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Up until now I've only used one set of monitors in my studio (the Rokit KRK 5s) and I've always ignored the advice to use multiple sets of monitors (partly because I'm not made out of money.)

But recently it's sort of clicked for me just how important it is to have two sets of monitors, particularly two sets of monitors that are reasonably different from each other.

The idea being that if you can make your mix sound good on both of these sets of monitors then the chance of your mix working just about everywhere in the "real world" seems like it would increase significantly.

I'm considering the Yamaha HS50Ms based on some online recommendations.

I'm also considering getting a single speaker to use for mono monitoring (maybe this one.) Perhaps going back and forth between my KRK5s in stereo and another monitor in mono is the way to go? (I also check my mixes on my ATH M50 headphones.)

I am interested more recommendations on where to go with this. Share yours in the comments. Thanks!

I was following week 2 from the Jillian Michaels "Ripped in 30" DVD with my wife when something Jillian said struck me as being wise. As being something that doesn't just apply to working out, but also quite directly to music (as well as many other things, I'm sure.)

I'm paraphrasing from memory so this may not be exactly what she said but it was something like this: "If it doesn't make you uncomfortable then it's not helping."

I think this is so true when it comes to improving as a musician. For years when I would play guitar I would just play whatever I already knew, whatever was comfortable and easy. Even though I played guitar quite a bit during this time, I never really improved my playing much at all. I had very little improvement over the course of about 7 or 8 years of playing because I didn't push myself to learn new skills.

Over the past year or so I've been actively trying to improve my skills as a musician and the difference is night & day. Now that I'm practicing daily with guitar lessons that often make me feel "uncomfortable," instead of just playing around, I become a much better guitarist.

I've also been playing guitar more often and for longer periods (I think this is mostly because I find it more enjoyable to play when I can play better) but I think the big difference between now and before is that I'm now actively practicing to improve rather than just playing. It makes all of the difference in the world.

This goes for more than just playing guitar of course. It goes for all musical skills, including songwriting (and drumming: from a background of having never played drums in my life, I've become a decent drummer over the course of the last 6 months by practicing about 30 minutes a day on average - by the book - see my post from early March on my new drum set.)

Before, I would "write a song" by just singing whatever came to my head while I was strumming some chords on my guitar. I still sometimes get initial ideas that way. But now I push myself much farther. I study the musical structure of songs I love (and those that I hate - it's good to know why things don't work too.) I write down my melodies and try all sorts of variations with them on the piano (which I've also learned to play, at a basic level, this year.) I've read books about lyrics and lyric writing and study the lyrics of songs I love.

This can be quite hard, quite uncomfortable. But I find myself understanding music at a much deeper level than I ever did before. And I think my songwriting is improving significantly.

Another important point that I think goes hand in hand with this is that everything is difficult at first. No one is born a great guitar player for example. When Jimi Hendrix first picked up a guitar he sounded like crap. Even a skill we think of as being something someone is "born with" like singing is mostly a learned skill. The people who we say are born great singers simply learned to sing at a very young age.

And no, getting better at something hard doesn't happen overnight. But if you keep at it every day, you will notice a few weeks later that you can do all kinds of things you couldn't do before. And then a few months later you will barely recognize the blundering fool you were before. It's an amazing thing!

I know in many ways this is all quite obvious; but I'm sharing it because I know that while it is obvious I somehow didn't really manage to realize it until about a year ago (you can see the kindling for where I'm at now in this post from July 2010) and I think it may help light a spark under the ass of some other person out there who is going along just doing what's comfortable with their music. Get better by getting uncomfortable!

Jillian Michaels?

And yes the "Ripped in 30" DVD is pretty good. Yes the target market is clearly females, but the workouts are pretty tough. They kick my ass and I'm a guy in decent shape. And I know that if I do them every day and push myself to the point of being uncomfortable that I will see the same type of positive changes to my body that I'm seeing with my guitar playing and other musical skills.

As a big fan of The Beach Boys who is very interested in Brian Wilson's songwriting process (I have this cool book on Wilson's songwriting) I'm very excited about The Beach Boys Smile Sessions Box Set coming out on November 1.

Not only will it be the first time the 1966 & '67 original recording for Smile are released in a form something like they were originally intended to be heard but there are also going to be a lot of alternate takes that will hopefully give some interesting insight into how Wilson was writing and arranging his songs during this very creative period.

I just bought my first Snark Clip-On Tuner and I'm extremely impressed with how well it works. It seems like a real improvement over the Intelli tuners I have been using.

It picks up on the note I'm playing much quicker (and doesn't jump to overtones) and it seems to pick up a wider range as well (picking up low and high notes better.)

Not only that but it's got a nice extra feature where you can tap out the tempo of whatever you are listening to (and you could even use it as a visual metronome, although I don't really like doing that.)

You can also flip it over from vibration to mic if you want to. Usually vibration is the way to go but sometimes I like to use mic to see if I can sing a note right on. The mic setting is also useful for tuning certain strange instruments I have that are hard to clip onto.

One more thing: It's crazy cheap. You can buy it on Amazon for $12. And you can see there I'm not the only one raving about this tuner: It's currently got a perfect 5 star average customer rating.

Melodyne was used to the extreme to get the vocals in tune with the piano. Not only does this make my voice sound robotic, but it also added some strange artifacts to the recording (partly because of how I recorded it.) Hopefully they are not too distracting.

Song Associations Used

"White Christmas" for Minor 2nd: "i'm DREAM..."

"Frere Jacque" for Major 2nd: "frere-AH..."

"Georgia on My Mind" for Minor 3rd: "george-AH..."

"Michael Row the Boat Ashore" for Major 3rd: "mic-HAEL..."

"Here Comes the Bride" for Perfect 4th: "here COMES..."

"The Simpsons Theme" for Tritone: "the SIMP..."

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for Perfect 5th: "twinkle TWINKLE..."

"In My Life" (The Beatles) for Minor 6th: first two notes of the guitar riff.

"My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean" for Major 6th: "my BON..."

"Star Trek Theme" for Minor 7th: first two notes of melody.

"Take On Me" (A-Ha) for Major 7th: "take ON..."

"Over the Rainbow" for Octave: "some-WHERE..."

The links take you to YouTube videos of the songs (fast forwarded to the moment in the song where you can hear the interval.)

Learn About EarMaster Pro Ear Training Software.

Lately I've been trying to take my guitar playing to the next level and after trying out quite a few different guitar lessons online (mostly trying out different YouTube channels) I've settled on JustinGuitar.com as the best free guitar lessons online (he does sell some advanced lessons too, but he has a ton of really high quality instructional videos available for free.)

I think the thing that really sets these lessons apart is that Justin Sandercoe is such an excellent teacher. He seems to understand (far better than most other YouTube guitar teachers) how to best explain things to someone so that they can pick it up. Too many other guitar "instructors" seem to just be showing off how good they are which is truly obnoxious.

He seems to put in just the right amount of explanation for what he does too. Some other guitar lessons I found online either had way too little explanation (hint: just playing through a song isn't really teaching it) or way too much incoherent rambling that made me feel like I was wasting my time.

It also doesn't hurt that his site has a ton of material on it and that his videos are really nicely done (very high picture & sound quality.)

Anyway; I thought this was worth sharing this recommendation for anyone looking for great free guitar lessons online. JustinGuitar.com is definitely worth checking out.

"I Feel Fine"

For a long time I've been considering buying an electronic drum set and I've finally gone ahead done it. An Alesis USB Studio Drum Kit is set up in my studio now and I'm quite pleased with it so far.

First off let me explain why I didn't buy a real acoustic drum set.

(1) I have very limited studio space. An electronic drum set takes up far less space.

(2) I have no experience with recording a real drum set and I've read that it's among the more difficult things to record well. Also, as previously mentioned, my studio space is small which is not ideal for recording acoustic drums.

(3) I wanted to be able to switch between many different drum sounds (which is easy with a MIDI controller drum set.)

(4) With MIDI input it's easy to correct performance mistakes (and I'm a beginning drummer so there are plenty of them.)

The Alesis USB Studio Drum Kit allows me to get great sounding drums without the hassle of setting it all up and of course it also allows me to have unlimited variety in my drum sounds. Well, more accurately it's limited only by the software that I have on my computer.

Unlike most electronic drum sets on the market, this one has no on board sounds. Its only purpose is to be used as a MIDI controller. To me this was actually a plus because I have no interest in the on board sounds; I wanted an electronic drum set to control my VSTi drum samplers (I have EZDrummer and Battery 3.)

It ships with a "lite" version of EZDrummer which I can't comment on because I haven't used it (since I already had the full version.)

It also ships with a USB cable to connect to your computer but it does not come with a MIDI cable. My situation required that I get a MIDI cable so I had to buy that separately.

It doesn't come with a kick drum beater either. You have to buy one separately.

It does come with drum sticks.

It took me about two hours to put the thing together but I'm not very good at that sort of thing and I didn't have any significant problems doing it.

I have no complaints with this drum kit; it's working exactly as I had hoped it would. If you're in the market for a MIDI controller drum set; this is a good one.

If you're looking for a MIDI Controller guitar you should definitely consider the "You Rock Guitar." I love mine and at about $200 it seems like a really good deal considering all that it is capable of.

It may look look like a video game controller (and it can actually be used as one) but it really works quite well. If you've got some sweet VSTi synthesizers (and/or samplers - even drum machines!) then you can plug this thing up via USB and control them. I use mine with REAPER but I believe it works well with any software that has MIDI input.

I've been very impressed with how responsive it is so far. I wasn't really expecting it to work as well as it does. Nice surprise. Yes I have had some dropped notes with finger style playing but I think that may just be a matter of adjusting the settings and how I play it (you have to be a bit more precise with a MIDI guitar than you do with a real guitar.)

On the other hand, this guitar is much easier to fret than a real guitar as there are no strings to hold down (the only strings are for the picking hand.)

It's got all kinds of on board features and sounds but to be honest most of them seem really cheesy to me, I say skip all of that silliness and use it as a MIDI controller that's where it's true awesomeness lies.

I plan on sharing some samples of the kind of things you can do with the You Rock Guitar as a MIDI controller in the future, in fact I may just edit them into this post (after I put them up on YouTube.)

Last October I wrote about a kind of timing practice that I had started doing (and that I continue to do almost everyday) where the principle focus is to "make the metronome disappear."

The idea is that when you are really clapping on the beat "in the pocket" you don't hear the metronome click at all because your perfectly in time clap makes it "disappear." And this is not at all about being loud, it's entirely about timing. It's common when you first do this exercise to just try to clap louder, but that's not going to do it.

Recently I've started to expand upon this basic technique.

I had the idea that I should learn to mimic kick/snare rhythms with my own foot stomps/claps. Now you may be thinking "why are you doing that unless you want to be a drummer?" but I really I think that for musicians of any kind the importance of developing a good sense of rhythm cannot be overstated.

Improving your rhythm greatly improves your playing of any instrument. This is something I didn't really realize until relatively recently.

Unfortunately, like many people I know, I sort of jumped into learning to play guitar way back when without really following any kind of structured practice routine and I pretty much completely skipped the whole rhythm practice thing. For some reason I thought if I played the right chords then that's all that mattered.

Because of this blind spot I played guitar for years without really getting significantly better. Then one day I decided to try to learn to play guitar properly (actually following a guitar teacher instead of just winging it) and it was then that I learned how much rhythm is emphasized by people who actually know what they are doing.

Since then I have made concentrated rhythm practice a part of my routine and I have seen much improvement in my playing (in a short amount of time.)

Becoming A Drum Machine

Back to the topic at hand! The newest timing practice that I'm doing I call "Becoming A Drum Machine" because I'm trying to follow the kicks (with foot stomps) and snare hits (with hand claps) that are in this book called Drum Programming: A Complete Guide to Program and Think Like a Drummer.

This book is about learning how to program your drum machine to sound more realistic and although it's quite outdated (almost 20 years old) the basic principles still apply and it has helped me to improve my drum programming.

But now I'm using it to become a drum machine myself! It's pretty cool to be able to physically do these rhythms with my body. I have only been doing this exercise for a few days and I already feel an improvement in my overall sense of rhythm.

And hell, if I ever do get a drum set (perhaps an electronic drum set?) I will have a bit of a head start on the basics.

By the way: Always practice with a metronome. If you can't keep up, slow it down and then slowly speed it up as you get it.

I bought a Lanikai Tenor Ukelele (with a pickup) on Amazon.com last year and lately I've been playing it quite a bit. It's really a lot of fun to play and I find it to be a great instrument for songwriting for some reason. I seem to come up with some pretty cool melodies while strumming it.

I also got a cool ukelele songbook called "'60s Uke-In" which I highly recommend to any fan of '60s classics (particularly The Beatles, their songs dominate the book.) It has a handy chord chart too.

So what makes playing the uke so fun? Maybe it's because it's so incredibly easy to play. Unlike a guitar there's no struggle with holding down the strings for a beginner (the strings are very soft) and the chord fingerings in some keys (particularly G and C) are very easy to get down. You can really pick up a uke for the first time and be playing songs within minutes.

In fact I would highly recommend the ukulele as a first instrument for a kid. It's really perfect as it's the right size (a guitar is way too big for a small kid) and it's easy to hold down the strings and unlike those crappy cheap kids guitars you find at Wal-Mart or Target it's actually a real instrument (not just a crappy toy) that can stay in tune and sound good if played well.

The electric pickup is a pretty sweet bonus. I could have got a cheaper model without the pickup but I wanted the option of being able to run my uke through my distortion, delay, and wah pedals!

I'm glad I went the electric route (for an extra $40) because it's ridiculously fun to jam on it while using my wah pedal and my delay pedal. I think I may be in the process of creating some kind of new genre. Hawaiian space rock?