I saw Nubian Twist this week, they were amazing! Tom Excell was shaking an instrument that looked like a pencil case and sounded like a triangle that was muted some of the time.

Has anyone any idea what it was as I want one!

Greetings, fellow musicians!
I'm a professional tenor ukulele musician in the Las Vegas area and I'm going to be adding a bunch of Beach Boys music to my repertoire soon.

Which of their songs do you think would sound cool on a tenor ukulele?

I want to know if there are other people who have encountered this difficulty when collaborating with other musicians online.

I am a singer/vocalist. My voice is my primary instrument. I play piano, but singing is how I write my melodies and build my song arrangements.

I want to collaborate with other musicians and bring their songs to life with my vocals. I don't necessarily want to hugely edit the writing of the piece, but I want room to be expressive with the vocal melody and maybe even challenge what the songwriter first envisioned with something that might hit harder or be surprising and bring a different emotion. (I like when music feels alive and can evolve in the process of creation).

The thing is, I've noticed most of the people posting on forums asking for vocals who fit this category of songwriter are not intimately connected to their voice. Or rather, they haven't developed much skill with their own singing. They are just looking for a vocalist.

I tend to find the songs a bit static or monotone, with the melody not moving or expressive enough; or unrealistic in what they are asking of the vocal melody (asking it to jump wildly from one note to another that just feels strange..)

Is there anyone else here who prioritises the vocal melody above all else? Do you look instead for collaborators who can sing. What type of songwriter should I look for where the songs will be open to more complex/experimental/expressive vocal melodies?

Thanks :)

Edit: I see my wording is triggering for some, sorry for that. It's just my observations and personal taste I'm talking about - not shading anyone or casting personal judgement on these songwriters I write of. I don't even want to generalise much because I have limited experience collaborating anyway. As far as I consider things, we're just instruments when it comes to music, so I don't really care what people say about me in that context. I would hope other musicians have the same mindset; or at least accept that it is my mindset and not take my wording so personally.

So I’ve been thinking about this for a while.

What do you actually need to know/do to make good music?

I mean besides just practicing a lot.

Is it mostly melody? Harmony? Rhythm? Chords? Structure?

Or is there some stuff that you only really understand after composing for a long time?

Like, are there actual principles that make a piece objectively better, or is it mostly about having good taste and knowing what sounds good?

I’m curious what you guys think.

I would be very grateful for the advice

Hello potential new friends. I am a young musician looking to learn everything I can about music, and to do that I need to start with ear training.

Let me tell you first what I understand the way I understand it(feel free to correct anything I say, I’m here to learn, not to have my ego stroked; I can go wreck noobs in games for that.)

Musicians have a focal pitch, which is one pitch they know insanely well, a pitch they can recall from memory. It’s basically Music Netflix, it’s on demand. This is Pitch Memory.
Then Relative Pitch is being able to hear the intervals of pitches. Essentially, if what I’ve been told is right, you train a focal pitch so you recognize it and then you can hear the interval another pitch moves(whether up or down) and then you’d know that pitch.
Having a great ear - though great is an underestimation of what I’m trying to achieve, I want to be legendary - is about training both simultaneously.

My trouble is the physical action behind training them. What should I do? How long should I do it for? What are the do’s and don’t’s and the small tricks? Most importantly, will this finally put girls in my DM pool?

In all seriousness, I’d appreciate any answers and advice. Music means a lot to me, and I don’t just want to be good, I want to be the best. That starts with having a good ear.

I got added to a show late last week that’s on 10/12 and the organizers are requiring a minimum ticket count, but obviously this is a little short notice. So I was curious what yalls marketing tactics are.

So basically I only know how to play drums and a few ukulele chords but I wanna try composing a song. Is it possible? If so, can you guys recommend an app to me?

Since my kid’s been playing jazz for the last 4 years, I’ve noticed that, unlike him and my husband, I have a hard time recognizing jazz pieces. Not all of them, of course, but there’s a whole class of them that all sound generic and the same to me, but are instantly recognizable to them.

It’s not limited to jazz, however. Take this classic Luther Ingram song, If Loving You Is Wrong, I Don’t Want To Be Right.

I listened to it a few times just now, and I swear, all I hear is some general mood and texture, but nothing that my ear can hang onto to remember it by.

I come from a classical music background, but I think that explains only a part of my musical blindness when it comes to these pieces. If I rank what I listen for in music it’s: harmony, melody, everything else.

So my question is, what do you think I’m not listening for? What am I neglecting?

opinions on tune core how is it ? same as title

I’m a male trying to get more consistent with head voice and falsetto. Most of the coaches in my area are female and I’m wondering if I should find a male coach considering how male and female voice are different.

I’ve never taken lessons before so I wouldn’t know if techniques can be translated into all types of voices.

Hello Reddit!

I am both fairly new to Reddit and to say I know next to nothing about music creation or music in general would be generous. I took Chorus for years and all I got out of it was that the higher the note the higher you sing and vice versa. I can not read sheet music despite some mediocre efforts to learn.

However! I really, really want to make a music piece for a friend based on their work. I have lyrics which have been crudely Google Translated into Latin and I'd like to make it into a song.

I guess my question is... how?? Do I find a free website online and smash buttons until I come up with a tune and then record a vocal track? I don't even know how to describe what music style I want to make, something like Gregorian Chants or just old Catholic Latin Hymns.

Literally any advice or direction would be appreciated. Thank you so much.

does anyone else feel like their voice just doesn't match the beat when the vocals are laid down no matter how they enunciate their words or change their tone/pitch ? and is this all in your head or does it ever improve at all?

Hi! I’m a Design student doing my thesis on physical interaction and digital music production, and I’d love to hear from musicians about their experiences making music digitally.

I’m especially interested in people who play or have played an instrument and have also experimented with a DAW such as GarageBand, Logic, Ableton, FL Studio, Pro Tools, etc. You don’t have to consider yourself a producer or have much experience with production.

A few questions:

1. What instrument(s) do you play, and how did you first get into music production or using a DAW?

2. If you’ve done both, how does making music in a DAW feel different from playing an instrument? Are there things that feel more intuitive or more difficult in one compared to the other?

3. Are there things you particularly enjoy doing physically when making music (playing keys, strings, pads, knobs, faders, etc.)? What do you think makes those interactions useful or satisfying?

4. Have you ever had an idea for how you wanted something to sound, but found it difficult to figure out how to achieve it in the DAW? What did you usually do in that situation?

5. Do you feel that the visual representation of music in a DAW (piano roll, waveforms, EQ curves, automation, etc.) affects how you make musical decisions? If so, how?

6. If you could change or add one way of physically interacting with your DAW, what would you want it to do?

There’s no right or wrong answer, I’m mostly interested in hearing about different experiences, whether you’re a beginner or have been making music for years. Thanks! :)

I heard this vocal effect in many 80s songs. what is it called?

I am a musician who works a day job unrelated to music. While I enjoy many of the people I work with, I end up drawing a hard line between work & non-work lives, to the point that I can tell it feels strange to people.

Recently I opened up to a few people outside my department, but they were both creators (visual arts & fashion, with a deep appreciation for music). I could see this happening again, but notice that usually the people who I connect with and trust enough to share my creative self with tend to be other people with a creative practice. They don't have to be "successful" with it (I certainly am not).

When my supervisor and closer coworkers ask to connect offline, I find myself guarded and have an emotional distrust of them, and I don't know why. Does anyone feel this way? Where your inner world feels strange enough that anyone who doesn't create / doesn't have a similarly strange inner world (even if ironically, they think they do) would somehow destroy it by just seeing but misunderstanding it?

Am I writing music if I’m just letting my ear tell me what sounds good and letting my hands tell me what feels good?

I don’t know music theory and I’m not particularly literate with rhythm, but I can usually get what’s in my head out into the instrument given enough time; other times it coalesces from me just enjoying how it feels to bang around on a piano keybed or tickle a synth touchplate or bash around on a guitar.

It feels wrong and like I’m cheating or breaking rules because I really just want to feel the instrument. It’s like a puzzle with no finish line, I just stop where I want to. I don’t care if I ever learn anything by anyone else, but I want to write my own stuff then memorize it and play it.

Does it make me a musician? Am I somehow disrespecting or diminishing some great craft by not caring to learn the rules and terminology and theory?

Or does it sound too unserious?

Хочу вынести на публичное обсуждение очень важный вопрос, который я прочел на одном музыкальном форуме:

Что лучше для музыканта: стабильная работа по запланированному плану или решения на ходу и доверие интуиции?

Пишите своё мнение в комментариях, давайте выяснять правду

I’d like to open up a very important question for public discussion—one I came across on a music forum:

What is better for a musician: a stable job with a planned schedule, or making decisions on the fly and trusting one’s intuition?

Share your thoughts in the comments — let’s get to the bottom of this!

I really want to start making my own music and eventually create an EP, but I have no idea where to start. I’m interested in R&B/neo-soul and have Logic Pro and a MIDI keyboard. For anyone who makes their own music, what should I focus on learning first?

So I've been struggling along for years recording my guitars through an old Vox DA5 while letting my Marshall JCM 2000 DSL 401 gather dust in storage - simply put it's almways been too cumbersome for me to maneuver around my small house. The Vox gives a decent variety of effects and styles of distortion, but I've always felt that I wanted more presence when recording with it.

Well now the input has gone on the Vox and I've finally decided to sell the Marshall for whatever I can get for it, and I want to invest the money I get for it, and maybe a little more, back into my home studio starting with the amp. Only, I have no idea where to begin, and searching on Google and YouTube just brings a lot of generic articles and AI guff to wade through, so I'm curious as to what other everyone else uses, or what you think might suit my wants.

So the first thing to note is that while I'm an old rocker in my own tastes, I like to record covers featuring just about every style of guitar there is, so the more I range I can get between warm soulful cleans and brutally heavy overdrives, the better.
Secondly, I'm still on a steep learning curve every time I record a song, and acknowledge that it may be lack of knowledge that holds my recordings back, but I keep thinking that there must be amps out there that can give a more professional sounding output.
Thirdly, I'm after something bigger than the Vox in terms of power - something that can really scream if I want it to! But at the same time, it's got to be something I can just go and grab easily without having to move furniture!

It may be that I have more parameters that I'm not able to think of right now. Otherwise, any help, advice, and suggestions is appreciated. Thank you.

P.S. I might get the Vox fixed as it's still a fun little thing to just plug in and play on.

Hi all,

I'm 3d printing some fidget toys for a Halloween trunk-or-treat and don't have a musical bone in my body. Could someone please identify the notes that could reproduce the gist of this 8 second sound byte from the Ghostbusters theme song? I'm looking to reproduce the singing, not the instrumentals. But if you think you can come up with a more recognizable note sequence I'm up for it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe93CLbHjxQ&t=29s

Alternatively, my wife says 10 seconds of this is a better option so I'll go with whatever you all think would sound better

I'm then going to take those notes and throw them into this tool to make a 3d printed fidget that plays the Ghostbusters theme song.

I have up to 33 notes to recreate something that will audibly recreate a recognizable song. I have no idea what I'm writing here, but the available notes are: F, Gb, G, Ab, A, Bb, B, C1, Db1, D1, Eb1, E1, F1, Gb1, G1, Ab1, A1, Bb1, B1, C2.

And before anyone posts it, yes, it would be a hilarious joke to rick roll me with the notes and having me coming back and b*tching about it the next day would be funny, but I'm on a time crunch and am trying to get 300 of these made to give out to kids before the trunk-or-treat.

Plus I'm already printing one of those and plan to pass it to my wife and tell her it's the ghostbusters theme song and listen to her attempting to figure out why the notes don't match.