If you’re one of the human beings on Earth born with two functional ears, you should consider yourself lucky. Not only are you a miracle of evolution and natural selection, but you get to experience the vibration of air molecules and interpret them as different sounds! According to Ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus, “we have two…
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. A few weeks ago, I was on tour with Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band in support of the band Heron Oblivion. When I learned that…
Though I believe wholeheartedly that your tone is mostly in your fingers, the choices you make as a musician on gear, style, and technique will go a long way in shaping your sound. One option that’s pretty unique to bassists, though, is how many strings they want under their hands (sure a guitarist can go…
Sight singing: If you are a vocalist, it’s likely you’ve made it your whole career without having to perform this dreaded task. But despite requiring a bit of work to master, being able to transform sheet to sound can make you more marketable, versatile, and easy to work with than the endless number of talented…
By David Stewart Jr. Rock music has always pushed the limits of pop culture. Be it through the rebellious lyrics and aggressive vibes, or through scandalous images and (literal) pyrotechnics on stage, rock ‘n’ roll is the go-to form of expression for some of the world’s greatest and loudest artists. I have studied the greats…
The consensus amongst musicians seems to be unanimous: Led Zeppelin has written and performed some of the most high-intensity rock and roll music ever. Yet beneath the fuzzed out, thunderous madness of Valhalla and Middle Earth typically associated with rock’s golden gods, there is a wealth of musical ingenuity and innovation waiting to be uncovered by…
There’s a very good reason why the pentatonic scale is so generally pleasing, applicable, and capable of making neck hairs stand on end: It’s something humans have been perfecting for a long time, and can be found in cultures all over the world. As a guitarist, I’ve often wondered whether the guitar was in some ways…
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…
Improvisation looks effortless and cool — until you try to do it. In reality, spontaneously composing is one of the most difficult things a musician can attempt, and it takes practice. There are a number of crafts that a musician must master to be a good improviser. Technical ability and music theory knowledge are important,…
By Harvey Grant As musicians, we can spend so long trying to improve our technique in terms of scales and “speed” that we bypass one of the most important factors in the success of a piece: timing. Sure, you may say that Glenn Gould didn’t stick precisely to the given measures of Bach’s Goldberg Variations,…
