Our Winnipeg in home music lessons will teach you about rhythm - but what is rhythm? One definition I particularly like is “timed movement through space”, a quote from Charlotte Jirousek. We seem to be able to feel rhythm from very young, and some speculate that the ability to feel rhythm has existed in humans since our prehistoric days. That means rhythm has been around since before we could write; the systems that we have [...]
One of the nicest things about the guitar is how easy it is to tune. While our standard tuning is E-A-D-G-B-E, we can use those six tuning pegs to create an astonishing variety of different tunings. These tunings can have a variety of different uses; they might be used to create sounds and chords otherwise practically unavailable, or to help guitarists with weak fretting hands to make beautiful music that might otherwise be impossible for [...]
Parenting is one of the most challenging and rewarding things you can do. There’s a funny link between challenging and rewarding; the more difficult something is, the more fulfilled we’ll often feel when we’ve accomplished what we set out to do. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint; pleasure is derived from accomplishments because those accomplishments might help us or the next generation survive. This is part of the reason it’s so incredibly rewarding to [...]
I love pop music. Longtime readers of the blog will probably appreciate that I love music generally; there’s really not a genre I’m not interested in, so life is pretty wonderful. I do have a special place in my heart for pop, though; I’ve been blaring the new Ariana Grande album pretty much since it came out. You can read about a billion different articles about how loving pop makes you basic, because it all [...]
One of my favorite composers of the last few decades is David Wise. Mr. Wise worked for game developer Rare, and created soundtracks for some of the iconic games of my youth, most notably Donkey Kong Country 2, though his work spans all of the Donkey Kong Country games. His ambient tracks, made despite the extraordinary hardware limitations of the console they were released on, the SNES, are incredible pieces of music; for a taste, [...]
To ponder music’s link with spirituality means to think on the entire notion of spirituality itself. You see music in every major religion I’m aware of; in Islam, the call to prayer, adhan, is a key ritual followed several times a day, every day. There are chants abound in religion; Gregorian, Vedic and Buddhist chants are well known. Religious albums are not at all uncommon; the motivating factor for writing this text is my listening [...]
I doubt anyone questions the benefits of learning music, but a lot of people probably aren’t aware of just how beneficial they are. Music schools vary greatly in how they approach teaching music, from the Suzuki method to the Kodàly method, but they all have the same wide array of end benefits. You can certainly learn music on your own, but an instructor will help you shore up the finer points of your technique, as [...]
In writing and in music, it’s best to go into things with an open mind. You might set out to do one thing, and end up finding something completely different, something that shifts your way of thinking, your way of creating. Take this article, for example. I set out to write about the history of the electric guitar. You may know a little bit about it; at the very least, you’ve probably heard apocryphal tales [...]
I’ve been reading the book “Quiet” by Susan Cain. The book is about introverts living in an extroverted world, and how to use your introversion as a tool for good. One of the most striking ideas in the book is that of deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is an act of mindfulness, in which you break apart a particular skill into small chunks, and then focus on improving the chunks, rather than focusing on improving the [...]
Looking for some incredible insights about music theory and composition? I cannot recommend Adam Neely’s YouTube Channel enough. For the deliberate practice we discussed in the last blog post, he recommends imagining your forearm is your instrument in order to practice fingerings. Another fascinating video of his that I watched recently breaks down the 9/8 time signature. There’s a lot to unpack; one of the things he goes into is how you can entrain people [...]