Fiddle Lessons: How to Clean Your Violin

If you’ve enrolled in a couple of our fiddle lessons, chances are you’ve just bought a new violin. Though it might look spotless now, there’s a good chance that it won’t stay that way in the long run. After all, you’re going to spend a lot of your time playing with it. This said, here are a few tips on how to properly store your violin in your home.

There are two things violins hate most: severe humidity and temperature. This is because extremely dry weather could cause your violin’s wood to crack. While too much humidity, on the other hand, could also cause the violin’s varnish to bubble and—eventually—pop. However, what violins hate they equally love as well—strange as it may be. We’re talking about a good mix of humidity and heat. So, to keep your violin at a stable temperature, it’s best that you store it in an air-conditioned room. Now, if you don’t have an AC, then you can simply keep a wet paper towel in a punctured plastic bag inside your violin’s case.

Lastly, you might want to polish your violin from time to time. And, by that we mean polishing it at least once a year.  Not only will it make your violin look like the day you bought it, but it’ll also improve your instrument’s sound as well. Now if you don’t want to, that’s okay, just be sure to keep your violin dust-free by wiping it with a soft cloth.

Clarinet Lessons: Big Breaths

The clarinet, aside from your fingers, requires strong lungs to be played properly. After all, you can’t make smooth note transitions if you can’t blow air properly, smoothly, and in a continuous manner. Worse, you won’t be able to improve if you keep breathing that way. This said, if you find yourself being short of breath, here’s a nifty tip on how to improve your body’s air support system.

The secret to good clarinet playing is being able to produce big breaths. Most of the time, beginners tend to crunch up their shoulders and slouch when they inhale. When you do that, you’re not breathing properly. When you’re slouching, your diaphragm won’t have enough space to expand and contract—which, then, causes you to have shortened breaths. Instead, try breathing with your shoulders and back straight. This will let air to move in and out of your lungs in a smooth, easy manner. On top of that, you’ll also have an easier time taking in and exhaling out air. The result: you’ll be able to blow more air through your clarinet without too much effort.

This takes time to practice. So, before and after your clarinet lessons, be sure to practice breathing exercises to let your lungs adapt. You should also try breathing this way even if you’re not playing. This way your body would “think” that breathing in this manner is already second nature. So, practice big breaths and you’ll be playing the clarinet without getting short of breath.

How to Learn Guitar by Ear

The epitome of the rock star, the guitar is one of the most popular musical instruments today. Though this instrument is hard to master, the rewards are always worth the sweat.  It requires dexterous fingers and fast hands; plus, it also requires a sharp ear. If you’ve got the former and not the latter, then read on and find out how to learn guitar by ear.

 

To be technical about it, playing by ear is a process of audiation. It’s when your brain hears a sound and then tries to recreate it by using an instrument (in your case, the guitar). You can practice audiation by tuning your guitar. By using an electronic tuner, find out what E, A, D, G, B, and high E makes. Then, try to recreate that sound by slowly tuning your guitar without the help of your tuner. Once you have that, you can then move on to simple notes. Remember the song “Mary had a Little Lamb?” Try to recreate its melody by experimenting on various strings. The more complex the melodies you practice, the better you are at audiation.

Obviously, not everyone can read musical notations. And this, our friend, is where playing by ear shines. By simply hearing a song, you wouldn’t need to read through music sheets or tablatures just to know how the song is played. Instead, all you need is a guitar and you ear to figure things out. With practice, you’ll be doing exactly this in no time.

Acting Lessons and You

The art of acting isn’t something that you could pick up naturally. Though you can try and pretend that you’re trying to play like a certain character, there are finer, subtler nuances like clarity, expressivity, and projection that you might be missing out. This said, most people take up acting lessons to refine their talent. Why go for formal lessons, you ask? Well, read on and find out.

Acting tutorials doesn’t necessarily teach you how to “just act.” Rather, it teaches you more than that. Here, you’ll get to learn what it is like to get into a character. You’ll get to study vocal projection, speech, physical expressivity, imagination, as well as the emotional requirement to be in character. On top of that, you’ll also be able to mimic accents, dialects, as well as body language so you could refine your acting skills even more. Now if you want to take your talents even further, these lessons could also help you learn how to do method acting, improvisation, as well as miming and even stage combat. Through time, training, and a lot of performances, you’ll soon be a full-fledged actor.

All these said, taking up acting lessons will separate you from doing “pretends” to becoming a professional actor. As someone who specializes in performances, you’ll have the emotional, technical and creative capacity to “be” the character—and not pretend to be like one. So if you’re interested, give acting a try. We guarantee you’ll learn a lot while enjoying it.

Playing Guitar without Looking

Most beginners have their eyes glued on their guitar’s frets. No, it’s not because it’s interesting to look at, but rather, it’s because they aren’t confident that their fingers would land on the right string and fret. If you’re one of these, don’t be alarmed; every beginner does this. But then again, looking at the frets is a bad habit that’s certainly hard to break in the long run. This said, here are some tips on how to play guitar without looking.

Remember when your instructor told you to do finger exercises? The one where you have to pluck each string at a certain pattern? Though it might sound trivial, these exercises are one way of hardwiring your fingers to your brain. It lets your fingers’ movements turn into solid muscle memory. To supplement this, try playing the guitar while blind folded or in a dark room. This way you’re forced to rely more on your fingers than on your eyes. If you can’t, you can practice playing in front of the mirror. As long as you’re not directly looking at your fingers, you’ll soon get the hang of not consciously placing your digits on the strings.

Though it’s hard, playing guitar this way is a critical factor if you want to play more advanced songs. After all, you’ll need your eyes when you’re reading tablatures or music sheets. On top of that, having your eyes stapled to the neck doesn’t look good when you’re performing. So keep on practicing!

Guitar Music through Tablatures

There are a lot of guitarists who can’t read musical notation. If you’re one of these, then “fret” not because there is another, easier way for you to learn that favorite song of yours without having to scratch your head through complex sheet music. How? By reading music through tablatures! So, read on and find out how.

So how do you translate tablatures (or more colloquially termed “tabs”) to beautiful guitar music? It’s easy. If you happen to have a tablature at hand, you’ll notice that it contains six lines with numbers written on it. The lines represent the strings on your guitar while the numbers are associated with the frets. The tricky part here, however, is that guitar tablatures are written “upside down.” Meaning, the line at the bottom represents your guitar’s 6^th string; the line above that, on the other hand, is your 5^th and so on and so forth.  Striking the specified string and fret lets you create melodies (or chords) appropriate to the tab. The end result: you’re already reading (and playing) the song that you want!

As you progress, however, some guitar tabs soon become a bit complex. Aside from numbers, there are other symbols that you should be aware of. The “h,” for example, means you should hammer this strings while the “/” symbol means a slide from one string to another. Don’t worry, though, as these techniques will soon become easier the more you practice. All these said, enjoy playing through guitar tabs!

Lessons on Music: What Motivates You?

A lot of people take up music because they want to enrich their lives—may it be a personal goal or a life-long dream.  There are others, however, who take up music lessons as a release, some sort of rest, relaxation, or therapy. Truly, one’s reasons are as varied as there are musical instruments. But then again, what motivates you to take up one of life’s best pleasures? If you’re still not clear with your motivations, read on.

When it comes to taking up lessons on music, your motives would tell the difference between you staying (and hopefully, enjoying) with your tutorials and you from walking away from it. See, an uninspired student would find learning music as a chore—a laborious, time-intensive, mentally-straining activity. Though there is some truth to that (music takes time, focus, and patience to learn), a determined student would see beyond the complexities and, instead, find enjoyment in the activity. How? By being undoubtedly interested with the task.
So what’ll make you interested with taking up music lessons? The choice here depends on you. But then again, we suggest you take up tutorials on an instrument (or performance) that you’ve already been curious about since you were a child. Also, pick a genre that you love and are genuinely interested in. May it be rock, pop, classical, blues, or jazz, your favorite music genre would make the theories and techniques significantly easier. Also, your interest wouldn’t wane over time. This said, enjoy your music lessons!

Beginning Guitar Lessons

Beginning guitar lessons isn’t a simple task. You’ll have to find the right teacher and the right type of class. Not to mention, you’ll also have to find the right guitar for you as well. So what do you do to minimize the time and maximize the enjoyment? Well, our friend, read on and find out how.

First, it’s best to start with your guitar. There’s no need to buy a guitar costing more than $200 as the instrument you’ll be getting would only serve as your practice guitar. This said, go for one that’s around $100-150—just be sure that you get one from a trusted brand, though. Next, hire a teacher that specializes in your favorite music genre. This is because you and your teacher should be on the same page. This way you two can easily set your expectations and goals. Also, if you have a lot of things in common you’ll have more fun learning as you and your teacher would be playing music that you both love.

Now, let’s discuss the class type. If you have the money, try to get a one-to-one class with your instructor so that he/she can focus on you. You can learn a lot more here since private guitar lessons usually move at your own learning pace. If you don’t have the money to hire a private instructor, however, you can then go for group classes—which are way cheaper. All that said, enjoy taking your first formal guitar lessons!