This is my site. If you have any questions or feedback, you can either drop
me a note on this page (or elsewhere on the site, if you can make sure I'll see
it), or send me an e-mail at 
viatasso-wiki.john@viatasso.com.
I started a diary at the beginning of 2004. I wrote then: "I give myself less than even odds that I'll stick with it."
Amazing, I'm so prescient!
Editable page to-do list
- Setting the title doesn't work if there is no
<title/>element. - Pressing enter when a dialog box is popped up saves the page.
Since I know you do mind, I promise I won't read your diary anymore so feel free to write whatever you want.
You can read, but writing in it I'm not a fan of. Nothing personal; it is a diary, eh?
Come on John! You know you're very unconventional and you yourself never follow any conventions (which is why you're called an inventor). So why do you ask me to follow conventions and why ask me not to make your diary into an interactive diary? :-)
No seriously, I won't write on it, promised.
I do like the way you write. It's very brief and very evocative and you only write when you have something to say. I like the story of the poor choked shrimps at Owens, the G chord for the GoodNight song, the bed that got too small and the Robert Abitbol contest nightmare...
Hey you don't only dance once in your lifetime and that is at Graduation! You haven't finished paying your dues, Son. So you better learn the moves and boogie! :-)
Now, I suggest you get "Then came Polly" from the video-club. Excellent movie plus a few good scenes on dancing the salsa. And the actress is lovely.. Jennifer A... from Friends. You'll see: impossible not to fall in love with her... She is really loveable!
And check out the bathroom scenes in that movie!
About your wiki, a software is always a work a progress and I think it's a mistake to say you won't improve it. You are only 21 or 22 and you already have accomplished a lot. Imagine what you will have at 50 of you keep it up!
No need to work fast. A little everyday gets a lot of stuff accomplished.
You'll see the huge benefits of a left window feature when you'll program one. Believe you me!
Talking about chords, I have been using the same chords over and over and I wrote over 60 songs with the same progressions namely:
- C, A minor, D minor (or F), G
- A minor, E, D minor, A, D
- C ,E minor, A minor, D minor
Try these chords and try to write tunes from them.
Can you suggest a nice progression to experiment with? I am pretty sick and tired of the same old progressions...And I think these progressions are also tired of me! :-)
Thanks and cheers!
— Robert Abitbol
See 
http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/4/12/72348/4426/93#93.
Summary: You can add notes to chords to make them more interesting. For example, add a "7th" to a chord to make it sound more jazzy, or ambiguous, or even stronger. A seventh is the note right below the root note of the chord. So to a C major chord (C, E, G) you can add a B, which gives you a Cmaj7 chord (C, E, G, B), which sounds smooth, jazzy, and a little bit sad. Or add a Bb to create a C7 chord (C, E, G, Bb), which you'll find almost screams out "play a G chord next!"
Or try changing a major chord to a sus4 chord. You do this by rasing the middle note (the 3rd) up one half step. So for a C major chord, you raise the E up one half step to an F, creating a Csus4 chord (C, F, G). It sounds nice to play a Csus4 and then a plain C major chord—it creates a nice sense of resolution.
Also, you can try using the opposite of a chord, turning a major into a minor, or vice versa. Using chords like this that are "out of the key" gives a song more flavor. So turn C, Am, Dm, G into C, A, D, G7 (all major). The G7 chord would be G, B, D, and F. The A major and D major chords aren't part of the C major scale, but they still sound good—and different.
You should definitely learn music theory. Obviously, I'm quite passionate about it. Music theory is not just dry and stuffy academic stuff; it will lead you to notes and chords you'd never have thought to try. Music theory tends to open doors, so that you don't have to just rely on your ear to try to figure out what sounds good.
Indeed! My father waged a real war on me when I was a kid so that I learned music theory. To no avail.For him wanting to learn music by ear was a real no-no.
I have written a funky tune (one of my best tunes) by adding a seventh to the E chord and by playing each note of the chord. I have added an A-minor.