Using kid’s songs to practive improvisation By Mattie O’Boyle If you are just starting out in improvisation, I recommend playing easy, kid’s songs. Since they won’t challenge you technically on your instrument, you’ll really be able to focus on your phrasing and breathing life into the tune. And, hopefully, you’ll find that any tune that … Read more
Mixing styles to create your own personal sound By Mattie O’Boyle Today we are going to add another improvisation technique that can help you express yourself; again by drawing on your own musical biography. We are going to focus on taking the rhythm form one musical style and apply it to another style. In this … Read more
Mixing styles to create your own personal sound By Mattie O’Boyle Today we are going to dive deeper into an improvisation technique that can help you express yourself; drawing on your own musical biography. I’ll be using a blues palette of sound as well as a country palette, but you can apply whatever sounds interest … Read more
Add movement to your music using leading tones By Mattie O’Boyle In this week’s blog, we are going to check out a cool way to add movement to your music. We are going to use the note right below the root note of each chord in order to help the music flow from one chord … Read more
Breaking Into Chromatic Ear Training With The Arpeggio App By Mattie O’Boyle An important step in ear training is to distinguish between notes that right next to each other. The musical term for these notes are chromatic notes. Once you can work with notes that are separated by two or more steps, than you can … Read more
Get Groovin’: Playing Bass Notes And Chords In The Melody App By Mattie O’Boyle In this week’s blog, we are going to check out a cool, easy way to practice adding bass notes into your chord playing. Playing bass lines and melodies in the bass really beefs up your chords and adds a layer of … Read more
Mixing it up: Playing On The Beat And Off The Beat By Mattie O’Boyle A cool way to ease into syncopation In this week’s blog, we are going to explore a quick way to practice hearing, feeling and playing musical phrases that fall both on the beat and off the beat. This is the doorway … Read more
Play The Music, Not The Melody, By Mattie O’Boyle Don’t play the melody, play the music In each case, to bring out the music, we have to go beyond the melody So many musicians focus on learning songs. And that’s fine, but let’s dig deeper. When you really look closely it’s not the song that … Read more
Playing music – it’s just like acting By Mattie O’Boyle Don’t play the notes, play the phrases In grade school, I was told to read in phrases, until I came to a punctuation mark. Here’s my definition of music: Music is the organization of sound and silence to produce certain emotional or physical effects in … Read more
The Harmonic Series By Mattie O’Boyle What is the Harmonic Series? The Harmonic Series provides the naturally occurring, physical basis for the sounds we hear. The harmonic series is a naturally occurring, acoustic phenomenon. When a body vibrates, like a string on a violin or a column of air in a flute, a complex, regular … Read more
