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
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
Extracting the underlying rhythm By Mattie O’Boyle Use rhythm to improve composition and improvisation Extracting the underlying rhythm from your favorite musical melodies or chord progressions is a powerful tool to expand your musical vocabulary and to drive your compositional and improvisational creativity. Furthermore, it is a technique that is actually really easy to do, … Read more
