Blog - Altered Stage - Music. Lived Daily.

30Sep

Post Malone Rubs Me the Right Way

by Aubrey Aikens

As some people may know, I personally cannot drive without having music on, and when I was in high school, that music was almost exclusively classic rock (I had a deep love for Boston, Kansas and Journey courtesy of my mother). I thought that driving around in my little old Honda with “Separate Ways” blasting as loud as possible made me seem pretty groovy. Spoiler alert: it did not. Now that I’ve graduated from university with degrees in music and music business, I wish I could say that my tastes have matured, but I think they have ironically gone the opposite direction than one would expect, because now I tend to find myself listening to the Top 40’s station (along with a little bit of Chicago’s Polish/American club music station which, if you haven’t checked out, you should because it’s really something).

I feel pretty confident in saying that today’s Top 40 can be summed up in two words: Post. Malone.

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19Sep

Singing with Confidence

by Aubrey Aikens

Last week, I gave my first ever masterclass about communicating emotional depth through singing and live music and it was an absolutely wonderful experience. We discussed the art of having confidence in front of people and honestly, I’ve only scratched the surface on the subject.

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12Sep

My Journey Began at Abbey Road

by Chris Medici

I’m grateful to my brothers for many things, one of which is their musical taste. Being the youngest brother, I would often hear whatever albums they had – a diverse range of artists and genres for sure. On any given day, depending on who was home, I would hear The Allman Brothers, Chicago, Bowie, or Sly and the Family Stone. One artist and one album, however, stood out from the rest: The Beatles’ “Abbey Road.”

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20Aug

Singing – The not-so-impossible dream

by Ben Herrington

After passing by Altered Stage every morning and evening, for close to a year, as I walked to and from work, and each time, inevitably, trying to convince my anxiety that years of singing punk rock in the shower would surely springboard me to rock superstardom (which arguments my anxiety would smartly dismiss by pointing out that I was not only tone deaf, but barely able to play the cowbell), on a cold February morning, upon arriving at my desk I finally decided to tell it (my anxiety) to STFU and I rang the telephone number listed on Altered Stage’s webpage.

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11Apr

Theory Thursday: The Piano

Theory Thursday

by Jason Steele

Welcome to Theory Thursday! Some would argue, “what’s so fun about music theory?”… I would argue back, “what’s NOT fun about music theory?”

No matter what side you live on I’ll be posting an ongoing series of music theory lessons. If you want to grow as a musician it unavoidable that you must have some sort of idea about how music works. I’ll start with the basics while also trying to keep it always tied to basic concepts. I don’t want to go too far too fast. I’ll also be posting some tune analysis down the line, so if you have a song request you’d like me to pull apart and teach you about what’s going on, just post your requests in the comments below. Happy Theory Thursday Ya’ll!

The Piano

The first step you need to take is to become familiar with what the names of all of the notes are, and to do this we will start by taking a look at the piano diagram below. You might ask here, “I play guitar, why are you showing me a piano?”. I teach this first concept on piano because the piano is so visual which makes it easier to see all of the notes and their relationships. In fact you may have already noticed that the piano has 2 different groups of black keys. From left to right it has a group of 2, then a group of 3, group of 2, group of 3, 2, 3,2, 3, etc.
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