Director of McGill University’s Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition and Expertise and best-selling author of “This is Your Brain on Music,” Daniel Levitin blends cutting-edge scientific findings with his own experiences as a former record producer and still-active musician.
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That’s what she said: Quotes from Famous Female Songwriters
Quotes from Famous Female Songwriters: We all have someone to look up to; these can be people who are part of our daily lives, or someone we’ve met briefly but left a lasting impression. They can also be someone famous like a celebrated musician, composer or vocalist. Let’s read and learn from these inspiring quotes […]
Don’t let your children quit playing music
Children will often take up a musical instrument with high hopes of becoming great at playing the instrument or great at singing. Typically the first few lessons are a lot of fun and it’s exciting to learn a few things about how to play and sing. Beginning music lessons need to be set up so […]
Music makes things worthwhile
A week ago or so I wrote about how music and art are always the first thing to go whenever the public school system needs to cut back on things. I think of this again on Superbowl sunday because I think what would football be without the art and music that sell it. The Superbowl […]
Songwriting classes at GPMA
Songwriting is something that all musicians can engage in regardless of the instrument that they play and what level they are at. It is certainly helpful to know more and be well practiced on your instrument when writing songs, but learning the skills of songwriting can begin at anytime. Some of the most popular songwriters […]
Temperament: Information for real musical nerds
You would think that the ideal way to tune your piano would be to make each of the consonant intervals sound exactly in tune, so that no beating could be heard. Indeed, many musicians have long regarded this as sort of ideal, but it doesn’t work out very well on a keyboard with only twelve […]
Tablature
I often get asked the question as to whether or not a guitar student should learn to read guitar tablature or bass tablature. Many people have the notion that tablature is a new thing that guitarists use to short-cut their way to learning to read music. After studying both standard notation and tablature for a […]
Happy New Year
Happy 2012 to everyone! It indeed is the new year and as we all know, the new year typically brings about a renewed feeling for most people in some or all aspects of their lives. Many people will make their resolutions public and some will quietly seek out the change that they desire. Spending more […]
Rock drummers ‘are top athletes’
Playing the drums for a rock band requires the stamina of a Premiership footballer, research suggests. Tests on Clem Burke, the veteran Blondie drummer, revealed that 90 minutes of drumming could raise his heart rate to 190 beats a minute. Despite rock’s reputation for unhealthy living, Dr Marcus Smith, from Chichester University, said drummers needed […]
Ukulele Christmas
Guitar Players, Piano Players, Violin players, and all instrumentalists have enjoyed picking up the Ukulele and learning to strum simple chord accompaniments. Relatively speaking, Ukulele is an easy instrument with only 4 strings. Everybody thinks that the ukulele came from Hawaii. Well, while it’s true that the word ukulele is a Hawaiian word (it means, […]
What should I do about poor rhythm?
The answer to this is so simple. It’s should be the easiest thing to do but it somehow perplexes people to the point of giving up on playing music all together. It’s really too bad because if most of the people baffled by rhythm had just been willing to SLOW DOWN then they wouldn’t have […]
Music Together Demo Classes in Canton
Grosse Pointe Music Academy in Canton Township will have ‘Music Together’ demo classes on Tuesday, January 10th, 2012 at 9:30 a.m. and on Thursday, January 12th at 10:30 a.m. These Free Demo Music classes are for children ages birth-5 years old and their parents or caretakers. Don’t miss out on your chance to try this […]
Musical Intervals and their names
Musical intervals can be likened to measurements that we learn early in life like the inch, the foot, the yard and so on. Music notes are are also given names for the space that exists between two points. In the most basic way, intervals can be defined as the distance between two musical notes. Musicians […]
The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook
Playing guitar with just the lyrics and the chords on a sheet of paper is a common practice of many guitar players. The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook is a collection of almost every Beatles song ever played and recorded by the Beatles. Using chord grids at the top of the page and chord symbols over […]
How to write creative music
Creative writing in music can happen in many different ways and begin from many different angles. If you’re a singer or just someone who thinks up songs and melodies, you might want to learn to play guitar or piano to provide accompaniment for your singing. In this method, the creative process will first begin with […]
Spelling your scales
A scale is a series of notes that can be used to create chords and play melodies. When a musician first begins to understand scales and their purpose there are a number of ways to go about it. The process of learning the scales includes learning to write and identify notes on staff, playing the […]
What is Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, etc.?
If you start reading a book on music theory you will most likely come across words like Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Sub-Dominant, Dominant, Sub-Mediant, and Leading Tone. In the scale of C Major there are 7 notes. They are C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. In this scale, C would be the Tonic, D-Supertonic, […]
What’s your favorite guitar solo?
Knowing lot’s of chords and lot’s of scales is a good thing. Knowing how chords and scales interact functionally with one another is very empowering for the creative musician. The notes in a chord are a subset of a particular parent scale. The most common scale is the Major scale which contains 7 notes and […]
Tertian Chord Harmony
Tertian chords sound like they might be chords that reside on an alien planet somewhere in the universe. While the word is not typically used, tertian chords are the fundamental chords that are used by all popular american music and most music from around the world. Tertian harmony is so common that most musicians assume […]