Lesson 3: Waking Up

A short entry for today. To wake up early, think of the day as an opportunity to be seized, something to look forward to, and not the beginning of work. Do something (or think of doing something) before the work begins, and realize that waking up is bringing that event closer to you.

I tried this during the weekend and it worked well.

Lesson 2: Osmosis

Excellent article on how osmosis really works, here:

http://www.alienryderflex.com/osmosis/

Poor explanations of osmosis have bothered me since high school (a strange thing to be upset about, I know). Typical arguments run along the lines of water "wanting" to swell up a cell because it "knows" the concentration is too salty or sugary and it needs to balance out.

I'm all for anthropomorphis, but seriously... I've yet to hear an adequate physical derivation that did not include water's subconsious wants, needs and desires. But this article has it.

So, in the end, it isn't the water that moves, but the mebrane. In fact, the water doesn't care about the sugar or salt, and will bounce around the same regardless.

Now there's one less monkey on my back; it really bugs me when there are gaping holes in explanations that go ignored. I have similar feelings regarding proofs of why calculus works, which I'll leave for another day.

Lesson 1: The Guitar

I like to play guitar. I've played on and off for several years (let's call it 8), but for a lack of constant practice I haven't progressed much further than my level in high school.

Granted, I'm happy with where I am and how I've studied on my own. I can play the songs I enjoy, have picked up some music theory, and have improved my ear. But I still grapple with the issues I faced in high school, such as learning to solo, improvise on my own, or quickly transcribe a song by ear.

Mr. Rose (my karate teacher from back home) occasionally asked us to think if we had "10 years experience, or 1 year's experience 10 times," in reference to martial arts. For guitar, I imagine it's 3 years' experience a handful of times.
My friend Craig got into guitar last year and it's helped me see what constant practice can do. Talking with him and scouring the net, I've found some outstanding tools to help in my studies

• Functional Ear Trainer (free program): This excellent program helps improve relative pitch -- it gives you a few chords in a scale (such as C-F-G-C), then plays a random note (like B), and asks you to identify it in relation to the root (C). In this case, it's the VII. You can tune the settings to start small then work your way up.
  
  After practicing for 10-15 minutes a day, for less than a week, I can get 100% accuracy in the key of C major. When I stared on Sunday (it's now Thursday), I was guessing at the notes.
  
  I'm now moving onto random keys, beyond C, and can get about 90% accuracy. It's great to see progress here, I'm keeping track of it in a strict, structured, unforgiving spreadsheet.
  
  I highly recommend this program to anyone interesting in improving their musical ear -- it's free.
  
• Transcribe! (trial version) -- This allows you to slow down a music file (including .mp3) without distorting the pitch. This lets you hear a song in genuine slow motion, without the deep-voiced "noooooooo" you hear in the movies.
  
  I used it on some Dave Matthews tabs, like warehouse, and it's great for figuring out and practicing the strumming pattern. I play the song at 50% speed, following along with the strumming, then slowly increase the speed by 10%. After a few minutes, I'm playing at full speed with the proper rhythm. Also, you can easily loop any segment of a song, so it's very easy to practice the same 3-second riff over and over.
  
  This crawl/walk/run approach works well, and lets you learn the song properly, rather than finding ways to cheat or use sloppily technique to play at full speed.
  
  Also, it can does a spectrum analysis on the song, basically telling you what notes/chords are in a segment. This is really helpful for transcribing music (hence the name of the program), but with practice, the Ear Trainer should make this much easier to do on my own.
  
• 10 Minute Guitar Workout ($25) -- This book has some nice, fast exercises that get incrementally harder. Same crawl/walk/run concept as Functaional Ear Trainer. It seems pretty good so far.

And so it all begins...

For years I've struggled to keep track of the thoughts spilling from my head. I have a site where I put long notes about learning, and another where I write about what's happening in my life.

This site is about what I'm studying or find interesting at the moment. One day I will consolidate these sites, but blogger is just too darn convenient.