Muzikant

Everyone has their own associations upon hearing the sound of a certain instrument. Without doubt, most of us will link the sound of a resonator guitar (also known as a dobro) with the rocky landscapes of the American South – the place where the resonator guitar found its home in bluegrass, country, blues and other styles characterised by the authentic sound of this steel-stringed instrument.

Our shared obsession for vintage instruments is as timeless as the gear itself. From the Rhodes, Hammond and Wurlitzer to the Yamaha CP series, the Clavinet and the Mellotron, the signature sound of these old-school units can be heard in countless chart-toppers, which goes to show just how big of a mainstay these revered keyboards are.

A humble percussion instrument, at first glance, you don’t need much to make a cajon sound good. That said, there are plenty of tricks you can use to get even more out of your cajon. Maybe you want to expand the percussive range with some add-ons and set yourself up with a broader dynamic array and sound that’s unique to you? In this blog, we serve up five short-cuts to your own signature cajon sound.

While the trumpet is centuries old, it’s more than proved its staying power across multiple genres. The trumpet is an unmissable element of classical music, and when it comes to jazz, it’s probably the most iconic of all time. Even countless popular songs have included its unique voice, all the way from seventies reggae and ska to more recent EDM bangers. Here, we cover the history, take a deep dive into the anatomy, have a look at the many variations and playing techniques, and list some legendary masters of this popular yet notoriously difficult brass instrument.

Guestblogger Celine Gaurier-Joubert is the founder of the Institut de Musique de Paris and has a wealth of experience teaching adults to play the piano. During her career, she has met hundreds of enthusiastic students who, just after a couple of months of lessons, have given up on their dream to play the piano. In this blog, Celine reveals why so many adults give up and why it’s far better to just keep at it!

If you want to make a living from music – partly or entirely – then it’s worth having a good think about where exactly the money is going to come from. Almost every professional musician and music-maker has multiple sources of income, which in business-speak is referred to as a ‘revenue model’. To help you build yours, Guestblogger, Maaike lines up ten possible money-making options for your consideration.

While the bass looks a lot like the guitar, it demands an entirely different playing technique. In this blog, we’ll take you through some bass-playing basics, starting with the absolute fundamentals: the correct playing posture, both sitting and standing; the right-hand technique, where you’ll learn how to pluck the strings with your index and middle fingers and with a plectrum, and you’ll also learn to mute the unplayed strings and remove all that nasty low-frequency rumbling from your sound (a technique that actually involves both hands, but more on that later). Then, we’ll close with the left-hand technique to make sure that your thumb learns to rest against the back of the neck and that your other fingers are always ready and waiting in just the right spot, setting you up with a solid bass-playing foundation.

Ukulele posture is not something that a player can master instantly. Most players will have to slowly work on their posture over many months and years to ensure that they can play the most effectively and healthily, and each player will have their own ways of doing things. Below, guest blogger Matthew Quilliam explains how he approaches holding each size of ukulele, taking into account what he uses each scale length for.

The Hammond is to the organ what the Hoover is to the vacuum cleaner. A household name, this timeless instrument is indivisible from classic rock and modern pop, whether it’s a vintage model or a modern digital Hammond, and decades before it even made the rock hall-of-fame, it was a mainstay of blues and jazz. Despite the fact that playing one means lugging a 100-kilo chunk of hardware from gig to gig, we find out exactly why this instrument is as much a legend as the musicians that have played it. Welcome to your definitive guide to the Hammond organ. Enjoy!

You probably already spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos, but did you know that YouTube contains a treasure trove of content that can help you become a better guitarist and musician? Whether you’re looking for a tutorial on how to play a song, a walkthrough of a guitar technique, an informative gear review or a vintage lesson, it’s all available on YouTube if you know where to look! Guest blogger Andrei Kryssov breaks it down.

Believe it or not, the accordion is perhaps the most played instrument in the entire world, especially when you take the entire accordion-family into account. The truth is, the accordion is not just a mainstay of folk music but has managed to penetrate as far as the pop world. With that in mind, let’s get to know this one-of-a-kind instrument.

How different can singing jazz be from singing pop? The answer is: very different. Get your average pop singer to take on a jazz standard and it just won’t be jazz any more. Jazz singing demands an entirely different sense of timing, rhythm, phrasing and an entirely different attitude, and there’s one final essential ingredient: improvisation. In this blog, we tackle the techniques that make jazz singing possible.