Brian Farley

Live Music - Musicians Fascinate UK Youngsters

In the UK for the last 18 years at least, a whole generation has been virtually starved of live musicians for a variety of reasons. The advent of computers being a standard household utility with their accompanying music production and downloadable music ... Read >

Reading Music - Learning Rhythms, Time Signatures and Counting

One essential part of learning to play a musical instrument is often sidelined - learning to count and to understand time signatures. Let's start with a basic foundation in reading music rhythms. All commonly used time signatures consist of one figure ... Read >

Musical Scales – Why change the Minor Scale?

Surely one minor scale is enough! It would certainly make things easier, but in a lot of cases it would not sound as easy on the ear. OK, so we need to use the notes of the major scale in a way that makes the whole thing sound sad or haunting. Playing ... Read >

Musical Scales – Why We Have Scales and How They Were Made

Most students of a musical instrument hate playing scales, but too many of them only think they learn scales as some sort of finger exercise. How wrong! Instead, all music students should be informed that scales are the Building Blocks from which all musi... Read >