Peter Erskine App Features LAMA Drum Instructor Aaron Serfaty

New App!

We are very proud to announce LAMA drum instructor Aaron Serfaty, the go-to studio drummer for Afro Cuban and Brazilian drumming, is featured on the “Erskn Afro Cuban Essentials”, a brand new app from Peter Erskine (currently available in the App Store).

Here is how the App works:

Using the built-in mixer, the user can create their own combo: full rhythm section (trio), music-minus- piano, music-minus-bass, music-minus-drums, or solo tracks of drums-only, bass-only or piano-only PLUS any combination of congas, bongo and timbale percussion tracks. There are click-track and count-off options, too. 

This YouTube video showcases all the features of the app:

Want more from Aaron? Check out his quick tip videos from LAMA College for Music Professionals below:

-LAMA Staff

Video Quick Tip: Stretching Exercise for Guitar

In this new quick tip video, brought to you by LAMA College for Music Professionals, Guitar Department Chair Jody Fisher gives guitarists a great “strength and power” exercise (where you learn very slowly and keep going slower and slower). This exercise will help you increase the span between your first and second finger. What other exercises do you practice on the guitar?

-LAMA Staff

Jody Offers a New Look at LAMA’s Guitar Program

In this new video, brought to you by LAMA College for Music Professionals, Guitar Department Chair Jody Fisher explains what you can expect as a student in the guitar program and why choosing a music school like LAMA is the best choice today for your advancement as a musician.

For more information, visit the guitar department page here:

-LAMA Staff

Video Quick Tip: Altered Dominant Chords

In this new quick tip video, brought to you by LAMA College for Music Professionals, Guitar Department Chair Jody Fisher discusses how to use altered dominant chords, focusing on altered fifths. Any questions? 🙂

-LAMA Staff

Music Notation App to Revolutionize Teaching?

What if music students could still learn how to write music by hand, but quickly turn that into computerized notation? The people at @ThinkMusicTech say this is very real thanks to a new app that we don’t have many details for just yet but more updates are coming soon. Here’s a preview — we’ll keep an eye on the developments but we are interested!

[http://youtu.be/66AEYRXiVnA]

-LAMA Staff

Sean Halley Music Producer Quick Tip – “EQ Usage”

Sean Halley has been actively making a living in some musical or musically technical form since he began playing live club gigs at 17. Years where he played 280+ gigs were not uncommon, in addition to the full-time studio life that began professionally in college. In addition to writing and performing music for himself, he has also spent a lifetime on “both sides of the glass”.

In this quick tip Sean gives a lesson on “EQ Usage” :

Sean has produced a large number of indie pop and singer/songwriter records, sometimes playing all of the instruments but live drums. these projects range in genre from drop B metal and roots country, to torch pop and hip hop, with nearly everything in between (but he hasn’t done a zydeco project yet. anyone do zydeco?).  Sean is the Chair of the Music Producer department at LAMA.

For more great videos, tips and highlights from LA Music Academy alumni and instructors, subscribe to our YouTube channel here: http://youtube.com/LAmusicacademy

-LAMA Staff

Early Music Lessons Benefit Your Brain

We always thought we were a little bit smarter from all those years of music lessons — now we have some evidence to back it up. According to a recent New York Times article:

When children learn to play a musical instrument, they strengthen a range of auditory skills. Recent studies suggest that these benefits extend all through life, at least for those who continue to be engaged with music.

Is that how all the LAMA students got those musical skills? Seems early music lessons extends to other aspects of their lives beyond the musical, according to Professor Nina Kraus, Director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern University:

To learn to read, you need to have good working memory, the ability to disambiguate speech sounds, make sound-to-meaning connections…each one of these things really seems to be strengthened with active engagement in playing a musical instrument.

We love studies like this because we have said over and over that playing a musical instrument is an important skill for many aspects of life. We look forward to a future article that talks about the benefits of attending rock concerts in your mid-twenties.  To read the whole article visit: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/early-music-lessons-have-longtime-benefits/

-LAMA Staff

Sean Halley Music Producer Quick Tip – “Guitar Intonation”

Sean Halley has been actively making a living in some musical or musically technical form since he began playing live club gigs at 17. Years where he played 280+ gigs were not uncommon, in addition to the full-time studio life that began professionally in college. In addition to writing and performing music for himself, he has also spent a lifetime on “both sides of the glass”.

In this quick tip Sean gives a lesson on “Guitar Intonation” :

Sean has produced a large number of indie pop and singer/songwriter records, sometimes playing all of the instruments but live drums. these projects range in genre from drop B metal and roots country, to torch pop and hip hop, with nearly everything in between (but he hasn’t done a zydeco project yet. anyone do zydeco?).  Sean is the Chair of the Music Producer department at LAMA.

For more great videos, tips and highlights from LA Music Academy alumni and instructors, subscribe to our YouTube channel here: http://youtube.com/LAmusicacademy

-LAMA Staff

German Schauss Guitar Video Quick Tip: “Guitar Picking”

German Schauss is a guitarist, composer, author, and educator who teaches at LA Music Academy. He performs and tours as the leader of his own band and with other internationally known artists. Schauss writes music for commercials, TV, and video games, and has been named one of the 50 fastest guitarists of all time by Guitar World magazine. He is the author of Shredding Bach (Alfred/NGW #34922) and The Total Shred Guitarist (Alfred/NGW #36573) and writes a popular monthly column “Instant Shredding” for Germany’s biggest guitar magazine Gitarre & Bass. German uses and proudly endorses: Ernie Ball/Music Man, Bogner, Rocktron, PreSonus, Native Instruments, D’Addario, Planet Waves, Maxon, Guyatone, Morley, Dunlop, Voodoo Labs, Pigtronix Pedals, DiMarzio, Zoom, Tremol-No, and Pedaltrain products. For more about German Schauss and his music, please visit www.germanschauss.com for more info.

In this video, German talks “Guitar Picking”:

For more great videos, tips and highlights from LA Music Academy alumni and instructors, subscribe to our YouTube channel here: http://youtube.com/LAmusicacademy

-LAMA Staff

#Music Lesson: Practice Tips for #Bassists

LA Music Academy’s Doug Ross graduated with honors from MI in 1988 and the University of Maryland in 1992. For over twenty years, he has performed, recorded and taught bass all over the world, including four years as head of the bass department at Fukuoka School of Music in Japan. A few of the artists that Doug has recorded or performed with include Brett Garsed, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Otmaro Ruiz, Fantasia Musical Circus, Katia Moraes and Sambaguru, Gregg Bissonette, and jazz pianist Ron Kobayashi. Information on Doug’s activities and recent solo album can be found on his website at www.dougross.net.

Doug features quite a few bass lessons on his website here – http://dougross.net/bass-lessons/ – and he’s allowed us to “borrow” one for the Get to the Music blog! In this condensed version of his lesson, Doug offers tips for practicing your bass. Not all as obvious as you’d think!

Practice Tips For Bassists

by Doug Ross

If you’ve already been playing for a while, you have probably come to the realization that bass ain’t as easy as it’s cracked up to be.  Playing any instrument well requires a long-term commitment to disciplined practice.  I have personally experienced the frustration and wasted effort of bad practice habits, and I’ve also seen many students struggle to keep on track.  With the hope of helping you to avoid some potential pitfalls, here are my suggestions for maintaining a healthy practice routine:

1.     Every Day is the Only Way

Practice 5-6 days a week. Regularity of your practice routine will get you where you want to go.  Practicing 10 hours a day only on the weekends will never yield results like practicing one hour a day all through the week.

2.     What Do I Suck At?

This is the first thing I ask myself every time I sit down to practice — the guiding principle for setting my practice priorities.  After working on one skill for a while (like reading music for example), it gets better and becomes a relative strength.

3.     Practicing vs. Goofing Around

Let’s define “practice” as solitary, focused work on musical skills you haven’t yet mastered.  That excludes a lot of other valid musical activities: performing, jamming with others, listening to music, playing familiar tunes and licks, rehearsing with a band, and just goofing around with your bass for fun.

4.     Budget Your Time

If you can only consistently do one hour a day or even 30 minutes a day, then plan on that and divide up your hour into small chunks of time for each item on your “suck list”.  Even 5 or 10 minutes per subject per day can yield some progress.

5.     Break Before Burnout

If you are practicing for longer stretches of time, it’s important not to run yourself into the ground on any one topic.  Remember, we’re working on new, difficult stuff here, so frustration is a real danger.  Figure out your own attention span, and make sure that you get in the habit of switching subjects before you start pounding your fists on the music stand or your eyes glaze over.

6.     First No Time, Then Slow Time

Give yourself the luxury of playing out of time at first.  Once your fingers are making the right moves, then you’re ready to turn on the metronome at a slow setting and add that timekeeping element into the equation.  If you’re consistently making mistakes, that means you’re probably going faster than you’re ready to play, or biting off too big a chunk of music, which leads me to my next point…..

7.     Isolate the Difficult Bits

Don’t waste time going back to the beginning of that Beethoven piece every time, it’s just half notes and you can already play it!  It’s that tricky shift in the middle that keeps tripping you up, so what you need to do is isolate those few bars and work them out.  Repeat them a bunch of times, and once that’s solid, make sure you can also nail the transition from the easy part into the hard part.

8.     Practice in All 12 Keys and in All Neck Positions

Yes, it’s kind of a drag.  It’s one thing to understand a musical idea conceptually, but it’s something else to truly master it.  You don’t really own anything until you can play it in all keys.

-LAMA Staff