Posts

Here's Why You Should Write Your Own Music

Since you're reading this post, I believe you are a musician or you've had a lot of experience with music. I know for a fact that most of the avid readers on this blog are musicians themselves. Many of you have tried to have a band at some point in your life. Many of you have tried to compose your own music at some point, and yet there are many others, and here I'm talking about the majority of people, who haven't ever tried composing anything. This post tells you why it's important to compose and write your own music. But I'm not good at composing! That, right there, is most common response I've received when I've told people that they should compose their own music. So, before we begin talking about writing your own pieces, let me clarify that I'm asking you to write, not publish your own music. I'm not asking you to compose music for the purpose of spreading it across your friends and family and to the general public. You need

Fitness and Guitar

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Apart from being a musician, I'm also a fitness enthusiast. I have been for the last 10 years. Only a few would've thought of whether the gym is going to affect your abilities on the guitar. Truth be told, yes it does affect your guitar abilities.  How? Well, we all know that the guitar is an instrument that you can use to shred on, play really cool riffs, solos, legatos, and the list just goes on. A lot of the things that one plays on the guitar involves fast finger and hand movements.  For me, I'm more of a calisthenics guy, I train in calisthenics six times a week, but I also go to the gym three to four times a week, so I don't have THAT much of a problem. Today we're talking about people who go to the gym six times a week and that's all that their fitness training involves...weights and cardio. For you guys, your gym training might just be hampering your abilities to play the guitar. The reason for this is, the workouts that you do in the

Peer Pressure in Music

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Is there peer pressure in music? Yes, certainly. For the most part, you can tell the kind of musician someone is just by the kinds of people he or she hangs out with, or the kind of music that the person listens to. There are very few instances where you'll come across people who, for example, listen to metal music, hang out with people who listen to metal music, and play classical music on their instrument.  You may not say it's peer pressure, it's more like influence. That's not wrong, but it's also pressure, more than you know.  Let's do an experiment. It's safe for me to assume that you have friends who listen to some sort of electronically created music, EDM, rap, whatever. The next time you're around them play something like country music (personally, I like country music but most people don't). What do you think will happen? They'll probably tell you something along the lines of "stop playing trash music in the car" or someth

The Beauty of Classics

As most of you readers might have noticed, I haven't given this blog much attention for the past few months, and I'm sorry for that. I've gone through a major change in my music life, and I want to share it with you. Very recently, I had to attempt my examinations, which was quite a big deal, and I had started to lose my interest in the guitar, something just didn't feel right anymore. So, I decided to take a break. I ignored my guitars for a while, and when I was asked for fees in advance for my next set of guitar classes, I didn't pay them. I thought disconnecting for a while might get me back on track. Here's the thing: that didn't happen. My interests changed, a lot changed.  Over time, I started developing a certain appreciation for softer music like jazz, and classical music as well.  Some of you who have read more than just one post on this blog, you might know that I used to learn the electronic piano or the keyboard for six years before I star

Why it’s important to practice a boring instrument every day

Let’s face it: there always comes a point in our life where we just get bored of playing our instruments and practicing them every day. We start by skipping a day, then maybe two, and ultimately we just stop practicing, and soon we lose our interest and stop playing the instrument altogether. This has happened to me and to so many people I know, and because I got back out of this phase and continued playing, I realized how important it is to continue playing…and that’s what today’s article is going to be about.   Why does this happen?   We’re humans, and we get really bored of doing the same thing every single day. Even if we love music, if we keep practicing every single day, there comes a time when we just don’t feel like doing it anymore. So we think “okay, nothing happens if we skip one day”. While that stands true in a way, what happens is you start thinking that it’s okay to skip a day in between sometimes. Therefore, you start doing it more regularly and easily.

You Don't Know True Music

This blog is full of technical and more serious aspects of music. It's about music alright, and you might find all your answers here, but today's post is going to be a little different. Today, we are going to take the technical aspects of music and throw it out of the window. Today, we are going to talk about expressing ourselves in terms of music.  To be honest here, I have been posting on this blog for years now. We have regular readers, some who've been there since the beginning. Some of you send me nice emails. My point is, in case I'm repeating something I already posted a few years ago, don't mind it. It'll be refreshing your knowledge. Here's the thing: you go for your music classes, you go on YouTube and search for song lessons, and that's good. You learn good songs, you can play some nice things. Here's the catch though: What you're learning, it's not you. You are not what you learn from YouTube, or the technical things you le

Respecting All Music: Is It Necessary?

Here's the thing: A lot of people say that being a musician requires you to respect all music. A lot of people, including my father.  You may think: Being a musician, you like certain music and dislike certain music, and that's how everyone is. Is it really necessary for me to respect the music that I don't like? Here's the answer: Yes.   However, respecting all music doesn't mean you have to like  all music. It simply means that your attitude, even towards music you dislike, is something along the lines of "I appreciate what you play, but it doesn't come in my list of preferred music".  That being said, you shouldn't insult any music, and specially not in front of the person who composes or practices such music. You can express your opinions on why you dislike it, but there shouldn't be any hatred for that kind of music.  Parth, just because we're musicians doesn't mean we shouldn't hate certain music...We're