YouTube, distributors of the highly popular salsa dance instructional videos of addicted2salsa, have launched a new music feature on their website! The new website feature allows you to type a salsa artist or song, and create a salsa music video playlist with videos that are related to that particular artist or song. This new feature is very similar to Pandora (no, not the Avatar type), where you can create a ‘music radio’ station based on artists that sound similar to a song or another artist.
This is a great way to visually discover new salsa songs and artists! Enjoy!
If you didn’t catch the new NBC show called “The Sing-Off“, you missed something pretty cool. The Sing-Off is a competition which mixes the aspects of a capella singing, show choir (similar to the TV show “Glee”) and American Idol. Keeping up with American cover songs remixed into Salsa-like rhythmz, a group from my hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico, called NOTA. NOTA is the term for a musical note in Spanish. They sang a salsafied version Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” in a capella that I think you are sure to enjoy. I think they mixed the song styles very well, even including a nice big symbal-ish clave as a transition point. I’ll be waiting for their album if they keep it up!
Now that everyone is becoming more experienced with computers, I wanted to give everyone a creative holiday salsa project! About a year ago I created a few salsa music tracks that became very popular with some of our fans and we received several emails asking how any salsero (with a Mac) could make their own. The process is very simple! Garageband, a free application that comes with every Mac computer, allows you to do this with just a few clicks of the mouse. When you start a new project in Garageband, you can select ‘New’ from the menu and select ‘Magic Garageband‘. From there all you have to do is select the instruments you like and you are done! You can also add your own clave in Garageband to give it a more salsa feel!
Here are the salsa music instrument tracks I made previously with Garageband that are available on our salsa feed (feel free to download and distribute, however, not for commercial use):
Here is a video of how you can easily change the different instruments in Magic Garageband to get the right feel for your musical style.
Salsa Holiday Contest Time!
Given how easy it is to create fun salsa music tracks, we’d like to listen to your creativity! Come up with a few salsa music tracks of your own! Send your track as an email attachment, with your name and location to contact@addicted2salsa.com (we’ll post them on our website at a later time). Submit as many tracks as you’d like for the contest.
The TOP 5 contestants, selected by us, will receive my favorite iTunes album for the Salsa Dancing Holidays: “Feliz Navidad” by Hector Lavoe and Daniel. Please note you need to have a valid iTunes account to receive the prize. Contest ends January 15th, 2009. The best track will be danced by us during the intro of a future Addicted2Salsa video episode (how cool is that!).
Musical tastes and personality are closely linked, according to a recent study by the Heriot-Watt University in Scotland.
We have always known the fact that what you wear, eat and listen is linked to your personality (whether for good or bad). Finally, there has been some research done by the Scotland’s Heriot-Watt University. In a study of more than 36,000 people from six countries, they provide some type of detail on what types of personalities are tied to people’s taste in music. Here is a snippet from the article:
You are what you listen to
Jazz fans tend to be creative and outgoing, with high self-esteem, in keeping with the innovative and sociable nature of the music.
Country western fans were found to be hard-working, but introverted, fitting with the blue-collar image of country music.
The research concluded soul music lovers are a well-rounded bunch — creative, outgoing, gentle, at ease with themselves and with high self-esteem.
Rap fans are outgoing and far from gentle, while indie music lovers lack both self-esteem and the work ethic.
While Latin music (or specifically Salsa/Cha-Cha/Bachata) weren’t included in the article, I’m trying to see if it was included in the published research (trying to find the publication). I’m sure salseros(as) would at a minimum fall under ’sociable’ and ‘outgoing’. But I’d like to hear your opinion. What do you think Latin music expresses about our personality? (your comments below).
You can read and see the entire music genres studied using the links below.
Have you ever woken up with that obnoxious ringing in your ears after a long night of dancing at the club? Is that EVERY weekend for you? If so, you may want to look into options to protect yourself from Noise induced hearing loss. The way it develops is this: you go to a noisy club- noisy to the point that the next morning your ears are still ringing. This is a temporary threshold shift, a (mostly unnoticeable) hearing loss. In about 24 hours, your hearing is completely back to normal. However, after doing this week after week for several years, the “temporary” threshold shift becomes more permanent as the damaged inner ear structures can no longer repair themselves.
Salsa clubs vary in how loud the music is, so some people may be more at risk than others. The more frequently you go out, the more damage you are potentially causing. If you think this is a problem for you, you may want to try using earplugs. I made a recent earplug discovery when I noticed a salsero friend wearing these- musician’s earplugs: they soften the loudness without muffling the sound.
Last, but not least – the third version of the ’salsa track’ that I made with Garageband is with a Flute Solo. Using a flute as the main part of the melody is common, but it is usually not heard of enough.
I’m sure there are many of you musicians out there that can do a much better job than I can – and we’d like to hear from you. If you can create an instrumental latin tracks, whether it be salsa, cha-cha or bachata, and would like to share that with the community – send it our way and we’ll post it up with a link to your site/profile. Who knows, it could start your record career.
YouTube, distributors of the highly popular salsa dance instructional videos of addicted2salsa, have launched a new music feature on their website! The new website feature allows you to type a salsa artist or song, and create a salsa music video playlist with videos that are related to that particular artist or song. This new feature is very similar to Pandora (no, not the Avatar type), where you can create a ‘music radio’ station based on artists that sound similar to a song or another artist.
If you didn’t catch the new NBC show called “The Sing-Off“, you missed something pretty cool. The Sing-Off is a competition which mixes the aspects of a capella singing, show choir (similar to the TV show “Glee”) and American Idol. Keeping up with American cover songs remixed into Salsa-like rhythmz, a group from my hometown of San Juan, Puerto Rico, called NOTA. NOTA is the term for a musical note in Spanish. They sang a salsafied version Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” in a capella that I think you are sure to enjoy. I think they mixed the song styles very well, even including a nice big symbal-ish clave as a transition point. I’ll be waiting for their album if they keep it up!
Bloch is carried here as well,...
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