mize
Jeff Weir Thanks for joining the conversation. While working with ColeMizeStudios it definitely hit me that the similarity between sloppy spreadsheets and sloppy rap is when the the first step is to start building the outcome. But it’s intuitive to build exactly what you envision.
And that’s where good teachers and coaches come in: reveal what’s not intuitive and that you build TOWARD the outcome as opposed to building the outcome.