The Good Musician

Image details: Mendelssohn served by picapp.com
Neighboring Georgetown is building a nationally recognized mega-festival of the arts. The Georgetown Festival of the Arts is an exemplar of community involvement producing a highly educational, thoroughly interactive, fun place to be for all ages. Kids can explore an instrumental petting zoo, learn the history of the dulcimer, and play along during a performance. Art in the Park ran May 31-June 1, and featured two days of fine arts shows and sales in the lovely San Gabriel Park. Georgetown even has it’s own Festival Pyrotechnician.
This coming weekend, June 5-8 is all about Mendelssohn in …read more

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Image details: Girl playing piano served by picapp.com
Here are a couple of sites that will help you drill for those end-of-year theory finals. These sites are free.
The Music Theory Minute is a super guide to the fundamentals of music theory, demonstrated in one minute tutorials. Features video/voice-over clips of Dr. Jack modeling the lesson. You’ll hear what a diminished chord sounds like, as well as see how it is constructed.
Western Michigan University School of Music offers a no-frills theory site that contains two rhythmic training programs you can download: Diktus allows you to practice one- and two-part rhythmic dictation and …read more

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It’s happened too often that I had a brilliant tune while sitting in the bus, just to end up at home at my instrument, having forgotten how it went.
You may argue that if it didn’t stick, it wasn’t that brilliant, but the point is that even Mozart was known to have had a quill and some paper around him at all times.
Similarly, you should consider a capturing device for your musical inspirations. I personally use Moleskines for note-taking and as an agenda, but they have a product just right for musicians, the Music Moleskine.
I love them for their beautiful …read more

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Quick Note:
I had the honor of writing for one of b5media’s most prolific music blogs, Metal Martyr. The post I wrote describes some thoughts on the difficulties and challenges apsiring metal musicians face, and I think the tips are interesting to anyone, even if you hate metal to the death (which is a pity, because you should respect all genres).
Check out the post: How To Be A Metal Musician.

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This is Part 3 in the Competencies Series. See also Part 1 (Personal Comeptence), Part 2 (Social Competence) and Part 4 (Practical Competence).

What sets Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits apart from you? Well, he was lucky.
Most famous musicians were lucky somewhere down the road. But so was Britney, and I will not begin calling here a musician just yet. As a musician, Knopfler was a heroic master of the guitar, and played so well not only because he practiced for hours a day, but because he had a great intrinsic knowledge of musical theory.
Music theory and the entire science …read more

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Photography by spazzbat.
Do you know how to compose great music?
Composing, or creating music has always been something I found hardest. I was recently asked why composing isn’t my forte, and it made me think.
Basically, if you can attach a few sounds to each other in a sequence, you’ve got a composition.
So composing is easy, right? Well, the problem is that it might be great for you, but let’s be honest: You want other people to like your music as well.

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What is a chord?
A chord is the simultaneous resounding of multiple notes. Now that we know about Major and Minor scales, we can build chords, picking out the right notes from that scale.
Basically, you could pick any two notes out of the scale and you’d already have a chord if you play them at the same time.

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After yestrday’s post about starting to jam, here’s 7 quick tips to keep you less frustrated:

Sit in a circle with your friends and ask questions about how other people’s instrument works. It’s important to know your instrument yourself first, but knowing why a bigger drum sounds deeper can be as useful to a drummer as it is to the trumpet guy.

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You know about seconds. But of course, those aren’t the only gaps between notes. While seconds describe the change between two adjacent notes, you can also go further by describing the jump of two notes, three , and so on.
Let’s look at our scale again:
Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do
It’s the major scale, because it begins with Do. Now, as we know, Do-Re is a second. Do-Mi therefore, is called a third. Followingly, the other intervals:
Do-Fa: Fourth
Do-So: Fifth
Do-La: Sixth
Do-Ti: Seventh
Do-Do: Octave
Try playing the intervals on your instrument, using the C-major key (Do is C, Re is D etc.).
All …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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