Tag: performance

Shine at your next gig with these tips, stories, and resources to help improve your performance and help you put your best foot forward on stage. For more help, check out all of Soundfly’s free and premium courses on music performance here.

  • Aesthetics: The Forgotten Frontier in the Tone Debate

    Aesthetics: The Forgotten Frontier in the Tone Debate

    If you’ve spent enough time around guitarists or bassists, you’re certainly familiar with what gear obsession looks like. You may even be a gear obsessive yourself, or have at least been through a phase of quarreling over minutiae in online fora. And if you know a gear obsessive, you’ve almost certainly witnessed them debate their main adversary: the “tone-is-in-your-fingers”…

    Read more

  • Focus on Simplicity: Exercises to Strengthen Your Foundations in Improvising

    Focus on Simplicity: Exercises to Strengthen Your Foundations in Improvising

    By Mike Casey Raise your hand if you’ve heard this cliché before: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Well, as cheesy as that sounds, I happen to believe it’s right on the money. After all, advanced musical devices, concepts, and patterns are usually just a slew of basic fundamentals stacked on top of one another, inverted,…

    Read more

  • Scrap the Backing Track – How I Create Live Improvisations Using an Ableton Push

    Scrap the Backing Track – How I Create Live Improvisations Using an Ableton Push

    + Master the processes and techniques for programming professional-grade electronic drum beats in Ableton Live with Soundfly’s acclaimed online course. By Dan Freeman In 2013, I had the fortune of receiving one of the first ever Ableton Push sequencers before the model went to market. I was chosen to be the Certified Trainer who demoed the…

    Read more

  • 3 Simple Yoga Poses That Work Wonders for Musicians

    3 Simple Yoga Poses That Work Wonders for Musicians

    Strengthen the connection between mind and body while easing your aches and pains through these musician-friendly yoga poses.

    Read more

  • How to Take Your New Songs to the Stage to Show Them Off

    How to Take Your New Songs to the Stage to Show Them Off

    + 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. You’ve done it. You’ve crafted a song from start to finish. Perhaps a couple songs. You’ve poured your heart and soul into your music and spent hours…

    Read more

  • 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.

    Read more

  • How Rock Singers Can Up Their Showmanship

    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…

    Read more

  • How to Amp up the Drama as a Solo Performer

    How to Amp up the Drama as a Solo Performer

    Not too long ago, a friend took me to a Willis Earl Beal show. Knowing nothing (behind the times, as usual), I assumed assumptions: He would be a songwriter with a guitar. Such was not the case. The show was much more interesting than that. He performed solo, accompanied only by backing tracks composed on…

    Read more

  • Four Musicians Who Are Reinventing the Piano

    Four Musicians Who Are Reinventing the Piano

    We at Soundfly love the piano. In many ways, it’s the Mother of Modern Instruments, a musical Khaleesi that’s ruled the stage for hundreds of years. Since its birth in the 1700s, the piano has appeared in almost every style of music you can think of — jazz, rock, classical, blues, cat music — and been played…

    Read more

  • What the Heck Is a Guzheng?

    What the Heck Is a Guzheng?

    The guzheng (古筝) is one of my favorite instruments in the world. An ancient Chinese plucked-string instrument, today it’s featured prominently in both classical Chinese and modern international compositions. I think of the guzheng as a perfectly balanced mix between a harp and a zither. + Read more: Curious what the heck a theremin, shruti box, djembe, or glockenspiel…

    Read more

Jlin: Rhythm, Variation, & Vulnerability