Success Beyond The Score

"You might not get to where you want to be, but you will get to where you ought to be!"

—Millicent Stephenson, founder of Success Beyond The Score

The boom of generative AI brings difficult challenges to the music industry. In an effort to keep regulations on par with the development of this technology, the Musicians' Union is pushing for copyright law to be upheld in relation to it, and for new rights to be introduced that will protect musicians and music creators from any unauthorised use of their works and performances.

Generative AI needs massive amounts of data —in the case of music, the input is millions of songs and sound samples— to train with, before it can generate pieces from given prompts. This data so far has been collected without explicit consent by its original, human creators. Developers argue that their LLMs (large language models, generally referred to as "AI") learn from the source data in a way similar to humans, therefore they can't incur in copyright infringement. However, these systems are unable to create their own ideas. Instead, they search for patterns in pre-existing music so, when they get a prompt,...

Here we reproduce a letter by researcher Mahaliah Edwards, who's looking for musicians to contribute to her current line of work. Please, take a look:

Dear all,  

I’m wondering if you can help me. 

For my Master’s degree, I’m researching musicians who have in-depth cultural and social understanding of two or more distinct musical traditions. I want to find out about their musical upbringing and experiences moving between different musical traditions and spaces. There are many terms for this, including bimusicality or intermusicality. 

I’m looking to interview musicians of any description over the age of 18 who may relate to this topic. I’m keen to have respondents from many different cultural, social and musical backgrounds. 

If you yourself are interested or if you know anyone that would be interested to participate please send this email on. 

This link to the initial questionnaire which takes 5 mins to complete: https://ddffu5e2czc.typeform.com/to/qeV4Qmxo 

This is inspired ...

It has been a while since many of you answered the Time For My Music survey in regards of having the next concert happen face to face on a venue in the city of Birmingham (UK). The community happily received all your valuable feedback, and the women have been discussing and organising the event ever since.

At the moment, they're doing one of the most exciting parts of putting a show together, which is choosing their songs. There's going to be solo, duo and group acts, which has made the process quite exhilarating. All the options on the table are interesting, and the challenge of picking the ones that'll make for the best experience alongside the others has been a good exercise for the women.

The show is taking shape and the community of Time For My Music is doing its best to be able to confirm the exact date and location. Look forward to announcements and information about the concert coming out very soon!

Nominations for the Musicians' Union Executive and Regional committees 2024-2025 are open until midday of Wednesday 27th September, 2023.

The Executive committee is the governing body of the union and it's in charge of taking major decisions that affect the working conditions of musicians across the country. The Regional committees are in charge of day-to-day management and perception of local concerns. If you, or someone you know, have a passion for social work and political change, consider submitting your or their name for a nomination. You could make a big difference! 

Click here to read all the information on what the positions entail and what are the requisites to apply. If you have specific questions about the role you'd have in a committee, you can contact our director Millicent Stephenson at [email protected] and ask about her experience. She was part of the Executive Committee for a few years, and she's currently part of the Regional Committee for the Midlands.

Are you a gigging musician, singer, rapper or spoken word artiste with big dreams but unsure of how to make them come true? If so, this is for you.

Learn how to get better quality gigs, ensure the longevity of your career and the energy in your performances, build your image and increase your income with Revealed, a free booklet where Millicent Stephenson, a multi-award winning saxophonist with a successful career that spans decades, condensed her experience and insight into 25 key secrets.

As you read, it's a free booklet, no catch! All you have to do is to provide a valid e-mail address. You won't receive spam and your information isn't going to be disclosed to any third party. As easy as that!

Anna Mae Bullock, known as the legendary Tina Turner, passed away three months ago. There are many things that one could say and highlight about her astounding career in the arts, and how she seemed to be able to sing, dance and act in anything she set her mind to. This time, however, we'd like to pay attention at how she kept a healthy work-life balance through her brilliant career, which most likely explains how long and fruitful it was.

When asked during an interview if she woke up in the morning and looked at herself in the mirror to marvel at the fact that she was really the one and only Tina Turner, this is what she replied:

In the current era, when everybody is a little celebrity building a persona through social media, this perspective becomes very valuable. Giving ‘everything’ on stage doesn’t have to include —in fact, it shouldn’t include— that which is more personal to us, our privacy and core identity. We must strive for a healthy relationship with our audiences. There...

We live in a busy world.  Our phones keep us active, the internet cries for our attention, and on top of that, there are demands and needs coming from our family, friends, work and even our music.  Sometimes, it feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done, which makes us face a common enemy: stress. 

There are many tips, videos and blogs on the internet giving advice on how to cope with stress. I learnt the hard way how much my health could be affected by working maximum hours with limited sleep. As a result, I started to realign myself since a few years ago, and now I can say it really pays off!

One of the things I did was to consciously plan breaks in my day and week. A break can consist of just a few minutes during which you mentally come away from work by, for example, looking at nature (as I was doing when I snapped the cover photo of this blog around a month ago, when I travelled to the Czech Republic). You can also have a quick nap, do something crea...

Jacob Collier is an English musician whose music often features combinations of jazz with elements from many other musical genres. He's known for his extensive use of reharmonisation (which means altering the harmony of an existing melodic line) and close harmony (which means that the distance between the highest and lowest note of a given chord is of no more than one octave). He's also famous for his energetic and interactive live performances, where he usually conducts the audience to sing.

During many years of spontaneous audience interventions, Jacob had been trying to make the choir go beyond the major scale. During a concert in Rome last year, he finally achieved it:

A chromatic scale is a twelve pitches scale where each of them is separated by a semitone (also known as half-step). The semitone is the smallest interval between pitches in the Western scale, so it's uncommon for untrained musicians to sing it intuitively. Suffice to say, that, that an entire theatre full of un...

When the community of Time For My Music decided to have a Drink, Chill and Chat event in person, the question of the venue was the first to pop out. Fortunately, a woman who attends the Natwest Accelerator programme with Millicent mentioned the OLDP Women's Hub to her.

OLDP is the acronym of "Opportunities for Liberating and Developing your Potential", the name of the charitable incorporated organisation that manages the Women's Hub, among other facilities and programmes. Their objective is the promotion of equality and diversity for the public benefit by providing training and work experience initiatives targeting girls and women living in Birmingham and the surrounding area.

The Women's Hub is coworking space that women can rent to use as an office, and/or to conduct events, meetings and well-being activities. It counts with multiple spaces and appliances in order to accommodate to the needs of different business. The women of Time For My Music had a private lunch and a public soci...