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1500 questions
24
votes
10 answers
Pick weight - functional difference, or just personal preference?
I'm at the very beginning of learning to play guitar, and I recently needed to buy some more picks. This was more complex than I was expecting, since there are apparently many different weights of picks available.
I've gotten the impression that…
Chad Birch
24
votes
4 answers
How can I tell when music is live and not recorded?
I was walking past a bar the other day and heard music coming out. I could immediately tell that the music was live, being played in the bar at that moment. This is something I have often noticed, I can tell whether music is recorded or being played…
terdon
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24
votes
2 answers
How should I tune a guitar with a Floyd Rose tremolo?
A number of my guitars have a Floyd Rose tremolo system with the locking nuts near the headstock.
How can I effectively tune a guitar that has a Floyd Rose locking tremolo?
Jasarien
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24
votes
5 answers
Practice amount and habits for time constrained individuals
I am not a professional musician.
Three years ago I began to play electric guitar.
I have tried to practice systematically and seriously for approximately
1 hour to 1.5 hours a day which is divided up into three areas of focus:
1) Sightreading
2)…
darbehdar
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24
votes
10 answers
Why are conductors' movements shifted with respect to the musicians?
I have noticed that, in a concert, the conductor moves in advance: sometimes, they move all of a sudden, and the musicians start playing louder only a little time after.
I wonder why this is so: as an amateur musician, I think I would get very…
Plop
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24
votes
6 answers
How to identify the guitar chords of a song
What's the best technique to identify the guitar chords of a song?
I know the basic chords and also how to get into the rhythm of a song! But I'll always be spending huge amount of time to identify the chords :(
ragmn
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24
votes
6 answers
Why does G# sound right when my melody is in C major?
I composed the following melody using notes from the C major scale. In the third bar a G# (Ab) seemed a natural choice to complete the loop, but I don’t understand why.
G# is not in C major nor its relative minor scale Am. It is one semitone down…
acidtrancejunkie
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24
votes
5 answers
What does one need to know to learn to improvise with other musicians?
I came across the following video on YouTube in which two random people play the same piano together and to me it sounds really amazing. It's something that I couldn't do myself if someone started randomly playing together with me.
Video:
How do…
lunisolar
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24
votes
6 answers
Why do some pianists occasionally play their hands at different times?
Piano is not my main instrument, but I have always been taught that the same rhythms should always sound together. In other words, if both hands play on the downbeat of the measure, both hands should sound simultaneously as opposed to one hand…
Richard
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23
votes
10 answers
Making Sense of Blues Soloing; differentiating major/minor pentatonics
Quarantine has allowed ample time for musical exploration. I'm a classically trained pianist studying music in college, and I'm using this extra time to be immersed in and learn how to play the blues.
I've transcribed a handful of pieces and I can…
eubio
- 355
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23
votes
9 answers
Why don't organs have weighted keys?
An organ (especially a pipe organ in a church) is the most expensive instrument in the world, I saw some even cost in the millions of dollars. I've read a lot of mixed things about weighted/unweighted keys but the general consensus, at least in the…
user34288
23
votes
5 answers
When tuning a guitar, how should I strike the strings?
When tuning a guitar, what is the best way to strike a string to get it as close to pitch as possible? I'd like to get it as close to the right pitch as I possibly can. I've noticed with my tuner (it's an iPhone app) that the pitch isn't perfectly…
jprete
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23
votes
2 answers
How do I begin finally making music on the piano?
It's been almost 4 years since I had too much time on my hands while living in student dorms so I decided to learn to play the piano.
I always loved listening to classical and suddenly listening wasn't enough so I decided to start playing. I had…
neuviemeporte
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23
votes
7 answers
What is the difference between increasing volume and increasing gain?
Out of experience, I found that recording with smaller microphone gain results in less noisy audio, which later can be amplified by increasing its volume or adding a gain. My question is which one is recommended in music production to make music…
Mehdi Haghgoo
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23
votes
3 answers
What was the motivation for the invention of electric pianos?
Around the 1970s there were a lot of manufacturers creating electric pianos like the Rhodes piano and the Wurlitzer Electronic Piano. These electric pianos don't sound very close to a real piano, but they sound great as their own thing.
Were they…
Qwertie
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