What to keep on your musical toolbox!

Whats a musical toolbox you might ask? Well, it can be anything your little musical heart desires. If you're a composer, listener, performer, critic, or enthusiast, it doesn't matter! It's just important that you have a screw driver at your disposal to ensemble that new home entertainment system you just bought! But no seriously.... its important to have a "bag of tricks" when dealing with music. That way you're not some Joe Schmo just gettin' by. You want a toolbox not a swiss army knife. So here are some gadgets you might enjoy, or at least be happy to be aware of. 

First off if you're going to carry on a conversation with a musician about their music or even anyones music you better be relatively educated about it. Heres a website that plenty of music majors use to sharpen their skills. http://www.musictheory.net It may seem boring to you or even bring you back to those music appreciation days where you couldn't help but think about how that socially introverted, music theory teaching assistant was allowed to be in front of people. But hey, they say its good to be edumacated in a little bit of everything right?!

Next is for composers. Be innovative and daring. Right a piece that uses some super weird sounds! Go out... observe the world... and record it! Use a phone, iPad or computer! Heck you could even write down what you hear! And if you think you aren't getting good enough quality on your samples then use this website. And if you're not a composer you should still check out these sound samples... its quite amazing what we can do with sound these days. http://www.freesound.org

Random tip: get good rhythm and pitch... They say its innate but you don't have to believe them. Practice it. Taps beats on your desk. Hum a tune while you're walking. Pluck songs out on your keyboard as you hear them. Don't think it's possible? Check out this awesome TEDtalk. 

There are oodles of things you can do to make your toobox bigger. It just might take some time and investments. But music is good for the soul! It's an outlet, a form of expression, a language! Take some time to learn the language and try and talk to someone with it!