The word Newgrounds may seem alien to you and there is no wonder. Newgrounds is a content sharing platform that gives content creators the chance to share their games, art, and audio work with the world. This platform differs from most on the market due to the lack of limitations that it has. Due to the ability to put pretty much whatever you want onto the site, a lot of people have become extremely invested in the website. Due to the freedom over the content and lack of monetary pressure, a lot of creators are fast to put their work on the site and a lot of people have made big steps since.
You may have heard of the up and coming singer Fires. Fires have recently topped the billboards with his hit album ‘Rivers’ and shows no sign of slowing down his music production. He has been very open about how much of a struggle it was to get to his position and openly communicate with fans, offering them helpful tips on how to breakthrough in such a crowded industry.
Where He Started
Though Fires has been expressing himself vocally since he was a child, he didn’t start releasing his music until three years ago. Fires spent a lot of his teenage years online and met plenty of friends on online forums and Facebook groups. Some of these friends told him about Newgrounds, which was in the early stages of his development.
For Fires, the prospect of having a new platform to explore was exciting as the usual platforms that he frequented had started to get boring. He quickly became addicted to the site and would spend hours watching skits and playing his favorite game spin a dreidel. As he spent more time on the site, he also started to make a lot of friends that he spoke to regularly.
Discovering His Talent
One night when in a voice call with some of the new friends that he had met in Newgrounds they started talking about their passions. Though Fires had never been very open about his singing abilities, he did feel comfortable enough with his new friends to share some of the songs that he had worked on over the years.
After hearing his music, his friends insisted that he got his work out there as they believed he really had talent. However, he wasn’t sure where he would start or how he would even go about pursuing a music career. His friends of course suggested that he use the platform that they found each other.
The First Step
So Fires took the leap and decided to put himself out there. He uploaded his first song and waited for the response of his potential viewers. Newgrounds operates as quite a close-knit community and quickly Fires got hundreds of comments from people expressing their support.
Fires began a consistent upload schedule and were uploading a new song every week and slowly gained new followers every day. Among those followers was a talent scout named David Mars. Mars loved the content that Fires had been uploading and decided that he wanted to meet him in person.
Mars and Fires met and within the first ten minutes of their meeting, Mars had decided that he wanted to sign Fires to his label. Fires’ life changed almost overnight and within days he was in the studio recording his debut album.
Fires want to inspire people and let them know that with the right encouragement and friends, anyone can make it in the music industry.
If you are someone that works within the editing business, you will be more than aware of how some quality headphones can make or break the quality of your editing. Headphones are one of the most important pieces of kit that you could have as an editor, as editing via a speaker will often mean that you are disturbed by external background sound and will not be able to pick up all the audio within the actual recording. But does having quality headphones really matter, or will any pair do?
Why You Need Them
As previously stated, one of the main reasons that working without headphones doesn’t cut it is because you will be disturbed by background noise and you will not be able to hear all of the aspects of the video. Unless you are working in a perfectly silent area, you will still encounter this issue if you are using a mediocre set of headphones. Cheaper and lower quality headphones don’t block out external sounds as well as some higher quality headphones and so you may find yourself unable to differentiate between sounds happening in the real world and sounds from the video. Most high-quality headphones are noise-canceling, so you will only be able to hear the isolated audio from the video or song that you are editing. This will allow you to focus on the audio and will mean that your audio work will have the best possible quality.
Editors spend a lot of time sitting and editing videos and audio. Because of this, it is also important that the headphones that they are using are comfortable. There is nothing worse than spending hours editing, only to be left with sore ears. A lot of the cheaper and lower quality brands don’t think about this, so even if their audio quality is alright, the headphones themselves only cause pain. Some of the bigger brands really focus on ensuring their user’s comfort, offering to cushion that not only protects their user’s ears but also helps to buffer the sound.
Sound Quality
One of the main reasons that higher-quality headphones are better is due to the fact that they produce higher quality sound. Higher quality sounds will often lead to better results, as high-quality headphones can often pick up sounds that lower quality headphones cannot. This means that if the audio recording that you are working on has any distortion or background noises, you will be able to hear it clearly and fix it during the editing process.
Though higher quality headphones are undoubtedly the best option for any editor, a lot of people are hesitant to buy them due to the cost. It is a common misconception that you have to spend a lot of money in order to have quality audio, but that really isn’t the case. Be sure to learn about the different types of headphones available on the market right now, as you are bound to find a quality pair for a reasonable price.
No two instruments have played a bigger part in the history of music than the Piano and the Violin. While our modern music tastes often ignore the Violin and have the piano as a background instrument, it was not too long ago that these two were in the spotlight almost constantly.
A lot of classical music has its foundation built by these instruments. They weave wonderful tapestries of sound and enthrall us with their beautiful music. It is no wonder people flock to try and learn these instruments even today. Which brings us to the big question: Which one of these instruments is more Complex?
Complexity
When we talk about complexity, we should clarify what exactly we mean. We are going to look at how difficult it is to learn the instrument at the professional level, beyond starting lessons. We are also going to be looking at which instrument can create more complex soundscapes and music.
We are also going to examine how complex they are in terms of their mechanical structure. How they are put together and how they function while being played. We hope this list will help any aspiring musicians decide what instrument they should start learning or help any musicians decide what instrument to add to their music.
Piano
Pianos are one of the most famous instruments on the planet. Perhaps second to guitars. But in the classic era, a Piano was the heart of any home. In the evening’s people would gather around it to tickle the ivories and sing together. And no orchestra is complete without one.
But how complex are Pianos? A typical Piano has 88 keys, 52 of which are white. The piano creates sound by a hammer knocking against a tightly tuned wire under the casing. Each wire has to be carefully tuned to produce the exact note needed.
One of the biggest complexities of a piano is tuning it. Compared to a traditional string instrument, which can be tuned in moments, tuning a piano is a big deal. It often requires a professional tuner.
A piano can produce a vast range of notes. It can go up the musical scale twice over and is fantastic is creating a solid baseline for any song. Solo Piano music is also some of the most popular and versatile on the planet.
Learning Piano is actually relatively easy compared to the violin. It still requires a lot of time and practice, as any instrument does, but due to the way the instrument is played, is it a lot less complex. It is easy for anyone to teach themself how to play using programs such as pianoforall.
Becoming a Piano virtuoso though is extremely difficult. Not only do you have to become an expert in musical knowledge and tune, but you also have to train your hands to be dexterous enough to deal with the most fast-paced piano music. Finger blisters are not uncommon for hardened piano players.
Overall the Piano is a fairly complex instrument. Its structure is by no means easy to recreate with specialist knowledge. And tuning them takes a lot of skill and expertise. All of this is often reflected in the price of the piano. It isn’t every family that can afford to have a piano in the dining room.
Violin
The Violin is an instrument often associated with romance and intrigue. It is a classic. And it is also a very complex instrument. A typical violin has four strings and is played by a bow made typically of horsehair, or any other extremely fine hair substitute. The sound is produced by running the bow across the strings in various directions. The player can alter the sound by changing the strength and speed at which they play.
Like most traditional string instruments, the violin can be tuned fairly easily. There are tuning dials attached to the instrument allowing anyone with a keen ear to tune it. So, unlike a piano which requires a professional, anyone can prepare a violin.
Violins can produce a wide range of notes and sound types. By changing the type of hair used in the bow or how it is being played. But violins have faded into obscurity in recent years. While some musicians still make use of them, they are hardly as popular as Pianos are.
Learning the Violin is infinitely more complex than learning piano. It is commonly said that, unless you begin violin lessons as a child, you can never become a master. And that is down to how difficult and precise the movements are when playing. Your body needs to be conditioned from as young an age as possible.
It isn’t impossible to become a master later in life, but it is very difficult. And the process of learning the violin is much more intricate and complex than learning the piano. Despite the simplicity of the construction of the instrument.
The Winner
Overall we would have to say that the Violin is far more complex than a Piano, but not by much. Simply due to the intricate nature of playing it, the Violin towers above most instruments in terms of complexity. But within that complexity is beauty. It is a fantastic instrument that soothes the soul and ignites the imagination.
The current state of the world has led to changes in everyone’s lives, as anyone would expect, but less obvious is the effect it has had on many industries you might not have considered. From the boom of Zoom to Amazon’s stocks soaring through the roof, many businesses have prospered in the new world. Some industries are, however, having to think outside the box to keep themselves alive. Live music has been rendered essentially defunct for the present and near future, as it necessarily involves a lot of people in a small area in order to make enough money to thrive.
The Tech Revolution
Luckily, the technology always finds a way and the industry has quickly moved from clubs and stadiums to somewhere much closer to home. After months of uncertainty as to whether anyone would ever be able to watch their favorite band play live, artists started to sell tickets to live-streamed concerts. Artists such as Diplo, Oliver Tree, and Yungblud have tried to make their mark on the internet with shows paid and free on all forms of social media, allowing more people than ever to experience music in its purest form.
In the same way that many people found out they could work from home and still very much do their job correctly, people very quickly found out that live music could very much be enjoyed over a Livestream, even if it’s not the same without the communal aspect of being around hundreds of other like-minded people.
Not only that, the music industry very quickly discovered what the rest of the world already knew – the internet is a huge source of money just waiting to be tapped. Even without a pay-per-view system, there are thousands of dollars to be made off advertisements shown to fans hungry to hear their favorite artists live. L Devine has shown that you can profit in less direct ways. To increase your social media reach, buying likes on YouTube is often recommended as a quick and easy way to get your message and your brand out to thousands more people, but Devine chose to play her shows on all forms of social media from YouTube to Instagram.
Big Names
Marshmello had an even more out of the box idea and decided to partner up with Epic Games to play a live show on the popular video game Fortnight. Reeling in millions of people both into his music and Epic’s game, Marshmello’s digital avatar represented more than his real-life stage persona, it presented an alternative way for people to listen to music in the new age. A new way to enjoy the music instead of the several-hundred-year old convention of buying a ticket to a venue to be up and close to one of your idols.
But as much as this accessibility has helped many during lockdowns around the world and even brought new people into live music culture, ready to get out there once venues properly reopen, can these digital events really be the future of music?
Corporate Shenanigans
Many asked the same of iTunes back when Steve Jobs tried to popularise the idea of easy-access digital music, something most people today take for granted. A big difference between physical vs digital music and digital vs physical concerts is the very thing that has made digital concerts a current necessity – people. A huge part of the concert experience is being in the same room as the artists and other fans of the music. This is such an integral aspect of a live gig that it is inevitable that once the pandemic subsides one way or another, people will start to flock back to concerts in person.
This is not to say that digital concerts won’t continue to be extremely prevalent – they are an incredibly convenient and far less expensive way to emulate the concert experience. But will digital concerts become the new normal? I very much doubt it.
