Sonic State video reviews Novation Nocturn Control
February 4, 2008
I haven’t heard much about Novation recently, but here’s a video from Sonic State’s Rob Jones, who does a 6+ minute practical review of the Nocturn Control, a nifty little device making it easy to control plug-in parameters and other effects.
iVideosongs launches high-def video site for teaching aspiring musicians
January 30, 2008
iVideosongs is an on-demand, high-definition video service designed to teach aspiring musicians of all skill levels how to play their favourite songs on an instrument.
iVideosongs instruction is provided by the original artists who wrote and performed the songs and also by expert instructors.
“Aspiring musicians want to play complete songs accurately, and that’s exactly what we give them,” said Tim Huffman, CEO of iVideosongs. “We’ve recruited established artists, legendary sidemen and some of the best instructors on the planet to teach rock, pop, blues and country songs. With iVideosongs, aspiring musicians learn the songs at their pace, when and where they want.”
NowPlayIt.com: interesting but limited piano tutorials from star musicians
September 17, 2007
VNUNet.com’s Anthony Dhanendran (from Computeractive) has reviewed the online music tutorials web site NowPlayIt.com, which offers musicians the chance to learn how to play the authentic instrument lines from popular songs directly from the band’s musician.
The service offers three levels of video: for £4 (around $8) you get a full ten- to fifteen-minute video featuring the artist explaining the track, working through the track on the instrument, and then showing the music video and note guides in split screen mode.
For £3 ($6) a non-celebrity tutor hosts the video, while the lite version (£2/$4) offers just the chords and video tutorial, with no other commentary.
Unsurprisingly, of the 300 video tutorials currently available, there’s not a huge number to choose from for pianists. That’s probably because the piano is not as prominent as guitar or bass, and a synth line would probably be too complicated to create a short tutorial for.
In general, it looks like a good site, and as they add more songs and artists, hopefully pianists will be a little better served.
Good potential.
How to play Amazing Grace on the piano
February 20, 2006
I quite like Scott Houston’s tutorial videos. He has a friendly, laid back approach to teaching piano technique.
In this half-hour video he talks to two pianists, Arnett Howard and Bradley Sowash, about various techniques for playing Amazing Grace, one of the most popular hymns.
It covers useful musical techniques like chord positioning, inversions, the pentatonic scale, and different styles of playing and embellishing the piece.