Rock your next solo with these tips, stories, and resources to help you perform better in the moment. For more improvising inspiration, check out Soundfly’s free course The Improviser’s Toolkit.
Compared to most instruments, the modern guitar is a relatively new instrument. While classical instruments like piano, brass, and woodwinds all have hundreds of years of pedagogy behind them, the language of guitar music and how we learn to play is new and constantly changing. Today, we can find chords to any song on the internet…
You may not have known this, but yesterday was International Jazz Day. Look around, and you’ll find a ton of jazz festivals happening right this moment worldwide — from Denton, Texas to Espoo, Finland, and not to mention New Orleans. On the surface, it might seem like jazz is doing just fine, chugging along and as…
This is the fourth instalment in our series on How Successful Musicians Practice. If you’re just joining us now, this series asks professional and semi-professional musicians performing and recording with all kinds of groups how they practice and what helps them stay organized. We’re getting to the heart of what it takes to grow your musical…
By Lee Dynes The sound palette of Arabic, Persian, and various Middle Eastern regional cultures are generally not typically heard in the West outside of TV shows like Homeland and some films. Those droning tones, the anguished cries reminiscent of classical singers like Oum Kalthoum of Egypt or Yusuf Omar of Iraq, can evoke uneasy feelings…
When you’re composing music, you kind of have to split yourself into a bunch of different personas. There’s “you, the artist” who contributes all the emotive content; “you, the craftsperson,” who gets anally retentive over just how you’re going to translate the emotive content in such a way that another human being can interpret it with…
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 Kathy Dickson If you have been a guitarist for any length of time, you’ve no doubt heard about scales and how you need to know them. But let’s face it, the sheer number of scales to learn can be overwhelming. They smack of theory and are boring to play, right? In truth, scales are…
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…
+ 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. Jazz music is daunting to wrap one’s ears around. It is safe to say most Americans have a complicated relationship with one of our oldest art forms. Jazz is chronically…
+ Wanna learn how to turn the intersections between jazz and modern hip-hop into creative gold? Soundfly’s new course with jazz pianist and beat producer, Kiefer, on keys, beats, and chord changes, comes out this October! Hop on our mailing list now. When most people hear the word improvisation, they immediately think of jazz, but limiting improvisation to the…
