We recently found this fantastic piece on how musical improvisation affects the brain on Vicky Williamson’s blog Music Psychology and she graciously allowed us to post it here. Vicky teaches and researches on the relationship between music and the brain at The University of Sheffield. Check out more of her writing here. Hello Dear Reader, It is…
Happy Friday! This week’s Off Notes is a festive one. We’ve got a series of musical celebrations lined up — from a subterranean hullabaloo over Bach the elder’s 330th birthday, to the upcoming global observance of music’s newest holiday, Piano Day, to an awards show for a digital age — we have a lot to…
A couple weeks ago I got an email out of the blue from Sophie Chernin of Brooklyn band Madam West. Little did I know at the time that I was just part of her daily ritual—send one press email, one booking email, and one studio or engineer email every day. In fact, the more I…
There is only one single copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s newest album, The Wu – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, that has seen the light of day. The Wu-Tang Clan will auction this handcrafted album off after an international museum listening tour, and bids are already coming in exceeding $5 million. This single copy is encased in a…
The music world is up in arms. In case you’ve been living under a rock, here’s what happened: Last week a jury decided that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams had violated the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” with their hit song “Blurred Lines”. The song made $16.67 million dollars, so the songwriters…
For a brief few years in college, I got to treat music as a full-time job, devoting 40+ hours a week to musical improvement. I lived ten minutes from the practice rooms and had very few responsibilities, so I could practice as much as sleep and school would allow. Now that I’m a full-fledged grown-up…
Happy Friday! We never go into writing Off Notes with a theme, but week after week, there seem to be common threads in everything we come across. This week: creating instruments. We’ve found not one, but two newly-invented instruments, a stunning video of building a guitar by hand, and a short piece of web code that will turn your…
Photo credit: Conor Doherty On stage, Shea Rose is breathtakingly talented and charmingly charismatic. She exudes power and confidence through a presence that somehow radiates both comfortable ease and careful coordination. Offstage, she is easy to talk to and surprisingly humble—especially when you consider some of her achievements. From being a spokesmodel for CoverGirl to…
What Makes You Different? As a musician who loves music, I see a ton of shows, and a ton of really good shows. In recent weeks, I’ve been blown away by how many amazing singers I’ve had the good fortune to see — people with deep, silky voices, or high, falsetto voices, or bluesy, soulful voices.…
We recently sat down with the one and only Dustin Nelson, Marketing Director at New York City’s (Le) Poisson Rouge. He shared with us a ton of good tips and tools that an artist can use to get a booker’s attention, as well as what not to do. Check it out! You can find this…
