5 Ways To Use The Metronome By Mattie O’Boyle Ready to up your rhythm game? Here are five ways to use a metronome to improve your sense of timing and rhythm. The first is the traditional, play on the beat. Make sure that each note coincides directly with a click of the metronome. The second … 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
Hearing The Chords By Mattie O’Boyle The Fast Track To Hearning And Playing Chords Most folks learning guitar, piano, harp, accordion, or, any other instrument that plays a lot of chords, need help perceiving the subtle differences between different chord forms; furthermore, they need to practice playing those chord forms back on their instruments. An … Read more
Drones – Ostinatos By Mattie O’Boyle What’s the difference between hearing a melody played on a flute and hearing it on a bagpipe? The drones, of course! And you can hear drones in so many different styles of music from around the globe. I would venture to say, from their geographic ubiquity, that drones form … Read more
From Motown to Appalchia By Mattie O’Boyle What do Motown, Appalachian fiddle kicks offs and Blues Bass lines have in common? In this video blog we’ll dive deep into a short rhythmic phrase and follow it through a surprising journey across musical genres. At the same time, you´ll discover a technique that can help stimulate … Read more
