Blog
By William Muñoz
Learning scales is one of those aspects of being a musician that you cannot simply avoid. At some point, you will have to learn them and the quicker you start tackling them the better. But why do we need to practice them? The short answer is that they are a fundamental aspect of mastering music and playing a musical instrument.
By Kate MacKenzie
This is an exciting time to be apart of the AWSOM family! In July we rolled out our official Chamber Ensemble Program, which gives our students the opportunity to make music with other students! The possible instrument combinations are endless, and the music written for these groups is quite fun! Each chamber music ensemble will meet once a week with their coach (one of AWSOM's awesome teachers). It is a great way to meet other like-minded musicians, make some fantastic music, and learn in a group atmosphere!
By Maile Allen and John Hart
There are many ways students benefit from learning to play an instrument. Numerous students show students who take music lessons perform better academically, see an increase in verbal intelligence, and even see a boost to their IQ. Homeschooling families can enhance their students’ education and experience by adding music lessons to their curriculum.
By Nathan Straub
Have you ever wondered how music evolved into its current state? How did power chords, symphonies, rock concerts, Michael Jackson, and operas all come to be? This week, I will be covering three musical eras that answer a small part of these questions. These are known as the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic musical periods.
By William Muñoz
When I started learning the trumpet one of my goals was to eventually be good enough to play salsa music. After all, growing up in Puerto Rico, that is one of the most popular styles of music and I thought it would be awesome to be in a salsa band. My first trumpet teacher played in many salsa bands, some of which he also directed, additionally, he also performed with the Puerto Rico Symphony and Puerto Rico Philharmonic among other ensembles. I remember that after a few lessons he asked: “why do you want to play the trumpet?” to which I replied: “I want to play salsa.” He then responded: “Well, I am going to teach you how to be a trumpet player, more importantly, I will teach you to be a good musician.”
By John Hart
This skill is essential for music students who want to learn to play music genres such as blues, country, folk, hip, jazz, pop, soul, and gospel music. Instruments such as piano and guitar are commonly used as the musical backbone of these styles because they can sound more than one note at a time. Though sight-reading written notation is an important skill to acquire for any instrument, it is not required for reading chord charts. This skill doesn’t usually take long to learn and gives the budding musician the satisfaction of producing music that is pleasing to the ear within weeks versus the years that it takes to learn to sight-read proficiently.
By Esther Joh
While in modern times standardization has affected the craft of piano building, in the 18th century instruments were still personal works of art. Therefore, pianos differed from town to town and from builder to builder. Although within geographical area craftsmen did influence one another, the distance between two cities as far apart as London and Vienna resulted in the establishing of two distinct schools of piano building: the Viennese and the English. Viennese made by Stein from the early 1770, developed by Anton Walter, who built Mozart's own piano in the early 1780s. English were developed through Backers, a Dutch-born harpsichord maker resident in London, and John Broadwood.
By John Hart
A musician, according to Webster, is “a person skilled in the science of music, or one that sings or performs on instruments of music according to the rules of music.” I believe a well-balanced musician is one who has mastered at least one instrument and several of the following musical skills
By William Muñoz
If you play trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, or another brass instrument you already know that they are by far the coolest of the musical instruments (says the brass player writing this). In all seriousness, one of the greatest aspects of playing a brass instrument is that they are extremely versatile. A brass player can play all kinds of musical styles including: Pop, Jazz, Funk, Symphonic music, Concert Band, Marching Band, and the list just goes on.
