Classmates.com silliness

"Remember that Girl you wanted to ask out and never did?"

Well now she's old and fat.

Imagine! Arnold with a hankie!

OK, so I just watched the latest trailer for "Terminator Salvation".

There's something really special going on here. Apparently, the movie introduces the human-cyborg thing, but instead of the machines being slow-walking Austrian killing stormtroopers, they are captured humans who have been converted into killing machines.

"What are you?" John shouts. Marcus replies, "I don't know."

They have feelings and can act! That's a big surprise. I got all goose-bump-ified watching this trailer. Something about a really great intelligent action movie reaches into the heart of a man and touches him in a way no "Sex in the City"-loving woman will ever understand!
A summer movie that might not sucks!


My only problem with this trailer is the highly over-rated Bryce Dallas Howard. I love her dad, and I want so much to like her. But while her elegance, grace, sophistication always come through in a role, I can't ever get past that to see the character she is supposed to be playing. She really needs to loosen up and let her emotional boogers show. That's what makes actresses like Angelina Jolie a cut above. Bryce Dallas Howard is always being a sophisticated rich kid, even when she's supposed to be white trash.

New Multiplication Table Visualizer

I'm not sure what inspired me to create this little application. But I've been thinking about my grade school math lately.

As I'm 32 years old, it's been at least 20 years since I was drilled on my multiplication tables. And despite the fact that I went to an Ivy League college and have worked doing computer programming, I have yet to be put in a real-world situation where that would require me to multiply 7 times 13, much less 13 times 29, etc. But still it bothers me when I do try to figure out some math problem in my head that I can't do it. I know I'm a smart person, but mental math (which often requires you to put some part of the problem in your short term memory) is beyond me.

A few months ago I saw a book about doing math problems in your head. I was flipping through it and it got me excited about learning the techniques. I haven't pick up the book yet, but I have been ruminating on the idea of mental math.

Coupling that idea with my new found passion for Adobe Flash CS4, I decided to make a little application that allows you to actually see the math problems as you solve them, by using blocks. Doing programmatic graphics and animation has gotten a lot easier these days and a program like this would have been difficult to program even a few years ago (at least for a normal person, like myself).

Anyway, it took me a night to make it, and I decided to put it out there. I know most of you are here because you want to learn piano chords, but everybody could stand to brush up on their multiplication, right?

Multiplication Table Visualizer

President of Guinea-Bissau Assassinated!

World asks, "What's Guinea-Bissau"? Is that a country?

New Piano Chord Finder

In my quest to keep improving my piano chord finders, I've created a new one on my Patternpiano.com website that allows you to preview eight chords at a time without having to click a button. My last piano chord finder I found required too many button clicks. Let me know what you think!

New Piano Chord Finder

Nate

Gollum does Barry White

Microsoft Songsmith - Amazing!

20 basic rhythms

This is another fun rhythm video I did about two years ago. Enjoy:

Musical Rhythm Counting

This is a video I did a while back that I thought would be fun to put up here.

Flossing

OK, so I know this isn't piano-chord-related, but I sometimes have these brilliant ideas. My girlfriend was pestering me about flossing, and I realized something:

In a relationship, one person's floss is the other person's gain.

Answer to Question on Tritones

Question from Michael Bell:


Thanks for the site it's proving to be very helpful to me. I am trying to find out some information tritones I've been researching and they are called diminished 5th's or augmented 4th's. I have been reading and reading about them and I understand the basic theory behind them but I don't know how to form chords with these. I have seen some very interesting videos on youtube and they really change how your music sounds. I would appreciate if you could forward me some info on these chords in like the key of c or c#. Thanks God bless you.

Michael,

There are two common kinds of chords that use tritones, dominant chords and diminished chords. So if you take a look at any of the dominant or diminished chords on this site, you'll see tritones in action. Or if you look at any sheet music and you see a dominant chord or diminished chord, you'll see tritones in action.

In a dominant chord, the tritone is formed between the major third of the chord and the minor seventh. For example, in a C7 chord, the major third is E and the minor 7th is Bb. This interval is a flat fifth (i.e., a tritone).

A diminished chord has a tritone between the root of the chord and the flat fifth.

A dominant seventh chord is made up entirely of minor thirds, and two minor thirds make up a tritone.

So a Cdim7 chord has a tritone between the root and fifth (C to Gb), the minor third and diminished 7th (Eb and A) And the inversions of those two, the flat fifth to the root, and the diminished 7th to the minor third (A to Eb).

But all of this theory about tritones is not particularly helpful to playing well. It's more helpful to just start memorizing chord shapes on the piano. That's where my books and my piano chords site come in handy. Once you've memorized the shapes, and trained your ear, you don't need to think about where the tritones are, you'll just know the right sound at the right time - sort of like vocabulary and speech.

One interesting thing with tritones is that they are a tense sound that wants to resolve. If you play a G7 chord:

G, B, F

and then resolve it to a C chord:

G, C, E

you can hear how the tritone between B and F is a tension-filled sound and it wants to resolve to the C chord.

Cat Dances Against Guitar

Coolest thing I've seen on YouTube in a while

This is a really awesome stop motion video with tons of creativity, a beautiful girl and some good music. Enjoy!

Sight Reading Game - Vertical "Chord-Style"

Another Piano Sight-Reading Game, this one broken down into 22 categories relating to different areas of the Grand Staff:

1. Lines of the Treble Clef
2. Lines of the Bass Clef
3. Lines of both the Bass Clef and Treble
4. Spaces of the Treble Clef
5. Spaces of the Bass Clef
6. Spaces of both the Treble And Bass Clef
7. All Lines and Spaces of Both Clefs
8. The Lines Above the Treble Clef
9. The Lines Below the Treble Clef
10. The Lines Above the Bass Clef
11. The Lines Below the Bass Clef
12. The Spaces Above the Treble Clef
13. The Spaces Below the Treble Clef
14. The Spaces Above the Bass Clef
15. The Spaces Below the Bass Clef
16. The Lines and Spaces Above the Treble Clef
17. The Lines and Spaces Below the Treble Clef
18. The Lines and Spaces Above the Bass Clef
19. The Lines and Spaces Below the Bass Clef
20. All Lines in the Quiz
21. All Spaces in the Quiz
22. All Available Notes

New Sight Reading Game

Yet another sight-reading game.

This one allows for a more rapid-fire approach, for more advanced students. You simply type the note name of each note from top to bottom.
Here's the link:

Sight-Reading on the Grand Staff.

Or if you want to practice sight reading vertical notes (such as in a chord), you can do that here:
Notes in a Random Chord Sight Reading

Test Your Knowledge of Piano Notes

Test You Knowledge of Piano Notes with this simple Quiz:

If you would like to find out more about my piano tutorials, check out:
http://www.patternpiano.com/
http://www.list-of-chords.com/

New Piano Chords Quiz

I created a new flash-based piano chords quiz tool, so that you can test yourself on piano chords. These quizzes are a companion tool to "How to Speed Read Piano Chord Symbols" and "How to Play from a Fake Book Without Gettin' the Blues".

You can test yourself by chords with a certain root here:

• test your knowledge of C Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of Db Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of D Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of Eb Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of E Piano Chords



• test your knowledge of F Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of Gb Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of G Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of Ab Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of A Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of Bb Piano Chords


• test your knowledge of B Piano Chords

You can also test yourself on all 96 piano chords. There eight varieties of chords per root and twelve different roots, so that's 96 chords.

Sight Reading on the Piano - another flash tutorial

This flash tutorial focuses on the spaces of the staff in the treble and bass clef. The two mnemonic devices I use are "Fry All Canary Eggs" and "All Cows Eat Grass".

The Spaces of the Treble and Bass Clef

More Piano Sight Reading Help

Here's another Flash tutorial I created. This time, focusing on the lines of the treble clef, and the lines of the bass clef.

There isn't any feedback, this is just sort of a "move your mouse over and take a look" situation. I'll try to maybe turn it into an interactive game. :)

The Lines Of the Treble Clef and Bass Clef

New Sight Reading Tutorial

I created a flash tutorial game that focuses exclusively on the lines above the staff and below the staff. It also teaches some "mnemonic" devices for memorizing the lines above and below the staff.

The lines above the staff in the treble clef:
- All Cows Eat Grass

The lines above the staff in the bass clef:
- Crying Elephants Gulp Beer

The lines below the staff in the treble clef:
- Dog Farts Are Criminal

The lines below the staff in the bass clef:
- French Artists Crowd England

If you have enjoyed this tutorial, check out my list of piano chords website.