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• Post #4353261

  Learning to play multiple instruments at the same time. https://www.jefftk.com/p/learning-musical-multitasking 'The core of it is that I have much more physical ability to do things than conscious attention to coordinate them with. So I need to get aspects of my playing out of my conscious attention, to where I can control them as larger chunks that I can combine it with other uses of my conscious mind.'

• Post #4349512

  Muting the low strings when you don't need them is something we all learn at some point. https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/chords/it-just-sounds-like-doo-doo-under-a-d-chord-why-muting-the-low-e-string-is-one-of-the-most-important-lessons-any-beginner-guitarist-can-learn 'An effective way to prevent your low E string from sounding or vibrating sympathetically when playing an open C chord is to lightly touch it with the “paw” of your fret-hand ring finger (3) as it frets the C root no...

• Post #4349507

  How extra strings open up new chord possibilities. A tutorial. https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/artist-lessons/mike-stringer-spiritbox-tsunami-sea 'One of the great benefits of playing 7- and 8-string guitars in various tunings is that they continually inspire me to discover cool and unusual chords and voicings. A great example of this is the song Keep Sweet, which I recorded with Spiritbox for 2025’s Tsunami Sea.'

• Post #4075191

  Making it easier for blind musicians to play guitar. https://www.guitarworld.com/gear/electric-guitars/world-first-accessible-guitar-tactile-markers '“You realize this is the first accessible guitar ever made in the world? This is amazing. I can feel where I'm at on the fretboard without having to look for the harmonics.” And if the Sensory Navigation Neck wasn’t enough, NVision Guitars ... has also equipped it with volume and tone knobs featuring different textures to make it even mo...

• Post #4053175

  I wrote a song in 2008 which I've always thought one of my best ... but while it's been frequently performed live I've never been able to achieve a studio recording I'm happy with. I've tried at least four times, which is not a record for me: I have another song I rate highly which has so far gone to version 12. But I digress. [... more]

• Post #4045055

  At the moment I'm putting effort into developing two daily habits; [1] Singing exercises, and [2] Writing at least a song idea, if not a complete song The exercises need only take ten to fifteen minutes, but are increasingly important as I get older. The songwriting, of course, can take as long as I've got, so I try to limit it to half an hour.

• Post #3918724

  Sing a phrase and watch it print on a stave in your browser. https://om-intelligence.ch/projects/vocal-notation/vocal-notation.html 'Sing into the mic. The metronome sets the grid; whatever pitch you hold in each subdivision gets written down.'

• Post #3908817

  Which do you prefer? This musician has signed on for the P Party. https://www.tumblr.com/derekwebb/13503899950/giving-it-away-how-free-music-makes-more-than 'But any model claiming to be good for the music business that is bad for the individuals that make up that business isn’t really good.'

• Post #3827153

  Vinyl's popularity grows every year, as does its environmental impact. https://longreads.com/2026/07/14/vinyl-record-music-industry-kyle-devine/ '“People talk about vinyl and wax, and it sounds cool,” he says, “but there is no getting around that vinyl records are PVC and every one that I make adds to the plastic in the world.” This is another reason Clampdown regrinds, over and above the shortage. Clampdown even has a program encouraging bands to bring in their unsold records so they...

• Post #3781377

  A roll call of Irish guitar players. https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/18-of-the-greatest-irish-guitarists-of-all-time 'Thankfully, Ireland’s troubled history and sectarian divide has never crossed over into music; bands from the North and South have always enjoyed equal success and respect on their respective opposite sides of the border, and religious differences have rarely played any part in the makeup of the most successful bands from the Emerald Isle.'

• Post #3728582

  Johnny Marr on delivering Hans Zimmer's vision for a Christopher Nolan film. https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/inside-johnny-marr-s-blockbuster-guitar-contributions-to-inception 'Zimmer is, in Nolan's words, “A minimalist composer with a maximalist production sense.” He tends to be best-known for the blaring climaxes of his scores, but he often doesn't really get enough credit for the subtler, more atmospheric soundscapes that help make those tremendous swells, whe...

• Post #3699588

  https://agoodhardstare.substack.com/p/not-dark-yet 'How lucky we are that he had this second act, that he learned to work ... with the muse who had possessed him in his early years. How lucky that we learned from him what it looks like to keep your art vigorous and alive and never complacent, even after the fire of youth has gone. How lucky we all are, in these dark and desperate times, to have seen the last of his kind, the last emissary from the old world, to have seen Bob Dylan, the last...

• Post #3669867

  Although this article is principally about writers, the experiences recounted apply (at least) equally to creators of music. https://lithub.com/are-writers-intrinsically-vulnerable-to-alcohol-and-drugs/ '... the queen of drugs for artists, and especially the literati, is alcohol. “Drink heightens feelings. When I drink, it heightens my emotions and I put it in a story… My stories written when sober are stupid… all reasoned out, not felt,” Fitzgerald said to a friend early into his descent...

• Post #3658268

  Paul talks about his recent session with the Rolling Stones. https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/bands/mick-jagger-on-recruiting-paul-mccartney-to-play-bass-on-the-rolling-stones-upcoming-album '“It was like, ‘Wow, there’s Mick [Jagger]! Ooh, there’s Keith [Richards]! Woah, there’s Ronnie [Wood]!’ It was exciting. It was really good. A great thing is all I had to do was play bass and not make mistakes, so it was good.”'

• Post #3533693

  Country blues artist Eric Bibb talks about his finger-picking guitar preferences. https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/eric-bibb-one-mississippi-interview 'But I play electric guitars like I play my acoustic guitars, I fingerpick them. I’ve never played with a plectrum, you know? I’ve never really mastered or even really been attracted to that style of playing, although I have band members who are wonderful players on electric guitar and who play with their fingers but also are m...

• Post #3505776

  Older synths expect their MIDI to be slow and steady. Today's Web MIDI runs like greased lightning. Problemo! https://knob.monster/how-do-you-keep-web-midi-from-crashing-a-1983-synthesizer 'When you try to bridge these two eras using the modern Web MIDI API, you run headfirst into a classic retrocomputing bottleneck: buffer overflow. Send data too fast, and the synthesizer’s CPU hangs, drops packages, or corrupts the internal sound memory completely.'

• Post #3505768

  How Robert Smith came to write "Friday I'm in Love". https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/guitarists/the-story-of-the-cure-friday-im-in-love '“We were recording the [1992] Wish album in the Manor studio, which is about an hour west of London. I remember driving home one Friday afternoon to have the weekend off. And I started to think of this really great chord sequence. “I was about 20 minutes away from the studio. So I turned around, went back to the studio and everyone was...

• Post #3418002

  “Mr. Ainsworth. … Calling Mr. Aiiiinsworth. … If you’re within the sound of my voice, Mr. Ainsworth, please give us some kind of sign.” https://www.thefarside.com/2026/06/18/4

• Post #3416914

  A notebook has been identified as belonging to Mozart. https://www.classicfm.com/composers/mozart/handwritten-notebook-discovered-major-paris/ 'A 248-year-old notebook in France’s National Library (BnF) has been officially identified as belonging to a 22-year-old Mozart, in what library experts have called a “major discovery”. Consisting of 44 pages, the notebook was kept by the young composer between May and July 1778, while he was staying in Paris, employed as a music tutor for Marie-Lo...

• Post #2534212

  RE: https://uddannelse.social/@mosgaard/116568665255369682 A great thread on live vs produced music. Or is that electronic vs acoustic? Either way, a great read. Thank you @mosgaard ...

• Post #2534211

  “Say, Will—why don’t you pull that thing out and play us a tune?” https://www.thefarside.com/2026/05/13/4

• Post #2023200

  This is the swansong from my Korg Wavestate, which is now boxed for delivery to its new owner. It doesn't contribute much, really; just the pad and the percussion. The real work is done by the vocals ... and I really enjoyed writing and singing something snarky for the first time in years. There'll be no release for this (nearly seven minute) song; I just did it for the fun of it.

• Post #1887846

  Please don't listen to any sideSister music on Bandcamp Friday. We'd appreciate it if you would avoid both our albums until it's 2 May where you live. https://sidesister.bandcamp.com/album/space-for-you

• Post #1887840

  Please wait! Trumpet auditions in progress. https://www.thefarside.com/2026/05/01/2

• Post #1831763

  No, this is not about having artificial intelligence generate artificial music. This is a web page which emulates the background noise of an AI server farm. https://datacenter.fm/ You could incorporate the output in your own music, of course ...

• Post #1812286

  Exploring the anti-racist and social justice ethos underpinning the rocker's career. https://lithub.com/john-cougar-mellencamp-will-fight-you-on-the-rock-n-roll-rise-of-a-combative-heartland-leftist/ '“Somebody threw a bottle at him and hit him in the head. It just exploded, shattered right on his head, and blood was pouring everywhere ... Five minutes later, he comes back onstage with a hardhat on and his head bandaged up like a fucking mummy. He grabs the microphone and says,...

• Post #1792060

  The one thing holding your mixes back. https://graph.org/The-one-thing-holding-your-mixes-back-04-24 'Indecision has a real cost in a mix session, and the "wrong" decision made confidently will almost always produce a better result than no decision at all.'

• Post #1762970

  Musicians and cannabis in the twentieth century. https://lithub.com/the-scent-of-rebellion-how-cannabis-became-the-drug-of-choice-for-the-counterculture/ '[Louis] Armstrong found that cannabis not only put him in the right mood for playing music but also helped him cope with the daily indignities of racial segregation, which limited where Black Americans could walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat ... Armstrong once told white music producer John Hammond, who disapproved of cannabis: “It rel...

• Post #1417970

  The Wellington-based songwriter and singer's song 'Lighthouse' pays tribute to the remote Norwegian island where she grew up. https://www.rnz.co.nz/life/music/the-song-is-a-tribute-to-the-resilience-of-coastal-people ''Lighthouse' begins with the lyrics in her Norwegian dialect and then in English for the body of the song, she says. “The song is a tribute to the resilience of coastal people living by the coast. But it's a song about hope...

• Post #1417969

  As a teenager I experimented with using speakers as microphones with my reel-to-reel tape recorder. While relatively useless for recording music, they were useful for other applications. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot17/woot17-paper-guri.pdf "We introduce 'SPEAKE(a)R,' a new type of espionage malware that can covertly turn the head-phones, earphones, or simple earbuds connected to a PC into microphones when a standard microphone is not present, mut...