5/16/12 Vocals

warmups

a little Brick

worked on My Name Is Jonas for a while.  It’s almost too mellow for me to put good tone behind it.  I think it’ll help work on tone because I can’t just push the volume.

Worked on Stare at the Sun while playing guitar.  My jaw still feels fatigued when singing both verses.

5/14/12 Guitar

warmups

major and minor scales

chord change coordination work

worked a bit on pinch harmonics.  they’re getting better, but they’re still a ways off from being “usable”

Played Everything Evil with the record.  It wasn’t feeling quite on today.

Played My Name Is Jonas with the record.  With the finger picking I can play it at speed.

REAL Uses For Git

During a phone interview last week and the guy I talked to sent me some links to resources they used.  It’s always great to talk to people who like to be on the edge of technology and see what’s being used, so I’ve been reading through the stuff he sent.

The article on Git usage for team development was really good and I want to save it, so here it is: A Successful Git Branching Model.  Most of my git work has been on my own, so it’s nice to see a good model of how to use it with a team.

The other think he mentioned was SaSS ( http://sass-lang.com/ ), which is a meta language on top of CSS, which gives it variables and loops and stuff.  I still need to check it out more.

5/9/12 Guitar

warmups

major and minor scales

Worked on rhythm and clean chord changes.  PM down strokes on IV – III – VI – I progression, just to practice getting cleaner at longer chord jumps.

Worked on Everything Evil for a bit.

5/7/12 Vocals

warmups

read through the handout my old vocal teacher gave us.  Reminded me of some good things like training involuntary muscles and to just belt stuff out while practicing and not think so much.

Spent a bunch of time on on Stare at the Sun.  Worked with guitar and with the record.  Actually played/sang the whole song.  My jaw was very sore at the end, so I think I’m tensing up too much.  I could hear it in my voice too, it sounded constrained.

5/6/12 Guitar

played for 1 hour today

warmups

major and minor scales

worked on pinch harmonics again.  I still don’t quite have it.  I’m really trying not to get frustrated.  I plugged in Garageband today to get an amp tone, thinking that might help me hear the “squeelies” better.  It did a bit and it was fun to play with tones.  I should do that more often.

Worked on Welcome Home while trying to do the pinch harmonics.

Worked on Everything Evil for a while, playing with the record.  It’s sounding good.

Woodsheded the intro to My Name Is Jonas.  I think I can play it up to speed, finger picked.  Just need to clean it up a bit more.

Messed around with The Middle a bit.

5/4/12 Guitar

warmups

major and minor scales

worked on strumming consistency

worked on pinch harmonic stuff for a bit.  it’s coming along… but slowly.  It would be really nice to get this down.

Worked on Everything Evil for a while.

5/3/12 Vocals

warmups

some Brick

worked on Stare At The Sun for a while.  Mainly with the record, but a bit while playing guitar.  I’ve been trying to sing through the first 2 verses and choruses to build up stamina.

My feels kind of sore after singing so I’m worried that I’m pushing my voice too much.

Worked on Every Man Has A Molly for a bit.  Felt OK.  Not the best runs I’ve had on that song.

The Ternary Operator

I’ve come across code that uses the ternary operator many times, but it rarely dawns on me to use it.  It really is a nice clean way to do conditional assignment in a lot of languages and I should think to use it more.

The ternary operator replaces a larger if/else block with a single line of code.  For example in JavaScript I could do this:

var foo = bar ? 1 : 0;

This sets foo to 1 if bar is True and sets foo to 0 if bar is False.

In Python this might look more like this:

foo = 1 if bar else 0

Very Pythonic.

I know how this works, it’s a simple little thing that just makes parts of code a little better.  I should use it more.

5/1/12 Guitar

warmups

major and minor scales

Worked on pinch harmonic techniques for a while.  That is something I really should learn how to play.  It also made me think about correcting some pick hand form.  I tend to bend my thumb a lot when I play and I think I should be keeping my thumb straight.

Working on Everything Evil a bit.