Whether you play an acoustic or digital piano, in most cases, the stand or cabinet comes fitted with three pedals. If not, then you might be lucky enough to have the option to connect up a separate set. But what exactly do you do with these mysterious pedals? Bax Music product specialist, Marc will now illuminate everything!

To make great recordings and mixes, good monitoring is absolutely essential. With the combination of a set of good studio monitors and studio headphones, you can get a clearer image of how your masterpiece is going to do in the big, wide world. The position of your studio monitors and the layout of your studio is therefore just as important. Here, we offer some golden rules when it comes to placing your monitors, so you can get nothing but the very best out of them.

When playing the guitar without a plectrum, you use your fingers. This playing style is also known as ‘fingerstyle’ or ‘fingerpicking’. A great advantage of playing in this way is that you can play multiple strings with more precision (plucking is the better word for it). Also, you get a much warmer sound out of your guitar. In this blog, I’ll take you through the basics of fingerpicking: which fingers to use and the best playing position, and whether you need to play with your nails or with your fingertips. If you’d prefer to just play with a plectrum, then check out our purpose-made plectrum blog.

In this blog, I’ll be taking a look at the four most important drum rudiments you need to raise your drumming game. Rudiments are short drum pattern made up of a small number of strokes. Drill these rudiments every day, and you’ll not only watch yourself grow as a drummer, but you’re likely to find that playing your drum kit becomes much easier. This is simply because the most complex of rhythms is actually made up of rudiments. In this blog, we’ll talk about the four most common patterns, and since they’re the most-used, they’ll stay with you for the rest of your drumming life.

You see it more and more with living room and kitchen Djs, but also with professionals: playing with a DJ controller combined with an Android tablet or iPad. This set up doesn’t just make you more mobile but gives absolute beginners the ideal first step into the world of Djaying, especially since Djaying using Spotify has been proven to work. However, this kind of set up is not as straight forward as people might think. So, we’ve put this blog together to answer the most frequent questions that arise when picking out the right DJ controller to use alongside iOS and Android. Which controllers can handle it? And what do you need to look out for?

Everyone does it: get on the train and hole up with a good pair of headphones or ear-buds; soundtrack their walk to work with some happy-music, or go for a jog while jacked into some solid motivational smash hits. In most of these everyday sitches, you’re likely to push the volume up to compete with the traffic, the other commuters on the bus, or the heavy breathing of your fellow joggers. Fair enough. But what most people don’t realise is that this can unfortunately cause your delicate ears some serious damage. In this blog, we seek to answer the most essential questions regarding the hearing damage caused by using a humble set of headphones or ear-buds.

If you’re completely new to FL, or Fruity Loops Studio, and you want to get to know the software, you’ve come to the right place. Before diving headfirst into the countless tutorials, guides and courses, it’s a great idea to get a better picture of what the general workflow of this DAW is like. Guest-blogger Tim Ease is here to tell you about the basics of FL Studio 20 (the successor to FL Studio 12), and guide you through creating your first track.

It’d be a shame if you avoided sharp (♯) and flat (♭) notes simply because you don’t know their exact meaning. However, this is important information to know if you want to play a wide variety of music using sheet music, chord progressions or another kind of music notation. As such, in this blog, I’m going to teach you the difference between sharp notes and flat notes, and how you should use them.

Since most composers don’t mind boasting their complex melodies, harmonies and use of keys, it can be a bit of a struggle for fledgling pianists to find a piano book with easy-to-play yet great-sounding pieces. Fortunately, composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Mozart have also written beginner-friendly music that might even sound familiar to your ears.

Reading guitar tabs isn’t only easier than reading traditional notations, it’s also lot more intuitive. Tabs, short for tablature, show you exactly which string to play and which fret to press down on it at a single glance. It’s worth knowing how these work because they’re used all over the internet and in various guitar learning methods and songbooks. To learn everything you need to know about guitar tabs, simply sit back and enjoy this blog!

As a well seasoned online guitar teacher, Guest-blogger, Michel Penterman often gets asked the question: “Do I have to learn to read music to start playing the guitar, or can I use guitar tablature, or just learn all the chords?” In this blog, Michel sums up the pros and cons of each approach and offers a nice, simple conclusion!

The quality of your guitar sound depends on a range of different factors. Even guitarists with a cheap set up can shape a good sound. On the other hand, there are some musicians who build rigs out of the very best gear going and still are somehow able to make nothing but the sound of a cat slowly dying. An incredibly essential point when it comes to shaping your guitar sound is one that often flies over peoples’ heads: setting up your guitar amplifier.