+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Have you ever wondered if there was some kind of magical formula to all those memorable Disney movie songs you grew up with? I always did, because they…
+ Improve your songwriting with Soundfly! Explore our range of courses on emotional chord progressions, basic songwriting technique, songwriting for producers, and many more. Subscribe for unlimited access here. What we mean when we talk about “radio” these days is so much more than amplifying and broadcasting audio content terrestrially across radio waves. In essence, the term “radio” has come…
Welcome back to my four-part series of articles on How Successful Musicians Practice. If you’re just joining us now, this is the third installment, so if songwriting and composition aren’t ultimately your areas of interest, feel free to peruse the practice regimes of either these seriously successful percussionists or these 4, 5 and 6-string samurai! To briefly…
Welcome to the second installment of How Successful Musicians Practice. If you’re just joining us now, take a minute to peruse the practice regimes of some seriously successful percussionists here. To recap, I see there being four kinds of practice goals a musician works towards over the course of their career: practicing to learn an instrument and gain…
Along the road to becoming a successful musician, one encounters quite a few “P” words: patience, perseverance, posture, pain, etc. However, the most important of these words is undeniably and frustratingly, “practice.” I’ve personally had a love/hate relationship with practice since 2002. I can remember quite clearly my mother insisting that I practice my drums on a…
Last Wednesday, October 19, presidential candidates Donald J. Trump and Hillary R. Clinton faced off in the third and final debate leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. With absolutely no reasons remaining for viewers to continue to tune in to further coverage of this news media maelstrom, Stephen Colbert and his team at The Late…
By Shinjoo Cho If you’ve spent any extended time scrolling social media this year, you’ve probably come across a video of Ukrainian musician Alexander Hrustevich playing “Summer” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (formally, the Violin Concerto in G Minor, Opus 8, No 2 “Summer”: III. Presto) on his bayan accordion. This footage of a spellbinding, virtuosic performance by a young…
Lester William Polsfuss, the given name of guitar-maker Les Paul, was a legend. His technological innovations, as a result of a sheer addiction to tinkering, were vast. They include multi-track recording, overdubbing (which he famously called “sound on sound“), tape delay, reverb, phase effects, and “the log,” more commonly known as the solid-body electric guitar.…
What is it that makes a Billboard #1 song? Why do some songs make it to the top while others flop? The answer seems to be a difficult cocktail made up of formulaic songwriting mixed with a few unique ingredients that set a song apart; when blended correctly, it’s capable of hooking millions of listeners. Let’s…
“Perfect – fourth / Perfect – fourth / Tri – tone / Tri – tone” “Perfect – fourth / Perfect – fourth / Tri – tone / Tri – tone” Can you hear it in your head? If you did, you’re funky enough — go do something else, smarty. If not, feel free to help me…
