Discussion with customer about our Bass Song Learner lessons

By Andy@Musicademy | January 20, 2011

Learning bass guitar with Musicademy We’ve had a lengthy email conversation with a customer recently about our Bass Song Learner lessons. Andy goes into a lot of detail to address the questions and we thought it would be helpful to post it here as he covers a number of learning ideas for bass guitarists (and […]

Ask the expert – Mic recommendations for a choir

By Guest Blogger | December 9, 2010

We tackled a question on mic recommendations for groups of singers a while back. This question is particularly pertinent in the run up to Christmas with festive choirs. Sara Chambers from Alaska emails with a supplementary question: “Hello!  Thank you for your good work!  I appreciated the article “Ask the Expert – mic recommendations for […]

Ask the expert – playing sound from a laptop

By Guest Blogger | November 3, 2010

John Birbeck from Rawmarsh asks for some technical advice: “We want to play backing tracks from our laptop computer through the PA system.  So we want to go from usb on the laptop to an XLR microphone socket on the mixer.  We are using Windows Vista on the laptop but will probably play the tracks […]

Ask the Expert – How many songs does an average church need?

By Marie@Musicademy | October 25, 2010

Tony Marshall, an Elder at Westbrooke Church emails saying: “I’m somewhat of a novice in this field, and am struggling to find advice as to how many songs our worship team should have in its “song bank” at a time.  Is there a “typical” number of songs we should rotate through?  Do churches vary this much?” Our initial […]

Ask the Expert – guitar extension cabinets

By Andy@Musicademy | September 20, 2010

David Norris emails: “Loving the discussion on Valve Amps. Having recently upgraded from a 60 Watt solid state amp to a 15 Watt Fender Blues Junior, the improvement in tone is amazing – people ask me what effects I have on when often its just the amp! It is definitely loud enough for practice, and […]

Ask the Expert – mic recommendations for groups of singers

By Guest Blogger | September 6, 2010

Recommendations on microphones for a group of singers Dan and Aylin Fick emailed from Sucre Bolivia asking: I was wondering what kind of microphone you’d recommend for having 5 vocalists grouped around, say 2-3 mics/stands. Would a standard Shure SM58 do the trick, or am I better going omni-directional….hanging a “choir mic” from the ceiling, […]

Ask the Expert – Rock keyboard

By Tim Martin | September 3, 2010

How to play rock keyboard styles Shapwung Valui emailed asking: “Please send me tips about keyboards techniques and styles for playing in a rock band” As you will probably know, Musicademy is primarily focussed on worship music but obviously many of the techniques and styles that we use in worship music do in fact stem […]

Ask the expert – diagram showing chords within keys

By Andy@Musicademy | August 1, 2010

Bob Crockford emailed asking us to look at his chord chart: “When playing by ear, apart from the common keys of C, D, E, F, G and A, I struggle to remember quickly ‘under pressure’ the equivalent chord sequences in other keys, and also the other chords beyond the normal four in any key e.g. […]

Ask the Expert – Easy chords for the key of F

By Andy@Musicademy | July 26, 2010

Open chord shapes for F Jonathan Gabriel emailed us asking for advice on open chords for the key of F. Andy replies: F is not the most natural guitar friendly key so if I was playing in F I’d probably capo on fret 1 and use E shapes or fret 3 with D shapes. That […]