How To Find Your Musical Goals

There was a comment recently about tips for trying to figure out your goals. This seems to be a tough thing for most people, especially musicians. There are tons of articles out there about how to get things done and succeed. They start off with you making a list of your goals and then move on from there. Unfortunately, figuring out your goals is usually difficult and timing consuming. Some people go through their entire life not knowing what they're goals are. Yet you're supposed to figure this out in a short time and then move on from there. Figuring out what your goals are like asking you what your favorite color is. It's all personal and one person's answers are going to be different than another. The key to figuring out what your goals are is all about asking questions; tons of them. Once you start asking yourself the right questions it will become easier figuring out what direction you should take.

Music Theory For Rock Musicians

During the times that I played in various rock bands one thing that always amazed me was how proud rock musicians were about the fact that they 'knew nothing' about music. It was like knowing something about the theory of music was a bad thing. There was the feeling that real rock musicians didn't know anything about music theory and that was good. There are many reasons why some musicians feel that learning theory is a bad thing that I talked about in a past post. One of the reasons why rock musicians feel that theory isn't useful to them is because they think that it just doesn't apply to what they're playing. There is in fact lots to learn about rock music that is easily explained and easy to learn.

Harmonic Elaboration

So you've written a memorable hook, or a nice little melody. You put together some chords to go with your creation and that's it. What a lot of musicians don't seem to realize is that with any given set of notes, there are a ton of different ways to harmonize it. If you've ever heard some of the mash-ups of well known songs put on top of other tracks, you can see how there are many things you can do with the background.

The Basics

Whenever you've written a melody, there are a set of chords or harmonies that we may 'automatically' hear. For example if it's a simple melody that doesn't move around much or have any weird leaps and accidentals, we will probably hear a basic I IV V I. Since we hear these progressions so often, we may automatically hear them in our head. That doesn't mean that we have to use them, or even that they're 'right'. For example if you have a simple melody you may want to use other chords because you want a different 'feel' for the song. Or, you want to invoke some surprise, or you want to change it into a different genre, or you just may want to make the song 'more interesting'.

Cadences for the Rest Of Us

While studying theory and composition at university, one of the first things they talked to us about was voice leading. Voice leading is simply trying to find the best way of connecting the different voices in your harmony. You would start with a Cantus Firmus (fixed song) and work at writing counterpoint to that melody.

A big part of voice leading and counterpoint are cadences. Cadences are simply a way of ending musical phrases and ideas. There are a number of different cadences that happen in music. These are still just as relevant today although not used in exactly the same way. Today we're going to look at the different 'classical' cadences and see how they are used in today's music.

How To Learn Music

As we went through school, we realized that there were good ways to learn and bad ways to learn. We discovered some shortcuts and methods that helped us through the rough spots. As we get older and leave school we forget some of these and the effectiveness in learning. We're going to look at the different ways we learn and how we use certain techniques to improve our progress.

How To Sing Harmonies

Harmonies. They almost seem to be invisible on some tracks, yet on others, they seem to make the whole song. Most music you hear on the radio (pop/rock/MOR) is filled with harmonies. Sometimes it's obvious, usually it isn't. A great harmony can take a track to the next level. Yet, there seems to be lots of confusion about how to do these or where to put them.