Welcome to part 2 in How to Achieve the Perfect Country Twang! In part 1, you learned what the heck “vocal twang” is and how it differentiates from twang in a colloquial sense. Just to recap — vocal twang is a useful vocal technique. It has very little to do with the cat-like, nasal quality that we…
“We’re in an information overload… Just to be recognized you have to be more creative and do things in a way that people will talk about socially — online but also in the physical world. How do you become one of those things that people talk about?” – Scott Rodger (Arcade Fire’s manager) Your album…
One of the worst things about being an independent musician is the feeling of stasis: when you have no shows coming up, or you just put out an album, but you still feel like you’re going nowhere. You feel powerless against the forces of the music industry and the insane number of other people just…
This holiday season, there’s probably a handful of Golden Ticket gift items on our wish lists, like the incredible Nord Electro 5 Keyboard, or Native Instruments’ new Komplete 10 pack, or Artiphon’s recently introduced Instrument 1, which unless we’ve been very, very good boys and girls, we might not get. So here are a few more great…
Everyone has a favorite classic Nintendo Entertainment System soundtrack. Who could forget the much-celebrated “Tetris” theme, the driving Dr. Wily song from “Mega Man 2,” or the epic Moon-level music from “Ducktales?” Heck, someone even wrote a whole book analyzing Koji Kondo’s legendary original “Super Mario Bros.” soundtrack! But for a system that boasts more…
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…
Whether we are firing up the van for a coast-to-coast tour or showing up for our first open mic, we as performing musicians must hold ourselves to professional standards. Of course, we will still maintain our DIY-punk aesthetic onstage, and in our day to day lives. But when it comes to our bands, we take things…
+ Master the tools and techniques of producing pro-level electronic music and audio in Ableton Live with Soundfly’s course, Intro to Music Production in Ableton Live. By Niall McCallum There’s never been a better time to get into beat making. Editing software and audio processing tools are better, cheaper, and more readily available than ever before. Not…
+ 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…
+ 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. If a music lover happens to be a fan of both technically complex music, and popular genres like rap, electro, hip-hop, and dance EDM, then the Gorillaz’ 2001…
Artists are using loop pedals to improvise with themselves and bring out a new, diverse spectrum of vocal textures and tones.
+ 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. How much time does your band spend arguing over setlists, or who gets to write them? Back up… how much time do you even spend…
There is only one single copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s newest album, The Wu – Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, that has seen the light of day. The Wu-Tang Clan will auction this handcrafted album off after an international museum listening tour, and bids are already coming in exceeding $5 million. This single copy is encased in a…
+ 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. It’s 1965. After almost a century’s worth of benefits and remarkable improvements to our daily lives, electricity is here to stay. Light bulbs, television, computers…
+ Bridge the worlds of theory, improvisation, and jazzy hip-hop, and improve your piano chops with Grammy-winner Kiefer in his course, Kiefer: Keys, Chords, & Beats. Tons of producers making instrumental electronic music today scour YouTube and other online forums to find “vocal samples” to add to their tracks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve googled…
A little over a week ago, the Kennedy Center uploaded a video of a concert in which singer-songwriter and composer Ben Folds creates an orchestral piece of music in under 10 minutes and performs it with the full participation of the National Symphony Orchestra. The video, which has since been shared over 100,000 times, is a…
+ 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. It’s true. The album might be dead. Or at least the album as we once knew it is dead. Before you start throwing all your record sleeves…
Welcome to Soundfly’s brand-new interview series, Incorrect Music, curated by guitarist, singer, and composer Lora-Faye Åshuvud (of the band Arthur Moon). In this series, we present intimate conversations with artists who are striving to push the boundaries of their process and craft. By Lora-Faye Åshuvud Toronto-based saxophonist Joseph Shabason has an “incorrect” process in the sense that…
We chat with a band from Brazil after using their photo alongside a particularly poignant article that oddly reflected their group.
The term “virtual reality” always reminds me of some cheesy ’80s or ’90s movie that involved chunky headsets and dreamed of a future with flying cars and household robots doing everyday chores. The actual reality is that we have self-driving cars (thanks, Tesla), household robots to whom we can ask questions, (“Alexa, stream Total Recall”), and…
So, you’re interested in breaking into the indie gaming scene? Here are some tips and starting points to help you put together your production portfolio!
+ 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. Let me get this out of the way before I say anything else: This article is not trying to make fun of Skrillex. There are…
If you plan on making a living from your music, then you plan on being an entrepreneur. While many DIY musicians envision themselves more like a freelancer, focused on bringing in income from one main skill set, an entrepreneur creates multiple streams of income in order to ensure that there’s always money coming in, even…
Whether it’s writing a song or learning how to read music, becoming a serious musician comes with its fair share of hardship and challenges, already. Everything — from the time and patience it takes to build up your chops on a new instrument, to coughing up enough cash to purchase equipment — is a pain.…
