Scales play an integral role in any musician’s artistic vocabulary. They help us understand harmonic and melodic language, even if we aren’t consciously thinking about them all the time. When they’re properly understood, scales can be secret-revealing road maps in a musical journey. But more often than not, they’re treated like robotic exercises and nothing…
For many musicians, the idea of recording a demo can seem a bit daunting, especially when taking a do-it-yourself approach. Fortunately for those of us who need a bit of guidance, Black Lodge Recording’s Vishal Nayak has helped the Soundfly team create a brand new course, full of tips for efficient, effective, and stress-free demo production. For many musicians, the idea…
As Oscar Peterson once said, “technique is something you use to make your ideas listenable.” Until you’ve built up a bit of pianistic muscle memory, trying to play with good technique can feel super awkward. If you’ve taken private lessons, you’ve probably rolled your eyes at a few reminders to relax your wrists and play…
Reaching a large audience is a pretty tough undertaking, so it’s important to find ways to maximize your project’s online presence. In this video taken from our free course, “Touring on a Shoestring”, Jeremy Young walks us through some helpful tips for doing just that. Share your music online. One of the most important steps toward enhancing…
With Soundfly Mainstage, you’ll get personalized mentor support and feedback on your work over a six-week course session, whether you’re looking to write music for a string quartet, improve your understanding of composition, or insert more climactic emotion into your harmony, and more! Introducing irregular time signatures into your compositional practice can be a liberating…
This video is an excerpt of our free course “Music Theory for Beginner Pianists.” The piano is an astounding instrument. It offers players the opportunity to experiment with a nearly endless range of textures, dynamics, and even timbres. Of course, being faced with all those options can be pretty overwhelming, especially for those who are…
Playing in a new town can be intimidating, particularly for those of us who have yet to become household names. Luckily, Jeremy Young sat down with a host of great bands to find out how they go about attracting audiences for our (free!) course, Touring on a Shoestring. Here are some of the things they…
In anticipation of Carnegie Hall’s upcoming production of West Side Story at the Knockdown Center in Queens, New York this weekend, we’ve been binge-watching anything and everything we can find about the well-loved musical and its creators on YouTube. Of course, it helps that we recently made a series of videos about the show for the aptly named course, The West…
Most of us have a few horror stories involving raised voices, fallen tears, or temper tantrums. There was a time when I thought bad rehearsals were just one of the growing pains every band has to go through — as though a group wasn’t legit until someone kicked over a music stand. Thankfully, I have since…
So you’ve recently started working on writing your own arrangements, but are struggling to come up with novel ways to test your skills. Finding a fresh take on a beloved song can be a struggle for any arranger. There are so many things that can be altered in order to breath new life into an…
