As guitar players, generally, we learn a few chords, play a few tunes, buy more gear and even join a band before understanding much about music theory. As we get better most of us start to get curious about how things work and start to study some music theory. We work hard and we start to get good about understanding the basics but things can become very frustrating when we see that Cadd13 chord and have no idea how to play it.
Lessonface has rolled out some new updates to better serve our growing community. As you look around the site you may notice some subtle changes, and some larger ones too. Since our launch in 2013 we have been growing from your referrals, and listening to your feedback, and striving to make the site as fair and functional as it can be. We hope you like the updates! Please let us know what you think in the comments or in the anonymous feedback form here.
Here is a quick overview of what has been updated.
Professional musicians structure their practice to make the most of their time. They often have many projects going on at once and have to prepare for various rehearsals and performances at the same time. When they sit down to practice, they know exactly what they need to accomplish, how they will accomplish it, and how long they will need to spend on each task.
We celebrated Lessonface's third anniversary, in February, by renting out Mama Coco's Funky Kitchen, a Brooklyn recording studio, and shooting a few new tutorials with some of the great teachers who are in the New York City area.
Many talented performers in the world today deal with anxiety when performing. If you are one of those people, have no fear. We are all human and it’s natural to get those nervous jitters on stage! But, you should not let performance anxiety prohibit you from performing, auditioning, or composing, etc. Here are some tips that have helped me as a performer deal with anxiety.
It is very important to every musician to see what they hear and hear what they see. A great way to develop that is to start with simple intervals exercises and relate them to sounds that you have already stuck in your head, for example:
What is the Minor Second of the Note G?
Minor Second = One note ahead + Half Step Apart = Ab
Now when we play those simple notes, one after the other repeatedly, we can easily recall the familiar theme of “Jaws."
Lessonface turns three years old in February 2016. With our birthday on the horizon and the brand new year dawning, I hope you will join us in celebrating the amazing community of music learning that has come together at Lessonface.com. I went through our stats yesterday, and wanted to share some of the more interesting ones.
1. Set your metronome to 50, cancel the accented beat and count the beats as 2 and 4. Play Ex A+B and make sure you stay on time and the beats are well defined and clean. Subdivide the bars on Ex A for 1+2+3+4+ (1/8 notes) and Ex B 1e+a 2e+a 3e+a 4e+a (1/16 notes)
2. Set your metronome to 50, cancel the accented beat and count the beats as 2. Play Ex A+B and make sure you stay on time and the beats are well defined and clean. Subdivide the bars on Ex A for 1+2+3+4+ (1/8 notes) and Ex B 1e+a 2e+a 3e+a 4e+a (1/16 notes)
