audiotthoughts on music

yep, i wanted to add a few words to the last entry of this series. first of all, the doing-it-very-slowly-thing is especially for learning new things. then, it’s not only about doing it slowly but also about doing it well aware and concentrated. so to avoid any misunderstandings, i wanted to clean that up. learning something new on a drumset is a great example because with this instrument, the moves you make are huge compared to a guitar for example. big moves mean you can easily see what exactly’s going on. maybe you want to hit the hihat with your right stick and then hit the lowest floortom afterwards. that’s quite a long way for poor mr. stick. now, if you practice this at normal playing tempo, chances are, your motion is far from perfect. you mostly concentrate on getting this done in time. doing it slomo, however, gives you nice visual feedback on what it is you’re doing. you will immediately see, if the motion is unbalanced, weird, wacky, whatever. and you will be able to correct that aka replace it with a nice round beautiful motion that will not only help you staying in time, but also look a lot better to bystanders :-) – it will sound better (trust me on that), feel better and your hands, arms, shoulders, back, neck will thank you. and one more thing: you will be able to play this a lot faster once you really figured it out and got rid of all wackyness.

of course this goes for any instrument, drums just happen to show it more clearly…

hi there.

here is something i’m thinking about for quite a while now. there are vocal lessons online one can find through google or youtube, some of them good – some not. nothing fancy so far. but because i believe singing can only be really learned with a personal teacher and not through one-size-fits-all-clips, i’m gonna start an experiment. maybe there even is such a thing but i’ve never heard of one. so here’s the deal:

i’m gonna try to teach online. basically that means direct contact between the student and me via emails and sending audiofiles back and forth to have useful feedback and advice. no matter how much i thought about this, i simply can’t know if this could work until i launch kind of a beta-version. that’s what i’m doing now. the first people that are interested and willing to help me check it out will get free vocal teaching online (and i’m not talking about 1 or 2 lessons!). i have no idea yet how much time consuming this might become, so i can’t tell you how many students i can accept in this matter. but the offer stands – if you’re interested, drop me a line right here and we’ll work something out.

basically it will work similar to regular teaching. you will need the ability to record yourself, it doesn’t have to be perfect soundquality but i need to be able to hear subtle details – for quite obvious reasons. if you’re able to shoot some pictures as well or maybe even short videos, that would be perfect (if you’ve read through some of my singer’s faq entries you’ll know why). and besides, i’m going to ask you what you think about this way of teaching every once in a while and you’ll need to provide some feedback, because that’s what this offer is about. on the other hand, i will provide you with lessons, explanations, questions, answers and tasks – for example sending you some playback. you would then record yourself to it and send it back so i can laugh my butt off and spread it all around the net analyze it with you….

good idea? then don’t wait around. this sucks? then tell me why by commenting on this post.

have a great weekend…