From the Adafruit blog I learned of this awesome video summarizing the great animatronic restaurants I patronized in my youth. I recall many birthday parties at Showbiz Pizza Place where my friends and I would burn through rolls of quarters in the facility’s arcade but also sit down and enjoy Billy Bob and crew’s performance while scarfing down pizza. Too bad I never took any pictures or videos of those events. What great memories, though!
Category: general (Page 4 of 17)
Looking for a gift for the graduate in your life? Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go could be just the ticket. The book is a fantastic pep talk for those preparing to make their marks on the world.
Want to take this gift to the next level? If you’re hosting or participating in a graduation party for your graduate, have all the party attendees sign the book and write an encouraging note or memory in it.
Want to take this gift to the supreme level? Plan ahead: I’m talking months and even years. Every year your child or loved one is in school, make arrangements to have his favorite teachers write notes in the book–on whatever page they choose–and ask that they date their notes, as well. And don’t restrict yourself to just teachers, either: anyone who’s had a positive influence on your child should be included.
If you start this work early enough, you’ll have an amazing and heart-felt gift for your loved one at their graduation, especially if it’s many years away.
Past posts in this sorta-series: Part 1 and Part 2.
Pentatonic scales are quite popular among guitar players. If you’re rusty on your Greek, “Penta” means “five”. Thus, these scales only have five notes instead of seven–the fourth and seventh notes are dropped from their modal counterparts.
The major and minor pentatonic scales that I learned are truncated versions of the Ionian and Aeolian modal scales, respectively. My guitar teacher also showed me a longer form of both the major and minor pentatonic scales: scales that traverse more frets than the normal four-fret span. Furthermore, the long-form minor scale includes a feature called “The House,” where the notes on the fretboard resemble a house:
“The House” is, apparently, a popular shape used by lots of famous guitar players.
To help me learn these scales, as I have with previous scales, I coded them up in Python in a Jupyter notebook and displayed them in HTML. Here’s the code I wrote:
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from IPython.display import display_html
%matplotlib inline
major_pentatonic = {'Low E':['','1','','2'], 'A':['3','','','5'], 'D':['6','','','1'], 'G':['2','','3',''],
'B':['','5','','6'], 'High E':['','1','','2']}
minor_pentatonic = {'Low E':['6','','','1'], 'A':['2','','3',''], 'D':['5','','6',''], 'G':['1','','2',''],
'B':['3','','','5'], 'High E':['6','','','1']}
major_pent_long = {'Low E':['1','','2','','3','','',''], 'A':['','','5','','6','','',''],
'D':['','','1','','2','','3',''], 'G':['','','','','5','','6',''],
'B':['','','','','','1','','2'], 'High E':['','','','','3','','','5']}
minor_pent_long = {'Low E':['5','','6','','','','',''], 'A':['1','','2','','3','','',''],
'D':['','','5','','6','','',''], 'G':['','','1','','2','','3',''],
'B':['','','','','','5','','6'], 'High E':['','','','','','1','','2']}
pent_scales = {'Major Pentatonic':major_pentatonic, 'Minor Pentatonic':minor_pentatonic,
'Major Pentatonic (Long)':major_pent_long, 'Minor Pentatonic (The House)': minor_pent_long}
pent_html = '<h3>Pentatonic Scale Shapes</h3>'
for i, scale_name in enumerate(pent_scales):
nbr_of_frets = len(pent_scales[scale_name]['Low E'])
df_scale = pd.DataFrame(pent_scales[scale_name], index=np.arange(1, nbr_of_frets+1))
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/50899244
df_scale_styler = df_scale.style.set_table_attributes("style='display:inline'").set_caption(scale_name)
pent_html += df_scale_styler._repr_html_() + ' '
if (i+1) % 2 == 0:
pent_html += '<p></p>'
display_html(pent_html, raw=True)
And that code rendered this graphic:
So now I can show my notebook in a computer monitor and play along to the scale.
More to come!
Recent Comments