Month: December 2012

A Better Way to Practice

~ wilktone ~ Leave a comment

From an article called A Better Way to Practice.

While it may be true that there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going, there certainly are ways of needlessly prolonging the journey. We often waste lots of time because nobody ever taught us the most effective and efficient way to practice. Whether it’s learning how to code, improving your writing skills, or playing a musical instrument, practicing the right way can mean the difference between good and great.

Author Noa Kageyama makes some very good points that are worth repeating. First, he notes that quality of practice tends to be more important that the quantity of practice. In support of this advice, he quotes violinist Leopold Auer who reportedly said, “Practice with your fingers and you need all day. Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours.”

His article discusses the drawbacks to mindless practice and contrasts it with deliberate practice. He also offers some great advice for maximizing your results in practice. Five suggestions he gives are:

1. Focus is everything

2. Timing is everything, too

3. Don’t trust your memory

4. Smarter, not harder

5. Stay on target with a problem-solving model

More details about good practice in Kageyama’s article.

Hard Days Night Chord Solved

~ wilktone ~ 2 Comments

The opening chord from the Beatles’ tune A Hard Days Night has been infamously difficult to transcribe by fans wanting to recreate the sound. I have a book of complete Beatles transcriptions that lists this chord as a Gsus4/D. In 2008 a mathematician, Jason Brown, used a Fourier analysis to accurately transcribe the opening chord.

What he found was interesting: the frequencies he found didn’t match the instruments on the song. George played a 12-string Rickenbacker, John Lennon played his 6 string, Paul had his bass – none of them quite fit what he found. He then realized what was missing – the 5th Beatle. George Martin was also on the record, playing a piano in the opening chord, which accounted for the problematic frequencies.

What did he find the chord to be?

George Harrison was playing the following notes on his 12 string guitar: a2, a3, d3, d4, g3, g4, c4, and another c4; Paul McCartney played a d3 on his bass; producer George Martin was playing d3, f3, d5, g5, and e6 on the piano, while Lennon played a loud c5 on his six-string guitar.

For fun I took the pitches in this chord and used them to compose a melody and then wrote a short fugue using that melody as a subject (because composing fugues are what I do for fun). It’s in the style of Hindemith, not a baroque style fugue, so I had some fun with dissonance. Here’s a MIDI realization of it. Listen for the Beatles quote near the end.