Add built documentation
Update SUMMARY.md
Added front page.
Update intro.md
Create intro.md
Created front page
Add built documentation
Update function_parameters.md
renamed variable for clarity
Add built documentation
Update tuples.md
Missing quote
Update TODO.md
Add built documentation
Update tuples.md
Still messing with figure sizes
Add built documentation
update image sizes
Add built documentation
Proofreading of last few chapters
Add built documentation
Messed with image sizes
Add built documentation
Proofread and made edits to first 7 chapters
updated TODO
Add built documentation
Added chapter on 2D lists
Added my TODO list
Add built documentation
fixed some errors with dictionaries
Add built documentation
Added dictionaries, fixed typos, renamed some files
Add built documentation
Added strings and file i/o, changed outline to chapters and indented sections
version: '3'
services:
ollama:
image: ollama/ollama
container_name: ollama
ports:
- "11434:11434"
volumes:
- ollama-volume:/root/.ollamaAdd built documentation
It's weird that I almost immediately had the thought for essentially exactly the same approach while reading the article. Not that this reflects on OP; flashes of solutions like that I think are often mostly random.
But I wonder if this is a sign of things to come - rather than needing to find explicit deterministic solutions to many problems that might actually have one, because ML is getting much more powerful and accessible instead we'll just use ML models and get 99.9% accurate solutions, but say, well that's good enough.
I wonder if you could elaborate on how you use ChatGPT to generate web designs? I'm about to teach a course on web technologies and I want to integrate ChatGPT into the curriculum.
Fix for N.C. symbol.
High‐accuracy machine learning techniques for functional connectome fingerprinting and cognitive state decoding
Oh cool, something I’m qualified to respond to, having gone through exactly this process a few years ago. Let me answer each question individually.
It can be exported from any major sheet music software (Musescore, Finale, Sibelius).
I teach in the CS department at a University. My Intro to Programming for Non-Majors class has used p5js for the last 4 years, and the Intro for Majors is using a custom drawing library in Python built on top of pygame.
I would rather the non-majors learn the same language as the majors, and I would rather the majors have a platform that makes collaboration easier. Your editor seems like it ticks many of the boxes I’m looking for!
Feel free to PM if you want to talk more - I can send you my email.
I built a tool that auto-generates guitar chord-melody arrangements with tabs and chord diagrams, given a jazz leadsheet (melody + chord symbols) in MusicXML form:
I’ve been waiting for something like this for so long, thank you and congratulations!
It looks like the editor itself is not open-source, is that correct? I would really love to be able to submit a pull request to add a light-themed option.
This may sound crazy but the only thing stopping me from trying to use this right now in my intro to programming course is the visual look of it (mostly the color scheme). 😆
This is something I’ve struggled with, having spent most of my short jazz career focused on gypsy jazz.
Later when I started to be drawn to more modern jazz, and started playing with a straight ahead group, I felt very frustrated that the gypsy style and vocabulary was holding me back. It’s better than nothing (I can still play the changes) but what I play to me ends up often sounding cheesy, simple, or old-timey. It’s hard to describe but it just doesn’t seem to fit the vibe.
As I’ve tried to focus on making the transition I’ve come to the conclusion that while much of the issue is the note choices themselves (the vocabulary and phrases, often focused on simple arpeggios and chromaticism), there’s also a big part that’s coming from the right hand picking. It took a lot to retrain myself to do gypsy picking passably well, but trying to go modern with an electric guitar I find the same style sounds too heavy-handed. There’s also something going on where I think gypsy jazz soloists are often emphasizing the on-beats (with downstrokes), and the more modern phrasing is one that emphasizes the off-beats and should feel more bouncey and loose, with more dynamic range, rather than strong, stiff, and attack-y.
Having said all that, there’s a big part of this that’s probably a result of my own lack of experience in both styles. I play professionally, but my skill level is probably not what you imagine when you think “professional jazz guitarist”, gypsy jazz or otherwise. There are plenty of examples of gypsy jazz guitarists who do perfectly well playing in more modern contexts (Biréli Lagrène, Adrien Moignard, come to mind…) so it’s definitely possible for those vocabularies to co-exist. But for me there is a switch that I’m not really able to flip yet.
Bump version: 1.8.1 → 1.8.2
Fix for next_key().
Bump version: 1.8.0 → 1.8.1
Bring back legacy keypress functions.
Bump version: 1.7.0 → 1.8.0
Bump version: 1.6.2 → 1.7.0
Overhaul of keyboard interaction functions.
Ah gotcha. I saw it plugged in and thought, damn that’s a great sounding pickup! But yes, the big tones by themselves are pretty nasty.
In case you’ve never heard of it you might take a look at the Tonedexter (https://audiosprockets.com/) - it’s my main method of live amplification for gypsy jazz guitar, and it does a phenomenal job of making a piezo pickup like the big tone sound like a microphone. It’s not cheap, but there are similar and cheaper options I haven’t explored (LR Baggs Voiceprint, or NU-X Optima Air).
Edit: Correction, the LR Baggs is definitely not cheaper than a Tonedexter. The NU-X is, though.
Sorry - I meant, what kind of electronic pickup? Or are you just recording with a microphone?
Love it! What kind of pickup are you using for the gypsy guitar? It sounds great.
I would pay for this model! I’m following you to watch if you ever release it.
~/me $_ x = files('Music')
~/me $_ for item in x:
> if 'Rick Astley' not in x['name']:
> delete(x['path'])
Shouldn’t that be:
~/me $_ x = files('Music')
~/me $_ for item in x:
> if 'Rick Astley' not in item['name']:
> delete(item['path'])
?This is a very specific request and I’m sorry that I can’t help, but now I’m curious — what app is that?
You can use the website for free from desktop or phone (that’s how I use it on my phone, I just have a shortcut on my home screen). The desktop app is free, and there are phone official apps that unfortunately are not free.
https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/946752090
Bump version: 1.6.1 → 1.6.2
Change mouse interaction API
Bump version: 1.6.0 → 1.6.1
Fix events printing to console
Bump version: 1.5.0 → 1.6.0
Add mouse_clicked functionality
Update docs
Bump version: 1.4.0 → 1.5.0
Added various mouse interaction upgrades.
Do you know of any online community gathering places for this scene? Subreddit? Discord server?
Fix for duplicate notes across both hands in JSON.
Out of curiosity - are you willing to share broad strokes about your approach to the pitch detection algorithm?
In my own research, vocal pitch detection is so challenging (compared to other instruments) because (I think) of the variety of formants that are possible for any given note, and therefore the number of different kinds of harmonic spectrums you could see for the same fundamental.
This is super awesome, and yes a real performance-oriented arrangement would combine many types of voicings.
I’m working on a version that lets you pick the voicing per-chord, but that’s a ways off right now!
You can export in MusicXML format from MuseScore, Finale, and Sibelius.
I’ve added two sample MusicXML files to the front page.
There was a sample file on the instructions page, but I’ve added two to the front page now.
It’s not an exercise, it’s just a set of chord voicings that sound nice in a jazz context and are reasonably easy to play on guitar (unlike on piano, many closed voicings are unreasonably difficult to play on guitar - though see Johnny Smith for exceptions to that).
Take any one-octave closed voicing of a 4-note chord, in any inversion. For example a maj7 chord could be:
1 3 5 7 , or 3 5 7 1 , or 5 7 1 3 , or 7 1 3 5
Now take the second highest note in one of those inversions and drop it an octave:
5 1 3 7 , or 7 3 5 1 , or 1 5 7 3 , or 3 7 1 5
That is a drop2 voicing. There is a drop2 voicing for any inversion you want, including one where the root is in the bottom (maybe you’d call this root position?).
Same thing for drop3 and drop 2/4.
Yes, please!
I agree. I also hope that for beginners this could give them a musical sounding and systematic way of being exposed to some common chord shapes around the fingerboard.
Would you send me the XML files you tried?
Oof. Thank you, should be fixed now.
A made guitar chord-melody arrangement generator that uses jazz leadsheets (melody + chord symbols) as input: https://chordmelody.io/
I always thought the process was tedious but systematic enough to automate, and to some extent I think I was right. Here’s a video of one of the arrangements: https://youtu.be/F3h_yQOM_Jg
Initial commit.
Initial commit
Bump version: 1.3.0 → 1.4.0
Fix for sectors on small scale factor.
Add make target for syncing on linux.cs.du.edu
Add Data Science page, and add make target for publishing to linux.cs.du.edu
Replaced Installation page, renamed many pages in the index, other various edits.
Remove references to ‘background canvas’.
Bump version: 1.2.3 → 1.3.0
Add bump2version support, and make targets for releases
v1.2.3 - Fixes for thick line issues, unaligned circle stroke, and antialiasing.
Changing square and filled_square pass parameters to rectangle and filled_rectangle
tests for drawing a filled square
showing how to commit
all documentation done for now
added documentation for more primitives
partially generated documentation
v1.2.2 - Return Color from get_pixel_color(), and update some docstrings.
May I ask - when you say you're "sheet reading" Fur Elise, do you mean sight reading (i.e. able to play on sight without memorization)? And is that the whole song, or just the main melody (the part mostly without chords)?
I never understood this analogy, and now I’ve seen it enough to finally ask in good faith —-
If tulips bulbs were of a limited supply, (relatively) infinitely divisible, (relatively) impossible to forge, and could be transferred anywhere in the world, in any amount, (relatively) instantaneously… Would it really be that crazy to imagine that they may have kept significantly more value? Or be used as a kind of currency?
It seems like anything with those properties could be a good basis for a currency, whether it’s Beanie Babies or Pokémon cards (neither of which actually do have those properties), or cryptographically secure blocks of teleporting cheese.
Redirect build to /docs for GitHub pages.
Move image files, and add DUDraw Quickstart to index
Update dudraw_quickstart.md
A few formatting fixes.
Change code blocks to python formatting in dudraw_quickstart.md
Fix musical_bubbles.py references
Add musical_bubbles.
Initial commit
Add files via upload
Add files via upload
Rename DUDrawTutorial.md to dudraw_tutorial.md
To match formatting of other page filenames.
Create DUDrawTutorial.md
Fix floating point list index
Refactor large if/else tools, and move code to /src folder
Hmm sort of. Let me try to clear up two things:
First, I’m not suggesting you play a different scale for each chord, in fact I’m suggesting that you specifically DO NOT try to do that. I’m suggesting that if you want to noodle around in a scale, you do it for entire sections of a tune that are in a particular key center / tonality.
So for Minor Swing, the entire tune is in an Am tonality so you could noodle in the A Harmonic Minor scale over all the chords (Am, Dm, E7) if you want. Notice how all of the notes of all of those chords are present in that one scale.
The other thing is, just to be clear, over the E7 you would play an Fdim7 arpeggio (i.e. a dim7 starting half a step up from the root of the dominant).
So altogether this is what I’m suggesting for Minor Swing:
In fact, if you listen to the famous Django solo over this tune you’ll find a lot of the ideas he uses are exactly these things - in particular the Fdim7 arpeggio over the E7 is a huge component of the sound (play an Fdim7 run, and land on a note in the Am chord). Same is true of Grappelli’s solo.
A long time ago I did something like this with ImageMagick using what it called "Extract SIFT Correspondences". I don't know if that still exists, but the homography feature in OpenCV looks like the same idea: https://learnopencv.com/image-alignment-feature-based-using-…
I’m saying that for a D Dominant (D7) chord, you can play an arpeggios consisting of the notes:
Altogether those are the Eb diminished 7 chord. (also worth mentioning that those same 4 notes could be called Ebo7, F#o7, Ao7, or Co7)
In other words, the Eb diminished 7 chord contains all the notes from D7, except the D which has been raised a half step to Eb (the b9 of D).
In general, try to forget about scales and focus on playing the changes. Visualizing arpeggios is the quickest way to playing the changes.
If you want to noodle around in a scale, then here are some good bang-for-your-buck your options:
But you should probably focus on playing something different over each chord. The best bang-for-your-buck arpeggios for gypsy jazz are probably something like:
It looks like Unreal Engine (which is not open source, but you can get access to the source code) has a "Panini Projection" which does something similar: https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.27/en-US/RenderingAndGraphic…
this sounds great, I’d love an invite!
Add link to Real Python on editor
Fixes for voice leading, and added allowing fretted notes one fret below the chord position.
Fixes for pedal chords (major slash chords).
Fix typo
Fix problem with breve chord lengths
Remove whitespace to fix header rendering
Thanks to Jeremy (jmason)!
Fix sentence grammar
Thanks to John Thomas.
It sounds like you are essentially describing long-term potentiation (LTP).
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_potentiation
update gitignore
For a video demo of an arrangement, see the instructions page: https://chordmelody.io/instructions
For more info see the background page: https://chordmelody.io/background
This tool is the kind of thing that I'd guess very few people have ever thought about needing or wanting… But if you're one of the few who have, I think this project may be THE thing that you're looking for.
The short version is this: it takes a leadsheet (melody + chord symbols) of the kind you'd typically find for a jazz tune, in MusicXML format, and it generates a chord-melody arrangement using a standardized set of chord voicings. The output includes fretboard diagrams, and the melody can be shown in tablature or in standard notation. There are a few options to fiddle with to get different results, depending on your needs.
This isn't the kind of project I'd ever expect to be profitable, but it's gotten to the point where it's useful enough for me that I think it could be useful for other too.
It's hard to get perspective on a project like this since it's so personal, so I'd love any feedback. If this is something you might find useful, please let me know what you think!
None
Add support for time signature changes, and a few fixes and cleanups
Merge branch ‘main’ of github.com:kwertyops/chordmelodygen
Ignore chords on NoteTooLowForChord exception instead of failing. Also general fixes and cleanup
Update README.md
Bb | Eb7 | Dm7 G7alt | Cm7 F7alt |
Bb7 | Ebm(maj7) | Dm7 | C#m7 F#7 |
Cm7 | F7 | Bb G7 | Cm7 F7 |
Merge branch ‘main’ of github.com:kwertyops/chordmelodygen
Update template
Update README.md
Add support for drop3, and drop24 voicings
Add details about some abbreviation and fixes
Fix errors reported by YAMLLint + use old Ubuntu
Trying older Ubuntu because of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/calibre/+bug/1884295
Add Makefile steps to build pdf, epub
Simplify tweet
Add tweet to front page
Add fretboard diagram note intervals option
hey that’s a great idea! in fact, it wasn’t easy… but I had some time today and I went and added the option to do that!
check out the same link from the original comment for an updated version with the intervals names on the fretboard diagrams: https://lapompeband.com/public/days_of_wine_and_roses_etude.pdf
Initial working version, untested.
Initial commit
Link to the etude PDF: https://lapompeband.com/public/days_of_wine_and_roses_etude.pdf
Info –
My teacher had me learning drop 2 voicings (highly recommended!!) for all the different chord types, and I wanted to start applying them to making my own chord melodies. Just finding nice voice-leading between different voicings already sounds great, but I figured in the long run it would be more useful (and probably stick in my head better) to learn the voicings with actual tunes. Plus, just playing the changes is missing the more difficult part - playing a specific melody at the same time!
If you limit yourself strictly to drop 2 voicings, it turns out that the process of coming up with a chord melody for a tune is pretty systematic - for every chord, from all the possible voicings, there’s really just one voicing that has the specific melody note you need in the top voice (though it could be played in multiple places on the guitar).
By sticking strictly to drop 2s, and by sticking strictly to the melody and chords as written, the result is a little boring - it’s more of an etude than a performance-ready arrangement. But it’s great for learning, because you end up seeing the same voicings again and again (and the ones you see are the most common ones for real music!), and these etudes could be used as a basis for a more elaborate arrangements.
After doing this by hand a few times, I realized that I wasn’t learning much from the process of “find the voicing with this melody note in the top” - at least not at this stage, while I’m still getting familiar with the voicings and shapes. But since the process of making the etude was so systematic, I figured maybe I could get a computer to do it for me instead! So I made this tool to help me (and maybe you) —
The tool takes in a leadsheet in MusicXML form (can be exported from most major sheet music software), and spits out the full arrangement in PDF form, with chord diagrams and tabs/notation for the melody. It’s pretty deterministic right now, but there are a few options (how to handle triads, whether to output tabs vs standard notation, orientation of the fretboard diagrams).
The attached PDF is an example of what comes directly out of the process.
Regarding the video —
It’s not supposed to be an amazing performance, I’m still learning, but I think it’s amazing in it’s own way how good something so simple can already sound just by using these voicings. I think they’re like magic!
The video is mostly (say 95%) the etude exactly as written, though I made a bit of my own intro/outro to keep it interesting (though still loosely based on the voicings from the PDF).
If you want more info about the tool, or especially if you’re a jazz guitar educator and would like to try it out and would be willing to give feedback on how to improve it, please send me a message! I’d like to make it into something that could be useful for everybody.
If I come up with any other tunes that seem worth recording I’ll post another video!
Put me down as interested as well!
Yeah I’ve always thought of ivm, #ivdim, or IV7alt ideas as interchangeable for that second chord. I think they all sound fine over any of those options. The ivm just sounds more “sweet” or “traditional” to me, and the #ivdim / IV7alt sounds more outside.
| F | Fm | C | A7 |
| Dm7 | G7 | C | / |
The ending of All of Me (known in gypsy jazz as the “Christophe Changes”).
Tactics trainers:
Your model will only be able to properly operate on input of the type it was trained on. You can’t throw full recordings into a model trained on short clips and expect it to perform the same.
If you want to be able to dump a full-length recording in and have all possible sound sources labelled, then you need to train the model using full-length recordings as input, with all the sounds labelled. Something like that would likely be more difficult to train than your simpler model, but that’s a separate issue.
If you want to use your model that was trained on short single-sound audio clips, then the input needs to be short (potentially) single-sound audio clips. Maybe you can do pre-processing on the full recording to make the input fit into your current model… For example, segment the full recording into overlapping 2-3 second chunks, predict the contents of the chunks, and then aggregate them into a composite prediction for the full recording. Or maybe you want to use some other technique to identify sound onsets to do the segmentation more intelligently.
I think a pre- and post-processing pipeline in your case would be easier than trying to train a single model to do it all at once, but that’s up to you.
I have a lot of thoughts but I’m going to try to limit myself to three big ideas:
If you don’t listen to jazz regularly, you will never be able to learn to play it. Just like you can’t learn to speak French without listening to anyone else speaking French. Finding the jazz you like, and listening to it regularly enough to get it into your ear, is more important than everything else you’ve listed there. It’s foundation upon which everything else is built.
The theory/harmony/melodic ideas/chord voicings that you’ll want to learn depend a lot on what kind of jazz you’ve decided that you like, and that you are listening to regularly. You can play entire 3-hour sets of jazz music using only “cowboy” chords and barre chords, and it can sound fine if you’re playing old time swing jazz. If what you want is a “hipper” sound with more extensions, then well.. how hip? Bebop hip? Post bop hip? Fusion hip? Free jazz hip? Each collection of phrases and voicings is a dialect in the language of jazz, and there’s no point in learning a bunch of stuff just because someone else said that’s what you need to know, if it doesn’t apply to the sound that you like. Older jazz might be a good place to start because it’s easier to pick up, harmonically simpler, and all the rest of jazz is rooted in it… but it doesn’t matter how easy it is to pick up if you don’t like how it sounds, so you don’t listen to it, so you never get it in your ear!
Jazz is just a musical language, like any other, and in the big picture it’s no easier or more difficult to learn than any other musical language (metal, for example). Everything you know about learning metal applies directly to jazz. You learn it the way you learn any other language - by listening and imitation at first, and slowly developing your own voice over time. Theory and structure can help facilitate that process, especially when you start as an adult, but maybe like 10%, where the real 90% is listening and imitating. The difference with jazz is that it seems to be this holy grail musical language that everyone wants to be able to play even though they’re not actually interested in listening to it. When you come here and essentially ask “I want to play jazz, but I don’t really listen to it”, as many people are essentially saying when they start (and no hate from me, that’s totally understandable), I think what you/they really should be asking is “what kind of jazz do I like, and where can I find more of it to listen to? where can I find enough enjoyment in jazz that I’m inspired to just start learning those damn songs instead of over-analyzing what that learning should look like?”. And nobody can answer that question except you. I can give you a dozen resources on jazz standards, and chord voicings, and scales, and theory, and you could find a dozen resources by googling for yourself. But in my opinion, that is completely beside the point. What you need to do is just LISTEN TO MORE JAZZ! Find the jazz you like, and then find more, and listen to it more. When your question goes from “How do I learn jazz?” to “How do I learn
I don’t mean any of this disparagingly by the way, I mean it to be (I hope it is) encouraging. Learning jazz is really simple, and I think you’re just waaay overthinking it, as most people do with jazz (and some gatekeepers encourage). Most of that stuff you listed above comes later. The hard part is finding the stuff you like, and then just sitting down and figuring it out, piece by piece. It’s the enjoyment that keeps you going, figuring out the pieces. Without the enjoyment of the music, you’ll never get anywhere… but if you don’t enjoy it why would you want to learn to play it?
Add node.js install step
Fix link to INSTALL.md
Update text from Gitbook to Honkit (#89)
Build only on merge to master branch
Update blog links
Use GITHUB_TOKEN with ghaction-github-pages@v2
Use crazy-max/ghaction-github-pages@v2
Use npx
https://github.com/honkit/honkit
actually yes it does! thank you!
sorry to bother but I’m wondering if you can elaborate on that? I’ve recently become interested in the lydian chromatic concept, and I’m totally sold on the idea but I don’t understand how to actually use it in improvisation. I loved how this sounded and I’m curious how you were approaching it
In case you’re still interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/drums/comments/ihta9v/heres_a_rough_transcription_of_that_clyde/g32b2px/
See here for transcription: https://www.reddit.com/r/drums/comments/ihta9v/heres_a_rough_transcription_of_that_clyde/g32b2px/
Link to the original video: https://www.reddit.com/r/drums/comments/ihb87y/clyde_stubblefield_influenced_drum_groove_i_came/
Woah… I also wrote a simple app that does… exactly what you described! Sending you a PM.
As a general rule, almost everything that can be done in Processing can be done in P5. They are extremely similar. Here’s the code from above, converted to P5:
https://editor.p5js.org/kwertyops/sketches/_ULHNH8Hc
I bought an Ibanez AF75 that had a bridge buzz/rattle in-store. They tightened the intonation screws and it fixed it, and I loved the guitar so I bought it.
Then I got home and after another hour or two the buzz/rattle came back. I tightened the screws, it went away… Then it came back again.
Eventually, after reading online that this was a common problem, I bought the following drop-in replacement bridge:
https://reverb.com/item/12616712-new-gotoh-ge103b-nashville-tune-o-matic-bridge-w-standard-posts-gold
I got it in gold because my original hardware was gold.
Got it, replaced it, have had zero problems since. Also seems like the overall sound is just slightly better from some reason I can’t put my finger on.
This seems to be more simply all the data about the physical orientations and positions of neurons in a fly's nervous system.
I'd guess there is still humongous amounts of data missing that would be necessary for a simulation:
the exact biological and chemical makeup of each neuron
the biological and chemical environment in which those neurons exist
the exact physics that govern the biological and chemical reactions happening in and around the neurons (and the ability to accurately simulate those physics)
maybe most importantly, even if we have all those above (i.e. the ability to fully and accurately simulate biological systems as complex as individual cells), we may still missing the electro-chemical activation "state" of the neurons that allows the fly to operate as a cohesive whole. (as if we had all of the hardware of a computer, but none of the software)
Wow, what a trip to see this name at the top of HN. The author was a good friend of mine in high school, and one of my favorite people I've ever known. If you're reading this, Sam, I hope you're doing well.
Haha I had low expectations, but I like this a lot. :)
The only thing that stands out to me that pulls me out a bit is that the vocal track has a bit too much space on it - I can’t tell if it’s just the reverb you have on it, or if it’s maybe the space you recorded in. It feels just a little bit too distant. But that’s a really subtle thing. Overall love this track!
ohhh man.. I think lyrics might be the hardest thing to take criticism on. I get what you’re saying 100%, but also everything you’re saying was mostly an intentional choice for this song. I do personally get into abstract lyrics sometimes, as long as they are evocative of a feeling (not even necessarily of imagery), and the making the lyrics less clear was what it felt like the song called for here. there’s still a story going on in the background, my hope was just that you could feel what it is without being told directly.
that all having been said - I do agree that songs with more direct lyrics have a deeper impact on me, and I have written things like that. maybe I’ll try to post something more like that and see what you think. it’s just that sometimes I also like to make things that are “just pretty” if you know what I mean. and to me sometimes that means writing lyrics that intentionally don’t draw attention to themselves. that kind of sit in the background and let you just hear them more as sounds, and come up with your own story. and that can be done better or worse for sure - some vagueness just ends up being nonsense, but some vagueness (a lot of modern Radiohead for example) is still very evocative in a vague way.
I feel sort of stuck with this song because, while it might be possible to write a whole different set of lyrics that convey more, I can’t imagine re-writing it from scratch now. not even just for the work, but because these lyrics are what I hear now with the song, and maybe having heard them so many times they feel “right” now. I guess that is the curse of making music for yourself but trying to share with others - I have something here that is meaningful to me, but you’re saying it’s not meaningful to you…
I guess ultimately I can take your feedback as a reminder that more lyrically rich songs are very important to me too (sometimes more important that the vague ones), and as I continue to write more songs I can focus on telling a clearer story from the outset if that’s what I want. And I will try to remember that - I want to be able to write lyrics that make you want to take another listen, even if not with every single song.
Thank you for listening, and thank you for your feedback - it is very appreciated, and acknowledged. I’d love to hear some of your music some time too.
yes this - just a little bit of reverb to push the vocals back a bit in the mix, they feel just a bit too present and up-front right now. otherwise sounding good man.
Gotta second (or third?) the request for vocals. Such a juicy song, but it feels like a strong foundation that needs a building… A sexy body that needs a face.
wow thank you :) it’s an old guitar that I got fixed up and have been playing more recently. it means a lot to know that it’s appreciated
oh my god I just ran across this and I had to comment, I absolutely love it. you almost had me in tears, I was filled with such genuine joy listening to this.
when it finished I immediately restarted it to listen again.
please keep doing what you’re doing, you are amazing.
oh man, thank you so much - this is so much more depth than I expected from any feedback, and I hear you loud and clear.
all I’ve been playing is jazz for a while now, my head is way in the music theory clouds, and I think as I write this kind of stuff I’m making an effort to keep it simple, but it sounds like maybe I went too far in that direction..
I think I also might be imagining too much of what other instruments or players might add, I’m used to writing a melody and chords, and then arrangement is something that happens when you get a band together. I’m not used to being the whole arrangement and band all by myself, I definitely need to think about that more and not hear what’s in my head so much… create more variety just by myself.
I think I can hear some ideas of what you’re looking for with moving the melody around a bit more. I feel sort of limited by my vocal range right now - I don’t know that I could actually hit some of those higher notes, but I know that if there’s any point where you start feeling bored or too much repetition, then I definitely need to do something to get rid of that..
and thank you re: my voice.. that’s absolutely my biggest fear and the thing that I’m trying to work on the most. it’s a huge relief to hear you say the tone is good. it feels like everything else can be learned, but damn voice stuff is scary.
I appreciate all of this so much, all these are things I will keep in mind and work on. thank you for your feedback, you’ve made my day better. :)
Wow, I was not expecting to like this but you got me! Very cool, I love the subtle complexities. Veeery subtly reminds me of Umphrey’s McGee. Great job, man.
this is so gorgeous I love it! it reminds me of a sound I’ve started to go after in my more recent writing. just a beautiful vibe, so easy to listen to. and you have a great voice. definitely following, please keep making more!
wow thank you I’ve actually never gotten any feedback at all on South High Street and I really appreciate you saying that because I love it, and it’s associated with such awesome memories. it’s actually just recordings of an improvisational jam that some friends and I did one day many years ago. I kept the bits that seemed like they had the most potential. I wish we kept playing together but everyone went their separate ways. such is life.
thank you that means a lot to hear! hope to keep getting better
hey thank you so much. :) love your positivity!
oh man I’m super digging your stuff. love the instrumentation choices and arrangements. I love the eclecticism. this is right up my alley. you got yourself another follower.
Overall I make experimental music. Right now on the page I have mostly experimental electronic, but soon I’m going to do some indie/pop/singer-songwriter stuff.
Thanks for making this thread. :)
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1EQnqEy4b03PExUc7VTe0M
edit: Listened to your music, I really like it! You should have more followers!!
welp that’s enough feedback for me. appreciate it.
thank you very much!
wow this is seriously solid. are you doing the production yourself? great voice, well-paced. just solid pop overall.
thank you, that alone means so much :)
hey thank you :) I listened to some of your stuff and I dig it too! maybe not surprising since like you said we have a bit of similar sound. ‘Fear’ is nice and chill, I could imagine listening to that on a long drive at night.
and thanks for the follow on soundcloud :p I’m trying to move away from it as a platform but there’s still always gonna be stuff that shows up there and not on Spotify, etc.
thank you!! I’m always worried out production value so it’s nice to hear that it’s up to par. I make everything in Ableton, and as far as sounds it’s pretty much a grab bag of anything I have available to me. I use a lot of instruments from Kontakt and I have a friend who is deep into the sample game and shares some stuff that he finds with me.
Thank so much!! I’ve never heard of either of those artists but I’m going to check them out. I promise I will make more, it’s really awesome to hear that someone out there is into this kind of thing.
hi, it should be soon if it’s not yet. I uploaded through Distrokid and it takes different time to get into different stores.
RNN-Based Generation of Polyphonic Music and Jazz Improvisation
Yeah gypsy jazz is where a lot of my ideas come from. X-D
I think this cadence in particular is very satisfying because it’s full of half-step voice leading:
b5 of the A7 -> up to the 9 of the D
b9 of the A7 -> up to the 6 of the D
b7 of the A7 -> down to the 3 of the D
Aha, nice! Yes, in gypsy jazz in particular there’s a bit of a thing about using altered dominants in a way that’s not necessarily functional, but just to give some extra tension and flavor. When playing gypsy jazz a very common trick is playing a V7#5 sound to resolve to a I, just because it sounds cool and outside. It’s similar to playing a ivm6 -> I resolution - basically same thing. Django did this a lot.
In his case I think Stochelo is using it more like an A7b9b5, so –
Try this - play that chord he plays (a A7b9b5, if you will) and resolve it directly to the standard gypsy jazz voicing for a D69:
5 x 5 3 4 x -> 5 5 4 4 5 5
Sounds hip, no? ;)
That would be a seriously altered A7. It would be an A7b9#11. I can’t think of a context in which you would use those particular alterations.
To me that’s more of an Eb/A (that is, Ebmaj over a b5). That’s still weird by itself but try a progression like this:
Eb/Bb -> Eb/A -> Ab7 -> Eb
Notice the bass walkdown from the 5, to the b5, to the 4, then resolving to the I. To me that feels essentially like a simple reharmonization of:
Eb -> Eb7 -> Ab7 -> Eb
or in other words:
I -> I7 -> IV7 -> I
just in this case your I7 would have the alteration of a b5:
I -> I7b5 -> IV7 -> I
Tomorrow I’m going to play my first gig with a Tele through a Henriksen ‘the Bud’. I know it can handle the volume, and I know the tone is good enough since I’ve been rehearsing with it.
It really depends what you’re looking for. I’ll try to report back after the gig.
Just a heads up that your fingerboard app seems to be working incorrectly regarding displaying the names of sharps and flats on the fretboard diagram (in some cases).
For example, if I load the page and immediately click on an Eb on the piano, the fingerboard layout is correct, and the correct scale degrees are highlighted, but Eb are labeled as Db in the fretboard diagram. Similarly Bb are labelled as Abm etc. It seems like you just switched the sharp/flat symbol without also switching the note letter.
Otherwise awesome tool, this will be very useful for me!
Tonight at the Mercury Cafe there is arguably the best (biggest) dance in town for intermediate/advanced swing dancers. There is also a dance Sunday at the same location for more beginner dancers.
Is there software that you’re using that follows along with your playing with that red dot? Or did you add that in manually?
That particular song is ‘Take Five’ by Dave Brubeck.
Hey thank you so much for the effort to do this. :) This is awesome! Very much appreciated.
This is awesome!.. but given the title I was hoping you were going to explain what you’re doing here. Would you be willing to give some kind of explanation?
First finger (index) on the E of the D string. Second finger (middle) on the C of the A string and simultaneously also the G on the E string.
You’re jumping back and forth between bowing the bottom two and top two strings together, while using your remaining two fingers to move the top G note up to C (pinky), back down to A (ring), back to G (middle), back to C (pinky), to A .. etc
It is definitely not obvious what needs to be changed to do the “guitar tuning” the way I have done. I’m flabbergasted that it works at all. Honestly I broke the code more than anything else, I just broke it in a very particular way that produced the effect I wanted.
HOWEVER!!!
With that being said, the relevant changes are in a script in the ‘pushbase’ folder, which I believe is shared between the Push 1 and Push 2. So if you’d like, I can send you my modified file, and you can try with your Push 1. All you have to do is drop it in the folder, and Ableton automatically compiles it for you.
Shoot me a PM if you’re interested in trying.
Yes definitely! Although as mentioned to others, a lot of that is from my guitar knowledge. The degree to which I can improvise on guitar is essentially the degree to which I can on the Push, with some extra limitations due to the number of pads. But with the note layout the way I like it, it feels a lot like I cheated my way into being able to play keyboard, without having to actually learn to play keyboard. :p
Ah I misunderstood. To answer your question, the scale being shown in light pads is C major, but I’m using it mostly as guideposts, similar to the dots on a guitar fretboard. Or more accurately, the black and white keys on a piano. I orient myself relative to it, but it is not informing what I play at all. I am essentially disregarding the “key” entirely.
The voicings that I’m using here come directly from guitar, and because I am a guitar player this note layout (rows in 4ths) is very intuitive to me. I already know all the shapes, I’m just playing them with two hands now instead of one.
I imagine it would be much harder to go from piano to the Push.. But if I could play piano, I probably wouldn’t need to learn to play the Push. :p
The fact that the Push colors the root note, and shows sharps and flats with light and dark pads, helps immensely. If all the pads looked the same, this would be much harder. But it’s easy to keep track of where I am relative to the root notes, and sharps and flats are guideposts in between. I imagine it’s similar to the way a piano player thinks.
This is set in chromatic mode, with C as the root note, and rows tuned in 4ths – for the most part –
The extra trick is that I wanted the layout to mimic the guitar (tuned in 4ths, but with a major 3rd gap between a certain row). So I went in and decompiled the python MIDI remote scripts, changed some code, and now the result is that the middle 6 “rows” are tuned essentially like a guitar! Since I know guitar well, I basically get to cheat a bit.
The odd drawback is that my code change is a hack, and there are three pads in the upper left that don’t light up ever, but it’s a small price to pay for the tuning that I wanted.
As far as jazz characteristics, I’m not sure what to tell you. Jazz, like any musical genre, is just a language and culture. To play jazz, you transcribe and learn existing jazz. The same way you’d learn french or spanish. You learn the chord progressions, and you learn the phrases, then you’re playing jazz. It doesn’t matter what instrument you’re playing on – guitar, piano, Push – it’s about learning the phrases.. just like blues is learning blues phrases, or bluegrass is learning bluegrass phrases, metal is learning metal phrases, etc…
Maybe an important thing to note is that if you’re really trying to play jazz, then sticking to a single key and scale is definitely not going to work. You’re going to need all 12 notes, all the time. Chromaticism is everywhere in jazz, as is modulation, and playing chords that don’t fit in a single scale. I don’t know a single jazz song where all of the notes fit in a single scale. Jazz is about following chord tones, about following harmony with melody, not playing in scales.
Here I’m not thinking about any particular characteristics of jazz, this is a transcription of a Django Reinhardt song, essentially note-for-note. I’m just playing the notes he played.
Sorry, I’m not sure if that helps. If you have more questions you can definitely ask, but jazz is just jazz. It is intimidating, regardless of the instrument you use, but all you can do is just find some jazz you like, and jump in and start trying to learn it. I’ve only been playing jazz for 3-4 years, and only specifically gypsy jazz. It’s intimidating, but if you start simple, it might be easier than you think.
I do not play piano, I wish I could! I play guitar in a gypsy jazz group, so with the tuning on the Push set up right, it translates pretty easily. I know the shapes already, I’m just playing them from the other side of the fretboard, so to speak.
How did you get the bass sound? It really punches, and actually almost sounds more like a standup bass to me than an electric, which is even more confusing.
Super awesome video though man, very well done all around.
I think that you’re thinking of “sounding good” as being mostly relative to a fixed, un-changeing harmonic context. In this case the “key”. You’re thinking that because the piece mostly centers around the “key” of E major, that things will sound better the more that they are “in the key” of E major.
What you are hearing in this piece is that “sounding good” is more about the relationship of one chord to the next than to a fixed, un-moving “key center”. Songs can change key in the middle of them, or have multiple simultaneous implied key centers, and still sound good. “Keys” and “key signatures” are good to know in order to talk about music, but like someone else said they are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
If you create a nice melody connecting them, then you could make almost any two chords sound good one after the other.
In this case, this guitarist takes you on a journey through many different implied keys, but does it smoothly, and always ends up bringing you back to E major for a sense of resolution.
If I were to give you one thing to investigate to learn more about why this sounds good, I would say investigate “voice leading”. With proper voice leading, almost any chord progression can sound good, or at least coherent.
The dude with the clarinet pulled a gun on a friend of mine.
It’s a soprano sax, dude is my friend, I can’t speak for the others but he is one of the best guys I know. There is literally zero percent chance that this happened.
Hall and Oates :p
There’s no need to curse, and no one said anything about popularity. This is not a self-promotion, nor is it a request for feedback. He is not an established artist, and it is the exact opposite of low effort content. That covers all the rules I see posted anywhere for this subreddit.
It is not against the letter of the rules. If your opinion is that it’s against the spirit of the rules, then as an equally valid member of this community my opinion is that it isn’t. But that’s not up to you or me, it’s up to the mods, so use the report button.
If your problem is that you think something about this is fake, I don’t know what to tell you. I guess you can include that in your report to the mods.
To be honest I had a similar thought and hesitated to post, but he’s made plenty of things that I don’t care about enough to promote (no offense crumario), and I legitimately enjoy this thing in particular and want to make sure he keeps making it.
I can see it’s towing a line, but my vested interest is that I enjoy the content, not that he’s my friend. Maybe just better if I had not mentioned my relationship to him.
ooookay I get it now -_-
That’s fair. I think I like the bicycle song better, but the video in this one is more interesting to me - it’s easier to see where the samples came from. The flapping lid kills me. X-D
what do you mean?
Here is an easy way of remember this descriptively, rather than visually:
There are three flavors of major-sounding modes / scales, each distinguished by a specific note that gives its character:
Ionian (major scale): Sound of a natural 4 (unaltered)
Lydian: Sounds of a sharp 4 (#4)
Mixolydian: Sound of a flat 7 (b7)
The only notes that are common to all three of them (the ones that don’t give the flavor of the scale) are the 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 - we call that set of notes the pentatonic scale. It’s the sound of “major-ness” in general, without any particular flavor.
There are three flavors of minor-sounding modes / scales, again distinguished by specific notes:
Aeolian (natural minor): Sounds of a flat 6 (b6 - sounds classical)
Dorian: Sound of a natural 6 (sounds modern)
Phrygian: Sound of flat 2 (b2 - sounds exotic)
The only notes that are common to all three of them are the 1, b3, 4, 5, and b7 - we call that set of notes the minor pentatonic scale. It’s the sound of “minor-ness” in general, without any particular flavor.
There is one scale / mode that is “diminished” sounding. It is distinguished from all the other modes by having a note that none of the others do, minor or major.
Locrian: Sound of the flat 5, (b5 - the tritone, sounds dissonant)
Note that the b5 is different than the #4, even though they are the same pitch, because of how the note is functioning (as a 4 or as a 5).
The harmonic and melodic minor scales are not separate flavors, so much as they are like switching to a different numerical system. They each have their own set of 7 different modes, with different sounds/flavors to them and different naming systems.
If you just want to noodle around in a scale and have it fit with different styles, this should get you pretty far:
Minor Pentatonic: Rock, Blues
Major Pentatonic: Country, Bluegrass, happier-sounding Blues
Major (Ionian) Scale: General happy music, simple jazz, nursery rhyme style stuff, happy sounding classical music style stuff
Dorian Scale: Darker sounding modern music, jazz/rock fusion, post-rock, modern rock, simpler metal
Minor (Aeolian) Scale: Darker sounding classical music style stuff, classical-sounding metal
Mixolydian Scale: Jam band music
Phrygian Scale: Very dark, exotic, middle-eastern/arabian sound, exotic-sounding metal
Here’s a basic outline:
Step 1: Buy a gypsy jazz guitar. At this stage it’s probably not really important which one you buy, just that it’s set up well enough to play without fret buzz. Typical beginner guitars are the Saga Gitane line, or the Cigano line. (I started with a Cigano GJ-10, and recommend it highly)
Step 2: Change your right hand picking technique. The go-to book for this is Gypsy Picking by Michael Horowitz. It is not comprehensive but it will get you 90% of the way there. There will likely be a change in both your picking patterns, and in your hand position. Watch videos and take videos of yourself to make sure your right hand looks like the pro players. This step took me way longer than it should have because I was being stubborn, and it takes more effort than I expected to really make the change.
Step 3: Learn the common chord shapes. There are lots of resources for this. I would recommend Getting Into Gypsy Jazz Guitar by Stephane Wrembel, or maybe some of the introductory courses on Denis Chang’s DC Music School.
Step 3.5 (optional): Spend some time really learning how to play la pompe (the rhythmic technique). I say optional here because this one I think will require an actual teacher sitting down with you and correcting your mistakes. It’s harder than it seems to really get it right. On the other hand, if you’re just starting out it’s sort of forgivable if you’re close but not all the way there.
Step 4: Learn the chords and melodies for some standard tunes. Hopefully no explanation needed here.
Step 5: Learn solos from famous players. Best if you transcribe them by ear yourself, but there are many resources that will just give you the tabs and personally I think that is still very effective. Learning some Django solos is basically obligatory, but there are now many other great players with different styles that you can listen to and choose your favorites. A couple of my favorites: Stochelo Rosenberg, Adrien Moignard, Olli Soikkeli, Stephane Wrembel, Biréli Lagrène. And many others.
You can pick up lots of licks and shapes and other hints from a variety of sources, but seriously 99% of learning how to improvise solos is done by transcribing and learning existing solos.
Some good general sources for lessons and discussion are: Djangobooks forum, DC Music School, Rosenberg Academy, and Christiaan van Hemert’s video lessons.
Here’s a huge oversimplification that I think will get you pretty far without getting too technical:
If you’re playing in a generally major key, or “major” sounding section of a song, then when you play a 7 chord (like G7, or C7) a safe bet is to play around with the chord tones (root, 3, 5, b7) plus other notes from the major scale (2, 4, and 6 otherwise known as 9, 11 and 13).
Any other notes you play against that chord (b9, #5, #4, maj7, b3, etc) will produce sounds of tension, dissonance, darkness, etc. You can think of these as “altered 7” or “altered dominant” sounds. You can sort of pick and choose from all the alterations at will for different effect. They sound appropriate in places that should sound “minor” or dark or exotic.
For example in almost all “ii V i” progressions in a minor key, the V will be an altered dominant. For an example with the G7 specifically, try playing an altered sound over the G7 in the beginning section of Tears by Django Reinhardt.
It is both dense and sometimes difficult.
The story itself was not enough to keep me reading, in part because it jumps around a lot, especially in the beginning.
But the writing itself enthralled me – the quality and the depth of it. To me the book is clearly the master-work of a master. The quality of the writing alone kept me glued to the page for hours at a time (and it took many, many hours).
That said, although the story was not so engaging in the beginning, it did get considerably more interesting as it went on, it did stop jumping around so much, and in the end was satisfying and felt complete.
In fact, in full retrospect, it is one of the best stories I have ever read - because it resonated with me in a very personal way - but it’s not one that I would recommend to everyone, because it is deep and complex. And difficult.
I picked it up expecting and hoping for something challenging, but not as challenging as say, Infinite Jest. What I got was exactly was I was expecting challenge-wise, but the reward from making it through was actually many times greater than I had expected.
If you don’t mind a few more questions:
Open in Action: Music, Computing and Open Data
If the chord progression implies a very strong, specific, and complex harmonic movement, sometimes there’s nothing to do but just play the changes.
If there is a strong and stable implied key, something like Rhythm Changes for example, then just focusing on the implied key can work well.
Sometimes even if there’s not one single implied key for an entire section, you might still be able to simplify and group chords together into subsections with similar tonality. You might end up with 2 or 3 different tonal chunks with a number of changes inside each.
Another thing you might try is re-harmonizing, or super-imposing your own chord changes that are similar to the ones you’re playing over, but maybe that you’re more familiar with. If there’s a section of one chord.. going into some other chord… resolving to a tonic.. then it’ll probably sound find to play it as if it were a ii V I (or whatever) even if it’s not actually a ii V I.
/u/atomtwist – I’m curious what engine you’re building this in. This looks amazing for the work of a single dev - especially the menu interactions!
You sound like you’re just running scales a lot of the time.
I’m going to suggest a complete change in approach that I think might help get you where you want to go quicker.
Instead of thinking “Chord -> Scale”, think “Chord -> Arpeggio”.
There are lots of different scales and modes you could play over an F7 that would sound fine and good. Super locrian, mixolydian, bebop dominant, whatever.. Different scales will sound better or worse in different situations.
But the F7 arpeggio will ALWAYS sound good over an F7 chord.
Use that to your advantage.
If you can make a decent solo using ONLY arpeggios, then in between the arpeggios you can basically just do whatever you want, whatever you hear in your head, and if it ever gets mucked up you just land right back in those arpeggios.
Suddenly everything is more free, more forgiving. Jazz improvisation is very free and forgiving.
I think a lot of guys, especially swing guys, couldn’t tell you exactly what scale they’re playing, even if it is a scale. They’re not thinking “F super locrian”, they just see the chord tones, and have different ways of connecting them up.
They’re playing scales but not thinking in scales.
Melody follows chord tones, everything else is just decoration…
Learn the arpeggios, not the scales. Improvise with arpeggios, not scales.
But then the trick is this - just running up and down arpeggios sounds waaaaay more boring than just running up and down scales.
So how do you make just arpeggios sound interesting?
That’s the trick. I can’t tell you how, but I can tell you this - play around until you can do that and I promise it will be more immediately rewarding than trying to learn the thousands of possible scale combinations that go over which set of chord in which context.
Just wanted to say I really enjoy your articulation - very tasteful. The melody definitely has parts that remind me of other melodies, that you are almost quoting, but I don’t know enough to quite place them. Very good stuff, hope to see more.
Would you be willing to point me in the direction of the research? I’m just interested for my own sake, though I lack much background in DSP, it’s something I’m trying to learn more about, and this particular problem has always fascinated me.
What I’ve heard (and am about to find out) is that Master’s programs in CS don’t do much more than undergraduate degrees. Maybe if you’re lucky you do a little more research, you write a thesis, and then you’re in the exact same position you were a year or two ago.
What I’m thinking is.. Just start doing stuff on your own. Figure out things you want to make and try to make them. Join some open-source projects, start some open-source projects, build a portfolio of things that you made and code you’ve written that potential employers can actually look at. At this point I’m just regurgitating advice that I’ve heard too many times, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good advice.
You really need to do this. Here was my thought process…
I’m vaguely interested in this, so I’m going to go to the site to check it out. –> Hmm, okay 50 dollars, what was I here for again? –> Oh, iPhone app template, cool. Let’s see, $50 is a lot, I wonder what I get. –> That picture can’t possible be what I get, so I want to know what I get. –> This is too hard to figure out, I’m gonna look for an open-source version. –> …
Not that I’m gonna be your typical customer, but maybe I could have been. YMMV.
[Edit] To be fair, I spent a little more time on your site and I like what I see, but that reaction should happen on the front page.