Graham English

Archive for May, 2007

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 3

This dominant 7 pentatonic pattern is similar to the previous pattern. It still moves up a half step for a total of 2 notes in an eight note pattern. But this time, the transposed notes are the fifth and eighth notes in the sequence. This means that you have to transpose up a half-step twice during the pattern, rather than just once.

Solo Transcriptions: Remember Synth Solo

I’ve got dozens and dozens of transcriptions that I’ve done over the years. Some of them have been formatted nicely using either Sibelius or Finale. The other day, as I was listening to the Bryan Adams Anthology, a synth solo caught my ear and I quickly transcribed it. That got me thinking that I would [...]

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 2

If Pattern 1 seemed easy to you, I guarantee you’ll find this next one more challenging.
Last time, we simply took a four-note pattern and transposed it up a half step for the second half of the bar. This time, we’re using a full eight-note pattern and transposing only the fifth and sixth notes up a [...]

Playing Outside: The Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale Pattern 1

A favorite scale of jazz saxophonist, John Coltrane, is the Dominant 7 Pentatonic Scale.

Samurai Songwriting Issue 2 Is Now Available

It’s time to dig into the second issue of Samurai Songwriting. If you’re not a subscriber, join now. If you want to purchase just this issue, you can do that here:

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Here’s what we cover in this issue:

The Samurai Songwriter Code. How [...]

Last Chance To Get Issue 1 With Your Membership

If you’re interested in subscribing to Samurai Songwriting, today is the best day to do it. Tomorrow, Issue 2 will be released and if you subscribe now, you’ll have access to both Issue 1 and Issue 2. After tomorrow, Issue 1 will cost extra.
So if you want great songwriting advice from Academy award winning songwriter, [...]

Append To Inbox Quicksilver Action

For some people, Quicksilver doesn’t work as advertised. For example, I can’t get the ‘append to…’ action to work as a trigger. And since there’s one file that I’m continually appending, I wanted to customize my workflow. That’s why I created my own Quicksilver append action.
I’ve recently started using TextMate’s GTDAlt bundle for a number [...]

How To Become An Artist 2.0

Merlin Mann just pointed to a New York Times Magazine article about Jonathan Coulton and The Hold Steady. These artists are thriving in the post-CD music world through intimate virtual relationships with their fans.
Music promotion through blogs and social networks like MySpace is getting more and more powerful. Managing this vast world of Web 2.0 [...]

Exclusive Interview With Songwriting Consultant, Molly-Ann Leikin

Listen in as I interview Molly-Ann Leikin, an award winning songwriter and songwriting consultant to over 4,000 successful songwriters! She’s helped songwriters get Grammy nominations, win Emmys, and place songs in movies, TV, and CDs all over the world.

Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 05-20-07

Topics covered: Advice to developing songwriters, the art and craft of songwriting, strategies for writing hooks and melodies, a 7-step process to writing hit songs, and much more.

A Quicksilver Action That Creates A New TextMate Blog Post

I’ve been AppleScripting my @blogging context workflow. At first, I created a simple script that launches TextMate, NetNewsWire, and Safari along with some URLs to help me get started. It basically launches my workspace for my @blogging context. But I wanted something a little more flexible that would accept some initial user input.
Now what I [...]

Blogging With Quicksilver And AppleScript

Quicksilver gets more powerful everyday. I make it a point to learn something new about it almost daily. And it never ceases to surprise me with it’s power.
And I can say the same with AppleScript. Anything I do repeatedly, I see if I can script it. And when I combine AppleScript with Quicksilver… I feel [...]

Duplicate Content And The Problogger Group Writing Project

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention the SEO consequences of duplicating the entire list from Darren Rowse’s Group Writing Project.
It’s never a good idea to duplicate someone else’s content on your own blog. You now have duplicate content issues and can very easily send your page into the Google supplemental index, [...]

Top 5 AppleScript Productivity Hacks for WordPress Bloggers and Podcasters

As bloggers, we tend to do the same repetitive tasks over and over again. We open the same URLs. We launch the same apps. We ftp, we search Technorati, we comment, we do this day in and day out. The 80/20 rule would tell us that creating content in the form of blog posts, [...]

Integral Conversations Podcast 05-08-07

Listen to me brag about how cool it is to automate a podcast with AppleScript using Audio Hijack Pro, Transmit, and WordPress. It really doesn’t get much cooler!

Guess What… I’m Blogging This From Quicksilver Using AppleScript

Now this is an awesome Blogging hack. It’s not that flexible. I can’t choose categories or add excerpts but the novelty of it is just plain cool.
Plus, I tend to be more of an article writer and not so much of an off-the-cuff blogger like Scoble or Winer. Twitter has given me a voice for [...]

Update Twitter With A Finder Dialog Plus A Timed Repeat Function

Here’s a cool little AppleScript that allows you to update Twitter using a Finder dialog. Click here to open the script in Script Editor. Change the username and password and hit run. A dialog will open asking, “What are you doing?” Type your update and hit Tweet. That’s it.
Put this script anywhere you can get [...]

Automating The Quality Of Your Attention

I’ve been thinking more and more about focus. So much competes for my attention second by second (that’s you, Twitter and BlackBerry) that it’s never been more important to practice sustaining focus. The quality of my consciousness and the quality of my attention determine the quality of my life.
What needs to remain a touchstone in [...]

Automation As Part Of An Integral Life Practice

Most repetitive tasks are energy sucks. Opening the same web pages every day, clicking our way around the cybersphere, answering the same questions to our customers, all of these tasks are relatively low-value and cumulatively add up to a large chunk of our lives. The 80/20 rule tells us that 20% of the things we [...]