Category: Lessons

There are so many points in the process of writing a song and recording it where you can bog down and throw your hands in the air and give up.  One in particular is the arrangement of the song.  For some odd reason, bands and songwriters tend to suck at arranging.  They'll get the orchestration … Continue reading How to Arrange a Song After You’ve Recorded!

This is geared to newcomers to our hobby and love of making music.  As we start learning about music and begin actually paying close, deliberate attention to what we're hearing, it's easy to start psyching ourselves out... I remember overthinking everything in my early days, especially as I was introduced to music theory and harmonization. … Continue reading Are You Tone Deaf? Take This Quiz & Find Out!

I'm considering this a lesson... a lesson in motivation, inspiration, and creativity. So many times us songwriters will come with something we feel is extremely catchy or meaningful, but it's only five or six notes.  We'd love to incorporate it into one of our songs but it doesn't fit.  We can't hear an entire new … Continue reading Short Recognizable Ringtones Arranged Into Full Songs

The unfortunate reality for most of us is that we don't even think about the state our hands are in until they start to hurt. It's 2016 now, meaning a lot of us spend a crazy amount of time typing at a computer.  If we're not doing that, we might be at the gym suspending 100's … Continue reading Don’t Wait Till It’s Too Late to Think About Hand Health

There's no better way to capture, compare, and contrast the styles of the epically world famous guitarists than to use their techniques all in one extremely familiar song. But you can't force these master instrumentalists to collaborate on an unoriginal song.  How would they agree on which song to cover, and which ego would allow … Continue reading Michael Jackson Played Like 20 Epic Famous Guitarists

One on the largest challenges in music is learning the various rhythmic patterns of classical piano songs you're attempting to learn. When you first start learning piano, it's fun.  You start plinking out the melody to songs about bumblebees and bonnets with easy eighth notes and quarter notes. Then before you know it they drop … Continue reading Practice Classical Rhythm with Touch Pianist

A gentleman on Youtube named Vulf has been doing the music world a huge favor by EQing and boosting the killer bass lines on some of our favorite classic tunes.  But he's not just doing the bass boosting, he's also working with a partner to create these amazing videos that show the bass notes and … Continue reading James Jamerson Isolated Bass Lines Rock

A company known as HookTheory has produced several useful resources for musicians in the learning phase. Among these is TheoryTab, a database of thousands of popular songs categorized in various ways, but particularly by chord progression.  Today I want to show you how you can listen to common chord progression examples by using TheoryTab's songs … Continue reading Common Chord Progression Examples

From the Pentatonic Guitar God from the Future comes the most polyrhythmic playing you'll ever hear.  Let me tell you, for some odd reason this song is named Austin Powers but I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's what he was watching as he wrote this  track.  My brother did something similar while watching the old … Continue reading Alex Machacek, Austin Powers, & Pentatonics?

Flat out, standard notation sucks for visualizing rhythms. People do learn to do it, but reading a bunch of flags on ton of notes double stacked on a piece of sheet music is hard. We keep doing it because it's the old way, but there were better ways (if you ask me) like notes made … Continue reading Standard Notation Sucks – Visualize Beats on a Rhythm Wheel