Hey folks. My name’s Brad, and I’m a musician and writer from Portland, Oregon.

I started singing in bands when I was in high school, and have been playing guitar since my early 20s. I’ve also been involved in a few different hip-hop projects for the last decade, with the current one being Sticks Downey, in which I make the beats, write and perform the raps, and produce and record the whole affair. A lot of the music I make with Sticks Downey is culled from different sources (samples, live instruments, programmed elements), and finding ways for it to all fit together in song form has taken my ear training to places I didn’t even know existed.

Along those lines, in my writing for the site I’ll focus on how the individual parts of a composition work within the whole, and how disparate sounds can often make perfect sense when placed in a context that suits them. I’ve never been big on formal training, so my perspectives won’t be weighed down with fancy terminology. I’m self-taught, but I’ve still got plenty to learn. Let’s make it happen.

You can read Brad’s first article, on the K-X-P track “Mehu Moments”, later this week.

In the mean time you can read more of his writing over at his music blog Stallion Alert, get the latest in wry pop culture commentary in the Sly Records Weekly Waste and listen to Sticks Downey tracks at SticksDowney.com or CD Baby.

Before you put the blame on your lack of singing skills to quitting high school choir, you might want to check out your hearing. Years of drumming, jamming in a rock band, or working as a sound tech can wreak havoc on your hearing. While medical hearing tests can check how well your ears compare to a specific standard, Tone Tester has the musician in mind and checks how well your ears can detect one pitch from another.

Many people don’t realize that when they play the note B flat, their right ear may detect B flat while their left ear identifies it as closer to B natural – a difference of up to one semitone! Click to read the rest…

Greetings Ear Trainers! My name is Nick and I am a musician and broadcast engineer.

My personal musical odyssey began at 14 when I started playing the guitar. It wasn’t long before a hobby became an obsession and I joined the first of a succession of bands. For me collaborating with other musicians and playing for an audience is what music is all about. Over the years I’ve played Indie, Soul, Country, Heavy Metal, Punk, Post Rock and everything in between.

I love the challenge of mastering new instruments. Along with guitar I play bass, mandolin and even dedicated some years to playing the drums which will be the focus of my first sequence of articles. At the moment my main musical outlet is playing bass in my band Dark Energy (www.darkenergyband.com)

I’ve been involved with radio since university and spent much of my career working for the BBC designing and building studio and production systems.
Though I’m a qualified broadcast engineer I haven’t had a formal musical education. I’m not the kind of person who is interested in theory for theory’s sake, but as a self taught working musician I’ve found time and time again that I hit a wall that can be overcome with theory and ear training.

In my articles I hope to provide tips and advice aimed at the self taught gigging, or recording musician. Ear training has helped me to transcribe and learn music faster, sing backing vocals at gigs with bad monitoring, and produce better sounding demos and I hope it can help you to do the same!