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thinking about notes

playing them on the guitar

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Alien is Edward and Predator is Jacob. We are Bella 🐀

Explaining how the timeless clash between the two sides remains among the most elemental forms of storytelling worldwide, a study published Tuesday by researchers at Oxford University has concluded that virtually all modern narratives are re-expressions of the classic Alien Vs. Predator conflict. “The Epic Of Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, The Old Man And The Sea—each is simply a different culture’s exploration of the ageless, universally relatable struggle between Alien and Predator,” said study co-author Dr. Gavin Horsley, who noted he has yet to encounter a civilization whose most prized written works and oral traditions did not derive from the prototypical confrontation between the savage Xenomorphs and their technologically advanced, extraterrestrial humanoid adversaries.

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Growing up in New Hampshire meant that driver's ed had a compulsory unit on the dangers of hitting a moose.

It was described in detail how hitting a moose is worse than hitting a deer, because when you hit a deer your car slams into its body, but when you hit a moose you only sweep its legs, causing it's immense body to fall on your hood and windshield.

And then. It was emphasized. And then. Special moose ticks that are much larger and more ferocious than regular ticks will swarm from the moose's body, through the broken windshield and onto you.

Anyways, I hope wherever you're from they also had some sort of bat shit module for whatever special threat lurks on your roads.

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Explaining how the timeless clash between the two sides remains among the most elemental forms of storytelling worldwide, a study published Tuesday by researchers at Oxford University has concluded that virtually all modern narratives are re-expressions of the classic Alien Vs. Predator conflict. “The Epic Of Gilgamesh, Paradise Lost, The Old Man And The Sea—each is simply a different culture’s exploration of the ageless, universally relatable struggle between Alien and Predator,” said study co-author Dr. Gavin Horsley, who noted he has yet to encounter a civilization whose most prized written works and oral traditions did not derive from the prototypical confrontation between the savage Xenomorphs and their technologically advanced, extraterrestrial humanoid adversaries.

Full Story

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A few thoughts on why I've chosen to focus on swing instead of bebop in my study of jazz guitar. I argue that as a formal study of jazz vocabulary, it is more reasonable to learn swing than bebop. This goes against the hegemony of jazz academia, which has students learn bebop primarily. This is not to say that bebop is not worth playing, but rather as student it's not good to learn from.

The idea that "there are no wrong notes in jazz" comes from bebop language with things like the altered scale, the symetric diminished scale and chromatic enclosures to embellish target notes and chord tones. This is all well and good, but playing "outside" doesn't mean much if you can't play "inside". In swing, there very much are wrong notes. Nevertheless, artists of the swing era played with rich language and creativity that was still firmly within the given harmonic changes. Feeling like you need to break out of this too soon does more harm than good. Better to learn swing.

A classic mantra in jazz practice is "learn tunes and transcribe solos". To be fair, bebop is a great choice for transcribing solos. But bebop is not good for learning tunes. A common criticism of contemporary jazz is that is strays too far from the original melody and feel, and this drift started with bebop. On the other hand, swing era recordings often still have the vocals and lyrics for many standards; they hadn't been abstracted into oblivion yet. You don't have to learn Willow Weep for Me in all 12 keys. Just learn it like another pop tune, hum it, sing it, have some favorite lyrics. Better to hear a tune like any other song, not just some N-dimensional set of changes with tensions. Better to learn swing.

Swing is also a clear winner when it comes to playing rhythm guitar. Bebop was explored by players like Charlie Christian, who used the electric guitar more like a horn. As a result of bebop and the new electric guitar, the style of comping became more esoteric and feel based. On the contrary, the role of guitar in swing is clear - keep time. There's no reason to explore Martino's rhythm work over Oleo if you can't even swing it to Stomping At the Savoy like Reuss. As a student, the approach to swing is just so much more defined and learnable.

Another danger of bebop is feeling like you somehow need to be good at everything. Bebop pushed music to new limits, but you don't have to do that if you're just learning. Swing is a narrow style with predictable chord changes and melodies. And if you're good at swing ... no one will dare say you don't play jazz! Swing is jazz!

Swing guitar is also a full, proper instrument. The acoustic archtops of the time (no pickup!) were meant for solo playing and vocal accompaniment. Charlie Christian's exploration into bebop with the electric was certainly groundbreaking, but play one of his solos for a friend's and they'll just be like, okay? But start swinging the rhythm changes, or play a Dick McDonough style solo, and people can immediately grasp the entirety of the musical moment. It's really important to make your guitar practice not just a part of music, but capable of churning out the entire soul of the genre. You'll get there eventually with bebop, but with swing it comes quick. Students should start with swing.

Last thing, it's important to acknowledge that bebop as a genre is fundamentally avant garde. It's fast and often doesn't sound pretty, and that's the whole point. But it's okay to just want to play pretty music at regular tempos. Swing was the pop of the 20s and 30s. Swing is mostly good jams you can get up and dance to. People talk about how rhythm is the most important part of jazz, but have you ever wanted to dance to giant steps? No way. Better to learn swing!

All that being said, I love bebop and I've listened to it with pleasure for most of my life. I just think that swing is overlooked, and is way better to learn than bebop.

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what if you went to a little knick knack store and they had like. a little hole in the ground and there was a sign that was like “one of the deepest holes in the world??? drop a coin in… if you dare ;)” so you decide. okay so you get a penny and drop it in there and you never hear it hit a bottom and irts really dark in there. so you assume okay i guess it is kinda deep. and walk away. but the secret is that the hole isnt that deep… you didnt hear it hit a hard bottom because theres a guy in there at the bottom who catches the coins. with his mouth. he eats the coins. what would u do

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where were they

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this really says a lot about society

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How come all Italian cafes have this shit lining their shelves

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throwback to that time Terraform changed its pricing plan and I asked my colleague to help estimate our new costs and instead of, oh I don't know, looking up the new pricing plan on the hashicorp website, he asked the AI chatbot on MS Bing. Still haven't recovered from it.

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my hot take is that LLMs being able to generate code doesn't matter all that much because writing code was never the hard part anyways. This might be surprising to people who don't write code, but after a few years working professionally (working in different frameworks, languages, versions etc) writing code is just the execution. It's why editors like vim exist - to make the typing part a little easier. But vim didn't change the game, and LLMs won't either. The real hard part is choosing what code to write at all. The fundamental threat against all code bases is poor communication between people about what they are even trying to accomplish in the first place.

my other anecdotal take is that, as a platform engineer, tools like chatgpt have seldom helped resolve my issues because, low and behold, there is very little information on the internet about the type of problems I encounter.

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this is the distro ever

ubunu

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smoke weed, turn off the lights, turn on Dienda by Kenny Kirkland

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I'm saving double reed wind instruments for my golden years. Oh it's gonna be greaaat

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slowly, pleasurably, I am visualizing the lower and higher stringsets on the guitar as left and right hands on the piano