Explore the Michelle Ostrove Blog

It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or if you’ve been singing and playing piano (any instrument) for years; it’s always about your mindset and desire for continuous learning. You might have great musical abilities, but the most successful people in the industry know there is always room for improvement. Every great singer or pianist has a desire to master their craft. In the beginning you are like a sponge wanting to understand and learn everything you can. But…

Vibrato is a musical effect from an instrument or a voice. It is a technique used to add expression to a piece of music. Vibrato is the rhythmic pulsation, vibration and/or bending a pitch (note). Vibrato can happen very naturally with a singer. If it doesn’t happen naturally, it can be a learned technique. There are 2 ways to hold a note, with vibrato or holding the note solid without vibrato. Very skilled and experienced singers will alternate between the…

Scientists have been researching how music impacts the brain for years. When you learn how to sing or play new songs on the piano (or any instrument) there are many benefits to the brain. The research has been exploring how music affects brain function, human behavior, reducing stress, reducing pain, helps symptoms of depression, cognitive skills, motor skills, spatial-temporal learning, and neurogenesis (brain produces neurons). For all of my science geeks, the results can be seen on an MRI, the…

When you sing, if your vowel sounds are poor then everything else vocally will just sound mediocre. Articulation is when you sing your vowel sounds clearly and correctly; forming them into a well-crafted sound. It is also true for piano, playing the notes with articulation creates a clean and professional performance. The art of articulation is the formation of clear and distinct sounds, clarity in playing piano or singing successive notes. Have you every noticed how the British singers always…

Here are some tips on how to submit a demo to the record label and create the best chance of getting signed. Select the songs you’re the most proud of to send to the record company. Let your friends listen to the songs you’ve chosen and get their feedback. If you choose the tracks you love and they like them, the A&R Representative will ask to hear more of your songs. You will need to upload your chosen songs to…

Every singer and pianist must know how to count in music; knowing when to start and stop in a song, it’s all about rhythms and timing. The time signature at the beginning of a song will tell you how to count. For instance, If the time signature is 4/4 (the two numbers are written like a fraction), you will count 1,2,3,4 repeatedly. The Waltz rhythm is 3/4 time signature and you would count 1,2,3 over and over. The time signature’s…

When putting a song together you need some basic elements. An Artist will have their own unique way of expressing the song and the way they want to structure the song. But these are the basic important elements in music for song: 1. The melody, it is the single most important part of a song. This is what the artist would sing or Carlos Santana would play on his guitar! 2. The harmony is when 2 (or more) people sing…

The picture you see attached is the grand staff. A staff consists of five lines and four spaces. So you can see from the picture there are two staffs joined together (by a brace, the straight line and the curvy line that looks like a sideways mustache). By joining the two staffs together (treble staff & bass staff) you form the grand staff The top staff is called the treble staff and the symbol you see on the left side…

You should think of music as a language all it’s own. The term enharmonic is like a woman being called a wife and mother but it is the same person; one person with two titles. An enharmonic is somewhat the same, it has two names but one sound (one tone), similar concept. An enharmonic is one pitch (tone) but the note name is two different names. Pitches such as F# (F sharp) and Gb (G flat) are written differently in…

What is an accidental? An accidental is a sharp (#), flat (♭), natural sign (♮), and various other symbols. An accidental affects the note it precedes in music notation. The accidental is written before the note in the staff or after the letter name, like F#. A sharp (#) looks like a pound sign or hash tag, and what it does is raises the pitch (note) a half step. So if you look at piano keys, you will see white…