Tuesday 30 May 2017

Why it is Important to Exercise your Voice before Singing

Exercises Help Maintain Your Voice

Do you check the oil and water in your car before taking a long journey? The oil and water help to cool the engine and keeps it in good working order. Singing vocal exercises are as important as the performance itself, if not more so, as the preparation will determine the outcome of the show.

Exercises Help Recover From Sleep

After sleep our voice has not been used for hours.  All kind of mucus builds inside our mouths and nasal when we are asleep, and this reduces the quality of our vocal chords considerably.  Singing exercises make your lungs stronger while building stamina so that you can sing for longer periods without feeling exhausted. 

 














Exercises Help Reduce Vocal Damage

You don’t want to put a strain on your vocal chords because you failed to loosen up the muscles.  Exercise requires oxygen intake, which in turn stimulates the production of the body’s own mood-lifting endorphin's. So ultimately, singing these exercises should benefit you mentally as well as vocally.

Conclusion

So overall make sure that the voice is maintained regularly and drink plenty of fluid while trying to avoid sugary drinks.  Never go on stage without going through a proper vocal warm up routine and by following these advice your voice will not only get stronger but perform well.


BlueTimbre is a Music hub with Music Education spaces, Jam Room and Recording studio located in India. BlueTimbre provides complete end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. BlueTimbre management team comes with a decades of cumulative experience in running structured businesses, music curriculum development, music education and performance.

Sources:


http://borntosingmusic.com/singing-vocal-exercises/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F15-PVberTs 

Tuesday 16 May 2017

Top 5 Most Important Scales for Guitar players

As an aspiring guitarist, you often hear about the importance of scales and why you need to practice them. However, not everyone knows which scales are the most important scales and why they are so.

Scales are the foundation of riffs, melodies, chords, solos, improvisation and much much more. Although playing the rhythm guitar can be fun, if you want to try something different with your music, incorporating scales is a great variant.

In this article, we attempt to explain the importance of 5 scales on the guitar and why we think they are important.

1.    The Major Scale - The major scale is heavily used in a number of ways. The chords formed from the major scale are commonly used to form chord progressions, and there is also a lot of theory on how to form harmonies with this scale. Additionally, this scale is used to form modes which are also commonly used. If you have ever learnt solfège, you will know “Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do” – this is a major scale.

2.    The Minor Scale – The minor scale is another diatonic scale. While the major scale sounds happy and it resolves. The minor scale is kind of the opposite – it sounds, sad, dark and sort of incomplete.



3.    The Major Pentatonic Scale – “Penta” means five and hence, the pentatonic scale is made up of five notes. In other words : it is a major scale without the 4th and the 7th note. This eliminates the two semitones present in the major scale. (In the C scale between E and F, and between B and C.)

4.    The Minor Pentatonic Scale – minor pentatonic scale consists of 5 different notes. They are the same 5 notes as the major pentatonic scale, but the tonic of the scale is a different note. The tonic of the minor pentatonic scale is the note (3 semitones) below the tonic of the major pentatonic scale.

5.    The Blues Scale - Once you learn the minor pentatonic scale, it should be relatively easy to learn the blues scale as it is essentially the same with one additional note (a flattened 5th). As the name suggests, the scale is used heavily in blues but is also used in rock and jazz based styles a lot too. Soloing over the blues using this scale is relatively easy to get the basics of, but you could spend a life time honing the subtle nuances of the style, such as the feel of the bends, the vibratos and the timing of your phrases.

One you understand these scales, you need to practice regularly in order to master them. You need to learn to play the scales in both ascending and descending order – this will help ingrain the position as well as the sound of the scale in your memory.

You should then begin spending time experimenting with the scales to try and come up with phrases and melodies using the notes of the various scales. You can then move onto experimenting with scales over backing tracks that you can find online. Choose the pitch and tempo and then jam away! As you do this regularly, you will become familiar with the scales and playing the scales will become a very natural process.


BlueTimbre is a Music hub with Music Education spaces, Jam Room and Recording studio located in India. BlueTimbre provides complete end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. BlueTimbre works with schools providing complete Music Education solutions on campus. BlueTimbre management team comes with a decades of cumulative experience in running structured businesses, music curriculum development, music education and performance.



Sources:
www.jazclass.aust.com/scales/scablu.htm



Tuesday 2 May 2017

Benefits of Music Education

Music is universal. It’s more than a billion dollar industry, and it is omnipresent. How many hours in a row do you ever go without listening to music? Everywhere you go, everything you watch— music. Always music. We are surrounded in it, bathe in it, soak in it.

Then, why would we not want to know more about something constantly present in our lives? Would you want to live in a world without music? Then why would you want to have a school without music?

We would list innumerable number of reasons about the benefits of Music Education but here are our top ten:

1.    Children who study music tend to have larger vocabularies and more advanced reading skills than their peers who do not participate in music lessons.
2.    Children who study a musical instrument are more likely to excel in all of their studies, work better in teams, have enhanced critical thinking skills, stay in school, and pursue further education.
3.    Increased coordination: Students who practice with musical instruments can improve their hand-eye coordination. Just like playing sports, children can develop motor skills when playing music.
4.    Music is the fabric of our society, and music can shape abilities and character. Students in band or orchestra are less likely to abuse substances over their lifetime. Musical education can greatly contribute to children’s intellectual development as well.
5.    Schools with music programs have an estimated 90.2% graduation rate and 93.9% attendance rate compared to schools without music education, which average 72.9% graduation and 84.9% attendance.
6.    A Stanford study shows that music engages areas of the brain which are involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating events in our memory.
7.    Much like expert technical skills, mastery in arts and humanities is closely correlated to a greater understanding of language components.
8.    Young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year, compared to children who do not receive musical training.
9.    Emotional development: Students of music can be more emotionally developed, with empathy towards other cultures They also tend to have higher self esteem and are better at coping with anxiety.
10.Better self-confidence: With encouragement from teachers and parents, students playing a musical instrument can build pride and confidence. Musical education is also likely to help students develop better communication.

It is up to each of us to ensure that our children are exposed to learning music in their everyday life and especially at school. The importance of music and music education continues to be recognized everyday. Schools must not compromise on the quality of instructors or curriculum in order to ensure children are taught correctly and gain a life skills from the instruction. The school curriculum should be designed to deliver more than a minimal education to students. Music and Art should be taught at every elementary school in a regular and systematic way. Music and all Fine Arts should be considered “academic electives” in secondary schools and available to all students on a multi-year basis to allow adequate time for skills to develop sufficiently for informed decisions about college programs and career choices. All academic electives, including Music and Fine Arts, should count towards entrance requirements in colleges and universities.

Companies such as BlueTimbre offer quality music education programs in schools so that schools can continue to focus on what they do best. Companies such as BlueTimbre offer schools an alternative to being people dependant and worrying about the quality of instructors or curriculum. BlueTimbre works with schools providing complete Music Education solutions so that despite the students background or understanding, they have access to good quality instruments, teachers and internationally renowned curriculum. ‘While teaching music is important, showcasing the learning by performing is the key; says Sherin Winstent, founder and expert musician.



BlueTimbre is a Music hub with Music Education spaces, Jam Room and Recording studio located in India. BlueTimbre provides complete end-to-end Music Education solutions for schools. BlueTimbre works with schools providing complete Music Education solutions on campus. BlueTimbre management team comes with a decades of cumulative experience in running structured businesses, music curriculum development, music education and performance.


Sources:
http://www.nafme.org/20-important-benefits-of-music-in-our-schools/