Piano Lessons for Kids in Barcelona

Posted on January 18th, 2023 by shineuser

Piano can be a great way for small children to learn about music. It is a superb instrument for building a strong musical foundation, and with the right teacher can open up a new world for kids, filled with far-reaching benefits. At our studio in Barcelona, piano classes are one-on-one with a dedicated teacher, and can even be arranged online in conjunction with our handy instrument rental options. What could be better than doing a music lesson from the comfort of your home?

It’s all in the science! Music has long been touted as an important element in the development of our brains, and giving your child the opportunity to explore that can help them in a variety of ways outside of the music realm. Unlock their musical creativity, help them learn in a fun and engaging way with teachers who are adept at connecting music to games as well as learning. At Shine Music School in Barcelona we are also offer siblings the chance to form small group classes, which can make learning the instrument more dynamic and versatile.

Piano is an instrument which is fantastic for accompanying singing, as well as other instruments. Not only can learning piano boost your confidence, but also your serotonin levels. Music has been proven to improve our immune systems as well as provide a literal workout for our brains! If you can instil a love of music in your kids from a young age, you will be benefitting them in the long run, helping them to become well rounded humans as well as expanding their minds.

Finding the right teacher is key. A teacher that can share their love of music and actively engage their students can be hard to find! Teaching kids a musical instrument is a special skill that requires a good understanding of psychology as well as music. Our teachers at Shine encourage their students, and boost their confidence while teaching them their favourite songs. We do not follow a particular curriculum but goals are set by the teacher during the course of organically learning the piano. For older children, we have been training those that wish to, in the Trinity music exams, and each child can track their progress through the grades. Shine prides itself on matching the right teacher to your child to ensure that learning music stays fun and engaging.

Begin early! Children from the age of 5 are encouraged to start music, as at this age they are beginning to read. This ties in with being able to recognise and read notes. Although students younger than 5 can learn an instrument, we prefer to offer our smallest musicians our Music Awareness courses which introduce rhythm, notes, songs, and teach them to recognise tones through movement, dance and musical interaction. Students who have attended these classes are easily able to continue onto our private music classes with their preferred teacher.

Barcelona is a city filled with musical history and at Shine we encourage the continuation of this musical exploration with the youngest generation! Check out our online piano classes for kids!

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Free Music Resources for Musicians

Posted on January 25th, 2021 by shineuser

Music is a fantastic hobby, and playing an instrument can be a great source of entertainment and joy. But times are tough and every budding musician can use a freebie every now and then! Even if you are taking lessons and have invested in a great instrument, having free extra musical resources in your pocket is recommended and useful!

We have put together a list of freebies for you to browse. From free software for editing music, to free tabs and backing tracks.

FREE GUITAR TABS

Ultimate Guitar has about a bazillion guitar tabs that you can browse by genre or difficulty. They have an easy search bar, so finding the tab you are looking for is not at all complicated.
Guitar Tabs has tabs listed alphabetically, and you can even submit your own.
Acoustic Guitar Tabs has a great archive of free tabs as well as free lessons, so you can learn how to read the tabs too!

FREE BACKING TRACKS

If you are struggling to play your music at home, perhaps a backing track will help. Not only does it help you with improvisation and timing but also fills in all the other instruments! Many websites provide free downloadable tracks so that you can practice anywhere, both online and off. Guitar backing tracks has loads of tracks created specifically for guitarists. Backing Tracks has almost 100 000 tracks that you can download! Karaoke Version has a number of free backing tracks that come with variations, for example instrumental versions, or ones that include backup vocals. You can browse and find the tracks you like, and download them. Each track includes useful info such as Tempo and Key. And if you cannot find what you are looking for here, Youtube has loads of free backing tracks available online too.

FREE MUSIC EDITING SOFTWARE

Audacity, while it might look a little complicated, can be mastered through some trial and error. It has been providing one of the best free music editing tools for over 20 years. If you can get past the intimidating look of the program, and figure out how to use the plugins, you can master the art of music editing for free! TIP: Watch some tutorials online! Ocenaudio is far simpler to use, and may be a better place to start if you are just beginning to set up your home studio! This software also lets you listen to the changes you make to your audio files as you make them. Wavepad has some very useful features, like editing audio tracks in a batch (ie more than one at a time!) which can save you a lot of time! It has plenty of handy features like noise removal, compression and reverb as well as audio scrubbing! And if you need more free editing tools, check out this list which also includes a free lesson on getting started on music editing!

FREE ONLINE MUSIC LESSONS & COURSES

You can find plenty of free lessons online for every instrument. Most of them are introductory, but a free tutorial can really help if you are a bit stuck! MakingMusicFun has some free lessons for kids in everything from Recorders to Guitar and Trumpet! Alison offers full courses in music and music theory, all it requires is a sign up, which you can do easily with your email address. Learn how to write your first song for free with this online course from Future Learn! Study how to play the Jazz piano with The Jazz Pianist’s free courses! Udemy is well known to provide great lessons! If you are a serious musician and want to make a business out of your music or band, why not try the free Band as Business, Musician as Entrepreneur course.

FREE DOWNLOADABLE MUSIC

Perhaps you need some music for your video or school project. If you don’t have time to make your own, there are plenty of places where you can legally download free music without any copyright issues. The Free Music Archive is a wonderful resource full of all kinds of different music that you can use free of charge! Jamendo also offers music for free. Soundcloud is not only a fantastic place to listen and discover music for free, but many artists allow you to use their music under the creative commons usage rights. Youtube now also offers free music to use in making a video, logging in grants you access to loads of royalty free soundbites and background music.

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