Defining The True Artist Do You Have What It Takes?
The real communicating artists seek unique expression. They are not interested anymore in sounding like their heroes, they are searching constantly, developing and refining their own unique voice.There are musicians who are more than comfortable remaining anonymous. You know, happy to hide behind their guitars or keyboards and be sidemen to the stars of today or tomorrow. Then there are those that have grandiose aspirations of stardom, adoration and limelight. And then there are those who have a...
How To Learn A New Piece Of Written Music
The following is a process designed to get your brain to assimilate new musical material. This system will let you memorize music fast and help you reprogram your mental synapses and learn music the right way rather than relying on muscle memory only. This process applies to all music and all instruments and assumes that you have some competency on your instrument.1. Look at the page you are about to learn and make mental notes of all the new music.2. Break this material into small sections. i.e...
?I?ve Always Wanted To Play The Piano But?? What’s Stopping You From Taking Music Lessons?
When I tell people I play the piano, the most common reply I hear is ?Oh I?ve always wanted to play but?? Here?s are the top-ten reasons that adults give for not becoming a musician- even though its their secret ambition. Read on for how to overcome these barriers and achieve your dream.I?m just too busyMost people assume that you will need hours of free time every week set aside for lengthy practicing to get any good. This idea is a complete fiction- in fact I would say about 5 minutes each day...
Piano On The RightSide Of The Brain
Some of you may remember a book titled Drawing on the Right-Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.In this book, Betty Edwards tried to teach you how to see differently. She reasoned that once you could look at something with the eyes of an artist, you would be able to create like an artist. A simple idea, yet one that has helped many draw.I wondered how this might also apply to music. Music is, at it's best, a right-brain activity. That is, the thinking left hemisphere is dormant while the intuitiv...
The Most Important Thing A Piano Teacher Can Give You
I've had a few piano teachers over the years. And I can't say that they really helped me. Why? Because I can learn technique pretty much on my own.What I needed was for someone to help me TRUST MY OWN INTUITION and act as a mentor guiding me to my desired goal, which at that time, was to create my own music.Think of a visual artist as an example. This artist may be able to understand and apply different techniques to create a pleasing work of art, but the art itself won't have that special X fac...
A Guitar Lesson To Help You Test Your Note Knowledge
In this guitar lesson we look at a great way to test your note knowledge of the guitar fretboard. But before we look at that, why even bother learning the notes?Knowing the notes on your guitar fretboard is an essential skill. Here are a FEW of the benefits that you'll gain if you have fantastic guitarfretboard knowledge You'll learn how to apply music theory to the guitar much more quickly. In my opinion there's no point learning music theory if you can't PLAY it!Your creativity will increase. ...
Learning Piano Without Years Of Lessons!
So, you want to learn the piano. But you don't want to spend years learning how to read music.That's understandable. Learning piano doesn't have to be the hard chore so many believe it to be. In fact, it can be quite easy IF YOU START BY LEARNING CHORDS!For example, in the lesson Reflections in Water, available below, we have four chords and a scale to create music with. We don't need to read music and we don't need piano tabs either. All we need is to learn how to finger one chord position and ...
Jazz As A Language: What The Improviser Does
Jazz is a language. Its practitioners are public speakers. Think of what happens when one learns to speak English, Korean or Japanese, for example. The process is the same as when learning jazz. You learn by listening and picking up figures of speech, then you learn to use them in your own personal manner to make statements by putting them together in paragraphs and sentences to tell your story.If you were to speak publicly, you would want to know the story well (in this case the tune or com...
Guitar Players Palm Muting Builds A Strong Right Hand
Playing guitar requires a technique that is uniquely different from an instrument such as piano. Think about this for example, you can drop a roll of quarters on a piano and get a clean crisp sound out of the keys. The guitar requires a little more finesse with both hands in order to get notes to sound (other than the open strings). Most beginning guitar players focus most of their attention on the left hand (or fretting hand for you lefties), and rightly so. The left hand needs to learn the gri...
The Joy Of Spontaneous Expression
Do you remember finger-painting as a child? How fun it was. How exciting to be able to dip your fingers into a color that called out to you and put it on paper. The excitement of it all came from the feeling that you were an explorer, looking into uncharted territories of your own creative source.Now music can be that way too! All that is necessary is to understand that you don't need any special talent or ability to create music with. Two chords are enough to begin experiencing the joy of spont...
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