Ever wished you had better natural rhythm? Or felt intimidated by sheet music and wished you could easily sight-read? Do you know your answer to the question “Can you sing?” Or perhaps you’re just looking for some new musical treats for Halloween. Whatever the case may be, read on! We’ve got you covered.
There are so many music tutorial videos on YouTube, it’s an amazing resource. But it can also be hard to find really good useful videos to use. We rounded up the 5 best demonstrations of 3-chord songs to help show how far you can get playing by ear with just a few chords.
Rocking Rhythms
This week we published the latest in our Talking Rhythm series, covering how to Count Triplets and Compound Rhythms. This is getting into relatively advanced material, so if you haven’t already be sure to go back to the earlier rhythm ear training tutorials in the series!
Note: These guides to reading rhythm notation are all excerpts from one the full Rhythm ear training over at Musical U (where we just published a fifth rhythm training module this week).
Speaking of rhythm and Musical U, over on the MU blog the team was digging into what exactly makes a human drummer better than a perfectly-accurate drum machine. Have you ever wondered? Find out what’s the real difference between human drummers and machines?
How to Sight-Read Music
Have you discovered SightReadingMastery.com? Many musicians working on their listening skills with ear training are doing it partly because they find musical notation a bit confusing and even intimidating.
That’s why we were so happy to connect with Evan R. Murphy over at Sight Reading Mastery, where they make it really easy to learn sight reading from scratch.
Last week Evan wrote a great tutorial here on the site about How to Start Sight-Reading Music in Choir. Essential reading for all the singers out there who’ve ever felt nervous when handed a new piece of sheet music in choir practice!
This week Evan kindly invited us to return the visit, leading to this tutorial on how audiation helps you to sight read more accurately and expressively. Not sure what audiation is, or how it could help? Go on over and find out!
Can you Sing? (Can Adele?)
Our friend George Bevan over at Music@Monkton is constantly innovating when it comes to helping people get started learning to sing. This week he shared a fascinating report on a survey he ran at his own school, asking “Can you sing?”. and then do us a favour and take a minute to answer yourself: Can you sing?.
On the subject of singing… Adele has made an incredible splash in the last week with her new single “Hello”. A 30-second anonymous teaser was played during an advertisement break on the X Factor, sparking social media speculation that Adele “was back”. Was it recognition of her unique voice that sparked her fans to start the hype about the single’s pending release? We’ll be sharing our own take on this story next week – stay tuned!
Halloween Music
Tomorrow is Halloween! We always celebrate this spooky season extensively here at Easy Ear Training and this year was no exception.
As well as all our previous years’ Halloween ear training treats we published a new song writing tutorial looking at some classic techniques which the pros use to write great songs, based on the wonderful Halloween E.P. by John Anealio.
Stella from the Musical U team also stepped in with an active listening analysis of some Halloween Haunt Music featuring top-grade Halloween tunes from expert haunt composer Sam Haynes.
Here’s a fun video from the Easy Ear Training Facebook page – to inspire some fresh musical creativity?
And finally we’ll leave you with this sentiment from the Musical U Facebook page which I think we can all agree with:
(click to Like if you agree!)
That’s it for this week. Happy Halloween! Next week keep an ear out for our expert take on what’s so special about Adele’s new single and more great music news from here and around the web.
