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…
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…
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…
+ 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…
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.
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…
Summer is a time for love, and with that, comes a whole new chance to woo the guy or girl of our dreams. Enter: the love song. It’s that wonderful, time-honored tradition that would-be Romeos have been using to swoop a lady-love off her feet for hundreds of years. Or in my case make her…
In order to create all the videos, resources and course assets for our popular Mainstage course, Orchestration for Strings, we worked closely with the incredible young composer, Ian Davis, who writes and arranges in the band, Landlady as well as his solo project Relatives, and has composed for such notable acts as My Brightest Diamond. Specifically for the course,…
