[MUSIC] It's like learning a language, I tell my students that all the time. You have to keep practicing it, you have to use it. And it builds on, you learn one thing and then it opens up another topic, and it all kind of comes together, and then you start to use it in different ways. So, you have to really get the nuts and bolts, like notes and chords and key signs and intervals and all that stuff down so you can start to speak the language and communicate with other musicians, and eventually become very independent and use it in a creative way. >> I've taken a lot of electives in the ear training and harmony department, that's been my biggest focus. With the ear training thing, that's great because ear training is practical theory. That's when you're in rehearsal, when you're on the gig, like anywhere, like if you're as trained, if you're able to identify what is going on, then you're in a position to fix things or make things better, you're able to improvise better because you understand the harmony that's happening. As far as harmony goes, again, it helps to have the ear to recognize the harmony that we've learned about or whatever. Just having the harmonies, that's the vocabulary of the foundation of everything that's going on. >> Without the harmony, I don't know what I'm doing with the chords. I don't know what I'm doing when I'm putting different harmonies for the different instruments, I don't know anything. But when you learn harmony you pretty much learn how to speak music, because like when you're improvising, you're using chord scales, which you learn in harmony. When you're writing or arranging, you're using chord scales and chord and tensions and all those things that you learn at harmony. When you're doing melodies, you're also using a bunch of chord scales, [LAUGH] and everything like that. So, I think when you learn the rules, you will learn how to do music, and I think harmony is important in that. And I've also heard, personally, I used to be like, but I just want to write from the heart. I just wanted, like make music from the heart, but you can't make music from the heart unless you know the theory. Thank you Berklee for the ear training. [LAUGH] because when you're sitting there, you're just going do mi re fa, like this does not make sense. I don't need these syllables, but then now I started this jazz core ensemble. I probably would not be able to hit the notes with as much accuracy as I wanted to without the ear training. And I'm still going over it, old ear training things, to keep it up and to like have my side reading become a bit better everyday. >> Harmony is also really helpful to me as a producer. To make a good song we have to really know how the harmony works for the song, and how different harmonies offer different emotion. Harmony is a really important language that you have to master to communicate. >> So, if anything that harmony and ear training courses were really essential in helping me establish, really a catalyst between what I had already taught myself before Berklee and the composer I am right now. It just helped bridge a gap in a really really coherent way that even now I know what I'm trying to figure out a melody line, and I'm just like, all right, T, TI, there it is, like, there is Joe, all right. And it's something that I would have never even thought to do before I got to Berklee and before I took that course, and it's just, I mean, that's so ingrained in me at this point. And just make so much sense that I know it's going to be some day I'm going to use for the rest of my life as a musician.