Music and Lyrics by Adam Young,
Copyright 2019
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Category Archives: Music
Revision control and sheet music
Musescore is a wonderful tool. It has made a huge impact on my musical development over the past couple decades. Sheet music is the primary way I communicate and record musical ideas, and Musescore the tool and musecore.com have combined to make a process that works for me and my musical needs.
I have also spent a few years writing software, and the methods that we have learned to use in software development have evolved due to needs of scale and flexibility. I would like to apply some of those lessons to how I manage sheet music. But there are disconnects.
The biggest issue I have is that I want the same core song in multiple different but related formats. The second biggest issue is that I want to be able to make changes to a song, and to collaborate with other composers in making those changes.
Continue readingAnatomy of a Jam Performance
My Band, The Standard Deviants, had a rehearsal this weekend. As usual, I tried to record some of it. As so often happens, our best performance was our warm up tune. This time, we performed a tune called “The SMF Blues” by my good friend Paul Campagna.
Continue readingA Different Key Setup for Chords
For my birthday last year, my family got me an accordion. Yes, I am one of those people that collect musical instruments, not for their monetary value but because I enjoy trying them out. I spent some time trying to wrap my mind and my hands around the one button chord set up on the side. I know there are masters out there that have developed a set of techniques, but for those of use from other instruments, the arraignment of notes and chords in a cycle of fifth is challenging.
It got me thinking about how else you could arrange them. This might also be somewhat inspired by guitar and bass setups, but here is what I came up with:
All Twelve Keys
As Jazz students, we are often exhorted to take a lesson and practice it in all 12 Keys. How many ways can we take a pattern through all 12 keys? Lets do some math.
Continue readingSmirking Sigma
Design prototypes for a band logo
All images Copyright Adam Young.
Designed in Inkscape. Working title is “Smirking Sigma”
The font used is Beachman Script. by David Rakowski. It really seems to capture the classic feel of a fifties music venue.
Why is ABC Notation not ABC…?
When we read we begin with
A.B.C
When we sing we begin with Do Re Mi
–“Do, a Deer…” THe Sound of Music
Western music has coalesced around the major scale. Which is really a pity, because western music notation was built around the natural minor scale.
Continue readingSplitting the irealpro 1400
The irealpro player has become an indispensable tool for practicing a tune. Since I play saxophone, the fact that irealpro will give me a full rhythm section to play against makes working on a tune far more possible than it was for me in the past.
I recently got a new phone and went to reinstall the set of songs that I use. They come from a collection called the Jazz 1400. This snuck up slightly in number from the last time I imported, and it must have hit a threshold, because my phone refuses to import it.
Continue readingFixing Playback in Musecore on Fedora 35
Recently, the playback on Musescore became distorted. It was sped up, the notes were dissonant (no that is not my writing!) and they seemed to crackle and pop.
When both systems I have exhibited the same problem, I knew it was an upgrade issue, and not my hardware.
This phenomenon seems to have occurred a few times over the years, and I tried many of the recommended fixes. What finally worked was changing the output from PulseAudio to Jack.
Continue readingTriad Pairs
Or, as the Peter likes to call them “Double Mambo!” but I think he got that from someone else. Triad pairs are a technique for improvising that have recently gotten a lot of attention. I had not really focused on them in the past. Here’s my notes.
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