First Class Music Tuition
First Class Music Tuition
Greetings, singers!
I’ve uploaded a piano backing track for you to sing along to while warming up your voice each morning or before a performance. You can bookmark the YouTube video below, or go to the ‘Free Stuff‘ tab at the top of the page and download the mp3 to your device so you can use it offline too.
Happy Singing!
Emma
From time to time, I’m going to share links to articles I’m reading that you might find useful in your musical pursuits.
This one is about how to mic a cello. I’ve never recorded mine, but I was thinking about doing so tonight as I listened to Whitesnake’s ‘Still Of The Night’. I’d love to cover that track, but with real stringed instruments instead of synths.
How to Mic a Cello for Live and Recording
The cello is pure distilled elegance. Its tone is among the most gorgeous and evocative of any instrument. It has the lyrical expression and agility of the violin, in a baritone playing range. Trombone, bassoon, vocalist- nothing would sound so beautiful performing the cello’s definitive melody. The violoncello, as it is properly known, is noteworthy for its emotional range. It can just as easily settle into a classical piece as pop, soul, or even hardcore skate punk. While it is often used in emotionally touching settings, it can just as easily be played in a tense, gritty manner; check out the soundtrack from the 1966 version of Farenheit 451 or the arrangement in Eleanor Rigby.
If you are tasked with miking a cello player, you face a heavy task. There is a lot of potential to fulfill. That said, cellos (and other bowed string instruments) are not extremely fussy. They respond well to fairly simple mic technique. The biggest open question is of taste. What sound are you aiming for, and how do you bring that out most effectively. Whether you are at home, in a recording studio, or in a live setting, you can help bring the beauty of cello playing to life…
Read the rest of the article here.
And enjoy David Coverdale’s awesome vocal at the YouTube link below.
Here are the most common note values you will encounter.
|
Semibreve
|
A semibreve (whole note) lasts for four counts. |
|
Minim
|
A minim (half note) lasts for two counts.
|
|
Crotchet
|
A crotchet (quarter note) lasts for one count.
|
|
Quaver
|
A quaver (eighth note) lasts for half a count.
|
|
Semiquaver
|
A semiquaver (sixteenth note) lasts for a quarter of a count.
|
Notes smaller than one count, or beat, have tails, e.g. the quaver has a single tail and the semiquaver has two.
We also have demisemiquavers, hemidemisemiquavers, semihemidemisemiquavers and demisemihemidemisemiquavers – with three, four, five and six tails respectively – but we will ignore them for now.
The chart below will help you to remember note durations.
If you have seen sheet music before, you will know musical notes are written on a series of lines and spaces. These lines and spaces are called a stave (staff)*. The modern stave has five lines and four spaces. Each represents a note on the white keys of a piano keyboard.
* Throughout this course I will include the US names alongside the European terminology where necessary, as different examining boards follow different protocol.
A clef is a symbol that indicates the pitch and name of notes written on the stave. Clef is French for key. We use three main clefs in contemporary (modern) music, but there are several more.
The three we most often use are:
| Treble Clef |
|
| Bass Clef |
|
| Alto Clef |
 |
We also have a neutral clef for percussion; it is not a clef, per se, but a standard convention indicating the musical notes that follow it are to be played by an instrument of no fixed pitch.
Guitarists may be familiar with TAB. Tab, or tablature, appears similar to a regular stave but has an extra line. Instead of reflecting note names, the lines on a TAB stave represent guitar strings. The note heads are replaced by numbers, representing the fret to be pressed (more on TAB in a later lesson).
The Grand Stave is used for keyboard instruments, with a stave for the left hand below and a separate one above for the right hand. Theoretically, the Grand Stave is a single, eleven-lined stave, but that would be far too difficult to read. Instead, we eliminate the middle line and are left with two five-line staves.
The higher stave, or treble stave, is for notes higher in pitch than those on the lower stave. We play these with the right hand. Notes here are prefaced with a treble clef, also known as the G clef. The line which the body of the treble clef curls around is a G.
The lower stave, or bass stave, is for notes lower in pitch than those on the higher stave. We play these with the left hand. Notes on the left hand stave are prefaced with a bass clef, also known as the F clef. The line between the two dots of the clef is an F.
Notes are labelled like the modern English alphabet, but the musical alphabet is very simple as it only has seven letters. It runs from A to G and then starts over, as shown in the keyboard and stave diagrams below.
Eventually, we run out of space to place high and low notes. We can fix this by adding leger (ledger) lines to notes pitched higher and lower than the stave.
