1st Piano

By Andy Dansby Readers of this article, need to know this disclaimer. Some of the practices you encounter in this article pose some risk. Be careful when crawling in an attic or crawl space with sharp tools. Be wary of any spiders, rodents or any other creatures that may be lurking in these spaces. If there is any question of safety, then call a professional and let them do the work for you. There is always risk when working with tools especially if you are unfamiliar with their dangers. You have your new surround sound system and have the cables ran across the floor and now have thrown bits of carpet across the wires so you do not trip over them, or perhaps you have run the cables along your baseboard and either stuffed it underneath the edge or stapled it across the baseboard. Now you wish you hadn't and want a "Professional" installation. You can do the professional installation yourself with a few tips. One of the most complicated parts and most labor ...

By Eric Henry Building Instructions The best method for creating a practice studio which will let you do live rehearsals and recordings is to follow the instructions in the free brochure Acoustics 101 which you can download from www.auralex.com. You'll learn that maximum soundproofing for your music studio requires construction of a "room within a room." The ideas in this brochure can be used, however, for any sort of room soundproofing project, because the concept it describes takes advantage of the sealed air space which you'll created between the new walls of you music studio and the old walls of the original room. If space allows, you can dampen the noise you'll be making even further by constructing a separate ceiling for your room within a room, but that's not always practical. What will be practical is for you to frame the walls for your new room flat on the floor and then lift them into position. Adding Soundproofing Material If you mu...

Music Producer Pro is just one of the numerous music production programs out there. It's a highly reputable online workshop that contains a vast amount of downloadable audio & video tutorials, which are updated regularly. For a flat-fee, you get unlimited access, with no recurring fees. Additionally, the workshop also includes an online beat maker, as well as industry listings that you can use to contact record labels to have them check out the music you've created. The program teaches you professional music production & recording techniques, as well as how to play a good number of instruments that are commonly used (such as guitar, piano, bass, & drums). The easy-to-follow tutorials are great for both newbies as well as advanced level producers. You can learn to produce all types of music, which include rap, hip hop, rock, & techno. Furthermore, besides production & recording, the workshop goes into mixing & mastering, as well as songwrit...

By Jason Parent It seams allot of artist are starting their own independent record label for the simple fact that they do not have to sell their soul to the devil so to speak or lose their creative image that they have worked on developing over the past years of performing and creating their music. Independent or indie for short is a term herd allot in the music industry. More and more big name artist are emerging on to the charts under a independent record label and if they so happen to own that label their profit is 100 % . The chunks of money that a record company takes from the artists is on average more than 85%.Most major label artists earn a 10-15% royalty rate, expenses come from the cost of things such as album packaging, design, tour support, promotion, video production, and you cant forget the advance. A band or artist usually receives a advance when they sign on the dotted line. An advance is sorta like a loan which allows the artist to have money to live off...

Quite often guitar owners tolerate the ringing sounds that their strings give off. This problem can be fixed by proper guitar set up with no hassles what so ever. People complicate this process as if it is some impossible feat. The definition of the above phrase (set up) has to do with the changing of the strings, action adjustment, to a much more holistic job that fixes intonation, neck angle and saddle height. So from the above mentioned definition, one can clearly see what set up really involves. Depending on what the problem is, certain level of setting up is required to fix the problem. Some of the cases that might require the guitar to be fixed may include the strings buzzing like there is no tomorrow; difficulty of tuning and/or lack of the guitar keeping its tune. Strings Ring like a Bell After playing the guitar for a while, you might find that when you pick on a string, it gives off a buzzing sound. This might be that you need to tune your guitar or that you n...

Is music just "auditory cheesecake" or can it provide deep insights into the workings of the brain and the evolution of language? From the New Zealand haka to raves and dancing birds, The Guardian's James Randerson investigates why music evolved, how it is linked to language, how it is understood by the brain and how it can be used to treat patients. Scientists have learned that we are not the only species that can dance to a beat. Birds that engage in mimicry can be entrained to bob their heads in time with a beat, even as the beat changes. Since this musical awareness does not seem to occur spontaneously in the wild, scientists theorize that, in humans, it emerged through natural selection as a byproduct of another skill such as vocal imitation. In other words, perhaps music originated as a series of taking one capacity and using it for another purpose it wasn't originally designed for. Whatever way it originated, musical grammar is processed in the sa...

By Duane Shinn Just what is it about the tritone chord progression that makes it so mysterious? Perhaps it has to do with its dissonant, clashing sound. It may have something to do with its dubious history. Whatever it is, the tritone chord progression in music made a comeback in music after several centuries of bad publicity. 'Tritone" is defined as a musical interval that spans three whole tones. A tritone chord may also be called an augmented fourth or diminished fifth chord. The tritone sounds like a clash, or as a dissonant chord. For this reason, the tritone chord was often avoided during Medieval times through to the end of the Romantic era. For hundreds of years musical styles were, in large part, dictated by the church. During Medieval times, the tritone was viewed as too dissonant for use in common liturgical services. In fact, the tritone chord progression came to represent the devil. Perhaps as early as the 18th century it was commonly known as ...