Category: Tips

  • 4 Tips for Songwriters Looking for Artists to Record Their Songs

    4 Tips for Songwriters Looking for Artists to Record Their Songs

    + 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. The goal of many a songwriter is to find artists to sing our material. And there are few things more thrilling than when you hear your music come to life. The first…

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  • How to Approach Album Track Order in the Digital Age

    How to Approach Album Track Order in the Digital Age

    Back in the days of vinyl LPs, musicians spent a lot of time thinking about album track order. When Capitol Records released the early Beatles albums in America, for example, John Lennon was appalled at how the record label had changed the track order from what the band had originally intended. Nowadays, however, with the…

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  • The Singer’s Diet: 20 Things Vocalists Should and Shouldn’t Eat Before a Show and Why

    The Singer’s Diet: 20 Things Vocalists Should and Shouldn’t Eat Before a Show and Why

    Just like athletes singers need to be extra aware of what they put in their bodies and the effect different foods have on performance.

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  • A Primer on Tool’s Use of the Drop B Tuning

    A Primer on Tool’s Use of the Drop B Tuning

    The Drop B tuning has primarily two different variations, both of which have been used almost entirely in the post-grunge rock of the early ‘90s. Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin is credited with inventing the tuning, and he makes a point to tell players that the tuning sounds great when played “gingerly” as opposed to “heavily.” Yet today, 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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  • How to Get Your Music Played on SiriusXM Radio (and Local Radio, Too)

    How to Get Your Music Played on SiriusXM Radio (and Local Radio, Too)

    It may not be as easy, but it still is possible to get your song on the radio as an independent artist. Here are 4 proven steps to get noticed by SiriusXM.

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  • Learn to Play Bob Dylan, Mumford & Sons, and Joni Mitchell in Open E

    Learn to Play Bob Dylan, Mumford & Sons, and Joni Mitchell in Open E

    In Soundfly’s new multi-module course, Alternate Tunings for the Creative Guitarist, we’ve started the series off with an introduction to one of the most popular alternate guitar tunings for songwriters, Open D. In this tuning, you can strum all the strings openly, without touching any frets, to play a brilliant D major chord. And that’s…

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  • Learn to Play “Starboy” by The Weeknd (Featuring Daft Punk) on Piano

    Learn to Play “Starboy” by The Weeknd (Featuring Daft Punk) on Piano

    For fans of The Weeknd, yesterday was a big day. Not only did he announce a new album and give it a release date, November 25th. He also debuted the cover art, revealing a new loc-less ‘do (which garnered almost as much Twitter attention as the album). And he dropped the first single from the album, “Starboy” featuring a collaboration…

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  • A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Grant Funding for Your Music Project

    A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Grant Funding for Your Music Project

    + 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. By Peter Burton Grants and foundation funding can be a great way to get a musical project off the ground. They can help you cover the cost…

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  • Why Singing Is Just as Psychological as It Is Physical

    Why Singing Is Just as Psychological as It Is Physical

    When singers start learning about how to be better singers, there is a huge focus on achieving proper technique. In the beginning, all the advice you hear is about how to breathe and how to stand, how to warm up, and how to work a microphone. Singing is a complex physical act, but it also requires huge…

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