Author: Musicality

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/practical-listening-skills-for-the-developing-choir/
In every elementary classroom across the globe, teachers try to create a room full of good listeners.

Any teacher worth their salt knows that when a student opens their mouth to talk, their ears magically shut off and they stop listening. Unfortunately, this applies all too often to singers as well!

When we open our mouths to sing we tend to focus only on what is coming out of our mouths. We begin to ignore everything going on around us: other singers, the accompaniment, fire alarms… and any other noise that might distract us from listening to our own voice!

The first step toward a choir that uses their ears is to be very specific about what they are listening for.

Musical-U share’s some practical tips to get your choir to sing in tune and train their ears.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/instrument-practice-techniques/
You probably already know how important regular practice is for improving your skills as a musician. However, we’ve come across many aspiring musicians who are frustrated because they feel that regardless of how much time they spend on “practising”, nothing has really changed.

The root of this common problem is our understanding about what practising really is – many musicians mistake playing for practising. While playing is purely for fun, practising requires discipline, repetition, systematic performance, and perseverance, all combined with the goal of reaching the next level of competency and mastering an instrument. Practice isn’t always pleasant. It’s real, hard work.

How can you make the most of your practice time and take your musical skills to the next level? Try out these 4 practice techniques.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/open-your-ears-to-modern-electronic-opera/
When you think about opera, you might envision Bugs Bunny wearing a Viking hat singing loudly to Wagner or remember sitting bored in a concert hall as a robust soprano belts out some serious Italian.

For many reasons, opera has gotten a pretty bad rap in the last few decades. After all, how can hours of Wagner’s Ring Cycle compare to flashy three-minute music videos starring “the Bieb” in today’s high adrenaline multitasking multimedia mayhem?

But opera in the 21st century is not your great-grandma’s opera. Before film became the audiovisual entertainment of choice, opera was the cutting edge artistic voice of change political, musical, and even fashionable. Opera today embraces the spirit of traditional opera but adds in technology, jazz, pop music, and even sci-fi to make opera relevant to the third millennium listener.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/counting-triplets-and-compound-rhythms/
Let’s talk about some complex rhythms!

Once you have learned how to count and use quarter notes, 8th notes, and 16th notes it’s time to make it a little more advanced, some would say, “more fun!”

Once you internalize these advanced rhythms and practice them again and again, you will find that identifying them and writing them down will be much easier. Not only that, but your sight-reading chops will improve!

In this article we’ll cover two areas of more complex rhythms: triplets and compound meters.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/get-rhythm-notate-it/
Learning how to write down music in traditional notation can seem difficult, often requiring a few years of good ear training practice. But it needn’t be so hard!

Read on to learn some of the basics of rhythm and notation, find great musician resources, and test your rhythm skills.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/whats-the-point-of-using-a-metronome/
The Metronome, love it or hate it, is an invaluable tool for locking in your timing.

Although it is often misused and disliked by beginner music students, a metronome can be the ear trainer’s best friend.

Find out what the metronome can do for you and how to use it. By the end of the article you’ll want to be best friends with your metronome!

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/12-ways-to-be-a-better-improviser/
Improvisation is a wonderfully fun musical activity but it can be challenging to learn.

Now whatever instrument you play, genre you prefer, or level you have reached, let’s dive into the twelve ways you can become a better improviser!

Be sure to grab that free downloadable cheat sheet! It’ll come in handy for improving your improv.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/mindful-practice-makes-perfect/
If you play an instrument, you know that it’s impossible to get better without practice. But how should you practice? Many people simply draw the conclusion that it’s only about how many hours you can spare. But research shows that that’s not the only thing it comes down to.

Perhaps you would like to practice more efficiently?

Hobby Helpl and Musical-U take a closer look at mindful practice and how you can give it a try. This is not only something that will make you a better musician, but also eliminate a lot of frustration and help you to focus on the task at hand.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/exercise-musician/
Of course, everyone knows that exercise is good for a person’s health. However did you know that consistent exercise might actually help make you a better musician too?

As a musician, you likely spend much of your time practicing. While this is a great habit to have, it can also be detrimental to your health and, in turn, the very music you’ve been working on so hard. This is due to the fact that playing an instrument doesn’t necessarily require a lot of extreme physical movement but can occupy the majority of your free time – leading some musicians to go through life in a very sedentary manner.

Here are six ways regular workouts can help you become a better performer.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/hearing-secondary-dominants/
Chord progressions make up the backbone of most popular and classical compositions. Without a strong chord progression, tunes can seem lost and aimless.

This constant pull between tension and release creates a delicate balance in songwriting. In a nutshell, chords constantly move back to the tonic chord of a song. But composers and songwriters can spice up their progressions and put a twist on this tendency with a handy technique known as “secondary dominants.”

In this article you will learn how to recognize secondary dominants and use them for songwriting, jamming and more awesome musical activities!