Synchronicity is a studio for developing musical creativity, musical knowledge, and musical understa
Courses and lessons offered at this studio are beneficial to students of all ages specially to those who consider themselves to belong to one these three categories: aspiring composers who want to develop their compositional vision and skills, instrumentalists who are interested in acquiring a deep understanding of music theory from tonal to post-tonal, and music admirers who want to enrich their
05/06/2022
Interesting explanation of how different whistles work.
Warbling Whistles Are Weird Signup for your FREE trial of Wondrium here: http://ow.ly/O6AN30siJKgBird water whistle's have a really interesting mechanism. I made a 2D transparent versio...
01/12/2021
GM Hikaru Nakamura 'musified' by Joey Barrett
Turning GM Hikaru Into Meme Music Drop a follow on twitch I'm gonna start making these live for you guys! Who should we turn into music next?Twitch: Twitch.tv/jblynnwoodInstagram: instagram.c...
11/10/2020
Ballerina who suffers from Alzheimer’s listens to Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky.
Prima Ballerina Marta .C. Gonzalez Valencia listens to Swan Lake, and it all comes back to her. suffers from ’s listens to and it all comes back to her... Former ballerina with Marta ...
09/29/2020
A note on how to practice a new piece to make the learning process faster and more efficient, with a color-coded musical example.
I was looking for a piano arrangement of the main theme of Papillon (the 1973 movie) and although there are many good arrangements, I couldn’t find one that includes the beautiful counter melodies of Jerry Goldsmith’s original version. So, I decided to do a relatively simple piano arrangement that includes some of those delicate lines that appear in the second and third repetitions of the theme. You can listen to it in this short video and if you like you can download the score here:
https://ssomus.ca/piano-lessons-in-port-moody-and-coquitlam.html
Here is a very short composition exercise using old tonal musical material that we can find in the music of Beethoven, Bach, and others, combined with some play in the grouping of the beats.
05/26/2020
What is perfect pitch? Can it be limited? And if it is limited what are the consequences?
Perfect pitch or absolute pitch is the ability to identify musical notes without any reference note, somehow similar to how we identify colors. Not everyone possesses this ability. In fact it is quite rare. It is believed that to develop it one has to have the required genetics and also one needs to start music at an early age.
Perfect pitch can be a very useful gift to have, especially if you are a musician. However in some cases people have ‘limited perfect pitch’, and sometimes this ‘limited perfect pitch’ can get in the way of developing other useful aural skills that are necessary to compensate for this limitation, namely ‘relative pitch’.
This short note is by one of my friends and students, Roberta Romero Lopez, who is a professional violinist with limited perfect pitch. It is about the problems she struggled with as a violinist for a long time, primarily intonation, and how she managed to overcome them.
If you know someone with a similar issue, please share this note with them, as it might help them find the right path in developing their ears.
When perfect pitch is not that perfect a short note on how to overcome problems with intonation due to having limited perfect pitch
05/14/2020
This post is again on the negative impact of discouragement, an important and delicate topic in teaching. In my experience, if a teacher doesn’t believe in a student, even if this distrust is at a subliminal level, it is very hard for the student to preserve their passion. Below is a short story on discouragement by an unknown author. It does not happen in a teaching setting, but its surprise ending says it all.
“It is said that once there was a group of turtles who decided to make a contest to see which one is the fastest. For this, they chose a very demanding route, a very tall tower. Of course there were spectators who gathered there to see the unusual race to start, being skeptical at the same time that any of the turtles would even be able to climb to the top of the tower.
The first turtle entered the race and hurried to climb the tall tower, but there were already discouraging voices from below exclaiming that it was too tiring for her to climb to the top and that it would fail. That's exactly what happened, because half-way up she was broke with fatigue and gave up. The second entered the race and managed to climb more than the first, but eventually complied with discouraging voices and gave up. In the game came the third one that surpassed the progress of the first two, but failed to reach the peak.
At this race joined a new participant who seemed very lively and determined to win. As she climbed the route proposed by the other turtles the same discouraging voices were heard from below saying the same thing, that it is not possible to climb to the top. Still, to the amazement of all, the newcomer that emerged from nowhere came to the top and won the race. After the race, everyone was curious how she managed to climb all the way up, but the only answer they received was a sign made for them to understand that she was deaf. All along the way she thought everyone was cheering for her.”
05/07/2020
We just launched our online ear-training app (which works best on a computer with a Chrome browser). This app is a useful tool for musicians who are at beginner or intermediate level when it comes to reading rhythmic or melodic lines.
If you are interested in improving on these skills, you can follow the brief instructions of the app to work on your aural skills in gradual steps, and hopefully with a few minutes of daily practice, in a few months you will see tangible progress in your aural abilities.
This application is work in progress. Please excuse the not very user/mobile friendly interface. We are working on its looks and we will add more ear-training material soon.
Many thanks to Robert West, a student of this studio and a professional programmer for doing all the programming of this app.
If you are a music teacher, please feel free to share this app with your students.
https://ssomus.ca/free-online-ear-training-app.html
Online Ear Training App This app is designed to help musicians improve their skills in reading rhythmic and melodic lines in a step by step methodical way.
05/02/2020
Not everyone may agree with this quote by Einstein, but for me, among other messages, it contains an important point which is especially relevant when it comes to teaching: It is easy to make someone feel low by merely pointing out what they cannot do properly, but it is hard to inspire someone and encourage them to explore their potential, if they are interested and willing to face the unknown.
Fun fact: Did you know that Einstein’s hair was not messy because he didn’t care about combing his hair, but that he actually had a condition called ‘uncombable hair syndrome’.
04/08/2020
Although music is sometimes referred to as one of the highest forms of art, when it comes to non-instrumental sounds, whether natural or urban, the potential impact of these sounds on our feelings is often overlooked. The discipline that tries to bring awareness to this aspect of our lives is sound arts and sound design, which looks at all sounds in all their different forms as musical material, and explores this realm from different perspectives, from abstract artistic to pure realistic. This exploration always involves getting into creative processes and finding creative solutions. This interesting video shows the procedures involved in one of the realistic applications of sound design, making animal sounds for movies.
How Animal Sounds Are Made For Movies And TV | Movies Insider Foley artists use objects to create sounds based on a character’s movements and interactions in movies and TV shows. Sometimes, they will find themselves mak...