Music Blog

Music has been an integral part of our lower education system from its inception and now that aspect of education is under fire from those who don’t believe in it. Due to the rise of budget cuts and a more heavily enforced focus on standardised testing, music and the arts programs are often some of the first, if not the first, to be done away with or downsized to an unacceptable degree.

If you are thinking about taking music lessons in Australia, your future may have just gotten a big boost. Vevo has just become Australia's largest online network for streaming videos. In March, over 51 million videos were streamed on the network. Worldwide, it trails only YouTube and Facebook in popularity.

If you are thinking about taking drum lessons in Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane, or across Australia, we have some inspiration for you. Readers of Rolling Stone, the oldest and most authentic of serious rock magazines, were polled to find the 10 best drummers of all time. Here are the results.

We have a variety of different music teachers in Australia. Music teachers have different styles, and teach different instruments. While we are proud to offer a diversity in teaching styles, there is one thing that we insist in from every teacher: check your ego in at the door.

If you are getting ready to take your first music lesson, you may be excited, scared, or both. You probably have no idea what to expect. We want you to be successful on whatever instrument you choose to play, and our experience is that those who are the most prepared are the ones who get the most out of their lessons.

Our network of piano teachers in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, and across Australia have given a lot of piano lessons. In the past, piano lessons were restricted to those who had a piano around the house.

Our belief in the power of music to touch people emotionally, and take them to places where nothing else can, was one of the determining factors in starting our network of music teachers in Australia. Music has been described by many as “the universal language”. It breaks down barriers and brings a lot of happiness to a lot of people.

Usually, our network of music teachers - drum, singing, guitar, and piano teachers in Brisbane, Perth, and across Australia uses this space to tell you about developments we think are important in Australian music. That usually involves giving you what we think is great information, and telling you how it relates to music lessons and music teachers.

We have piano teachers in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, and most points in between. We’ve taught a lot of piano lessons across Australia. When our teachers get together and discuss music education, piano teachers have many challenges in common, but one of the basic challenges is teaching and positioning to beginners.

Are you thinking about taking singing lessons in Melbourne? If you are even thinking about it, it sounds like a pretty good idea. According to the Victorian Live Music Census, live music has an impact of $1.04 billion on the Victorian music economy.

Your favourite musical artist may make singing look easy, but the reality is that most people who make it in the music business as vocalists eventually take singing lessons. We have taught lots of singing lessons in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and many other Australian cities, and we have seen two distinct patterns emerge over the years.

If you are taking music lessons, or looking for a piano teacher in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne, or most other places in Australia, the Natural Cultural Policy could have a direct effect on your future. If you’re currently a musician, there may or may not be good news for you. The policy is now called Creative Australia, and was unveiled for the first time on 13th March, at the National Press Club, located in Canberra.

If you’re thinking about taking guitar, piano, or drum lessons in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, or any place in Australia, you have come to the right place. Our network of music teachers stretches from Perth to Sydney and most points in between. We have hundreds of different teachers, which guarantees that you can find the right one to help you be the best musician you can be.

Just when our wide network of music teachers in Australia thought we knew everything about piracy, along comes one of the most controversial reports the industry has seen in a long time. According to a new study conducted by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), illegal downloading of music does not have nearly the effect we thought it did on legal downloading of music.

Andrew Schwartz is an MBA student, incoming president of the school’s Graduate Business Association, and an intern at Tunefruit, a music startup based in Atlanta. In America, as in Australia, it seems like every school system is try to cut its budget, and the first budget cuts always come out of the music program. Schwartz was asked to contribute an article to CNN concerning the benefits of music as part of the traditional school curriculum.

When Augie March was first starting out and we were trying to get some songs together, Crow was very influential, particularly the album Li-Lo-ing. We ended up having the great fortune to tour with those guys quite a bit, supporting them.

Li-Lo-Ing appealed to me on many levels, not only did it feature musicians that were playing in other bands that I had a lot of time for like The Necks, The Dirty Three and The Bad Seeds, Crow excelled at dark Australian, literate, intelligent but wild guitar music …

I have taught guitar lessons in Perth for many years. My students have told me of every insult they have ever heard from a parent or friend who aspires to be an amateur comedian. One of the most often used analogies is that of a wounded animal. If a recent experiment at the University of California is correct, that particular insult may now have the perfect comeback: “That’s exactly how it’s supposed to sound.”

If you are taking piano or singing lessons in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, or anywhere across Australia, you may have more power than you think. According to a recent study, music affects the brain in a way that changes how we perceive the taste of food. The study was conducted recently at Oxford University, and was called the “Bittersweet Study.” It was conducted by a professor at Oxford, Charles Spence, who teaches experimental psychology.

A lot of our readers don’t know it, but Monster Music offers violin lessons in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and many other areas across Australia. While making our daily cruise for music info on the Internet, we came upon a nice little piece about practicing violin, and realised that these practice tips are great for any instrument.

Today’s post from your favourite guitar teachers in Adelaide and Perth is about a form of music that a lot of people enjoy: reggae. Bob Marley only lived for 36 years, and died in 1981, but he remains an icon in the music business even today, and his legacy lives on through the many artists who are still playing his music.

Our network of music teachers, who provide guitar, piano, drum, and violin lessons in Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, and all points in between, is always interested when one of the giants of the music industry has something to say. Make no mistake about it, Michael Coppel is a giant in the Australian music industry. He is currently the President and CEO of Live Nation Australasia, and wields a lot of influence in the music business.

Whether you’re looking for guitar lessons in Melbourne or a piano teacher in Sydney, one of the best skills as you can acquire is to be able to understand any piece of music by ear. To play music you must be able to listen, and you must know what scale is being used and what key the song is in. Eventually, you can learn to play any song in any key.

In our previous post, we told you about the seven benefits of playing a musical instrument, which our network of music teachers in Melbourne and Perth would definitely agree on. Here are 10 more benefits.

Most music teachers - drum teachers, guitar teachers, piano teachers in Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, or anywhere across Australia will tell you that playing music has its own reward, but playing an instrument provides many unseen benefits. In a 2 part series, we are going to tell you about some of those benefits.

February 2013 brought great news for music teachers in Australia, their students, and anybody who really cares about the Australian music business. Thanks to digital sales and digital streaming services, the Australian music market experienced its first upward movement in sales in the last three years.

The 1960s was a decade of massive social and political change in Australia with many young people rejecting the values of their parents and the policies of their government, calling for racial equality and increased environmental awareness, demonstrating against nuclear energy, the arms race, and conscription into the Vietnam War.

Perhaps the biggest change was the rise of feminism. Women in Australia had long been socially segregated...

Do you take music lessons in Melbourne or singing lessons in Brisbane? Do you want to be the next Gotye? You just might be able to get help from what appeared, as little as six months ago, to be the most unlikely of sources: the Victorian government.

Many fellow music teachers - drum, guitar, violin, piano teachers in Sydney, Perth, and across Australia have struggled with technology. Here are some helpful questions that one must ask when considering which technology is appropriate for teaching music.

For those who think guitar lessons in Adelaide or Perth can be tough, or that there are too many obstacles to “making it” in Australia, how about a place where music lessons really are tough: Afghanistan?

Parents of children taking piano lessons in Melbourne or Perth now have another reason to be happy for their children: starting music lessons before age seven has been found to improve visual and auditory sensorimotor synchronisation. In other words, kids who take music lessons before they are seven years of age have better hand-eye coordination than those who start learning music afterwards.

Every kid who ever took singing lessons in Perth or guitar lessons in Melbourne, and allowed himself or herself to dream, had dreams of making it in the music industry. You know how it goes: take a few lessons, start a band, and someday, you have CD’s in music stores and you tour the world every year.

We like to monitor the Australian Bureau of Statistics website for music education studies. As you know, we have a network of music teachers in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, and most cities in Australia, and we feel that music education is important. We have been critical of music education in Australia’s schools, and for good reason.

Question: Should the Australian Governement subsidize the cost of "private" music lessons to school kids who genuinely want to learn music, given the education system is clearly unwilling and/or unable to make this important element of learning and development an option to ALL children?

Wouter “Wally” De Backer, better known as Gotye, capped off a great year by winning three Grammys. Gotye was born in Belgium, but his family emigrated to Australia when he was two years old, and he is Australian through and through.

Last month, music lovers of all kinds, from teachers to students to musicians to fans, protested in the streets of Sydney. We wish we could have been there. When something like this happens, it is bad for the business, not only in Sydney, but in Perth, Melbourne, and any other city in Australia you might want to mention.

The Fifties marked the start of Frank Sinatra’s love/hate relationship with Australia, which he visited seven times in all, beginning in 1955. On the plus side Australia gave Not-So-Ol’Blue Eyes the biggest crowds he’d ever played to, but he always seemed to run into problems here...

According to a post at Tonedeaf.com, less people are illegally downloading music, as newer, legal alternatives give music fans more options. As usual, our first thoughts were, “What does this mean to music teachers in Perth, or someone taking piano lessons in Melbourne?”

As funds for AMRAP are running out, our network of music teachers from Perth to Melbourne is fully in support of those who are speaking out against the government for leaving Australian music high and dry when they decided not to include AMRAP in the budget announced last June.

Then there are the musicians whose entire discography seems undervalued. Though lauded by the few, they fail to trouble the ears of an oblivious majority, releasing albums of distinction across the decades to continual critical acclaim but never mass exposure or much reward. Musicians like Spencer P. Jones.

I've been lucky enough lately to be working alongside Chelsea Basham, recent Australian Country Music Golden Guitar Award Winner.  People who know me would be aware that whilst running Monster Music I'm also a working musician...

We would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2013, and take a look back at some of what we think are the best of 2012. 

Is your child having problems with language studies? Do you want to learn a second language? At any age, whether it’s a first or second language, both formal and anecdotal research suggest that music can play a large part in helping to learn any language faster.

The X Factor is back for 2013!  Will YOU be Australia's next megastar?

Recently, five major tours were announced for Australia. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Birdy, the Presets, Julia Stone, and Guy Sebastian were all announced for Australian tours for the first part of 2013. All except Birdy, who is from England, are Australian artists.

In the past, we certainly haven’t tried to keep it a secret that we aren’t fond of how public schools are “teaching” music. If you’re looking for singing lessons in Melbourne or piano teachers in Perth, you aren’t going to find what you really need in the school system. Schools across the board have cut budgets, and many have stopped teaching music altogether.
 

We’ve found yet another compelling reason to take music lessons. Whether you’re in Melbourne, Perth, or really anyplace in Australia, it’s about to get a lot easier to get the funding you need to help reach your goals in music.

For those who don’t know who Michael Chugg is, he is Australia’s most prolific music promoter. If you have seen a big act in concert, there is a very good chance that Michael Chugg promoted the show. Basically, when Michael Chugg talks, music industry people shut up and listen.

In my time giving guitar and other music lessons in Perth, I have always suspected that people who took music lessons were a little sharper than those who didn’t. I never really had any proof, but it just seemed that kids who were doing music had it a bit more “together” than those who don’t.

Some of the most popular music on the world scene right now is coming from Australian Aboriginal artists. Interest in the music of Australian Aboriginal artists is at an unprecedented level, and we think it’s great.

The Moffs' guitarist/singer Tom Kazas recalls the making of his band's timeless debut, ‘Another Day in the Sun’, while Richard Lane, Monster Music comrade and member of then label-mates The Stems, shares why the song is still his favourite lesser-known Australian rock gem.

Yes: you read it right. 25% of Australians listen to community radio. The number, which comes from a McNair Ingenuity survey, was revealed at the recent Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) conference in Melbourne.

On 1st November, at 12:30pm, approximately 600,000 students in schools across Australia sang the same song at the same time. The song, Different People (Stand Together), was written by professional musician, singer, and songwriter Josh Pyke and three high school students: Sun Woo Kim, a Year 12 student from James Ruse Agricultural High School, NSW; Ryan Chelva, a Year 12 student from Heathdale Christian College, VIC; and Jorja Bromley, a Year 10 student from Shepparton High School, VIC.

This may not be a post about music (Xmas actually), but it's a pretty hysterical clip!  I couldn't resist sharing it.  Funky sound track too  :)

We covered this a bit in a recent post about learning guitar on tabs, but we feel that it is important to help you fully understand why it’s essential to have a music teacher for any instrument.

Guitar, piano or drum lessons can be daunting. Years of experience from Perth to Melbourne and all over Australia have taught us that most people are either afraid that they won’t be able to learn, or are impatient and want to play their favourite songs right now.

Tabs are great, and they are an excellent way to learn. But not if you don’t know what you are doing in the first place. We can help with that.

Every fortnight, Unmarked Tracks will dust off a different record or event from Australian music history, to discuss some of the more significant but overlooked moments in this country’s creative past.

We’ll trawl through the discount bins, along poorly-lit op shop shelves, through dog-eared old copies of street press filled with almost-forgotten concerts or events, to find underappreciated local music worth celebrating.

"What is Monster Music?" I hear many people ask.  My short answer is "It's an agency for music teachers", though this is a generalisation and there's a bit more to it...

We came across a government website called “Artfacts.” It has a lot of great statistics and facts about music. It doesn’t connect the dots very well, but it gives a great series of snapshots about how Australians feel about music, and how they participate.
 

For most of “modern” education, it has been accepted that there are three basic learning styles: audio, visual, and tactile.

So, you want to take guitar lessons. Great—you’re in the right place. Now, we need to figure out what is the best style of guitar playing for you. 

Over years of being involved in learning, teaching, and playing music, we have identified patterns that can help anyone get the most out of their music lessons. Here are a few tips and traits that seem to be common for most musicians.

Take piano lessons, practice, and profit: could this be you someday? On behalf of Monster Music, I would like to congratulate Daniel de Borah on his performance in winning the Australian National Piano Award (ANPA).

In the not-too-distant past, finding a music teacher was a very haphazard process for many. There were gifted students and gifted teachers, but they didn’t always find each other.

We have helped people take a lot of music lessons from a lot of different music teachers, in Perth, Melbourne, and most points in between.

Music teachers get asked this question all of the time. Really, though, it isn’t a “one size fits all” question. Situations and people are different, and the answers are as varied as those people and situations are.

Singing lessons are essential for anyone who wants to sing. From Perth to Melbourne to the US to England, or really anywhere: the music business is beginning to demand that singers are a lot better at their craft than they could get away with as few as ten years ago.

Despite all of the jokes and stereotypes about drummers, drums are difficult to play; ask any drum teacher in Perth. So, how do you know if you might have what it takes?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes it seems like everybody is a guitar player or bass player, but there just aren’t that many piano players around? 

Bass guitar is a deceptively simple instrument. The upside is that you can become competent in a very short period of time. The downside is that it takes a lot longer to master than one would think.

In the late 1950’s, there was a working-class lad from England. He was really into blues, rhythm and blues, rockabilly, and rock and roll.

As we mentioned in the last post, first of all, you need to play the instrument that you want to play: not the instrument that someone else wants to play. 

After the debacle of Meat Loaf's performance at last year's AFL Grand Final, there will be a lot more attention paid to tomorrow's half-time entertainment than usual.

So, which student are you planning on being? Here are a few tips to help you fulfil your potential at whatever instrument you pick up.

Ever been sued for the music you've made? Not a great experience, as John Fogerty, George Harrison and Men at Work have found out only too well...

In a fantastic new article in The New Yorker, Bruce Springsteen reveals he's been in therapy for 30 years, while bandmate Steven Van Zandt says that Springsteen is the only man he knows who has never used recreational drugs of any kind...

Online piracy rates in New Zealand have "halved in two years", according to the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand...

Jon Lord, member of Deep Purple and one of rock music’s greatest keyboard players, died on Monday 16 July, at the age of 71.
 

When renowned British broadcaster John Peel passed away in 2004, he left behind a record collection containing some 25,000 vinyl records. Last week marked the start of a huge project to catalogue them all online...

Tonight, ABC TV's Rage will pay tribute to the late Adam 'MCA' Yauch, by replaying two shows guest programmed by he and his fellow Beastie Boys.

Australian music website Mess+Noise has reported that Arts Minister Simon Crean has committed to additional funding for contemporary music initiatives, to the tune of more than $750,000 per year.