Thursday, April 4, 2019

Eight of the best apps for beginner musicians -

and where to download them

Piano - Keyboard with Magic Tiles Music Games. Picture: Gismart

By Helena Asprou, ClassicFM

From perfecting your piano skills and brushing up on your music theory to improving your vocal technique, here are some of the best apps for music students

For budding musicians, picking up a new instrument or understanding the basics of music theory can feel like a challenge.

But there's a new generation of apps out there designed to help both established and beginner musicians. Gismart is one of the companies that has created apps to meet this growing demand.

Lana Meisak, VP of marketing at Gismart, told Classic FM: “I believe the popularity and success of our music apps and games lie in combining three well-balanced core elements: music, gaming and education.

“Mobile music games will continue to be influenced by three significant trends: simplification, collaboration and tech innovations. Simplification will deliver more accessible experiences. These products will have better potential to appeal to mainstream audiences.”

But it's not just about people learning an instrument. As Lana explains, there's also potential for artists to reach a new audience through apps: “Artist collaborations will boost the growth of music gaming. Through gamified music-creation, artists can benefit from engaging with fans and promoting their music in a new way.

“Our recent partnership with The Chainsmokers in Beat Maker Go offered an opportunity to fans to play their music instantly. Tech innovations such as AI and machine learning will deliver more personalised experiences for users, especially across music learning and entertainment products.”

Pablo Bozzone, director at app maker Orange Studios, also emphasises the importance of using technology to help get children into music.

Orange Studios’ app Piano Kids - Music & Songs is aimed at introducing children to music and musical instruments for the first time: “[They can] learn to play fun songs, explore different sounds and develop their musical skills.

“It also offers a series of mini-games and activities that help to develop memory, concentration, imagination and creativity, as well as motor, intellectual, sensory and speech skills.”

So, here are 8 of the best music apps to help get you started.

1. Piano – Keyboard with Magic Tiles Music Games, Gismart

With more than 50 million downloads, Gismart’s Piano app is one of the most popular music learning tools on the market. This colourful electric keyboard simulator uses a selection of virtual instruments, including a grand piano, harpsichord and organ, to teach you all the basics – and they sound pretty realistic too.

One of the app’s most successful features is its ‘magic tiles’ game, which plays you well known songs while a series of prompts appear on the screen, guiding you towards the correct notes. You can even write and record your own melodies or share your compositions with friends.

Download Piano on Google Play and the App Store.

2. Yousician – Learn Guitar, Piano, Bass & Ukelele, Yousician Ltd.

Designed by music experts, Yousician is your personal tutor in digital form and has already had more than 10 million downloads. Whether you’re hoping to master the guitar, piano or ukelele, the app listens to you play before providing real-time feedback on key areas such as accuracy and timing.

Using step-by-step tutorials, gameplay to track progress, and hundreds of exercises and videos, you can learn to sight-read, strum and sing quickly and easily.

Download Yousician on Google Play and the App Store.

3. Piano Kids – Music & Songs, Orange Studios Games

Created specially for young children and their parents, this fun music box teaches users how to play musical instruments and discover new sounds.

Its bright and colourful design ensures that kids stay engaged, while four modes (Instruments, Songs, Sounds and Play) work together to boost memory, concentration, imagination and creativity.

From xylophones and drum kits to saxophones and flutes, plus additional animal, transport and comic sounds, the app is a great introduction to playing with sound.

Download Piano Kids on Google Play.

4. Violin: Magical Bow, Rubycell

String enthusiasts will love this free music app, which featured among the ‘Most Entertaining’ category in Google Play’s ‘Best of 2016’ list.

Learn how to play the violin, viola and cello using a simulated bow, and play along to popular songs in Game Mode by pressing notes (with prompts) on the fingerboard.

For gamers with a competitive streak, the app also allows you to play and compete against your friends, with daily challenges to boost your score.

Download Violin: Magical Bow on Google Play or the App Store.

5. Music Theory Helper, Okram Apps

Most new musicians will agree that music theory can feel like a bit of a minefield, so Okram Apps released Music Theory Helper to make it that bit easier.

Whether you want to find out more about chords, intervals and note values or scales, symbols and rests, there’s plenty of information on the app – which also offers a variety of exercises for improving your listening and reading skills.

Download Music Theory Helper on Google Play.

Music Theory Helper app. Picture: Okram Apps

6. Air Conductor: Orchestra Sim, Micro App Brewery

If you’ve ever aspired to become the conductor of an orchestra, this musical app turns your phone into a virtual conductor’s baton.

The conducted beat pattern determines the tempo of the MIDI playback and uses the accelerometer of your phone to detect beat patterns of 2/4 and 4/4, or you can set custom meters with the time signature feature.

The app’s sample music library includes popular pieces from composers like Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven – so you can practise conducting to your favourite tunes – or you can add your own MIDI files.

Download Air Conductor: Orchestra Sim on Google Play.

7. The Metronome, Soundbrenner

As any musician knows, a metronome is an essential tool when you're learning a piece – it's the device that counts time at a selected speed by giving an audible tick.

Helping you to play with precision, this smart app allows users to change the time signature, choose a subdivision and even set accents.

Whether you’re a beginner or professional, it’s ideal for daily practice and you can save your own rhythms or sync up to five other metronomes with the Multiplayer Synchronisation feature.

Download The Metronome on Google Play or the App Store.

8. Maestro – Music Composer, Future Sculptor

For budding songwriters and music students, Maestro is ideal for composing while on the move.

Write musical notations, such as notes, key signatures and time signatures, for 127 MIDI instruments – including the piano, organ, cello, guitar, pipe and drums – and use the playback functionality to hear your masterpiece.

Then, simply export it to your device or upload your piece to the app’s ‘Concert Hall’ if you’re interested in receiving feedback from other users.

Download Maestro on Google Play.

Mozart's London Townhouse has just been bought ...

... for £7.5 million – take a look inside

The Grade I Listed Belgravia town house was built in 1730. Picture: Savills

By Sofia Rizzi, ClassicFM

The house where Mozart composed his first symphony in 1764 boasts five bedrooms, an enormous garden and a guest house.

Just five weeks after it hit the market, the Georgian house which once served as Mozart’s summer home has been bought for almost £7.5 million.

The four-storey Belgravia townhouse is situated on Mozart Terrace, also known as Ebury Street, close to the affluent areas of Sloane Square and Victoria.

The Grade I listed building was built in 1730 and has a number of period features throughout its modern interior.

Mozart spent the summer of 1764 in the house with his father and family. During this time he composed his first symphony, No. 1 in E flat major, at just eight years old.

The house has three bedroom suites, an outside office building with a shower room, a separate guest flat with a kitchenette and bedroom suite, and a separate staff bedroom suite.

View the floor plan on the Savills website >

The house also has a rare find in London: a 33-metre-long garden.

The house was last sold in 2013 for £4.5 million, resulting in an astonishing £3 million increase in value over the past six years.

According to William Duckworth-Chad from Savills, there was significant interest in the property from local and foreign buyers, partly thanks to its former musical owner.

Thursday, March 28, 2019

What actually is perfect pitch ...

... – and how do I get it?

Picture: Getty

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM

‘Q: How do you tell if someone has perfect pitch? A: They’ll tell you.’

If you have perfect pitch – or ‘absolute’ pitch – you can sing or play any note on the spot, with no former guiding note.

Only about one in 10,000 people have it, so if you do have the knack – go you.

via GIPHY

OK, so how do I get perfect pitch?

Some people believe you can only have ‘true’ perfect pitch by being born with it. According to Brady (1970), Ward and Burns (1999) and Levitin and Rogers (2005), “training that begins after the age of nine very rarely leads to [perfect pitch], and there are no known cases of an adult successfully acquiring it.”

But there is also evidence that you can develop perfect pitch without having a mystical, innate ability. A study carried out a few years ago at the University of Chicago tested a group of students with varied amounts of musical experience, before and after a period of pitch recognition training.

The students showed significant improvement after the training, and those tested a few months later had retained the ability to recreate the notes, without any reference.

So, with the correct training, it is perfectly possible for adults to learn to have perfect pitch. If you fancy giving it a try, a good place to start would be A LOT OF PRACTICE.

> Do you have perfect pitch? Take our test!

And what about relative pitch?

Relative pitch is a bit different, in that it allows you to identify a note by comparing it to a reference tone. It is a lot more common among musicians, and can be as simple as asking a musician to play an ‘E’, while giving them an ‘F’ as a reference.

It can also mean you are able to recreate certain notes in the scale, simply by being frequently exposed to them. For instance, if you’ve played in an orchestra and have the sound of that concert ‘A’ ringing in your ears, you might be able to recreate that note and use it to find your way around the whole 12-tone scale.

Which musicians and singers have perfect pitch?

Some of the greatest classical composers, including Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin and Handel all had perfect pitch; and it’s not so rare in the pop world either.

Mariah Carey has it, as did Michael Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby. Charlie Puth, for all his current popularity, was supposedly bullied at school for having perfect pitch. He told The Independent: “I found out that I had something 0.5 per cent of the population has, a type of perfect pitch, where I can hear notes and play them back right away.

“It was mostly verbal, like name-calling and such, the verbal stuff was massive amounts of discouragement like, ‘how could you remotely think you could make it in this industry?’, but I didn’t listen, because I knew I was pretty dope.”

But despite the general feeling of awe that surrounds perfect pitch, it isn’t all that helpful to see it as a measure of musical ability (no offence, of course, to Charlie Puth).

It does make a pretty impressive party trick, though:

What advice do you have for a young composer?

We've worked out John Williams' secret ...

... to starting a great melody, and it's unbelievably simple

John Williams I – V interval — Is this John Williams' secret ingredient? . Picture: Getty Images

Do you want to know the secret to writing a world-class melody? If John Williams’ music is anything to go by, it comes down to one really simple thing…

Would you believe us if we said that John Williams used the same compositional trick in his melodies for Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Superman and Indiana Jones?

We're here to tell you he does and it all stems from one central idea: the tonic – dominant interval. That's the leap from the first note of the scale to the fifth. Call it a I-Vor perfect fifth interval if you prefer.

Tonic and Dominant — Tonic (I) and Dominant (V). Picture: 8notes

Using the I-V relationship is nothing new when it comes to writing music, it’s one of the fundamental melodic relationships in Western harmony. However, John Williams uses this interval as the backbone of many of his iconic melodies.

He doesn't just use the I-V interval as a part of the melody, he uses it as a tool to catapult us right into the juicy bit of the tune. Picture the harmonic interval as a slingshot, if you will.

via GIPHY

So, with this sophisticated analogy in place, let's take a look at the music to see how the magic happens.

Star Wars

The Star Wars theme is probably the most famous music to ever be used in a film, so John Williams was clearly doing something right here. Even the introduction of brass fanfare triplets is iconic, but the music really gets going when the melody hits.

The up-beat triplet motif is followed by two sturdy I-V minims (half notes, if you're American). Williams uses this as springboard into the rest of the phrase, and into the rest of the score, in fact.

Jurassic Park

For all those Jurassic Park fans reading, you’ll know that this music comes at the point when we catch our first glimpse of the island. Not only is there a sudden key change at this point, but the epic theme is put straight in front of us, no frills, no introduction. So it's no surprise that John Williams uses a I-V jump to get the melody going.

There is something else is going on in the melody here, too. Williams uses two consecutive perfect fifth jumps: first from B flat to F and then from C-G. Instead of reading this as a I-V and II-VI, using a quick tonicisation, John Williams treats the ascending sequence as two I-V jumps.

Superman

John Williams is a fan of a fanfare (see what we did there?), and his score to Superman is no exception. With triplets and blazing brass in abundance, we get the feel of the superhero from the very core of his score.

Does the music seem familiar? Look beyond the dotted rhythm and where the melody goes after the I-V jump, and the beginning of this phrase is almost identical to the Star Wars theme. Williams, however, takes the music in a completely different direction after his signature I-V interval.

E. T.

E.T. — Picture: John Williams / Classic FM

The E. T. Flying Theme opens with a perfect fifth jump, but this is far more lyrical than any of the previous examples. So how does John Williams adapt the same melody to sound completely different here?

It's all in the instrumentation – the melody sits atop tremolo violins, fluttering flutes and sky high scalic runs that instantly set the scene of the famous flying scene.

And unlike many of his other scores, John Williams begins by giving the melody to the strings. Gone is the fanfare and heavy brass; this melody is lighter than air.

So there you have it – some of the world's most famous film score melodies are built around that heroic jump from tonic to dominant. What comes after, well, that's another story.

via GIPHY