Erik Satie (1866-1925) is praised by historians for helping to provide the pre-war pathway to minimalism in classical music. His piano compositions, most famously the Gymnopédies suite of 1888 and the Gnossiennes suite of 1893, set the tone for experimentation within the next century of composers. These composers traversed new understandings of tonality, space, and emotion, even as academic trends in…
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of our latest free course series, “Alternate Tunings for the Creative Guitarist”! The first installment, new this week, explores the nearly endless creative possibilities of the Open D tuning. If you’ve ever played a guitar, you’re probably familiar with standard tuning. The six strings of the instrument are commonly tuned…
One of the greatest secrets about the blues is that it’s not primarily about the “blue notes,” or the structure, or the instrumentation. Those things are all heavily associated with the blues and appear in most blues songs, but at its core, the blues is all about storytelling. And the guitar is one of the…
+ Pursue your next marketing goal with a Soundfly Mentor! Soundfly offers four-week mentorship sessions with a pro, customized to you. Get in touch. If you’ve spent more than five minutes on any social media, from Facebook to Snapchat, you already know it’s a time suck. Just browsing the feeds can be an hour-long distraction, and when you…
Break out of standard and add rich, wistful tones to your shoegaze guitar tone using alternative guitar tunings! Explore Open D, C Wahine, and more!
By Songtrust We asked our friends over at Songtrust to compile a monthly round up of everything that happened in the wide world of music publishing. They are the experts in the subject — Songtrust works tirelessly to simplify royalty collection for artists — so it’s only best if you get it straight from the source! Without further…
+ Bridge the worlds of theory, improvisation, and jazzy hip-hop, and improve your piano chops with Grammy-winner Kiefer in his course, Kiefer: Keys, Chords, & Beats. Beautiful, versatile, and astoundingly complex, the piano holds a key place in nearly every form of music. It can be found across the globe in the back corners of smoky nightclubs, the…
Few people I’ve ever met speak with the gravitas of Yusef Komunyakaa. A conversation with him can be a meditative experience. The words wrap themselves around ideas rather than simply standing in for them. Rhythmically, he speaks in spacious jazz solos, allowing pauses to be as significant as the words themselves and letting the meaning…
Tons of things can make a great music video. Epic drama, quirky graphics and animation, innovative camera techniques and coloring, elements of humor and even horror; these have all produced some memorable videos. But I’d like to talk about the most innately human, natural thing music makes us do — dance. However, watching people just dance,…
We all have that one friend that we rely on for new music. The one who is always the designated DJ at the parties. The one who tells you which album to download and what concerts to go to. We rely on said friend… and occasionally we envy her… How is she always up to date on the newest…
