Montréal is a live music town through and through. It’s also a hockey town. And sometimes, it’s both at once! People are likely to know this city by its music due to break-out indie rock sensations like Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Mac DeMarco, and the Barr Brothers; major electronic acts such as A-Trak, Grimes, and Kaytranada;…
Many techniques and resources help you deepen your rhythmic skill set, and there’s no better classroom in which to learn the art of groove than on stages in front of audiences (and beside experienced rhythm section masters). But the second-best classroom might be inside your own headphones! Take a listen to some of these classic…
Welcome to 6String Minutes. In this segment, we’ll uncover the truth about Japanese “lawsuit” guitars imported to the United States from the mid-1970s on. Gear hunters and enthusiasts around the world all claim to have seen them, but the true story may shock you.* (* If you happen to be plugged into an ungrounded amplifier and…
+ 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 thought about why you have a website? If you can’t immediately come up with an answer other than “because everyone has one,” then this…
It’s been dissected as a runaway commercial success. It’s been analyzed as an incisive commentary on current race relations. It’s even, at times, received its due as an example of complex poetry in rap. But, rather counterintuitively, relatively few trained musicians have talked about this Broadway hit as pure music in and of itself. Leaving the…
+ 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. By Hannah Sumner I had finally reached a point in my career where I was recording at least five sessions a week, teaching regularly, and performing several times a week. For…
Fear of success seems a bit absurd. We’re all trying to succeed all the time, right? Fear of failure seems logical though; we don’t want to fail… Or do we? My band got into silent film accompaniment about 10 years ago. If you’re not familiar, it’s a show where a live band plays music accompanying…
It’s show day! You’ve rehearsed your set until there’s no more room for improvement, changed your strings, sent all the Facebook invites weeks ago (right?), and you’re ready to bring down a packed house tonight. But before you melt any faces, you have to arrive early to the venue and soundcheck. You’re a band full of…
So many artists want instant gratification: to shoot to fame before working hard to create something meaningful. It’s understandable, musicians today are forced to compare themselves to artists who have won a certain level of “overnight success.” But even those overnight-success-story artists have probably put in a ton of work behind the scenes over the years…
“I got my first real six-string. Bought it at the five and dime. Played it ’til my fingers bled. Was the summer of ’69.” – Bryan Adams Whether you’re thinking about hunkering down and buying your first guitar or looking to upgrade from the $199 Strat pack that your grandma gave you for Christmas to…
