The Good Musician

Ever been practicing a piece for hours, weeks, and not found yourself making any progress? Feel like you could use a break? Change of instrument? Pack up and go on pilgrimage?
Before I sound too much like a TV-Ad and scream “Call Now!”, let me tell you that most (even the greatest) musicians feel this way once in a while.
When we feel like we could throw the guitar out the window and set fire to our sheet music or chop of our fingers, that’s just perfectly normal. It’s a musical rut.
How to get out of it? Well there are a few …read more

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Previously, we spoke about the scale system (Do Re Mi). Let’s apply this system to normal notes as you would learn on your instrument:

Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
C D E F G A B C
Great. Now we also know that E-F and B-C are semitones, or minor seconds. This scale is the C-Major scale, and it is what you hear when just playing the white keys on a piano.
If we want D-Major, we just apply our major and minor seconds beginning with …read more

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Today we’ll learn about the basic structure of a musical scale.
What is a scale? A scale is a series of of notes within an octave. An octave is the range of sound between a pitch (e.g. 200 Hz) and double it’s frequency (i.e., 400Hz). So if you pick out a few pitches between 200 and 400 Hz, you have a scale.
The basic structure of scales in western music is as follows:
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
Each Syllable represents a different pitch on the scale, and the difference between each syllable is called a second.
A major second is an …read more

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Over at Oboe Insight, I got spanked for my Air Travel Guide.

Over at TGM someone writes 5-Step Guide to a Musician’s Air Travel:
Here are a few cautions you should keep in mind before hading for the airport:
1. Be ready to check in your instrument.
And there you go. This is why it’s “The Good Musician” and not “The Great Musician”.
Okay, maybe I’m joking. But oboists? Do not “be ready to check in your instrument.” We don’t do that. Ever. But do be ready to check in your reed making equipment. Of …read more

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You already know how important it is to keep a practice diary. It’s time you knew how to practice more effectively by forming your sessions properly.
Let’s look at a session of 45 minutes.

00:00 – 00:15 Technical Excercises: Begin your session by warming up with technical studies. Pick just one excercise in a maximum of 3 areas of focus. On the guitar, I do one exercise for the left hand (legato playing) and one for my right fingers. My third exercise is a study by Sor or

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Reader Shankar recently chimed me via IM to ask about the difference between artist, composers and interprets. While I thought the distinction to be rather straightforward, it actually can be quite confusing and isn’t always second nature. So here’s a round-up of these terms, and why they mean different things in the music world.
In 1989, Milli Vanilli played a concert in Bristol, Connecticut during which the track of “Girl You Know It’s True” began to skip and repeat the “Girl you know it’s…”-part, thus revealing that Milli Vanilli were not singing live.

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Picture this: Last night you might have eaten leftovers. Lasagna. Mmh. You don’t really care what’s in it.
But once you know there are carrots, tomatoes, some spinach etc. in there, you start savoring the single flavors of each item, enjoying your dish that much more. Now before I tempt you to run for the fridge, let me tell you that a musical piece is just like Lasagna. It consists of many components to form one smooth mass. You can even apply the analogy of layers to both.

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Reader roll call! A few of you out there have already become devoted readers, and if you’re spankin’ fresh to this blog, now’s your chance to join our community.
Let’s open the round and hear from you guys. Are you a musician? How do you defien yourself as a musician? Where are you from, and if you want to, you can tell us how old you are, to demonstrate that making music is timeless and ageless.
Let me start.
Hi, I’m Arjun, 19 years old, student of business administration in Switzerland. I play the guitar, mostly classical, btu a lot of jazz …read more

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“Stage Performances turn good musicians into stars.”
Besides being damn good at playing that song or piece, you suffer stage fright and your performance is probably not one that radiates the presence of a star.
On TV, casting shows hugely depend on people who can stage perform. Why,the infamous “Popstars” even launched an “On Stage” version of the show focussing on stage performance.
While it isn’t regarded as the be-all and and end-all in musical studies, it probably seperates stars from the “No, Thank You”s. The Wheat from The Chaff. The Heidi Klums from the Condy Rices. You get the point. A good …read more

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No, this post won’t teach you to fly using your guitar as a magic carpet. I share with you here my experience in the last two days while flying to India. I’m staying here for four weeks, and leaving my guitar back home in Switzerland is not an option.
Here are a few cautions you should keep in mind before hading for the airport:
1. Be ready to check in your instrument.
In my case, on the first flight, I wasn’t allowed to bring it on board because they were overbooked and storage was scarce. On the second flight (from Dubai to …read more

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