Hear It. Capture It. Pyramid It. Learn It.
I’m excited to share that Music Phrase Pyramids Version 2 is now available on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
But before I talk about what’s new, I want to talk about the problem I’ve been trying to solve.
Hear It
As musicians, inspiration rarely shows up when we’re sitting in our practice room with our instrument in hand.
More often, it happens while we’re scrolling.
Every day I come across incredible musicians on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify. Many of them aren’t famous. They’re simply sharing ideas, grooves, fills, melodies, chord movements, and musical concepts that stop me mid-scroll and make me think:
“Man, I gotta learn that.”
Maybe it’s a jazz line.
Maybe it’s a bass fill.
Maybe it’s a chord progression.
Maybe it’s just a short phrase that immediately grabs your attention.
You know you want to learn it. And you want to learn it now.
Capture It
This is usually where the friction begins.
You sit down with your instrument and try to learn the phrase directly from social media.
You pause.
You rewind.
You replay.
You miss the beginning.
You rewind again.
You try slowing it down.
You accidentally skip past the part you wanted.
Eventually, you start looking for another solution.
Maybe you find a questionable website that extracts audio.
Maybe you download the clip.
Maybe you upload it into another tool.
Maybe you tell yourself you’ll come back to it later.
And that’s usually what happens.
The moment is gone.
Not because you didn’t want to learn it.
Not because you weren’t motivated.
The process itself was just painful.
Over time, I realized that one of the biggest obstacles to learning music isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s friction.
The more steps that exist between inspiration and practice, the less likely we are to actually do the work.
That’s the problem Music Phrase Pyramids was built to solve.
Pyramid It
The inspiration behind Music Phrase Pyramids actually came from somewhere unexpected.
When my daughter was four years old, I taught her to read using Sentence Pyramids.
A Sentence Pyramid starts with a small piece of information and gradually builds upon it, one chunk at a time.
What fascinated me wasn’t just that she learned to read.
Her vocabulary expanded incredibly quickly.
She began recognizing words instantly.
She started combining ideas naturally.
Before she ever learned grammar rules, she was already forming sentences and telling stories.
Years later, after returning to the bass from a long hiatus, I found myself thinking about that same process.
I knew I didn’t want to become the same bass player I was before.
I wanted to develop a deeper musical vocabulary.
I wanted to hear more.
Feel more.
Recognize more.
And I kept coming back to the idea of progressive chunking.
Instead of trying to absorb an entire phrase at once, what if I learned it piece by piece?
What if musical vocabulary could be built the same way reading vocabulary is built?
That simple idea eventually became Music Phrase Pyramids.
Learn It
The goal isn’t to memorize a phrase.
The goal is to absorb it so deeply that it becomes part of your own musical vocabulary.
A phrase you’ve learned thoroughly begins to influence how you hear music.
How you respond.
How you improvise.
How you create.
The phrase stops being something you copied and starts becoming something you understand.
That’s the kind of learning that has always interested me.
Not information.
Transformation.
What’s New in Version 2
Version 2 is a major step forward in reducing the friction between inspiration and practice.
You can now:
- Capture inspiration on iPhone and iPad
- Access your phrases across iPhone, iPad, and Mac
- Sync your phrase library through iCloud
- Continue learning wherever you happen to be
In other words, your phrases are no longer tied to a single device.
You might hear something worth learning on your phone while scrolling social media.
Capture it immediately.
Then later, open Music Phrase Pyramids on your iPad or Mac and continue learning exactly where you left off.
The goal is simple:
Reduce the distance between hearing something inspiring and actually learning it.
The Journey Continues
Building Music Phrase Pyramids has been one of the most rewarding projects I’ve worked on.
Version 2 represents a significant milestone, but it also feels like the beginning.
There are still many ideas I want to explore.
Many improvements I want to make.
And most importantly, many musicians I hope this helps.
If you’ve already downloaded Music Phrase Pyramids, thank you for your support.
And if you’re just discovering it, I hope it helps you spend less time fighting your tools and more time learning the music that inspires you.
Hear it. Capture it. Pyramid it. Learn it. Get Music Phrase Pyramids on the App Store.
