Whether you’re sitting down at the piano for the first time, or have been playing for years and looking for some fresh inspiration, our archive of piano articles has something for you. For more help getting started on piano, check out Soundfly’s free course Building Blocks of Piano.
TL;DR: Here’s a new method for writing sheet music for piano that makes it easier to learn to play everyday songs. Traditional sheet music relies on symbols, scales and memorization and can be difficult to learn and read, so this new notation uses visual cues by showing “fingers and hands” on keys. It’s read from top to bottom with…
Have you heard Macklemore and Kesha’s recent duet, “Good Old Days”? It’s got a main theme everyone can relate to: “why, oh why, did I take those days gone by for granted?” The video features some pretty universal moments as well, just driving through the woods in a van at various states of chill along…
Welcome back to the dance floor, Quick Trackers! Once a month, we hook you up with a short production or songwriting challenge, aimed at helping to up your musicianship. To respond to the challenge, just email us, leave a comment, or post to social media with the hashtag #quicktracks and tag us @learntosoundfly. …And we’re back! This week, we challenge you…
Hanon exercises are the source of much debate in the keyboard community. Some teachers love them, and others think they’re useless. Students seem to universally dislike them, at least when they are starting out. It’s not hard to see why; they’re repetitive, they don’t sound cool, and it can be hard to see the practical application.…
+ 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. I’m one of those people you look at and think, there’s no way that guy listens to Billy Joel. I even look at myself and imagine a person…
It doesn’t take much to inspire us here at Soundfly. In general, we’re pretty excited about most things that our friends, partners, and students send our way when it comes to new music or new projects involving music and sound. But what really gets us amped is watching awesome crowdfunding projects come to life. Why? Simple.…
The above video is courtesy of our brand-new, free course, The Definitive Guide to Building Your Audition Book. Being prepared for an audition in musical theater is a multi-faceted endeavor. Yes, you need to do what you do best and flawlessly — sing, act, and possibly even bust out a dance step or two — but…
Although a lot of songwriters have at least a basic sense of either the guitar or piano, there are still quite a few who rely solely on their voices when writing melodies and lyrics. While that’s a perfectly fine place to start, songwriters could gain a lot by expanding their instrumental horizons, especially when they…
A canon (or round) is a single melody line that provides a counterpoint to itself. Canons can, at times, feel lighthearted and happy go lucky (“Row, Row, Row Your Boat” or “Frere Jacques” for example), but even the simplest sounding pieces require careful attention and are difficult to craft well, especially where more than two voices are…
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…
