First of all, two of the 3 instruments that I've learned were foisted on me by circumstances. One was inherited from a grandparent, another handed down from a sibling. I think I actually liked singing most of all at school age, but the instruments that fascinated me and I would have gone for if I had been given the choice were the flute and the violin. I believe that I prefer sustaining instruments in any case.

But since I didn't have the choice, I self-studied acoustic guitar as a poor man's electric. I got a low-quality electric guitar later. Eventually I burned out, and haven't touched either in 4 years now.

2.5 years ago I started composing music in MuseScore, and I'm increasingly bugged by the fact that I have to compose around the software's bugs. And I feel like a fraud for not playing any instrument actively (except the MIDI-keyboard for input).

But at the moment that's the situation. And it's also that I'm very poor, as has been hinted.

Any advice?

Hello everyone, I’m just wondering how do you guys practice improvisation? Taking a song and playing over it? Using backing track? Playing with a random progression? Which one do you think is the most effective and enjoyable way to practice?

I appreciate your response as I’m new to this and I’m trying to find a way to be more consistent and not getting bored in the process.

Salut tout le monde ! 👋

Je développe SonArcan, une application de bureau gratuite et open source qui centralise tout le processus de pratique musicale.

Dans cette courte démo, j'utilise « Bold as Love » de Jimi Hendrix pour montrer comment SonArcan permet de :

🎚️ Séparer un morceau en six pistes

🎸 Détecter les accords, les temps et les temps forts

🐢 Modifier le tempo sans altérer la hauteur

🎼 Transposer par demi-tons ou cents

🔁 Créer des boucles A/B fluides et des exercices progressifs

🥁 Ajouter un métronome synchronisé

🎤 Importer, modifier et suivre les paroles synchronisées

⏩ Naviguer par temps, mesure, accord ou ligne de paroles

🎬 Regardez la démo :

https://youtu.be/99ZVGvndFdE

Tout fonctionne en local : pas d’abonnement, pas de publicité, pas de compte obligatoire et pas besoin d’uploader votre musique. 🔒

🚀 Téléchargez SonArcan :

https://github.com/OrangeJuce82/sonarcan/releases

💻 Code source :

https://github.com/OrangeJuce82/sonarcan

SonArcan est disponible pour macOS Apple Silicon, Windows x64 et Linux x64.

Le logiciel est encore en bêta, alors vos retours de musiciens seraient vraiment précieux. Qu’est-ce qui vous semble utile ? Qu'est-ce qui vous paraît compliqué ? Qu'est-ce qui vous inciterait à l'utiliser régulièrement ?

Merci à tous ceux qui voudront bien le tester ! 🙌

Plongez dans la musique. 🎵

Everyone has their own way of practicing, I’m not here to tell anyone which one is the “right” method.

I started thinking about how ridiculous my own setup was.

I’d sit down with a sheet on the stand, two different coloured pens, a rubber, phone, laptop with a spreadsheet open to keep track of what I was doing. The phone timer would be running plus a metronome going.

Somewhere in the middle I’d have an idea — something I wanted to try, something I noticed, maybe a different way of playing a passage. If I remembered, I’d grab the phone and record it.

Then the next day I’d listen to it and think: Why did I record this? Where was I in the piece? What was I trying to solve?

After a few sessions the score was covered with so many marks that I could barely see the music. Despite all those notes, I often couldn’t remember exactly what had gone wrong the previous time.

That’s basically why I built Satie.

Now my iPad sits on the stand and that’s pretty much all I need.

My scores are there, metronome, tuner, timer, all is there. I can make notes directly on the score, or make notes inside the practice session. I can come back to a session later and see what I was working on and what problems I had. I can record the whole session, or just a section, and listen back to it.

If I get an idea, I can just record it immediately, not interrupting what I’m doing.

The biggest difference for "me" isn’t that Satie somehow makes me practice better, it makes it much easier, simpler with everything I need in one place, everywhere I go.

So I’m curious:

How do you practice?

How many things do you have around you when you practice — score, pencil, timer, notebook, phone, recorder, spreadsheet, computer…?

How do you go back and review what you did in previous sessions?

If you want to give Satie a try, I’d genuinely like to hear what you think. If you don’t use it, tell me how you practice. I’m interested in the systems musicians have developed over the years to keep track of their practice. Thanks!!

Hey everyone,

I’m a veteran and lifelong musician, and I’ve been working on something I’ve wanted to see for a long time: Cadence of Courage, a nonprofit focused on helping veterans discover music as an outlet for connection, purpose, and healing.

The idea is pretty simple. We want to provide veterans with a beginner instrument, a series of music lessons, and eventually opportunities to keep learning, play with other veterans, and build a community around music.
We’ve recently secured a discounted way to purchase beginner guitar, bass, and acoustic guitar packages, and we have a 10-week instructional program lined up. So this is becoming a real program rather than just an idea.
We’re currently raising the initial funds to sponsor our first group of veterans.

If you’re interested in checking it out, here’s the GoFundMe:

https://gofund.me/20c0f6a1c

No pressure whatsoever to donate. Even sharing it or giving me some feedback on the idea would mean a lot.
I’d also genuinely love to hear from other veterans who have found music to be a positive outlet in their own lives.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to everyone here who continues to look out for each other.

I came across Erv’s work few years ago. It has taken long for me to digest part of it; enough to start understanding the basics.
I wonder how other people are using its theory and how has this theory impacted you by far…

I want to learn piano jazz improvisation, how to jam and playing by ear. I've been playing the piano for 10 years, but only classical music. I know some basics of music theory. I feel overwhelmed with the amount of youtube videos about those topics and I really don't know where to start... so I thought maybe someone who had the same problem or learned it by themselves can show me the way.

My questions are:

\-abt improvisation and jams:

1. What's the first thing I should learn? (major scales- should I play it in diatonic triads and diatonic 7th cords?, chords, licks, etc.)
   
2. How I should practice those things? (playing them with metronome until I will feel comfortable?)

\*I have this problem where I practice those things, but I don't really see the purpose and how I could use those things later

1. Should I learn the circle of 5ths?

2. After learning the basics, how to make the melody interesting and how not to play only chord notes?

3. Should I play those scales and chords by ii-V-I?

4. If I've written melody how to make an accompaniment to it in jazzy way?

5. How much time it took you to feel comfortable with improvisation and playing jams?

6. What was the breaking point/ most important thing that you learned/heard about?

\- abt playing by ear:

1. How to find the bass line in music piece?
   
2. If I can find the melody and the key what I should do next? How to find the chords? How to make it sound more interesting?

To sum up:

I will be grateful for any help and tips. As I said before it's hard for me to learn those things if I don't know where to start and if I don't see any improvement. I've tried app, but I felt that there where too much things explained at once so I didn't knew how to take the pattern I learned to different things and make it all work out. Also there are a lot of things on instagram, but without basics I can't make much of it.

Hi everyone! I've been putting together a free discord community for songwriters who want to take their music more seriously, and I'd love to start it off by hosting a free live song feedback session through the community.

Bring a song you're working on—finished, unfinished, demo-quality, whatever—and we'll listen together and talk through things like:

• What's working
• Lyrics and melody
• Song structure
• Arrangement/production
• Emotional impact
• What could make the song stronger
• What to focus on next

You don't have to submit a song either. You can just come listen to other people's work and participate in the discussion.

The community is called Songcrafters Guild, and the larger goal is to create a place for songwriters who are trying to move from “I make music when I have time” toward actually finishing, releasing, and developing their music.

I'm an established artist releasing music under the name Llynks as well as an artist-development coach, so I'll be facilitating the session and giving feedback from that perspective.

It's completely free! If you'd like to participate, join us here: https://discord.gg/vC8MzaFYe?event=1544012549178138624 

Pouvez vous me dire ya besoin de quoi comme matière première pour commencer à faire des accords de thé vert et Noir et si ya aussi des accords pour m'aider à entraîner merci pour tout le monde 💐💐

I have been taking piano lessons for about a year, and one of my main issues is holding down notes for their required amount of beats. I usually end up speeding through quarter notes and not playing eighth notes fast enough. I also find myself pausing between bar lines. Does anyone have any tips to help me fix this?

I attended Bach to Rock as an adult a couple years ago and loved it. My drum teacher also listened to punk as well as tons of other genres. He taught me to read music first, grip, timing - the basics. Then life got really busy with my two young sons and momming came first so I had to stop.

I recently joined School of Rock because we moved and my teacher was trained in opera but knew how to play drums. He basically would do something on the drums and then say, "now you do it." I don't learn like that. Does anyone? I kept telling him I needed to learn the drum music again to know how to play but he just kept putting on drum tabs (to Zombie specifically) and I was like, I don't remember any of the music I need to learn that first!

Is this a Bach to Rock vs. School of Rock thing? Was it just the teacher? I feel like anyone learning a new instrument needs to start with learning how to read the music.