Posts Tagged music lessons

Give a Gift of Music Lessons for Valentine’s Day!

Nov 23

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Music and Life | 1 Comment

 

 

2009 Gift Cert

 

 

 

Hello!

 

It’s time for my Holiday Gift Specials! This one is Valentine’s Day!

At this time of the year, people often give loved ones music lessons as a gift.

Many people either want to study and haven’t, or used to play and would like to again: there are many situations.

The common factor here, is they would like to get some private instruction… but haven’t!

Now is your time to give them the chance to take their musical lives to the next level.

Browse through my teacher pages to see what I do, then get some lessons as a gift!

 

Here are the specials:

  • Normal rate: $65 / lesson (an hour)
  • Gift Rate #1: $55 / lesson — Buy two lessons (minimum) at $110
  • Gift Rate #2: Same price with a four-lesson package at $220 (Normally $260)
  • Gift Rate #3: A five-lesson package for $275 and you get one free! (This is a good deal.) This applies to anyone paying by or on the 14th and starting before the end of February.

All lessons need to be weekly, at least one a week. (More is always fine.) Until a student is stable with the learning process, it’s easy to get off track when a week is missed. Once someone is grooved in, occasional misses aren’t an issue.

 

Here are some starting links to see how things work:

Introduction
Teaching Method
Student Comments

 

Take advantage of this offer!
(Click here to download and print the gift certificate.)

 

Marty B.
(818) 242-7551
Email
(And remember that I deliver lessons by phone and Skype to your out-of-town friends and family.)

 

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Guitar and Bass: Which Way is Up?

Dec 28

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | 3 Comments

Learning what “up or down the neck” means is one of the funniest things about learning beginning bass and guitar. This has perplexed and embarrassed more adult students then almost any other point! (Almost…)

Musically, the words “up” and “down” most often refer to pitch. “Pitch” is the highness or lowness of a note determined by how fast the string is vibrating. (More about pitch at the glossary at my website.)

An open guitar or bass string vibrates at a certain speed. When you press the string down to a fret, it shortens the string thereby making the string vibrate faster and the pitch higher. When you play notes going from the head of the instrument towards the sound hole, or pickups, the pitch’s are getting higher and is called going “up” the neck. Using a vertical guitar as an example, going up the neck is going down in gravity, and going down the neck is going up in gravity! So down is up and up is down!

It can take a while to get used to this when learning to play. Often enough I’ll say “move your finger down one fret” and the student moves it according to gravity instead of pitch, laughs then corrects the motion. This becomes rather humorous after the 20th or 30th time it happens. Some people get used to this after a few weeks, though most actually take a few months to stabilize this concept.

After all, we’ve been dealing with gravity longer than dealing with vibrating strings!

Marty B.

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Metal and Classical (Music) Analysis Blog

Apr 13

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Writing Music | No Comments

 

Check out my new blog about analyzing metal and classical music. Short but possibly informative!

 

Beethoven

http://aboutmusiclessons.blogspot.com/2010/04/metal-analysis.html

 

Avenged Sevenfold

 

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Glossary of Musical Terms

Mar 26

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Learning Music | No Comments

Check out my new Glossary of Musical Terms!

It is an expanding list of musical and music-business related terms. It has brief, yet concise definitions of important words. Not everything will be here as we already have dictionaries for those terms.

There are often many definitions for a word and I will mainly list a musically-oriented, simple definition or two for each one. Sometimes simple is good! (As time goes on I will be adding more involved and more in-depth definitions that you can access by clicking on words that are hyper-linked.)

The main focus is musical terms that are commonly mis-understood, or should be known by anyone playing or studying music.

I just started this project in March or 2010 and it will be expanding over the next few months. If there is anything you need a definition for let me know.

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Balancing a Music Lesson

Nov 5

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Music Lessons | No Comments

My last student of the night was Mike on guitar. It ended up being a perfect example of aligning his lesson to his goals, and I wanted to share that with you.

He came to his lesson feeling good about what he had practiced that week. He looked happy, but not REAL happy, so I dug into his “head” to see where he was at.

He was tracking with what he was learning, but really needed the scales and chords and technical stuff to directly relate to a particular song and we hadn’t done that yet. Fine. So I had him pull out his iPhone and play me a few songs he liked, picked one that was in the same “key” as something that was on his lesson and said, “Let’s apply everything tho this song.”

He said, “Great!”

Well… I related everything on his lesson to some part of the song: the theory, chords, rhythm and ear training. Then I taught him the opening guitar lick… and he blew out.

Super happy.

That’s how I like to end a lesson!

MB

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Practicing Music at the Right Speed

Aug 26

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Practicing an Instrument | No Comments

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The purpose of practicing is to gain control over some element of music, whether ear training, technique or an isolated passage or riff. Part of gaining control is eliminating hesitations, jerkiness and uncertainty. The goal is having complete “ownership” over what you are doing: you want to “know” that thing in and out.

For ear training, chose the speed that allows you to listen, duplicate and understand what you are hearing. Repetition and focus are key. You might need to play and listen to something hundreds of times before really getting it, and you will improve to the degree you are focused. When you are focused you are “there.” Only when you are there can you duplicate or learn something.

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Can Music Lessons Ruin Your Originality?

Aug 19

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Music Lessons | No Comments

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I believe that people are natively creative and original: taking lessons should increase your originality rather then blunt it. (After all, there is only one you!)

Quality music instruction promotes understanding, practical skill, creativity, thinking on your own and fully expressing yourself. The more freely you express your ideas, concepts and feelings the more original you will be. Anything that inhibits your personal expression can blunt your creativity, therefore ruin your originality.

In my twenty-eight years of teaching I have found that students who had little success with music lessons probably experienced one or more of the following:
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What Exactly Does a Music Copyist Do?

Aug 14

Posted by Marty Buttwinick in Reading Music | 2 Comments

This post is an answer to a question a friend asked me the other day.

 

Caught - Leadsheet MySpace
“A music copyist prepares written music for performance. A copyist gets the music written down on paper in a fashion that the musicians can easily read.”

Here are some of the jobs a copyist has:

Preparing music for singers: Singers need correct charts of their songs to hand out to musicians. A music copyist works with the singer to make sure their music is written out the way they need. There are many ways to write charts, and a copyist can determine what the singer needs. i.e., piano? full band? style? With good charts, the singer hands the musicians the music, and it’s played the way they want with no guess work! (One of my main gigs as a copyist is helping singers get their books together.)

Working from a score: A composer creates a score (music with all the instruments on it) and the copyist “extracts” each part of the score and prepares it for each instrument. E.g., he’ll take each individual part and make it look great for each player, such as the violin, viola, flute, etc.
Proofreading: A copyist has both the score and the individual parts, compares them and makes sure that everything is correct.
Transcribing: Someone has a recording and wants the music written down. The copyist listens to the music and writes it down in whatever form the client needs. (See my post on “The Seven Different Types of Written Music” and you’ll get the full picture.)
Copyrighting: The copyist listens to the song and writes down the melody, lyrics, chords and form. This “chart” is registered with the Library of Congress for copyright protection.

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There are Music Preparation Houses in major cities. In Los Angeles there are mainly two or three large facilities that handle all the chart writing for the movie and TV networks. Freelance copyists are abundant and it’s largely a word-of-mouth business. I mainly get my copywork from people that I know, though occasionally I’ll advertise somewhere, like “Craigslist.com“, and get some new clients. I have some occasional overflow work from the main offices, but my clients mainly consist of original artists wanting their music transcribed and charted well, and singers wanting their songs put in their key and arranged the way they want.

The main two computer programs used in the business are “Finale” and “Sibelius.” Finale has been the standard for years, though Sibelius has become a tough competitor. (I’m a Sibelius guy.)

The main ways to start working as a copyist are:
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