Find Tickets

Planning a trip, looking around at prices and feel your jaw dropping when you get to airline tickets. It is…

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How To Break Through Creative Blocks

 

Can experimenting with an instrument help you break through a creative block?

Annie Sama—better know as Apigeon—captures the essence of hard work, and honing your craft to build your name in the music game.

The Montreal producer creates music in technicolor, mixing electronic music, pop, folk and a wild palette of visual stimuli into her sound. Her performances draw comparisons to Lykke Li and Bjork, Apigeon is on a mission to explore otherworldly phenomena, and take the audience along for the ride.

We caught up with Apigeon in her loft apartment, with her freeform studio as its centrepiece. Boundaries between art and everyday life are non-existent, with her tools at the ready for whenever inspiration strikes.

The sound artist unveils her secrets to music making in the latest episode of ‘Behind the Board’.

Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/how-to-break-through-creative-blocks/

Guitar Lessons Online

I have a huge list of goals that I need to achieve during my life time. Some goals are small…

Guitar Lessons Online is republished from Shadow Keep Band Blog

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Guitar Acoustic

So you’ve chosen to take up the guitar. Good for you! Now comes the hard part: which guitar is the…

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Buy Guitar

When it comes to learning to play an instrument, practice makes perfect. But if you don’t have the fundamentals on…

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Blues Guitar

It’s not that kind of blues. Nobody here’s a candidate for Prozac. But if you need to be worthy of…

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Guitar Songs

Playing guitar is just about one of the most enjoyable things you can do. Ask any guitar player and they…

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Bass Guitar

The bass guitar has been derived from the double bass, which was used in the late 1950’s. Having 4 strings,…

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Online Guitar Lessons

Guitar Lessons can be fun and easy. The most important thing is the approach and additude that you have and…

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Guitar Player

Guitar Synthesizers have been around for years. I remember seeing a picture of Pete Townsend of The Who back in…

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Dave Matthews Band

The Dave Matthews band is made up of Matthews, Stefan Lessard, Leroi Moore, Boyd Tinsley, and Carter Beauford. The group…

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Guitar Chords

When first starting to learn guitar chords, one of the most difficult tasks to master is to have your fingers…

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Beginner Guitar

This article is about how to avoid guitar practice burnout – something that happens to all of us from time…

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Classical Guitar

Learn Classical Guitar Today! A classical guitar has a different anatomy than regular guitars. It has six strings, with the…

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Guitar Lessons

Bending strings is used to give the guitar a more personalized and harmonic quality. The technique is used mostly by…

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Bass Guitar Tabs

Playing bass (or any guitar, for that matter) is more than pressing strings and fancy strumming. There’s a lot of…

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Tips to Make Your Mix Sound More Professional

The first thing you need to think about when mixing a song is what genre you are working with. Each genre has its own characteristics however there are general techniques you can use when mixing.

 

Stereo Imaging

Using Delay as a Stereo Widener

One clever trick is to use a delay plug-in to introduce small delays in one or both sides of a stereo signal. in Logic Pro you can create this by selecting the Sample Delay plugin. Set the delay on the right to around 200 samples. Anything higher than 300 samples you start to hear the delays rather than a wider stereo image. This effect, often referred to as the ‘Haas effect.’

EQ and High Pass Filtering

Using EQ for clarity

To create space in the mix you can EQ to remove problem frequencies. One technique using a parametric EQ to find the frequencies you do not want is to boost using a narrow Q width and go through all the frequencies until you can hear the dissonant/problem frequency clearly. You can then further narrow the Q width and reverse to from a boost into a cut, removing this frequency. Doing this on instruments will free up space in the mix making everything easier to hear and less muddy.

Using EQ to create space

You may have a few instruments that share frequencies. For example: guitar, synths and vocals. You need to think about which instrument you want to stand out the most. In most cases this will be vocals. To make sure that the vocals are not drowned out by these instruments you can cut the guitar and synths at around 300Hz-3kHz.

Leave Space for the Bass

A lot of producers when creating a modern mix use high pass filters on a instruments other than the bass and kick. This frees up all the rumbles/deep tones that are not needed and leaves room for the low end to be punchy not muddy.

Too Many Mixes

There is always the temptation to go overboard when mixing. For example put reverb on everything, EQ everything. Sometimes less is more! It’s also important to take breaks from mixing as once you have heard a song hundreds of times over you begin to loose interest and stop hearing things like you did at the start.

The brilliant song Billie Jean by Michael Jackson was mixed 91 times by audio engineer Bruce Swedien before it was finalised. The final mix they went with was mix 2. It’s great if you have the time (and patience) to create that many mix versions but sometimes its important to know when to stop and say ‘it’s finished.’

 

 

Read Full Article Here: http://www.helpforbands.co.uk/tips-to-make-your-mix-sound-more-professional/

Find Tickets

Did you know that there are plenty of opportunities out there for affordable Disney tickets? Several people do not realize…

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Live Band

The live band or DJ that you choose to entertain at your wedding can either enhance your wedding or put…

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StudyWithAdam.com Review: Funky Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons Online

A while back, I took a look at online lessons for fingerstyle guitar.  As modern acoustic fingerstyle playing has grown in popularity, so have the options for lessons.  There’s video courses (like JamPlay), tab sites (like gtdb.org), Skype lessons (like Callum Graham), etc.

One of the sites I looked at was the StudyWithAdam.com site.  Run by Adam Rafferty, StudyWithAdam.com is a membership site that runs the middle ground between a straight up video course and a personal interactive lesson.  “Guitar coaching” is the phrase that comes to mind.

Several of my readers recently checked out the service, signed up, and liked it.  So I thought it would be worth taking a deeper dive for myself.  I contacted Adam Rafferty, signed up as a normal user, and got to experience his community first hand.  Here’s what I found.

Pros

• Registration. When you sign up, you immediately get a very personal welcome.  Welcome videos from Adam describing how to use his site, free eBooks, intro lessons, and explanation of how his emails will work.  Very clear, very warm. Made me feel at home.
• Watch and Play Videos.  These are the core of StudyWithAdam.com.  First you watch a live performance of the piece.  Then a long (often over an hour) video walks you through learning the song phrase by phrase.  Adam’s an excellent teacher, and the videos move at a good speed.
• Varied Levels.  Videos are marked for Easy / Intermediate / Advanced.  There’s good stuff to jump in with at any level.
• Friday Goal emails.  Every Friday, you’ll get an email asking for your weekly guitar goals.  I personally like this because I believe goal-setting is the best way to achieve results (in any area of life).
• The Community.  Students are encouraged to post videos of themselves as they learn new songs.  The comments are encouraging.  The performances are sometimes of work in progress, which lowers the intimidation factor for beginners.

Neutrals

• Style. Adam Rafferty bills himself as a “funky fingerstyle” guitarist.  If you’re in to the percussive technique of Thomas Leeb, or two-handed harmonic tapping craziness of Andy McKee, this may not be the best fit for you.  If you’re into solid, grooving fingerstyle arrangements of melodic, popular songs, you’re in the right place.
• It’ll push you.  This is not for mildly interested.  Rafferty uses email, a Facebook forum, and frequent updates to keep engagement high.  If you’re ready to get to work, you’ll love it.  If you’re not, it might get annoying.

Cons

• Assumed Knowledge.  There are some materials available for the complete beginner.  But the Watch and Play videos assume that students are past the beginner level of guitar playing.  Even a Watch and Play video marked “Easy” will require decent technique and familiarity with the fretboard.  So if you’re a total newbie, you’ll likely find yourself straining to keep up.
• Limited Songs.  Rafferty is adding songs regularly but, as of yet, the catalogue is limited.

Wrap Up

StudyWithAdam.com is a really positive experience.  Rafferty’s personal style is very warm and welcoming.  The site is well-organized.  The goal-setting mindset makes improvement attainable.  The songs are great and the lessons teach at a great pace.

My only personal hopes are that a) we may see some more percussive/harmonic fingerstyle techniques included, and b) that Rafferty can keep up the output (he has a busy performance schedule in addition to the site).

If you want to sign up, there are 3-month ($99.97), 6-month ($179.97), and 12-month ($199.97) subscriptions available.  If you want to test it out like I did, the free 14-day trial is the way to go.

Sign Up for 14-Day Trial

The post StudyWithAdam.com Review: Funky Fingerstyle Guitar Lessons Online appeared first on The Guitar Journal.

How To Play The Guitar

In the same way as you can take educational classes online, you can now learn to play the guitar online.…

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Show Tickets

Whether you are traveling on business or pleasure you will always need to find the cheapest travel deal available. Looking…

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