A-SharpMusic

A-SHARP MUSIC is dedicated to developing and honing musical skills for all musicians

08/11/2025

Dominant Tonic.
No it's not a drink or a hair solution! It's musical GPS in every song you listen to or play! Let me teach you how to play it on your own musical instrument. A # Music is scheduling lessons now!

03/22/2022

Dominant Tonic. No it's not a drink or a hair solution. If you have been around music for a good while you already know what this refers to. But for some of us that are kinda just getting our musical feet under us, these are at least 2 words that are important in every piece that you play or hear. They refer to chords in a song. Tonic means the main 'tone' or home chord area or key that the piece is written in. For example, in the key of F major, the tonic or anchor chord is an F. In the key of G,it's, yes, it's G. How about Eb minor? Well the tonic or home tone area of that piece is Eb minor. So what, right? It's important to know, however, that the dominant chord is always the 5th chord above the tonic. So in the key of F, the dominant or 5th chord would be C. In D minor, it would be A. It's just 5 steps above the tonic chord. Why is it called the 'dominant'? Because it dominates the song by driving us back to the tonic chord. In almost every piece on earth there is a tonic and a dominant. Listen for it in the pieces you hear. Know that this is important foundational stuff in the make up of your musical experience!

03/14/2022

Music is a story. All of it is a story. Or a statement. It's an expression at least. But there are no isolated individual academic sterile notes that we play just to make a sound. What about warm ups? Even there, we are doing stretches and movements of fingers and embouchures and whatever it's gonna take to play our instrument. When we play up and down a scale, in our mind we may be just warming up but the truth is, we are expressing communication of musical words and feelings. We're just not really paying attention to what we're saying. Don't ever look at a practice etude or exercise as a mundane menial effort to just get through. It is building up our musical vocabulary. It is important that we work them beautifully through over and over. When we are playing pieces in performance, that work will show in our ability to communicate a piece masterfully. In 5 words: We play like we practice. So practice like you are playing!

11/10/2021

COMING SOON to a website near you:
Learn to Play Guitar By Ear... taught by Yours Truly....
a three-part set of short recorded classes that you can purchase and own forever.
But you'll probably want to teach someone else.
Watch for details soon!

Jan 31....hey a quick update on my Play Guitar By Ear series..... the first two sessions are done and am working on the third, only to have to redo the first two sessions now due to some glitches that weren't really fixable, BUT, it'll be better than ever! Check back soon! You'll be playin by ear in no time!

08/18/2021

Trying to play a really really complicated passage and feel like you'll never ever get it down? Listen, if someone else can do it, you can too! Many times things are complicated due to either the speed at which it needs to be played, or the fi*****ngs that are necessary to bring about the grouping of notes, or some sort of version of these.

So one of the keys that has helped me in learning hard stuff as well as teaching hard stuff is simply to S L O W D O O W W W N N...... . Like really really slow!

Your remember when you first learned your instrument, right? If it was through a formal process like a beginner book, you very likely had to finger and blow or play or strike a whole note. Then a quarter note. Then a couple of quarter notes. Now that might annoy you now that you know how to handle your instrument. But take your complicated passage, and play it that slow. It's just notes. If you can play each note all by itself individually, add the the note next to it. Do that over and over until it's timing and fi*****ng is smooth and you are focusing on the beauty of the sound and not the academic movements of your hand/fingers/wind.

Now, add the third note to that. Play them all for the duration required but so slow that you couldn't possibly get them wrong.

I tell my students to play passages so ridiculously slow that you can't get it wrong. You can always speed up. Later. After you have it down and communicate it smoothly, beautifully, and without thinking about what you're doing.

Remember, the best cakes come out of an oven, not a microwave. Take your time and enjoy the process! You are making music and communicating stories and emotion. Make sure you take the time to be able to say what needs to be said.

09/05/2020

Always wanted to play piano but ended up with playing clarinet? NOW is the time to learn a new instrument, don't wait, there's no age limit, you've got nothing to lose! Get to it!

06/25/2019

Do you hear rhythms in your car blinker? Do you sense the interval of two pitches in a car horn? Do you pick out what the pitch is in a beeping construction vehicle in reverse? You just might be a musician. Listen for such things and then put them to your instrument not only for the novelty of it, but use it in a piece that you create. How do you create the sound of a passing train horn on a piano? There's your first assignment. Have fun!.....

03/25/2019

Do you hear what I hear? ...One way to sharpen your musical acuity is to listen to music for a specific instrument. Trace it throughout the entire piece or song. Of course a piano concerto should be simple enough, but what about the flute part in an orchestral movement? What about the entire bass line in a country song? What is the sax section doing throughout an entire jazz arrangement? Listen for your part and then finger it in your mind. Does that part really jump from there to there? How would I play that? Is it in a different key than I'm thinking which may change how it's fingered? Force yourself to be specific about what is happening and then go copy what you hear and see in your head. It just makes you a sharper and more musically sensitive artist!

03/13/2019

Do you play more than 1 instrument....not at the same time, of course! If you can teach anyone anything on the instruments you play, it's almost the same as several practice sessions for you.

04/12/2018

Even people who don't know how to play guitar can strum an Emi7(add 4) chord! (right?)

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Bowling Green, KY
42104

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