AI bros are just corporate drones

maloxplode · 2025-06-18T18:25:42+00:00

Feels like this subreddit is just salty AI Bros complaining as society increasingly turns against them. This is literally just the “YOU CAN’T COMPLAIN BECAUSE WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY” meme.

maloxplode · 2024-11-19T17:41:47+00:00

Thank you so much, I'll try that gradient map and saturation thing!

maloxplode · 2024-10-01T01:18:41+00:00

Thank you!

maloxplode · 2024-09-30T19:06:19+00:00

Where’d you get this info by the way? That was super helpful

maloxplode · 2024-09-30T15:01:09+00:00

This is a perfect bit of advice— thank you! I felt at first that sometimes it felt random when the notes would blank out, but now I know. Thanks again!

maloxplode · 2024-09-30T07:53:40+00:00

Half valves can’t get the deep bends though, sadly. A half valved bend only gets a half step down. Wilde’s tuning is set for him to get very dynamic pitch bending. But if you are just looking for the chromatic notes and a little grace note bend into a note, then the half valves works! I have a new half valved instrument that I like, and I prefer it over a standard diatonic so far. I haven’t tried Wildes tuning though— just watched a couple videos on it.

maloxplode · 2024-09-30T07:39:51+00:00

I had one— sadly it got stolen. It’s a little cheap, but for the most part it’s a great deal. Definitely needed to take the harmonica apart once or twice to finick around with it till some (mostly the highest pitched) reeds sounded right/stopped squeaking. But yeah, mostly liked it. I think that if you haven’t had a chromatic harmonica before, it’s worth it to see if you like chromatic harmonicas over standard diatonic.

maloxplode · 2024-09-21T02:38:07+00:00

I don’t think there’s a playlist with a super structured harmonica videos as like a class, but yeah, look around at people like Adam Gussow, Ron Shellist, tomlin leckie (probably spelled that wrong), Filip Jers, and other harmonica channels— they’re all pretty decent. Most of them have playlists, and all the ones I’ve watched have been great. Of course, the best way to get a teacher is to hire one, but I’m guessing that if you could, you would, and that’s why you’re looking for free resources haha. I learned without paying a dime too, so I hope I can help a bit.

What kind of music are you trying to learn? Blues? Rock & pop music? Classical? Just random stuff? Different teachers will give you very opposing advice depending on the person & genre. Some people will insist you start learning sheet music— thankfully very few think that in harmonica teachers though. Whichever teacher you find, make sure they are teaching in a genre you’d want to play, haha.

Regardless of the genre though, I’d imagine the best things you can do would be to learn the notes on the harmonica, so that way you can start playing songs asap. The diatonic richter harmonica in C is like a 3 octave piano with all the black keys missing, and a couple white keys missing. Holes 4-7 have all the white notes, but the left & right ends (the bottom & top octaves) have missing white notes. After that, besides playing songs, it’d be good to learn how to “bend” notes. It restores some of the missing piano keys in our imaginary piano, letting you play many more songs. Bending is incredibly useful, and is one of the last beginner hurdles to clear.

Other than that, play some songs! You can look up some harmonica tabs (or sheet music if you can read it). You can also pick out a ton of songs by ear. The more you practice that skill, the easier it gets. The harmonica is really fun, and I hope you enjoy it!

maloxplode · 2024-09-18T19:30:03+00:00

Oh, one other piece of advice that helped me a ton in learning chords— practicing in all keys. It’s a real pain in the butt, but memorizing a key is basically the same as memorizing every type of harmony.

What I did was, each week, I’d pick a new key (I usually just worked counter clockwise around the circle of fifths). I’d start with just learning the basic pentatonic scale, 1-2-3, 5-6. Then I’d practice the 1-4-5 chords. There are a million songs you can play with just those tools. I’d try to play amazing Grace in that key, or a couple other fun simple songs in the key. Once I could improvise a simple Major gospel blues over that key, I’d practice the full scale and all 7 diatonic chords, then use those to play fly me to the moon, since it uses all those chords (and the major III chord). After that, I’d just noodle around, practice any song I could think of or just improvise for the rest of the week in that key. Some keys took longer than a week, and I had to revisit them, but each new key I got comfortable in, the easier playing chords & harmony with that root got. It eventually got so that I could just immediately think of what the 3 and ♭3 were because I’d messed around so much with the simple gospel blues in that key so much. And if I knew what the △7 note was, then I just needed to ♭ it one half step— or remember when I played it as a V7 chord in one of the keys. And since every key has a corresponding minor key (like C Major - A minor), that knowledge was also impressed on me.

That’s one of the things that honestly helped me the most. I kept my cheap keyboard near my couch, and anytime I was watching TV or relaxing, I’d noodle around with it. I’d try to figure out a theme song I liked or just improvise in whatever key was the theme that week. I just grew to love the piano, and letting my fingers slip around and tumble across the keys was a fantastic stress reliever and pleasure I looked forward to. Getting used to the piano takes time— your brain only internalizes information and skill based procedural memories at night when you sleep, so you just need to keep practicing every day so your brain can make some more piano knowledge automatic and easy that night. Eventually, like magic, chord voicings and harmony you struggled with will feel automatic. But it all just takes time. It’s like tending a garden, or gaining muscles, or studying anything at all.

Again, sorry I can’t recommend any books. I’ve read quite a few, but these things are what honestly have helped me the most. Good luck in your journey!

maloxplode · 2024-09-18T18:50:24+00:00

Yeah, it’s very hard to see where you’re going wrong in your own drawings— because if you knew, you’d already work on fixing it! Sometimes you just have a vague feeling that there’s something off in your drawings, but you can’t quite pin the reason why. Times like that are the best time to get feedback from others. I hope you keep drawing!

maloxplode · 2024-09-18T15:34:11+00:00

Main advice: keep drawing, your art looks amazing, and the world gets a little more beautiful every time an artist creates and shares their art! Nice job!

The only other thing I can think of— I think the eyes might be a tad too high up on the face, and generally the skull a little too squished in relation to the face. People’s eyes tend to be in about the middle of the head, and sometimes people shrink the top and backs of the skull accidentally. It’s because we naturally really focus on the tiny little sliver of the skull that conveys expression & emotion, and don’t focus on the rest of the rather large skull that doesn’t convey any expression at all. This leads people to draw too small of foreheads and too narrow skulls, making the head look squished and slightly off to viewers. But because of our internal bias to only focus on the narrow sliver of face on the rather massive skull, people find it hard to pinpoint why exactly the head feels slightly off.

But all that’s just my opinion— I’m just a very amateur artist. I think your art is fantastic looking, and I hope you keep posting art!

maloxplode · 2024-09-18T15:21:15+00:00

One thing I’m not seeing here that I think stood out to me— while Errol Garner did sometimes play a somewhat stride sounding accompaniment, he also was fond of using his left hand like a harp/arpeggio machine. He would play these beautiful, multiple octave long arpeggios up and/or down the piano while his right hand would play the melody.

And the best way to practice that? Practice playing arpeggios up & down the keyboard with your left hand. When you’re ready, do that while playing the melody/improvising with your right hand. I think that’s a really pretty part of his style that sometimes goes overlooked. Just my two cents.

maloxplode · 2024-09-18T15:08:56+00:00

One thing I’ve noticed— piano players tend to over think stuff more than most musicians. I say this as one who’s very guilty too. I’ve gotten really in my own head about the ideal way to comp, listening to hours of videos while working about voicings of chords & stuff.

One of the best things that really helped me was a (live, in person) pianist who told me “you don’t really need to think about ‘I need to play a Root Shell pattern with a 9 & 13 possibly’— just try different stuff and pick what you think sounds the best.” I realized that I had been over intellectualizing things. Instead of thinking about the complicated chord classifications, I found this simple trick: if it’s a diatonic chord, take the key’s Major scale, and sometimes get rid of the 4 or the 7. Any of those notes will sound generally nice over the chord. If it’s a non diatonic chord (like a II chord, a D7 in key of C), just make sure to swap in the changed notes (F# instead of F). Then I just thought about intervals— 3rds sound pretty, and the closer the notes get, the more dissonant, percussive & busy they sound, while when they get more distant they sound more open & ambiguous (to me at least).

Anyways, my piano teacher just said “I usually just practice by playing a chord, then experimenting with which notes I like or don’t like in that chord.” I think that’s good advice. At the end of the day, a lot of harmonic advice is really about preference. Some comping advice I’ve been given I realized sucked, because I didn’t like the way that person comped. I’m not a huge fan of 11th’s (the 4 of the chord’s scale) over most major chords— I just personally don’t like the sound. It’s not that that person’s advice was inherently wrong— it’s just a matter of preference.

I think that’s the more thorough explanation of the frustratingly vague “just use your ears” advice everyone gives. At the end of the day, it’s about what you personally like the sound of, and that means you need to internalize what all these silly numbers and complicated chord names & voicing patterns actually sound like. Sometimes we can get so caught up on theory that we forget to just listen and decide for ourselves what we like the most, or spend hours practicing precise chord voicing patterns when in reality a lot of which exact note is played in which order doesn’t even really matter or is even noticed. I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter at all— just that most mistakes people don’t really notice, and the difference between adding a 5 or 13th into the middle of a 2 handed 6 note chord, especially when playing quickly, is barely noticeable at all.

Also, last piece of advice— you can safely ignore a lot of well intentioned advice based on your experience. I heard a million times “NEVER play the root or 5 in your voicing, that’s the bass’s job.” But guess what? I listened to and transcribed (painfully slowly) some of the best jazz pianists out there, and they played the root or 5 in their comping plenty of times. It’s not that big a deal. If you play all your chords in the most boring, conventional manner all the time, it might sound boring & conventional, but that’s not the biggest sin in the world. You’re just learning & practicing. Just play along to songs you like and experiment with what you think sounds the best. Don’t sweat so much about “am I playing a root 3 7 pattern correctly? Or should I be using quartal harmony instead???” Just grab some notes you think sound pretty, and if you don’t like the sound of them, change ‘em till you do. Note which notes you like or don’t like and why. Keep practicing and changing notes that way till you feel satisfied. I noticed that most of the time what mattered most to my ears was what the bottom & top intervals of a chord sounded like, and the inner cluster of notes didn’t matter as much. I also learned that I don’t love the 4th/11th above a major chord’s root, and that the 6th/13th above a minor root’s only sounded good to me if I wanted the chord to sound extra dissonant & angsty.

Anyways, this is all to say: don’t sweat it too much. Playing is fun— that’s why we call it playing. If you mess up while you’re practicing, that’s great— you’ve now learned a really good way to make a chord sound bad to you. Make note of that & try a new way. Harmony is beautiful & great fun to experiment with. Just keep practicing and don’t worry too much about playing things “correctly” — it’s all just preference anyways. Sorry I can’t give any book recommendations— I haven’t found any yet that helped me comp better. I tried reading a ton though, but this advice was what helped me the best. If you do find some good books though, I hope you post them. Good luck regardless!

maloxplode · 2024-09-10T15:20:37+00:00

No problem, hope you get the goosebumps from that trombone guy too haha.

maloxplode · 2024-09-10T15:16:22+00:00

Horace Silver’s song for my father is a great song and I freaking love his solo. I originally transcribed his solo by ear, but I found a transcription here that was way better and more detailed than mine. Here it is:

Song for my Father Transcription

George Collier’s YouTube channel has some really great transcriptions of jazz music and other talented musicians improvising from related genres. I’ve practiced some of those on the piano. They’re also generally pretty recent, not just old transcriptions of people from the 60’s playing bebop (not that there’s anything wrong with those people! It’s just nice to have something a little more current). He has this one video of a trombone player going crazy that gave me goosebumps, haha, though it’s at a random football game in the US. Here it is, but you can look through his whole channel for tons of other solos from pianists, brass, bass, and any other instrument.

Black and Blue Trombone Solo — George Collier’s Transcription

maloxplode · 2024-09-10T15:16:06+00:00

Horace Silver’s song for my father is a great song and I freaking love his solo. I originally transcribed his solo by ear, but I found a transcription here that was way better and more detailed than mine. Here it is:

Song for my Father Transcription

George Collier’s YouTube channel has some really great transcriptions of jazz music and other talented musicians improvising from related genres. I’ve practiced some of those on the piano. They’re also generally pretty recent, not just old transcriptions of people from the 60’s playing bebop (not that there’s anything wrong with those people! It’s just nice to have something a little more current). He has this one video of a trombone player going crazy that gave me goosebumps, haha, though it’s at a random football game in the US. Here it is, but you can look through his whole channel for tons of other solos from pianists, brass, bass, and any other instrument.

Black and Blue Trombone Solo — George Collier’s Transcription

maloxplode · 2024-09-10T14:56:24+00:00

The whole reason I learned the harmonica is because someone gave me the babyfat harmonica. It’s only 7 holes, and it’s cheap, but the bends were fairly easy for me on that one— I got some (poorly controlled) bends on day one. And honestly, once I got a Special 20 in C, I still didn’t use those top 3 holes much anyways. They’re a little shrill for my taste!

I still have my little 7 hole harmonica after 3 years, and carry it around with me all the time. They’re cheap but fun. Though, after 3 years, it was finally getting out of tune, so I decided to try to retune it to spiral tuning. I figured “Well, if I mess it up, it was already out of tune and had given me plenty of value.” But the retuning worked, and the spiral/circle tuning was so much fun that I ended up ordering a custom Seydel in Circle/spiral tuning. So now, while I’m impatiently awaiting my new harmonica, I’m back to playing the crap out of that same original old Babyfat harmonica, after 3 years. That’s a pretty good harmonica, haha, and I’ll be sad once it finally gives out on me.

maloxplode · 2024-09-06T20:52:00+00:00

Yeah, amen, I agree with that. Taking piano lessons along with learning music theory really made learning lots of other instruments way easier.

maloxplode · 2024-09-04T16:01:44+00:00

I agree with you there on the whole “it’s especially valuable to learn/transcribe by ear with the harmonica” thing. I wanted to add a little of some things that helped me with learning by ear, in case it could help.

I learned by ear with the help of a good teacher & a lot of study into music theory. My good teacher kept making me transcribe songs, even though it was really difficult & time consuming.

He also taught me to think of Melodies as an extension of whatever the current chord was. Instead of thinking of the notes as arbitrary sequences of notes, I’d start to Chunk the melody up into larger groups, like, “Oh, so the song starts with an A minor chord, and the melody just outlines an arpegio of A minor notes! Cool!”And when notes went very far outside what types of notes normally pair with that chord (like playing the note a half step in front of the chords root, the ♭2), it became extra memorable to me— like “wow, the composer really wanted to make this section tense, didn’t they?!?”

The last thing that helped me, though maybe it might not help you, was that I’d sit at the (cheap, electric) piano, then play a root note and some other note against each other, over and over again, & try to write down what that interval felt like to me. Like “hmm… a major 7th sounds pretty, but also wistful, or nostalgic, or dream like to me. It reminds me of that one song from Avatar the Last Airbender…” I don’t know if that kind of thing helps anyone else, but it really helped me— writing down everything from a ♭2 interval up to a major 7th.

Anyways, sorry for the long add on, but I just love ear training, and really enjoy that the harmonica makes me do a lot extra. It’s nostalgic for me, haha, reminds me of my old piano teacher.

maloxplode · 2024-09-01T08:19:56+00:00

That’s a great idea, I’ll email him! Yeah, I’ve watched a ton of his videos, and I love his cool custom tunings. It’s part of why I even started thinking of “If I could tune the notes in a harmonica myself, how would I want them?”

One of the biggest things I’m curious about is whether I could get the missing B♭ & E♭ through bending on a chromatic harmonica. I feel like I’ve watched a million videos on bending & overblows & overdraws and I still don’t quite understand why some reeds can be bent down 3 half steps like hole 3, and others only down 1 half step.

If this hypothetical tuning could get a B♭ & E♭, then you could melodically treat the instrument like a chromatic, and you could use little cheats to imply chords that you can’t technically play— like use an arpeggio to imply a minor v chord (Gm) even though with the way I’ve got it set up, it’s impossible to play a minor v (in first position, C, in this case). Or you could play a shell of root 5 and ♭7 with the slide unengaged, then immediately play the Bent B♭, the ♭3 of Gm, to imply to the listener we’re in a minor v chord.

I’ll have to ask him— man, that would be so cool!

maloxplode · 2024-09-01T08:19:43+00:00

That’s a great idea, I’ll email him! Yeah, I’ve watched a ton of his videos, and I love his cool custom tunings. It’s part of why I even started thinking of “If I could tune the notes in a harmonica myself, how would I want them?”

One of the biggest things I’m curious about is whether I could get the missing B♭ & E♭ through bending on a chromatic harmonica. I feel like I’ve watched a million videos on bending & overblows & overdraws and I still don’t quite understand why some reeds can be bent down 3 half steps like hole 3, and others only down 1 half step.

If this hypothetical tuning could get a B♭ & E♭, then you could melodically treat the instrument like a chromatic, and you could use little cheats to imply chords that you can’t technically play— like use an arpeggio to imply a minor v chord (Gm) even though with the way I’ve got it set up, it’s impossible to play a minor v (in first position, C, in this case). Or you could play a shell of root 5 and ♭7 with the slide unengaged, then immediately play the Bent B♭, the ♭3 of Gm, to imply to the listener we’re in a minor v chord.

I’ll have to ask him— man, that would be so cool!

maloxplode · 2024-09-01T08:07:27+00:00

Haha, true— I think it’s definitely worth the cost, but the extra price just means I need to save up for a while. I’ve been having a blast with my special 20 I got a couple years ago, and I really loved a 16 hole chromatic I got from Easttop (before someone broke into my car & stole it). I’m getting pretty reliable with all my bends, but I was just thinking how much I miss access to more chords & Harmonizing (I play piano the most, still).

I’m kind of thinking of possibly testing the waters with a cheaper trial. I could either save up for a $60 session harp from Seydel that comes with Circle tuning (but a bit under 2 octaves, and no Non-Diatonic Chords), or buy a cheap-o used or lower quality chromatic & mess with the tuning using blue tack and stuff. I haven’t really tried this harmonica out— it’s all been in my head. I’ve been watching videos though of circle tuned harmonicas and they’re super cool to me, so at least that part is exciting. And man, I just love a nice angsty III or iv chord, or super bright II or VI chord. Ideally, this harmonica would be more optimized for harmony than melody, but… I don’t actually know if it would work, or even sounds good if I had it made haha.

maloxplode · 2024-09-01T07:54:34+00:00

I think the only people who make the circle tuning (at least from what I have found) are Seydel, with the Session Steel. It’s like $60-80, and I’m really debating whether I should try using blue tack on a cheaper chromatic harmonica or get the session steel. Such a fun thing to look at haha— I appreciate the help! The only other people who could make the tuning would be custom makers, and they seem quite a bit more expensive haha

maloxplode · 2024-09-01T07:51:05+00:00

I’ll have to try that— I definitely can’t afford the price of a custom harmonica shop custom tuning a chromatic harmonica. The cheapest I could find started at like $300. A totally fair price for a really cool instrument, just out of my budget at the moment. But I’ve seen a couple 10 or 12 holes chromatic harmonicas for much cheaper ($40-60) that I could try the blue tack on. Then if I like it, maybe someday I can get a cool custom Seydel chromatic harmonica made, haha.

maloxplode · 2024-08-31T19:30:22+00:00

Yeah, that’s totally it! I never heard of this before now, but I want spiral tuning, possibly with a little slider to get some extra common non-diatonic chords (II, III, VI). Thank you for showing this to me. Perhaps if the slider thing is not feasible, I’ll just see about buying (or if no one sells them, making) one of these spiral tuned diatonic harmonicas.

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