This is the third and final instalment in a series of articles that aim to get you started on the road to playing your favourite music by ear.
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How to Work Out Songs by Ear, Part 2 – Basix
This is the second in a series of articles that aim to get you started on the road to playing your favourite music by ear.
Back in Part 1, we looked at why learning music by ear is a worthwhile exercise, and I sent you away with some active listening techniques and an example song to get you started. Hopefully you’ve had long enough since then to digest the song, so in this part we’ll take a look at how to deconstruct a piece of music and begin to discover what’s going on!
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Arrangement Tips and Tricks: Fills and Transitions
Twice a month we revisit some of our reader favorite posts from throughout the history of Audiotuts+. This tutorial was first published in March 2010.
Even the best track can be let down by bad arrangement. Let things slide in this area and you’re in danger of losing your listeners’ interest. Often getting things right in this area is down to lots of small touches. It really is all in the detail.
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How to Work Out Songs by Ear, Part 1 – Basix
A budding guitarist – or even a relatively, uhm, budded one – could very easily and quite understandably get the idea that the ability to learn music by ear is some rare ability, bestowed only on those with uncommon talent, deep theoretical knowledge, years of experience, or some combination of the three.
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Arrangement Tips and Tricks Part 3: Breakdowns
One of the most challenging aspects of arrangement to a beginner (and even some more experienced producers) is changing the tracks energy level. So you may find that moving from a busy section of your track to something a little more chilled present some stumbling blocks.
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Arrangement Tips and Tricks Part 2: Automation
If any of you follow my tutorials then you’ll know I have started a few different series dealing with key subjects. In this series I’m taking a look at various aspects or arrangement using modern DAWs.
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How to Introduce Variety In Your Basslines
Unless you frequently experiment with a wide variety of musical styles and genres, it can be easy to fall into musical habits or patterns that prevent your songs from sounding fresh – or worse – can cause many of your songs to sound the same. Overuse of simple on-beat or off-beat basslines is one way that artists might falter in crafting a more compelling or unique song. With this tutorial, I’d like to offer some suggestions and inspirations for introducing new variety and flavor into your basslines. By experimenting with a variety of styles and approaches, you can breathe new life into old tunes, as well as create new tunes built from exciting new foundations.
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Quick Tip: Use a Sustaining Element For Stability
As great as pretty harmonies and soaring melodies can be, sometimes you need a much more raw and chaotic effect. If you’re scoring a chase scene you might want to have quick sharp stabs at unexpected and random times. Or perhaps you’re working on a free jazz album and want to give every player complete freedom to blurt out whatever musical idea comes into their head.
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Using Ambient Techniques For Composing
“In modern recording one of the biggest problems is that you’re in a world of endless possibilities. So I try to close down possibilities early on. I limit choices. I confine people to a small area of maneuver. There’s a reason that guitar players invariably produce more interesting music than synthesizer players: you can go through the options on a guitar in about a minute, after that you have to start making aesthetic and stylistic decisions. This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people.”
- Brian Eno
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How to Create a Song Sheet in Logic’s Score Editor
Logic Pro has some very advanced tools when it comes to scoring. In this tutorial I’m going to show you the basics of getting started with the Score Editor by building a basic song sheet. Don’t worry, you don’t even need to be able to read music!
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How to Record Great Music
If you've been thinking about recording music or dabbling in audio engineering, then kick-start the process by grabbing a copy of Björgvin's book and start learning how you can record great music with whatever equipment you've got!
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