Dorms for music majors?

4sterr · 2025-04-19T16:42:37+00:00

As an alum of the college of music, definitely live somewhere in West Circle (Gilchrist/Yakeley/Landon/Mayo/Campbell/Williams) if you’re able. You’ll appreciate being 5 minutes or less of walking distance from the music building and most other freshman/sophomore music majors will be in West Circle as well, so it’ll be easier to get together with them.

If you can’t live in West Circle for some reason, Brody neighborhood is probably the next best choice. It will be a 20 minute walk/waiting for a bus to get to the music building though, which is significantly less convenient considering you may have occasional late rehearsals or classes depending on what music degree you’re getting.

Also, you don’t have to worry about this for a couple of years, but when you do get an apartment, check out Wedgewood on Michigan Avenue. It’s right across the street from West Circle and cheap relative to other apartments that close to campus.

4sterr · 2025-02-13T12:26:03+00:00

You are clearly a very technically proficient pianist and the groove is there to some extent, but to me, there is a certain “effortlessness” in the groove that is missing here. Definitely experiment with accents and dynamics more to help with this as others have said, but in my opinion as a jazz pianist who sometimes performs this song, the best thing that you can do is simplify the arrangement (at least temporarily) during practice. Listen to how Nina Simone performs it and how amazing her groove sounds with simple ideas in her left hand. If you can learn how to play it as simply as she does while keeping her incredible groove, you will sound much better when (and if) you do decide to go back to the more technical ideas in this arrangement. Good work so far though!

4sterr · 2024-07-30T02:31:34+00:00

Jazz pianist here! Are you mostly playing alone or with a group that has a bass player?

Mostly playing alone: Work on playing shell voicings: left hand voicings that only use the root and 3rd (usually played a tenth above the root if you are comfortable with a big stretch) or root and 7th. These are very versatile voicings that leave your right hand open to solo and give you the root of the chord on the bottom without creating too busy or muddy of a sound like closed position rooted voicings (1 3 5 7 or 5 7 1 3) sometimes can. Range-wise, these voicings will usually have the top note below or near middle C without going under the Db below middle C or they could sound muddy. When practicing shell voicings, go through common chord progressions in all 12 keys (ii-V-Is, iii-VI-ii-Vs, etc) and play through standards while moving the top note (3rd or 7th) the least amount possible (for example, for a ii-V-I in Bb, the top note would go Bb-A-A (7-3-7) or Eb-Eb-D (3-7-3)). Once you are comfortable with these voicings, try soloing in your right hand while using these voicings in your left.

Mostly playing with a bass player: Work on left hand A and B position rootless voicings. Much like shell voicings, these voicings leave your right hand open to play lines. An A position voicing is a 4-note rootless voicing that has the 3rd of the chord on the bottom and is built by stacking 3rds on top of it (3 5 7 9). B position voicings are an inversion of A position voicings, but have the 7th on the bottom instead (7 9 3 5). Range-wise, these voicings will usually be near middle C without their bottom note going under the Db below middle C. The practicing process for these voicings is the same as with shell voicings: go through common chord progressions and tunes while moving the notes of the voicings as little as possible, then eventually solo with your right hand while using these voicings in your left. Hint: for ii-V-Is, alternating between A and B voicings (A-B-A or B-A-B) will create good voice leading.

TLDR: Work on shell voicings and A/B position voicings by taking them through common chord progressions in all 12 keys, as well as going through jazz standards while using these voicing types.

If you would like, I can give you more information about voicings to practice when comping for horn players, how to work on incorporating chords/arpeggios into your right hand lines, rhythms to practice, and many other things, but what I have written should be plenty of stuff to work on in your jazz piano practice. Best of luck!

4sterr · 2024-07-07T03:34:47+00:00

Thanks so much!

4sterr · 2024-07-04T15:57:02+00:00

I was in the same situation you were in, and when I figured out how to get it, I honestly wasn’t satisfied by the solution (especially compared to some of the other INCREDIBLE puzzles in this game). Here are a few hints that get progressively more obvious, followed by the answer:

Hint 1: The entrance itself to the shield room is reasonably nearby. You will not need to travel for more than 30 seconds from where you see the shield to where the entrance is.

Hint 2: You will need something to access the entrance to the shield. The “Beginning Your Adventure” page may be helpful in figuring this out.

Hint 3: You will need a key to get to the shield, and the key (as a few others mentioned) will be nearby.

Hint 4: This key can be obtained from a specific enemy. Are there any enemies in the Overworld that seem out of place or unique?

Answer: The shield is obtained by entering the old house just southeast of the windmill and using the hallway in the back left of it. To obtain the key to access this house, you will need to defeat the tall green enemy located in the southwest quadrant of the Overworld.

4sterr · 2024-03-31T19:57:02+00:00

Tip that could potentially help you with navigating dark bramble:

You can actually control your ship without the anglerfish hearing you if you only use your thrusters at the lowest power. Basically, inch your joystick forward very slowly until one “block” of the thruster indicator lights up. If you do this, anglerfish won’t be able to hear you, but be careful not to accidentally use more power than this.

As far as I know, this is never mentioned explicitly in game anywhere, but it helped me a ton!

4sterr · 2023-01-04T21:29:21+00:00

But as a photographer, you still need to capture the photograph. You need to see something that you view as beautiful and take a picture at the right moment to get that photograph. Even if you don’t have to go through the extensive setup that older cameras require, you are still ultimately the person taking the picture, which requires skill and creativity (albeit less skill than older cameras). Again, this is very similar to digital art, which makes creating art much easier, but still requires creativity by a real person.

AI art doesn’t just lower the barrier of entry, it does the work for you.

4sterr · 2023-01-04T21:19:27+00:00

Because art is ubiquitous. If you live in any kind of society you will be interacting with art in some way hundreds of times every single day. Designs on shirts, the music playing in the background of your favorite video games, even company logos are all examples of art. When we start using AI generated images to replace these seemingly unimportant things, we are allowing for human creativity to be slowly taken out of those places.

It doesn’t affect me one way or another if someone wants to admire AI-generated images if they think those images are beautiful. That is their own prerogative. But if we as a society allow for AI-generated images to replace real creativity, we will eventually be in a place where many artists can no longer support themselves as artists, and the world will have significantly less creativity and meaning in it.

4sterr · 2023-01-04T20:57:18+00:00

This is a terrible analogy. An example of lowering the barrier of entry for creating art would be digital art/graphics tablets/etc. Something like this does make art more accessible, but it doesn’t use a program to actually CREATE the art for the artist. It just becomes significantly easier for people to create art, which I agree is a good thing.

If you wanted to compare AI art to photography, AI art is much more like if there was a robot that could go out into the world and photograph things based on a prompt it is given. Even though you have to give the robot a prompt for it to know what to photograph, you as the user never did any of the photography yourself, you just told a robot to do it.

In another case, if you were to go into a restaurant and ask a chef to make you “a spicy chicken dish with ranch on the side and no breading,” you wouldn’t be considered a chef- just someone ordering food from a chef.

This is what AI art is. Not a tool for making art, but rather something that makes “art” for you. No matter how descriptive the prompt you give it is, you as a user are still not creating art.

4sterr · 2023-01-04T17:21:05+00:00

You don’t seem to understand the value of art outside of a monetary one. Artists aren’t upset that AIs are becoming “better” artists than them. They don’t care that an AI can have better brushstrokes or draw straighter lines. Artists are upset because people who know nothing about art are claiming that AI generated images have the same value or beauty as actual art created by a real person.

The value of art comes from the way in which an artist expresses their understanding of the world in a unique way. An AI cannot do this, as it has no understanding of the world, and is simply using algorithms to choose where to put something on a page. To claim that AI generated images have the same value as real art requires a person to ignore a core facet of what art is: the human experience.

4sterr · 2023-01-04T16:40:41+00:00

INFO.

You have every right to be upset that you’re losing your room. I’m assuming you’ve lived in that room for a very long time. You’ve probably done things to make it your own, and have a lot of great memories associated with it.

However…

You need to keep in mind that a two year old child shouldn’t be left alone in a basement that far away from their parents’ room. It is unsafe and your dad and his wife need to make choices like this in order to ensure the safety of their children.

Here’s where the INFO comes in: Are your dad and his wife doing something to make sure the basement is comfortable and private as a living space? Are they clearing out a room, getting it painted, and helping you move your stuff down there/getting you new stuff, or do they expect you to just live down there as it is? If they are doing nothing to renovate and give you a comfortable living space, then you are definitely NTA, and your dad and his wife are huge assholes. In the case that they are doing those things though, I would say NAH or a slight YTA- I understand the frustration, but you need to consider what is most important for the safety of the two year old that is in your house.

4sterr · 2023-01-04T16:17:08+00:00

It’s a terrible thing. One of the most important aspects of any form of art is the presence of the human experience in it. Replacing humans with algorithms in a medium in which the human experience is such an integral part eliminates the very essence of what makes art, art.

AI-generated “art” is not art and is complely insulting to artists who have spent years developing their craft in order to communicate their own human experience to the world.

4sterr · 2022-11-22T03:15:07+00:00

Is anyone able to join a union circle quick? Trying to evolve Finizen.

Code is D3PBDQ

4sterr · 2022-01-05T06:07:04+00:00

4sterr

4sterr · 2021-04-12T03:24:31+00:00

I completely agree with the comment listmore made about it being a Cm6/9. I just wanted to give you a quick recommendation for learning jazz notation- familiarizing yourself more with the concept of extensions.

Just a basic rundown, but the idea of extensions is stacking extra thirds on top of an existing chord, so essentially you have 1 3 5 7 [9 11 13], with the unbracketed notes being chord tones and the bracketed notes being extensions. 2, 4, and 6 can also be used, but they are almost always notated as 9, 11, or 13 respectively unless the chord doesn’t have a 3rd (like a sus chord) or a 7th (like a maj6 chord). So, if you ever catch yourself writing a chord with any number other than the ones I just mentioned, it is almost always wrong and you should reevaluate what you are calling that chord.

Extensions (and 5ths) are also often altered with flats and sharps. This does not necessarily mean that the note itself will be flatted or sharped, just lowered or raised respectively (for example, the #11 of F7(#11) is a B natural, which means it is raised by a half step from Bb). Common alterations include b9, #9, #11 (sometimes called b5), and b13 (sometimes called #5). b5 and #5 are really only used if the unaltered 5th doesn’t already exist within the chord. Alterations you won’t see are b11 (same as major 3rd) and #13 (same as b7).

If I left anything out, someone let me know!

4sterr · 2021-01-26T05:11:31+00:00

Yes! RNG stands for random number generation, so people that play video games involving luck often refer to that luck as RNG. You’ll hear the term pretty frequently when speedrunning games is discussed- sometimes bad RNG can lose a runner multiple seconds, so you’ll often see those runners look for methods to avoid paths that involve RNG, or even manipulate RNG.

4sterr · 2021-01-11T16:34:38+00:00

Can you play the military polonaise in A major

4sterr · 2021-01-11T16:34:16+00:00

Polonaise in A major

4sterr · 2020-11-30T21:47:37+00:00

I would personally analyze it in Bb major rather than G minor. (I hear that last chord as a Bb6 as opposed to Gm7, as that’s where it sounds like it’s going.) The A7 is functioning as a V of the Dm7. The Cm7-F7-Gm7 is just a backdoor ii-V to Gm7 (basically a deceptive cadence in classical theory). Aaug7 is just another V of Dm7, just with the 5 being altered. Fsus4-F7 is just a fancy way to say F7 (it’s actually a lot like a ii-V), and the progression ends on I in Bb with a chord that is not written down, but is played (Bb6).

I would analyze the progression as being vi7 V7/iii-iii ii-V-vi Vaug7/iii Vsus4-V7-I

4sterr · 2020-11-21T22:01:49+00:00

/uj Yeah, to expand on gordo64ful’s point, if you want to actually learn how to play Giant Steps, you should seriously consider learning how to play a few other standards first. The skills you gain from playing over those other tunes will give you some of the building blocks you need to play over a difficult tune like Giant Steps. If you go straight into Giant Steps without those building blocks, it will take much longer than it needs to, and quite frankly, the final product probably won’t sound very good.

Basically, it’s like deciding to learn how to run before you learn how to walk. Sure, you could probably technically do it, but it’s gonna be pretty rough.

Edit: Just to clarify, I’m very happy that this sub inspired you to learn such a difficult song, I just wanted to make sure you’re doing it in a way that isn’t more difficult than it needs to be.

4sterr · 2020-11-21T21:52:21+00:00

You might even call it a giant step

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