I’ve been a professional musician and music teacher for over 30 years. I am utterly passionate about teaching, playing, and learning about music. I would love to help you start making the kind of you music you want to hear on your instrument.
Read moreAuthor: julia kasdorf
Want to ‘train your brain’? Forget apps, learn a musical instrument!
Reading Music, the Joys of
Reading music is a relatively new skill for me. I only picked it up in the past 5 years so I could stay a step ahead of my students. All my life I’ve played by
ear so why bother to learn to read? Is it not arcane, the domain of hide-bound, old school music teachers, who don’t have the wit to play by ear? Actually, sight-reading helps us all understand and communicate about music more effectively.
How Reading Music Helps
In reading music, we see our dum-de-dums and diddley-dees broken down into eighth notes, dotted quarters, and rests, our tra-la-las unequivocally identified on lines and spaces. Then we can communicate about music in these quantifiable terms, instead of “you know, kinda faster than that” or “can’t you make it higher?” or “I can’t explain it, but we aren’t playing this right.” It’s like the difference between telling some one how to get there, versus showing them on a map. And we come up understand the whole musical lay out better ourselves, just as a map gives us context for our location.
Reading & Recording Music
The joy of reading music really came home to me yesterday. Most pieces in any student book will be ignored, as most students just want to get through the assignments and explore no further. As a teacher, I’ve been delving deep into books to see what might be most interesting to my students. Man, there’s some good stuff in those books! Pieces that were once closed to me are now open and quite compelling! To wit,I found “Easy Trio for Three Guitars”. Easy, hey? That got my attention!
Nowadays almost any easy piece has me slavering to read it and play it, but a trio is kind of pointless unless you hear all three parts. So i got my iPad and launched Garage Band. (If you don’t have an Apple product, look for a good multi-track recording app here). I plugged my combo mic/headphone input into the jack. I set my metronome to 73 bpm so I could handle the 16th notes. Playing only to the metronome, I laid down Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, all the time wondering how the three parts were going to work together to make music. When I had laid all three parts down reasonably well (remember, this piece has the word “easy” in the title!) I unmuted all three tracks, and voila! To my delight and amazement, there I was, for all the world, playing a charming italian guitar trio, utterly out of my style and habit, but true enough to make me laugh out loud! Here it is: Adagio 1 by L. Von Call, (abbreviated).
I can scarcely explain how very satisfying this whole process is to me. Truly, there is unbounded joy in reading music, and we can discover a lot more with the cool toys at our fingertips these days!
Showcase Announcement! WML Spring Showcase June 4 at Vino9 Market!
Each year, I look forward to having a Spring and Winter Showcase for my students. These are very low-key, festive affairs at a local pub or restaurant. The public is invited, and I encourage all my students to participate, no matter their level of attainment, or how long they’ve been studying with me. The attendees are free to enjoy the hospitality of the venue, while my students offer their music. I sit close by to help out as needed.
Our 2017 Spring Showcase will be Sunday, June 4, at Vino9 Market in Paeonian Springs. I’m very delighted with this venue – the owner wants to provide a fun place for families to come get out and enjoy the outdoor seating and great food and drink options. It exactly suits the mood for our showcases – family friendly, convivial, yet public.
Click here for Showcase flyer for download and printing. Right-click on image and choose Save As.
This makes me crack up!
Tense Party Enters Third Hour Of Unplayed Acoustic Guitar Leaning Against Wall (www.theonion.com)
EUGENE, OR—The tension at a party hosted by area man Chad Kopp was reportedly increasing by the minute Friday as attendees continued to glance uneasily at an acoustic guitar leaning against the living room wall for the third straight hour. “Yeah, Chad’s got a really cool place,” Kopp’s friend Eric Morehouse said to a small cluster of fellow guests, all of whom furtively eyed the guitar for any indication whatsoever that someone might pick it up and launch into a popular song, or an unknown riff they might later reveal as “just something [they’d] been working on.” “It’s much bigger than his old apartment, that’s for sure.” At press time, a full-blown panic was narrowly avoided when a party guest walking toward the guitar continued on to the bedroom to retrieve his jacket.
In Praise of “Guitar Toolkit”, a Killer App!
Guitar Toolkit – Great Guitar App
As a guitar wrangler, i feel it incumbent on me to tell you guys and let the folks over at Guitar Toolkit know what a killer app this is.
Now, kids, In the olden days, there were NO guitar tuners except pitchpipes so when electronic tuners hit, it was a revelation! They were the size of a box of Pop Tarts, but we sure were glad to have them. Nowadays we can have tuners right on our phones and we are blown away anew.
You should get the GTK app just for its fine tuner and metronome. Maybe some of you couldn’t care less about the metronome, but as a teacher, I’m pulling it out on my students all the time.But the folks at GTK/Agile Partners have added a bunch of other cool techo-features for us real guitar heads that have me turning to this app again and again, for all kinds of cool reasons.
Guitar Chords
But then it also has a huge catalog of chords! Just dial in the chord you want to play, and it shows it to you, complete with strum so you can hear the difference between a G diminished and a G augmented. It shows you different finger tings for the chords all up the neck. When we re driving, Ill dial up some wacky chord and play it for my husband using the autosttum feature and test his chord knowledge.
AND – here’s one of the real cool parts – there’s a virtual guitar neck where you can add the notes yourself and the app will tell you what the chord is! No more pulling out the old chord tomes and fumbling between the pages, looking for exactly THAT chord in THAT voicing so you can find out what to call it.
Different Instruments
This is all great for guitar, but the app also provides all these features for other instruments, like uke, 5 string bass, and mandolin. So you can tune your uke, find uke chords, or tune that pesky 12-string. Astoundingly, the tuner will accommodate a capo, a device which, as all seasoned guitar players know, challenges your nicely tuned guitar.
Different Tunings
But GTK doesn’t just off standard turnings! It also offers a million alternate turnings for today’s guitar adventurers! One of my favorite bands, Alter Bridge, plays a lot of songs in Drop C#. I select the tuning I want, and GTK’s tuner adjusts to that tuning. Joy! It has a bunch of different tunings packed in, even one called “Guinevere” so you can play the Dave Crosby song of that name. My people!
Lefty? No worries! Select the Left-handed option and GTK turns everything around for your benefit!
More Guitar Coolness
This is not a complete list of GTK coolness. I need to finish this post! Suffice it to say that The app shows you a million coolio and utterly outre scales and arpeggios – Neapolitan Minor? Inverted Augmented? – plus the beloved pentatonics.
This app is super cheap for what it is. You can buy features in the app like editable, shareable, audible chord sheets, and an advanced metronome with built-in patterns. The app includes chord sheets that you can create AND include audio files and share with others as PDF files. I haven’t dug into this feature yet but zowie!
Word – get Guitar Toolkit and you and your guitar are ready for more than anything.
Motel Quest
Adventure at the Perfect Motel
I’m going to name my record “Motel”, after my song about the bliss of temporary, solitary, anonymity. So now I must find The Perfect Motel for my cover photo. Some folks might call musicians when thoughts turn to recording, but not me. I call my photographer!
The Perfect Motel must be one of those drive-up-to-the-door places – worn, not sordid, charmingly authentic, and with one of those oh-so-coolio signs in front.
i choose the ONLY motel in our county, the Little Rock Motel in Lucketts. This savvy business woman books the room well in advance, #10 at the end, the loneliest room and the one I feel i MUST have. Only we arrive to find its been booked out from under us. Panic! Plus its raining. Oh no! Should we cancel? NO, says I. It’ll be what it’ll be. I fear losing the project’s momentum. Besides, do you know how long it took me to put on these false eyelashes? Now I know how famous generals must feel when an attack falters at the outset.
Wipers streaking and squeaking, I set my brow, grip the wheel, and make for the rendezvous. My great photographer, Jay Tamangan, is there right on schedule, and he and I take over #7 (not such a bad substitute, you must admit), loaded with wardrobe and guitars and lenses.
I’m all business. We drag outdoor benches about, scraping horrendous planters out of the shot, hustling the patio for the perfect, humble, expressive, but not too humble, vintage, but not precious, chair. Quick run to the bathroom for an eyelash check. Select the first hip, yet natural, western but not stereotyping, clearly loved but not worn in any other promo shoot, jacket, and I plop myself down into the shot.
Which guitar? The current fav, a Taylor of annoyingly recent vintage, a real workhorse for the live musician, or the useless for gigging but oh so cool Gibson L-7? You can see from the photo that i chose the L-7. Image over reality!
Unfortunately, after this fun shoot, Jay and I had a creative misunderstanding and he disappeared from my life. I regret it very much. I love the shots he took, but none really work for the album. So stay tuned for coming post Perfect Motel, Revisited!
Pop Radio
Then my little student asks to learn the new Katy Perry song. I look at them, keeping my aghast reaction out of my face, and then say “Why, sure. Let’s listen to it right now.” Sometimes the song is as bad as I’d feared, sometimes it’s better than I’d hoped. And there’s always something I can teach my student about the most banal number. I can have the student to listen carefully and tell me how many different chords there are in the verse, or whether one of them is a minor chord. I can compare [insert banal bit of tripe A here] to [insert banal bit of tripe B here] and see how much they are alike. “You see,” I’ll say, pompously, to my young charge, “these two songs use the identical chord progression but the melody line [insert stock celebrity gal A here] sings is very different from melody line sung by [insert stock celebrity gal B here]. Sometimes we even talk about the lyrics of the song if we are driven to it.
But the pay off is this: When I’m out performing for my bread and butter, someone will often ask for the new [insert stock celebrity gal A here] song. And I, mindful of audience rapport, my professional reputation, and tips, now have the underpinnings to deliver the crib version of the song. With a minimum of stalling, I can usually reconstitute and perform verse 1 and chorus, which generally meets the case. So there I am, completely mindful of how I trashed this ditty in the morning, now crooning it this evening with passion and vim! Does this make me a hypocrite? No, I say pompously, it makes me a professional.
Christmas and Guitars
My advice: Do not surprise someone with a Christmas guitar unless they have repeatedly expressed a desire for one! Most of the world would love to play guitar, or make music some how, but that doesn’t mean everyone has the commitment and drive to do it. Myself, I would love to be able to draw things that look like things, but I have yet to be ready to pursue it diligently. So being given a guitar can kinda paint someone into a corner, as in “Ack! now i HAVE to learn!” Then a person faces feeling guilty when you’re around if they aren’t making the most of your splendid gift.
If you decide to go ahead with your magnificent intentions, be sure to check under my FAQs to learn the difference between a nylon string, a steel string, or electric guitar.
That all being said, if you DO give them a guitar, make sure you set them up with a solid 4 lessons from me so they have the best chance of moving forward on their musical journey!
Workshops
Julia will be giving a Summer Camp Songwriter’s Workshop at Shamrock Music Shop, 10am – 12 pm, June 18-June 22. Julia is an award-winning songwriter with some fine songs to her credit. In this excellent workshop, she’ll explore:
- how to craft your emotions into lyrics that will move people
- how to set your lyrics to music
- how to create a memorable melody
- the basic song structure that works!
At the end of the workshop, you’ll receive a professional-quality recording of your new song! No musical instruments required – Julia will support all students on guitar, piano, or voice.
The class is open to all, ages 10 – 18 years. Class size is limited, so be sure to visit Shamrock today to reserve your seat!
- 108 N. 21st Street Purcellville, VA 20132
- (540) 338-3313
- www.ShamrockMusicShoppe.com
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