Author: Ian Temple

  • Soundfly Mainstage: Our New One Month Intensive Courses for Deeper Learning

    Soundfly Mainstage: Our New One Month Intensive Courses for Deeper Learning

    We’re really excited to announce that we’ve just published three entirely new courses on Soundfly.com! But perhaps more importantly, these courses are part of a new learning product that is entirely different than anything we’ve done so far and will help you better achieve your goals. Our new courses are part of a program we’re…

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  • Advice for the Indie Artist: 4 Things We Learned at CD Baby’s DIY Musician Conference

    Advice for the Indie Artist: 4 Things We Learned at CD Baby’s DIY Musician Conference

    This past weekend, more than 1,000 musicians descended on the most haunted hotel in Chicago for CD Baby’s 2nd annual DIY Musician Conference. Over the course of three days, attendees heard from a wealth of speakers about opportunities and strategies for succeeding in the music world as an independent artist. It also included a jam…

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  • Why We’re Rolling Out Online Courses with a Human Touch

    Why We’re Rolling Out Online Courses with a Human Touch

    We’re obsessed with uncovering better ways to teach and learn. Everyone in the Soundfly office takes on weekly writing challenges to push ourselves to learn more musically. We read books about practicing and how people learn. We talk to psychologists and neuroscientists about the process of learning. And we’re constantly looking to invent new approaches, both online and off, to help people…

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  • How to Play Alternate Tunings on the Guitar: A New Free Series

    How to Play Alternate Tunings on the Guitar: A New Free Series

    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…

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  • The Alchemy of the Blues: Turning Guitars into Vocalists

    The Alchemy of the Blues: Turning Guitars into Vocalists

    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…

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  • Pulitzer Prize-Winner Yusef Komunyakaa on the Poetry of the Blues

    Pulitzer Prize-Winner Yusef Komunyakaa on the Poetry of the Blues

    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…

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  • This Psychologist Wants You to Stop Wasting Your Practice Time

    This Psychologist Wants You to Stop Wasting Your Practice Time

    + 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. “Practice makes perfect” is a classic cliché — it contains elements of the truth but misses the whole story by a long shot. As musicians, we’ve all experienced times when we…

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  • Song Kitchen: “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone

    Song Kitchen: “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone

    Ever wondered what would be the perfect track to lip sync on a moon rat while doing a space dance across an alien planet? Well, I’m glad to say Guardians of the Galaxy pretty much nailed the answer. In the opening scene the Star Lord rocks out to the infectiously joyful and funky tune, “Come and Get Your Love” by…

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  • 10 Epic Collaborations Between Bands and Orchestras

    10 Epic Collaborations Between Bands and Orchestras

    We’re going through an orchestral-indie golden age right now. Here are 10 bands blurring the lines between classical, indie, hip-hop and pop to epic effect.

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  • Songwriting Advice and Inspiration in Our Rooftop Sessions with Joe Marson

    Songwriting Advice and Inspiration in Our Rooftop Sessions with Joe Marson

    When we first started talking to Joe Marson about offering songwriting advice, he was very wary. Joe rose to prominence last year as one of the finalists of the Guitar Center Singer-Songwriter Competition, where his bluesy, soul-infused performance caught people’s attention in a serious way. Since then, he’s toured constantly and released an acclaimed EP…

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