Why does my throat hurt when I sing?

                   

                       Why does my throat hurt when I sing?

      ( And other common vocal questions)

by Care'n Chato

Voice teacher

The Music Factory School of Music

Why does my throat hurt when I sing?
Your throat may become strained or irritated from singing because of
excess tension. Tension can become a serious problem, so be sure to
address it right away. Singing should feel easy and effortless. You
should never feel any pain. If you do, make an appointment with a
singing teacher or perhaps a voice therapist. These trained
individuals can identify what the problem is and how to fix it.

Why is my voice raspy?
Raspiness is the result of an irritated voice. The vocal folds (cords)
may become rough and swollen. There are many causes of irritation. The
most common cause is vocal strain. Most people strain their voices
when singing and even speaking in their daily life without  realizing
it! (Take voice lessons or see a voice therapist for good, healthy
vocal technique.) Sometimes, people may get a raspy voice from
overuse. The muscles can get tired just like any other part of our
body. (Voice teachers can help exercise your voice to keep it strong
and avoid fatigue.)

Why do I lose my voice shortly after I sing a concert?
Loosing your voice completely can be quite devastating, but the voice
can usually miraculously recover with a simple thing called rest - a
difficult healing process that involves not using your voice at all
for an extended amount of time. If you lose your voice after
performances, ask yourself the following question: Do I practice at
the same intensity and duration as when I perform? It's possible that
you strain to sing louder or more powerfully when you perform, which
may cause  an excess of vocal irritation. Also, your voice may not be
used to singing for such a long period of time. It is important to
practice building up your vocal stamina before every performance. If
you lose your voice frequently, be sure to work on better vocal health
techniques. Losing your voice can lead to serious health consequences,
and besides, when you're a superstar that needs to perform all day
every day, the audiences aren't going to wait for your voice to rest!




To contact Care'n send an email to info@themusicfactoryoc.com

10 tips to becoming a better Guitar Player

 10 tips to becoming a better guitar player

by

Eddie Oropeza

Guitar Instructor

The Music Factory School of Music

www.themusicfactoryoc.com

Playing music has got to be one of the greatest joys in life. Listening to music is one thing but then being a musician and actually learning and playing music brings endless joy for a lifetime. For me playing guitar is my vice. As a teacher I’ve been asked what the best advice I can give to a player is, and truth be told there isn’t just one absolute piece of advice I could give. Instead here are 10.

1)      Using a metronome or drum machine- a guitar player that cannot play to a click or a drummer won’t last a day in the music world. It is imperative as a musician that you practice playing to a click. Whether you’re playing a chord progression or practicing scales dust off that metronome and use it!

2)      Practice slow and clean- Guitar players are notorious for trying to play faster than they actually can. So SLOW DOWN. This means when learning a new piece of music (a song, scales, or a solo) play it very slowly concentrating on technique and playing it correctly. When you can play it perfectly at a slow tempo, you can start to speed it up. Using a metronome will help. Practicing this way will help you play better but also learn new material faster.

3)      Ear training- Once you have a good grasp of basic guitar playing, it’s a good idea to start trying to learn songs by ear. Learning this way will develop your ear to a point where you will be able to recognize chord progressions from something you hear on the radio and automatically already know how to play it on guitar. This might seem intimidating at first, but just like with playing guitar it takes practice. Now don’t go on trying to learn “Stairway to Heaven” right away, start small and work your way up. Learn some Bob Dylan or some songs by the Beatles.

4)      Play with other musicians- playing with other musicians whether it be a drummer, bass player, piano party, or other guitar player is both fun and educational. It forces you to play in time with each other and puts to work the stuff you’ve been learning.

5)      Learn different styles- what I mean by this is try and learn new/different styles of playing on top of the things you are trying to learn. Learn a reggae tune, or a blues song you can jam on. Maybe even learn a jazz song. Stepping out of your comfort zone, though challenging will make you a better musician in the long run.

6)      Learn the notes on the fretboard- learning the notes on the fretboard will help you recognize scales and chords a whole lot better. It’s good to know where the different roots of chords and scales are that way you aren’t confined to just one spot of the neck.

7)      Learn the whole song- when learning a song learn the whole thing. Aside from the structure of the song (verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) learn the names of the chords you are playing, the key of the song, what scales are being used. This will help you memorize the song much better and improve over musicianship not to mention, get you into the head of the writer and will hopefully inspire you to write your own tune.

8)      Practice- this goes without saying but some people underestimate the power of practice. Sometimes life gets in the way and we can’t practice as much as we want. While this may be the case for some people, it is possible to get in a good practice session in small increments of time. Try setting aside maybe three 10min. practice sessions throughout the day. First 10 mins focus on a certain technique. Other 10 practice parts of a song, last 10 mins is just for noodling fun.

9)      Music theory- yes it may be boring learning this stuff or may seem pointless, but learning even just a little bit of music theory can go a long way. It helps you understand what you are doing on the guitar and ultimately leans to wanting to learn more theory which in turn makes you a better musician.

10)  Write a song/ start a band- Writing music is very helpful to the learning process. Even if you know only 3 chords, it’s possible to write a hit song, look at Greenday. Writing a song makes you use the stuff you’ve learned and really makes you know it. When you finally start or join a band, that’s where stuff really gets fun and puts your skills to the test.

These are just some of the concepts that I think are important for any aspiring musician to know. Of course there are plenty of other tips and tricks to learn as you go but these are a great place to start.

art of practice

 

How to practice guitar ( the art of practice)

by Eddie Oropezza

Guitar instructor at the Music Factory School of Music

            Practice, practice, practice. We hear this all the time but do we really understand what it means and how to do it correctly? As a teacher I get these questions all the time: “how long should I practice, how many times a week should I practice, what do I practice, and how do I practice?” (yes, there is a right and wrong way to practice)

The answer is always different depending on the student and what they are trying to accomplish. For beginners, it is important during the first year of learning that you are consistent with your practice. This means being able to set aside at least 20-30 minutes 3-4 times a week. Now, it is understandable that these expectations can’t always be met because life does not always permit us to practice as much as we want or need to. Or if a student is younger, it might be hard to get them on a consistent practice schedule. A good way to remedy this problem is to spread out your 30 minute practice session throughout the day.

            Example: Say before you leave for work or school you’ve got about 10 minutes to spare, pick up that guitar and run through some chords or scales! Later after school or work and after winding down a bit, pick up the guitar again and review what you played earlier and maybe learn something new like one new chord or a different place on the neck to play a certain scale. After all your chores and homework, or business work is done, set aside another 10 minutes before you go to bed to just jam out or play a tune you may have been working on. Before you know it you’ve knocked out 30 mins of practicing throughout the day! Consistency is key!

            For intermediate and advanced players, the same concept can be applied. Though when you get to the intermediate and advanced levels, your practice time might increase. This is a good thing but, a more focused practice is hard to maintain. Guitar players are notorious for sitting and “noodling” for hours and then saying “Ok, good practice session.” This is a bad route to go if you expect to progress in as minimal time as possible. Instead write out a practice plan and try to follow it as best as possible, that way you get the most out of your practice time.

Example: Say you have an hour to practice. Try dividing up the things you are working on into 15 min intervals. 1) Warm up and dexterity exercises 2) Note reading/sight reading 3) Rhythm and Chords 4) Scales and improvisation.

The approach to practicing is different for everybody, so try and tailor a practice regime that suits you and the goals you are trying to accomplish. If you’re ever at a loss of what to practice, ask your teacher! Remember consistency is key!!


To contact Eddie at The Music Factory                                                             info@themusicfactoryoc.com

How much do Guitar lessons cost?

                                           How Much Do Guitar Lessons Cost?

By Jay Lawless

Guitar instructor at the Music Factory School of Music

This may be a question you have asked yourself, or perhaps your parents have inquired.  With the birth of the internet, this relatively straightforward question has grown the branches of a forest tree.

Much like karate classes, cooking classes, or just about any study, nominal fees apply based on whether you are looking for private instruction or classroom group instruction.  Becoming more popular these days is web instruction through Skype, where the subscriber can actually have real-time lessons from the comfort of their own home (even in pajamas). There are web-based companies that allow subscriptions to their lesson library archives that allow access to lesson chapters at the user’s request.  Lastly, the good old-fashioned lesson book or DVD may be an option with the least out-of-pocket expense.

Private Lessons 

Qualified instruction from a tutor with a degree by far, offers the most benefits to a novice student, and even for that advanced musician looking to hone his or her skills in another genre of music. 

Pricing is typically broken down into 30-minute and one-hour lessons. The most common fee is $30 a half-hour, once-a-week in studio lesson. Most facilities require that lessons be paid by the month, with a lesson scheduled once a week. These lessons are not given by,  “My friend at church who plays,” or “Joe down the street who plays a little,” instructors. Quality, professional instructors are found at reputable institutions such as, “The Music Factory”, located in Costa Mesa, Ca.  Professional music schools should have the a fleet of instructor’s resumes available for viewing, allowing you to get a better understanding of whom you choose to study with. 

The best part of private lessons is that it’s structured. Complete with a lesson plan, goals, and study material to take home. Students have the luxury of asking questions with personable step-by-step guidance.

Private in-home lessons (and even at your business) are also available for an additional fee.

Group or Classroom Lessons

Classroom or group-style lessons are fun, however, progress with instruction tends to rely on the momentum of the entire class. Typically the speed is at the pace of the student progressing the slowest, but it can be a great social opportunity. 

Common costs for group and classroom lessons can run $75 to $150 for six to eight-week courses. They are generally held once a week for an hour. Though be advised, there can be many variables in actual classroom time.  Class sizes can be as big as a college forum or as small as four to six students with only one instructor during classroom time. Class and group lessons offer participating students much less supervision and guidance than that of a private lesson. Age groups become a factor and tend to be broken up into kids, teens, and adults. Depending on the facility, these classes can be great for a group of friends or co-workers to get together and learn together.  Make sure there is information readily available about the instructor as it takes great patience to teach in this environment.  Picture 10 out-of-tune guitars playing at the same time.

Web-based Lessons (such as Skype)

This new format for instruction works great for the homebody. Cost is about the same as a private lesson at a music school.  Web-based lessons require an up-to-date home computer or laptop with internet access. 

Study material is usually available for download from the instructor, and sometimes for an additional fee. Due to the unrestricting ability to reach out to anywhere in the world, these lessons have become extremely popular with international students searching for instructors here in the states, and vice versa.

Generally web-based instruction require a monthly tuition that can range anywhere from $30 to $150 per month. With a paid tuition, students can access archived lessons already given and recorded by an instructor.  These lessons can often be vague, such as “Beginning guitar”, or more specific to a style of guitar.  Having access at anytime to these archives gives a student the opportunity of studying virtually anytime they choose.  Unlike Skype lessons, the student does not have the ability of asking questions.

Guitar Instruction Books, CDs, and DVDs

Cost for this approach is minimal in comparison to private, group, and web-based instruction. A typical beginning book, CD, or DVD may cost you around $11 to $20 dollars.  There is an incredibly vast library of these books and may be worth your while to do a little research prior to buying them. 

Keep in mind that taking guitar lessons means that you will need to have or purchase a guitar.  A worthy acoustic that will actually stay in tune starts around $99, but you can definitely spend much more. Electric guitars start around the same price, however, requires the purchase of an amplifier and accessories to make it work.  Electric guitar packs can start around $150 for an entry-level set.

Whatever your learning style, there is something for everyone. The gift of music can change your life.

To reach Jay directly info@themusicfactoryoc.com

Should I learn to read music or just learn tab?

Should I learn to read music or just learn tab?

By Bryan Karijanian

Head guitar instructor

at

The Music Factory school of Music

Orange County California

The internet is filled with easy-to-read guitar tablature for just about every song ever written. Because it's simple format of just numbers listed on strings, it tells you exactly where to put your fingers. Within moments of looking at it, you can begin to sound out the song. So being a guitar player is there a need to learn how to read music?

With piano lessons you generally start right away learning to read notes on sheet music. There isn't really tablature for piano.You have to learn the names of the notes on the keyboard. So when you start guitar and discover tab, it can be a wonder why there would be a need to have to memorize that series of dots,lines,stems,and crazy symbols.

Tablature is a great tool for guitar and learning songs quick. It's meant for guitar. It shows you where the artist placed their fingers on the neck to perform the particular lick. This can ensure a finger efficient pattern. It also points out of all the guitar techniques used in a song like the bends, hammer-ons, and even pinched harmonics. However, there are some flaws that it presents. The biggest problem is that it shows you no rhythmic notation. There is no way determine what is played fast or slow. Secondly, it can't be shared by another instrument. So if you wanted to communicate your song to other musicians, they would not be able to read it on other instruments, or of course know how the rhythm goes.

Reading a musical piece in standard notation provides you with the rhythmic value of each note, it can be played on any instrument, and with detailed key information, a band can transpose keys if needed. But learning how read standard notation on guitar can be a daunting task for most. Unlike tab, it takes a lot longer to learn to read and memorize notes. It will take a considerable amount time to be able to pull up any song and play it using just standard notation. Also, on guitar, there are more than one place to play exact same note. Therefore a lot of beginners give up on the commitment to learn it for the "instant gratification" of tab.

Having the ability to read music has some huge advantages. First off, you will develop a much better sense of rhythm. That result can be seen very early in the process. Also, when you are sight reading music, you have to make quick decisions, have to foresight of what's coming next, and the endurance to complete the song exactly as written. Hyper focusing on those elements can make you a very strong musician, and probably improve other areas in life.

For a guitar player, one of the biggest advantages of learning to read music is it will force you to learn the names of the notes on guitar, and eventually over the entire neck. You can then develop the power to improvise sweet sounding solos in any key and any situation with ease. When you watch those players that just jam effortlessly all over the guitar, they have a keen sense of every note they are hitting. It truly provides a solid and proper foundation to enter the advanced stage of playing.

In conclusion, for the guitar or bass player, it's about learning both. When you combine a strong understanding of both tab and standard notation you are truly unlimited. You can follow the tab to interpret the emotion of lick, with bends etc, and the still strum out the correct rhythmic values of any song.

With guitar or bass lessons at The Music Factory in Costa Mesa, we encourage that combination. The curriculum is designed to teach note reading and music theory, in parallel with tablature, so you can start to play a lot of popular riffs right away too.

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How do I tune my drums? or The 5 elements of good drum tone

How do I tune my drums or the 5 elements of good drum tone

By Danny Thompson

 How do I tune my drums? If I had a nickle for every time I heard that I would be out paddle boarding in Hawaii and not writing this post. How to tune drums is a complicated and involved art form. Part of the problem is there is so much bad information out there and most drummers get frustrated with it that they just half ass it. Now there is no way I can cover all of the issues, techniques and tricks needed to properly tune here in one article. What I thought I would do instead is cover what I consider to be the 5 elements of good drum tone, in order of importance, and why I put them in that order. I'm sure there will be some disagreement from the drum community out there so feel free to comment on this one. One of the things I do to continually work on my drum tone is to remain open minded. My techniques and procedures with drum tuning have evolved over the years and will continue to do so. So here we go..

                                           The 5 elements of good drum tone

1) Tuning
     When I really look at everything this is where it starts. Many people I polled on this repeatedly said the player was everything. Now I agree that the player is very important but think about this fact. I would consider myself to be at the level of player that I know how to properly hit the drums. If I was playing a show today and the drums had old heads and were severely out of tune, it wouldn't matter one bit how well I hit the drums, they would sound like crap in the context of the song.
     Secondly, good tuning with new heads on a cheap drum kit sounds way better than a great kit with old heads and bad tuning.

2) Player
    Hitting the drums properly is a huge element of good drum tone. It's amazing what a bad player can do to a well tuned drum kit. Choking the drums with the way you hit is a very common mistake that drummers make. I would highly recommend you watch the JoJo Mayer DVD to see some great demonstrations of this. Certainly having exceptional technique, dynamics and proper grip are all going to impact the sound of the drums. The simple fact is that if you can't hit the drum in the center every time you are going to struggle with a good sound.

3) Drum head
      An old or dented drum head is going to make it harder and harder for you to keep your sound at an acceptable level. Proper drum head choice is also going to impact the sound. There are some heads that no matter what I do I am unhappy with the overall sound.

4) Drums and Drum shells
     Certainly a better quality drum, with all other factors the same, is going to sound better. However, there are high end drum companies that , in my opinion, don't design drums that sound very good compared to some cheaper kits of better design. Design being shell material, thickness, bearing edge etc. Just because a company is using some fancy, hard to find wood with special processes involved, doesn't mean it actually sounds good.

5) Environment
     The room has a huge impact on the final sound. The reason I put this at number 5 is that you usually don't have cont roll over this. In your home studio you can use some treatments to the walls to try and develop the right mix of ambiance and diffusion to have a great sounding practice room. This will inspire you Io play more for sure.

That's it. The 5 elements of good drum tone. For more info on drum tuning you can email me at the Music Factory School of Music.
Danny@themusicfactoryoc.com
also, you can check out my pod cast  thedrumtuningguru@libsyn.com

I want to learn guitar...should I buy an Electric or Acoustic?

I want to learn guitar...should I buy an Electric or Acoustic

This is a very common question when considering to play guitar. It commonly 

arises after your first trip to the music store, staring at that array of 

beautiful natural wooden acoustic guitars lining the walls. You picture yourself 

strumming soothing bright and glistening chords. But then, you hear the rocking 

rumble customer testing out a shiny sunburst painted electric guitar. He is 

shaking the walls with the distorted "Whole Lotta Love" riff. Cool! So, Where do 

you start? Is there a passage way or rule?

 Well, there really isn't a straight forward answer. When talking with other 

musicians and instructors, you will find there are plenty of opinions that can 

cause indecision. The best approach is looking at some advantages and 

disadvantages of both.



Acoustic guitar:

Advantages:

1. No amp needed. You can pull it out of the case anytime anywhere and play.

2. You can transpose any style song to a cool sounding "unplugged version"

3. Less money to spend on equipment amps and cables.

4. Produces a consistent nice tone. Most beginners have trouble setting good 

tones on amps. Your family may not enjoy hearing uncontrolled buzzy distorted 

feedback.



Disadvantages:

1. The Neck is a bit wider which makes it tougher to fret some chords.

2. Strings are thicker on acoustics so it takes some more push to produce clear 

notes.

3. Can't use it to play in a band or with a drummer.



Electric guitar:

Advantages:

1. The Neck is a bit smaller which can make it easier to fret and produce 

chords.

2. Strings are thinner, which can help make lead guitar parts using those 

wailing bends easier.

3. You can plug into an amp and play along with a band or ensemble.

4. If your main musical influence is rock or metal, you can reproduce the tones 

of your favorite artists.



Disadvantages:

1. Have to lug an amp around with you. You can bring acoustics anywhere, out of 

town, or to a friends house.

2. Have to spend more money on equipment.

3. Due to smaller neck and strings, your fingers may not develop as strong or 

fast as an acoustic beginner. 



My opinion is a beginner should learn the basics on acoustic guitar. I think 

it's the best way to build good finger strength early, develop good rhythm and 

strumming habits, and people tend to enjoy the sound of a acoustic guitar around 

the house..even if your just starting out.



If you are a rocker, and you really want to approach that electric style, I 

would say start on acoustic and after a few months then maybe switch to 

electric. Here at the Music Factory in Costa Mesa, we have some electric house 

guitars available to try. So once you get the basics down, your instructor can 

have you do a few lessons on the electric to get you prepared and consider 

before buying one.

 

In the end it's up to you. Do your research and follow you're instinct. If you 

have your heart set on a shiny new electric cause you envision yourself rocking 

out with your friends, go for it! That might just be the motivation you need to 

practice more and improve. 



When you come to the The Music Factory for a free trial lesson, it's a great 

opportunity to talk to a professional, weigh out your options and try out both 

types of guitars. 

Bryan Karijanian is an accomplished guitar player and instructor at the Music Factory School of Music in Costa Mesa ( Orange County) California.

www.themusicfactoryoc.com

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