How Musicals Developed To What They Are Today

A musical can be in the form of a theatrical production or a movie, either of which uses songs and dancing as a means to tell the story. There are many types of musical theater, such as comedy drama, dramas, and others. They use music to tell their story. Musicals have always had a stage presence, but it has made its way into movies as well. If you have never seen a musical theater production or drama comedy, then you are missing out on a cool treat. There are three main parts to musical theater; the music, the lyrics and the book. Music and lyrics are easy to understand, and the book is just an expression for the real storyline. Musicals are different from operas because there is talking in the show, whereas operas incorporate only songs. Musical theater dates back as far as ancient Greece, with their drama comedies. In the golden age of the musical, musical movies were being made all the time. An actor or actress could actually have several musical movies in their acting career. Nearly all the hot movies back then were musical in nature. Now, however, that has faded and movie casting today has little to do with musical talent.The history of musicals is quite interesting as well. The concept of musical theater started with the Greeks. Some have dated this as far back as the 5th century B.C. Europe quickly stole this form of theater, and created the traveling musical troupe. By the Renaissance period, comedy drama was increasing popular in Europe. These were quickly turned into comedic operas and ballad operas. Each of these two styles had their unique features. It wasn't until the 1860s that the form of modern musical theater was considered to be created. This originated with the musical "The Black Crook," which was created in New York. Of course, musical theater took off rapidly from there. During WWI, the operetta was very popular on Broadway. However, by the late 1920s, films were providing a serious challenge to the world of theater. By the 1950s and 60s, the musical theater, as it is known today, was going strong and has not changed too much since.So that is where musicals came from, and how they developed to what they are today. You can tell anyone about the basic musical form, and some of the history of the musical. Back in the hay-day of musical theater, many dramatic movie actors were involved as well, but that has faded away.

How to Develop a Good Musical Ear

What do we mean when we say that someone "has a good ear?" Actually, the term can mean several things. When someone has a good ear, they can accomplish at least one of the following:
1) they can identify, usually by note name, the various pitches that they hear, and sing those pitches in tune;2) they can identify chords by name; and/or3) they can identify instruments or combinations of instruments within a musical work.
Having a good ear is something that most musicians strive for. Having a bad ear means that you can't recognize or label the music you are hearing - an important skill for performers and composers.
I run a songwriting website, (The Essential Secrets of Songwriting ), and I know how important a good ear is. If you are a songwriter, having a good ear is vital because the best way to improve your songwriting craft is to listen to the music of the professionals. But if you can't really identify what you are hearing, you're missing out on opportunities to improve. Throughout my years as a music teacher, I have observed something interesting and very important. The marks that my students make in music theory studies are usually very close to the marks they receive in ear training. And more than that, I can usually gauge how a student is going to do in one course by looking at their progress in the other. For example, students who do well in theory but poorly in ear training will usually see their ear training marks rise over time. And students who have great ears but weak theory skills will generally experience better marks in theory over time. In other words, music theory and ear training go hand in hand. The first and most important thing you can do to improve your ear is to improve your theory skills. Why? When you understand how music is structured, your ears have a reason for what they are hearing.
Here's one good example. In any key, there are three or four certain chords that work well to reinforce that key, and are more likely to occur than any other chords. Knowledge of theory helps you know and identify those chords. So when you are listening to music and trying to identify the chords you are hearing, you can focus in the most likely choices. Besides improving your theory skills, here are some other pieces of advice for you:
1) Try some of the ear training websites that are out there. Just do a search for "online ear training" and you'll find lots of resources that can help.
2) Try purchasing some ear training software. These days, most university aural perception programs incorporate computerized training into their curriculum.
3) Try writing down the melodies that you hear being played. Transcribing music in this manner actually does not require strong music reading skills, and you will find that what skills you do possess will improve greatly and quickly. Take a simple song, and play it on your CD player a bit at a time, writing down whatever notes you hear. Even if you aren't sure of the rhythms, write whatever pitches you can. If you're stuck on a note, find it on your guitar or piano, and then write it down. This is the best ear training exercise there is!
Practicing your instrument is crucial to becoming a better musician. But be certain that you don't neglect your ear!

Advice for Future Music College-bound Students

These days, there are a number of opportunities for careers in the Music Industry. While there are many choices for residential professional training, have you considered studying at a distance? It can have many advantages such as affordability, but the choices are fewer. One such school you may wish to consider is the US School of Commercial Music (www.usschoolofmusic.com), a college offering complete programs for Music Industry careers and serious avocations.The purpose of this article is to suggest an approach whereby you can evaluate online schools, particularly those offering music courses. There is an obvious financial advantage to studying at home, but can you really get a thorough education that way? The following principles may be used to compare whether any distance school has a relevant approach. There are a number of factors. An online college should have:Complete wide-ranging programs that are fun, thorough and exciting! Special relevant courses unavailable elsewhere. Better, more up-to-date materials, technologies and assignments. Nearly-instant feedback on each assignment via the internet. An incomparably thorough hands-on learning experience.While these principles apply to all schools, this article applies specifically to online music colleges. Let's take each of these topics in turn in an analysis of music education:To determine whether a school is good for you, perhaps the first question to ask is *not* about accredidation, which is virtually meaningless in the Music Industry, and which can be achieved by easy affiliation without intrinsic merit, but whether a school is really a college or simply pretends to be one. That is, does the school have complete soup-to-nuts integrated programs or is it a hollow shell of unrelated or sub-college courses? While a single course or two can be fun, is it really college-level training? If it's not, is it really a good investment of time and money? This article lists some of the advantages of a true college such as USSCM.Perhaps the second question one might have is whether the program offered is relevant to working in the part of today's Music Industry to which you are attracted. For example, some colleges offer only Music Therapy degrees, which is great if that's what you want. Beyond that, does the school offer some really unique courses as part of its curriculum? For example USSCM offers unique certificate courses as electives in its programs. See http://www.usschoolofmusic.com/catalog/certificate_programs.html?universals.Most colleges, by their nature, are not designed to upgrade their courses and materials frequently. This creates a hysteresis, a 'lateness' in the relevancy of the courses that can actually be measured. Schools sometimes refer to this as a "legacy," but it often turns schools into 'conservatories' which preserve the methods of the past. To counteract this tendency, USSCM updates its materials twice yearly in coordination with the research provided by NAMM, the National Association of Music Merchants. Perhaps no other college can make that claim.A distance school should use technology for the things that it does best, not just for convenience or economies of scale that boost the bottom line by allowing fewer teachers to handle greater numbers of students. There is an exciting, better way that USSCM staff has developed to teach and train the skills and knowledge needed by a professional musician or serious musical hobbyist. In order to take advantage of the power of technology without it's distraction, USSCM has internally developed proprietary software which allows its teachers to communicate asynchronously but in near-real time, to make the learning feedback loop as small as possible. Schools which use technology often distract the students with its complexity or attractiveness, only to result in a slower learning cycle.Finally, perhaps one of the most distracting issues facing music colleges is that students cannot advance rapidly because they only get to perform with their peers, who are invariably at their own level or inferior to it. USSCM's approach is Faculty-Minus-OneT; all students work exclusively with highly-focused recordings by recognized professionals, musicians who make their livings performing music. Even many students at bricks and mortar colleges seldom get this opportunity, because the competition for the time of the best teachers is extreme.>>>>>>The criteria above may be used to evaluate many sorts of distance courses. Use it to determine what is best for you. When it comes to music training, do your homework! USSCM may be better than many of the other choices you may have. USSCM staff enjoys helping musicians progress rapidly to their full potentials and feel this is particularly relevant in today's troubled world, because musicians are universal ambassadors for humanity. USSCM's programs are far more affordable than those of other schools, on or off the internet. Actually, no other college offers full commercial music programs online. If you, or someone you know, may benefit from a college-level program in contemporary music, please come see atwww.usschoolofmusic.com, where you can also build programs, calculate tuition and sign in to receive the USSCM newsletter.After that, please write to me and I will be happy to personally answer your remaining questions, hopefully as a USSCM applicant.

Music for Stress Management

Music has long been known to have an emotional effect on humans. Find out how the music you listen to might be affecting you and how you can use music to manage your stress.

There are so many kinds of music - country western, classical, eastern, rap, pop, hip hop, rock and roll, soul...what kind of music are you listening to, and how is it affecting your level of stress?Music moves us - listening to a sad song can make us feel melancholy, soft jazz piano can calm and soothe us, and rock can make us feel strong, excited, even free. Music has been proven to speed healing, is used in malls to put us in the mood to buy, in churches for inspiration and much more. So can you use music to influence your mood and lower your stress in your daily life? Absolutely.First, consider your general mood. Are you normally stressed, happy, positive, sad, angry, fearful, even shy? Are there consistent times in your life that you would like to change your mood - maybe the drive home from work, or getting up in the morning, or maybe you stress at night, laying in bed, tossing and turning? For me...it's that low energy time around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. I've usually been working since six in the morning or so, and I need a little pick up. For me, it could be a little Van Halen or White Snake, or maybe a little Santana. Other people may prefer some upbeat jazz, or pop music. It doesn't really matter, as long as it makes you feel good.How does music influence our mood like this? There are many ways music influences our mood. Music is energy - vibrations that have a certain frequency. As we listen to the music, our brainwaves may adjust to match the vibrations of the music. This is why music can be very effective for meditation and hypnosis, it can actually "entrain" the brain to enter a deeper, or more relaxed, aware state.Your memories may also be part of the influence of music. Many times, the brain stores emotion alongside memories - if a song makes you blue, you might remember a time when you were really sad, and that song came on the radio, virtually anchoring itself to that sad feeling. Your brain would create a direct link between the song and the emotion, so every time you hear the song, that emotion is accessed as well.Words can also have a large effect on us...there may be words in the music that really resonate with you, like in some inspirational songs. You may relate to the story of a song because of a similar experience. These things can strike a chord (pun intended) with you and alter your mood. Many people listen to music in the background while they work, drive or do other things. They are not focused on the music, but their inner mind does take it in. If you listen to music with negative or harsh words or themes, you might want to consider that many times when listening to music, people have a tendency to enter into an altered state of awareness. The conscious mind is distracted with work, but the subconscious, or inner mind, is recording and storing it. This can actually cause you to feel more stress. If you listen to a lot of negative music or other media, consider that it can have a negative effect on your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and actions. Of course, listening to positive music can have a positive effect on your beliefs, thoughts feelings and actions. You can use music as a tool to help you achieve the feelings that you want. If you want to have a more relaxed environment at work, play music that calms you and helps you to focus. There is music that is specifically designed to help you meditate, coaxing your brainwaves into a specific pattern. You can play upbeat music when cleaning the house or exercising. If you're feeling down you can listen to inspirational music.Music can have a big influence on your mood, increasing your ability to relax, making you feel good, increasing your focus and much more. When you choose music for yourself and the people around you, consider how you want to feel, then choose music that can help produce that feeling.

What Happened To Dance Music?

What is the first thing you hear when when you switch the radio on? If you are lucky enough to tune-in in time to actually catch some music, the chances are it's the latest breed of new-wave-new-rave-alternative-shouty-vocalised-indie-rock. (I call it guitar music for short.) Such has been the case for a number of years now, since the demise of the Higher States of Consciousness and the invasion of the Gallagher brothers in the early nineties. When perusing the archives of the Guardian Online, I came across an article entitled, "Bored of Dance" which documented the downfall of some of the UK's finest dance acts throughout the last decade. Fatboy Slim enjoyed less success in the Charts with the release of his last album, Palookaville, whilst the once popular magazines reporting the scene went out of business completely. Muzik, Ministry and Jockey Slut once supplied readers with news, reviews and future releases of all upcoming dance acts. Today, the sole survivor of the onslaught is Mixmag, fighting the good fight alone in a world full of "guitar music" magazines such as KERRANG, Metal Hammer and NME. But the question is, if dance music is as dead as they say, then why the huge queues to get into the clubs, and why are there still so many many festivals with self proclaimed "dance tents?" The answer is simple: Dance music never died, it simply morphed into something else. I believe it began when Bloc Party broke into the scene at the turn of the century. Their debut album, Silent Alarm forged a new sound that was just what dance fans needed - a mix of real instruments, fast beats and catchy basslines. Move on a few years and we now have the likes of The Klaxons, (champions of New Rave) Foals (Math-Rock anyone?), and The Futureheads. These bands seem confused as to where their loyalties lie. On one night they will be playing to a sell out crowd at Brixton Academy, whilst the next night sees them spinning tunes on the ones and twos at an underground warehouse party. Coincidentally, we have an abundance of dance acts with equally confused identities. Justice, Paris' latest dance act are a couple of skinny-jean wearing, leather jacket clad producers who are hell bent on redirecting the scene. Their fusion of overly-compressed basslines and quirky electro beats has won fans from every genre of modern music. Equally, Soulwax (headed up by Belgian brothers David and Stephan Dewaele) continue their two pronged assault on our ears through a combination of live shows and "mash up" mixes like never heard before.If the amalgamation of sounds presented here doesn't float your boat, try something a little more suited to Radio 2's playlist. LCD Soundsytem have recently released their second album, entitled Sound of Silver and present listeners with something that David Byrne would have been proud of. Their harmonious blend of real instruments, Casio keyboards and male vocals has proved a massive hit with music listeners young and old The effect of this on the music industry is quite the opposite to the Guardian's title, "Bored of Dance". A new breed of music created a new breed of fan and subsequently there are no longer any boundaries. So what if I like dancing the night away in a grimy London club, I'm still allowed to wear skinny jeans.So when you next hear someone say that dance music is dead, politely point out that dance music actually led the revolution that created the best sounds of this century. For the first time ever, rock, pop, breaks and beats all sit happily together under the same umbrella.

Creating Personalized Music for Personal Projects

The nowadays software tools are able to amaze everybody; these tools are taking intricate and complex tasks on a daily basis and they are able to transform all these time consuming tasks into a sort of child’s play. For instance, if you are thinking of creating Personalized music for children, the only thing that you will have to do is to find the proper program that is able to do the job. All the software tools are usually available at quite low prices and they are also likely to come along with added features and even better quality. The audio production software can be regarded as a genuine example because every personal computer is likely to have the necessary features in order to edit and record digital music. Recently, the exact same trend has developed into something else, namely the desktop music production. Therefore, you can have your own Personalized Music by using your existing computer together with the affordable software. No musical knowledge is needed and every video producer can create the necessary custom music in order to suit his projects. There are plenty of options when it comes to editing and recording music; these options are to be used in order to create your own custom music that will accompany every project you are thinking of. One reason for creating the custom music resides in the fact that you can actually decide the song length in order to suit your project levels. You can also control the content of the music and this control is to be provided; the control is to be connected with copyright or stylistic reasons. The music creation software is to be used in order to create Personalized music for children too because the kids will be delighted to hear their own names in the middle of a song. You can do this by using the software in order to introduce the child’s name in the chosen song.The software should be let to do its job by itself because the results are likely to be satisfying enough; check-box approaches will be offered by the software. The software will also contain all the pre-defined edit points that will divide the entire song into timed segments that are perfect for being recorded or edited. You may select the favorite music from a given list and you will have to tell the software how long it is going to last. You will have to inform the software about the exact number of seconds and minutes that are implied by every particular song; the software will be thus able to generate the final and finished product. The edit list is always to be taken into account when it comes to creating the Personalized Music. The edit list is the main tool that is used by the software in order to create the requested music; based on this list, the software will be able to build its own version of the requested song by using the criteria you have given to it. If you are not pleased with the way your software is doing its job when it comes to recording or editing music, you may redo the entire process in order to obtain the desirable result. You may also change some of the initial options in order to reconstruct the entire editing process. But you have to be perfectly aware that everything you are likely to gain when it comes to convenience and speed is likely to be offset by a certain lack of control over the software steps. But the results are likely to be consistently good; every software feature may help you create custom music quite fast because the automatic generation is to be used in this case.There are also some constraints that are affecting the normal use of such software; for instance, every user should be aware of the inherent difficulties because no protection scheme is likely to last forever. Any time content can be regarded as valuable enough; therefore, you should not feel motivated to find various ways in order to break all the protection mechanisms that were created in order to secure the digital music. Actually, almost every protection mechanism is subject to defeat; so, the most plausible countermeasure is the one that consists in the constant change of the designed protection.

Music - Expression of Emotions

We smile, we love, we cry. We, the human beings experience a wide spectrum of emotions in our life. Some of them are expressed while others die in our own mind. But from time immemorial, our emotions have been voiced through music. Music, which is composed of seven distinct tunes, is actually an expression of human emotions.
Music is characterized by certain qualities like, pitch, melody, rhythm, and frequency. And each type of music is again characteristic by certain degrees of these above mentioned qualities. A rhythmic music characterizes joy while a melody expresses romance. Again, a melody also expresses sorrows. For instance, Latin music is mostly featured by rhythm and certain genre of tune. Latin music is an expression of Bohemian lifestyle which very much complements Latin culture. Variation in melodies and rhythm leads to expression of varieties of emotions.If we look back to Western Classical, It connects us to something universal about human emotions. It makes us reach a transcendental stage of mind. However some composers opine that emotions conveyed through music is something quite abstract and varies according to the different perception of different individuals. One of the notable composers of Western Classical music was, Ludwig Van Beethoven, who gifted the world with musical masterpieces despite of being paralyzed with deafness at very young age (twenty eight). He can be regarded as the profounder of Romantic era of Western classical.
Eastern Classical or specifically Indian Classical music has a number of sections and categories. However the two major sections are Hindustani Music from North India and the Carnatic Music from South India. Each of the songs are known as "Ragas". The melodies contained in each of these "ragas" reflects various moods according to different times during the day. The Indian Classical music is mainly monophonic, that is, it is based on a single line of melody and has to be sung at a specific rhythm. Any deviation from the above rule is considered as a mistake.
Even Folk music conveys something about the culture and lifestyle of a particular region. To be more specific, it generally narrates some popular folk tales of that region.
When lyrics are put in a tune, it becomes a song. However, music can also be purely instrumental where one derives pleasure from the tune only. Beautiful notes of pianos, violin, guitars, expresses emotions without any words. Music can express most of human emotions. It expresses joy, ecstasy, romance, and also sorrows, pathos, and agony. In the words of P.B Shelly "Our sweetest songs are those which tells us our saddest thoughts".
Surprisingly, a simple song which is sung from the heart gives us more pleasure than a complex one which is often influenced by human artifacts. May be this is a reason why pop songs and rocks are also quite popular today. It is also quite true that likings for particular kind of music largely depends upon the temperaments of individuals. This is the reason why some prefer soft melodies while some like hard rocks. It can be reasonably argued that music is not only an expression of emotions, it is emotion itself. Music without an emotional message is like vacuum. It is like a flower without essence.