You hit the nail on the head as regards playing with others. I had a jam session in college with a violin and a piano and me on clarinet. It was actually a lot of fun, just sitting there throwing down some tunes, with none of us having the least experience playing in a group (without sheet music that is).

I know the cycle (or circle, as I've heard) of fifths and circle of fourths, both huge in jazz, but as for dominant and sub dominant I have a vague sense of something-ness but nothing I could put into words, and Tonica not a clue.

I actually think the piano is the easiest instrument to learn, if you go about it the right way. I'm not sure if I've told this story, so I'll tell it again. In college I knew how to play clarinet, but not piano, and decided to learn. I sat down and said "Okay, how to go about this??" I thought for a minute until I came up with the idea that the black keys are an F# pentatonic scale!!! So for quite awhile I "threw away" all the white keys while I learned how to move my fingers. Then I added them in again, and started to work through keys. I have a good idea of all the major and minor keys (minors are particularly easy for me, as it's simply a matter of correct emphasis to change the "feel" of a scale from major to minor, and once I heard of modes it was fun to experiment with differing modes of the same key, very fun actually).

My current (for 10 years now I guess) idea I'm working through is to almost abandon keys entirely, and play any note that seems to sound good, or even bad depending on what I want to do with the music. Major, minor, discord, resolution, my only thought is to "get somewhere", and the journey is actually more important than the destination, as once you get there you stop playing!!

Yes, to explain what the Dominant (chord) in music represents, one could say that the Dominant/(Sub-D/Tonic) terminology is used in music to refer to the <Function> of a chord in relation to the Key that is being played in. Eg in the key of F, the chord - Triad - starting with the Fifth note from that diatonic F-scale, is of course the <C>EG chord. Second in importance following of course the 'Tonic', which is the chord, major triad, in <root position>: FAC in the Key of F. The Dominant has a stabilizing function, next to the Tonic, and also usually serves as the springboard to "resolve" to the Tonic, eg at the end of a phrase/conclusion of a verse/chorus. The most commonly heard phrase in all western music, classical, but also in Jazz and Blues, is the 'two-five-one' progression, writen as ii-V-I, because the chord from the second position is in minor. Also called the "turn-around", or cadence.

To enhance the effect usually a 4th note is added, the 7th (so you have a 1-3-5-7 chord), and that one is 'flattened' - in our example in the Key of F the Dominant 7th chord thus becomes CEG<B-flat>, which of course is part of the normal F-major scale, ONE Black key on the piano, the one on the right, of the Black trio.

The ii chord (lower case i's to indicate it is a minor triad) btw is called the supertonic, and the triad from the 4th note of the scale, is called the Subdominant. The Basic Blues chords are in fact I7, IV7, and V7, Roman numerals are used to indicate the position within the scale.

In the Blues these I7 and IV7 chords have two flatted sevenths that are not in the normal scale, and that's where of course the "Bluesy feel" comes from.

This can all be found anywhere on the web, but a basic grasp of these concepts and names and symbols is imo essential in music making, you do need some basic underlying music Theory, basic Harmony, to play Jazz, Classical, or any genre for that matter. Those tools have to be part of your Toolbox/Kit.

Hope you may find it interesting and/or useful in the future.

Your completely free attitude towards playing solo piano is very much attractive - many would envy you if you are able to play that intuitive and "free from any rule or convention" - but certainly when playing in a small or larger group one needs a few conventions to get a decent result. ;)

Question: What notes form the Subdominant Seventh Chord in the Key of F?

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..... answer:

IV7 in F is: B-flat - D - F - A<flat>

Commonly written in Jazz as Bb7

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Twelve bar Blues in any Key, looks like this:

I7 IV7 I7 I7

IV7 IV7 I7 I7

V7 IV7 I7 V7

Strange, in retrospect, and musically naive, as well, from my side.

Now that we live in a time that Hal Leonard Publishing Company issues a lots of Transcripts by the old masters from both Schools, a veil of sorts is being lifted, for me, and clearly Oscar Peterson's more complex work where he recorded in the studio 12-16 minute interpretations, also in live recordings, reveals that he masters(-ed) it all, and simply lets his ear pick up some of the stuff his peers from those decades (50s-70s+) produced, and then easily incorporates it into his own playing, but all in all very sparsely I always thought. Being able to now in minute detail analyse the literal transcriptions of his mostly impromptu masterpieces, I realize that the complexity and idiom covers literally ALL genres and Schools. One of the few, like Coltrane, who transcend any label. Sigh - it's more difficult than Solving Chess, just to work out where the heck these harmonies came from, as complex and impossible to do, now, for any pianist alive, at that speed... It's like a painter's brushstrokes with underlying perfection for minutes on end at dazzling speed... or by a Saxophone player in Coltrane's case... Heaven opened her floodgates and certain insanely talented brains were able to download and decode it; there is no better explanation imo. I know of stories where people like George Shearing, himself a prodigious <blind> pianist, walked out of a Peterson Trio live set, shaking his head in disbelief, cited as saying that Oscar must have been possessed, because it was basically humanly impossible. Oscar's 1950s sideman guitarist Herb Ellis confirmed this also, later, on many occasions.

And in those days they did not have the time to theorize about it, they needed to play to pay the bills, 200 concerts a year for Oscar, only occasionally home for Christmas, so it was mainly the music critics and the Miles Davis crowd that started to intellectualize the 'Modern Schools' and diss the Óld' one - taking shots at Peterson and his ilk, well below the belt, as if he had not grown or evolved in any way, and played like a programmed computer. A few knew better though, and purely because of his utter craftsmanship and dedication and support from a part of the older generation's admiration did he manage to overcome the negative press. He literally ran all over them and annihilated the lot, and regained the Maharadja Of The Keyboard recognition Ellington bestowed on him in the few years before the Duke's untimely death in 1974. Those early 70s was when Oscar developed a style of Solo Piano that left all others, as well as those before him, in a trail of dust, except Tatum and Nat King Cole, his own idols from his youth.

And not just in the US -- Amsterdam, Holland, and also big cities in France, some in Scandinavia, the old Jazz traditions are literally kept alive in local clubs, Russia is a major revival ground, and in Amsterdam I can confirm from own experience that though little, if any, money was made, local clubs do have Jazz nights, and people play for fun, for the love of playing with oneanother, regardless of the complete lack of a chance of a good record deal. Exceptions: Jamie Cullum, Michael Bublé, and a few others, very few... You can literally feel the joy and longing from the younger generation from youtube travels to the giants of yesteryear, not forgotten, alive and well it seems, but little mainstream attention, but it is there. And it's clear now that it is there to stay.

Not many names may ring a bell, but Elvis Presley no doubt did, and at the age of 2-3 already, he was fascinated by the Gospel singing that he listened to while in Church, where he would sit on his moms lap, and when the choir started, he'd slide down and try and get closer to them, to try and sing along! Presley as I read was a walking Blues Encyclopedia, when he was 18-19, without having had formal musical schooling; all self-taught... Bernstein called Elvis the Biggest Influence in Music of the 20th Century.

But to get back to his Gospel, earliest, roots... I have a concert on DVD here, Elvis in the autumn of his career, when he was driving to a gig with his musicians, how incredibly deeply emotional he got when they would start a hymn, a capella in the car or at a soundcheck, and those were literally such a joyous and profound experience for Presley, that he had tears down his cheeks, and he gave unequaled vocal renderings in those moments, supposedly private moments, and clearly you could see where his musicality and love came from.

- - - -

Honouring one request to cease posting on this subject at the candidates page, I have placed this post also in <Bobwhoosta>'s forum, who posted yesterday on the subject, and no doubt a fruitful discussion, if one wishes, can be conducted there. I will not be participating, but will only post a few links to some of the many articles and google hits that will appear if you put "is chess a wargame?" or similar in the searchbox. I haven't asked his permission yet, but I think we'll know soon enough.

Let the evidence, other peoples opinions, studies, and historical fact speak, is my suggestion to those that have issue with the assertion that chess is a boardgame simulation of (pre-gunpowder) warfare between two armies. And then we of course can always agree to disagree.

<I have been noticing a disturbing trend amongst wargamers. Many of my brethren warriors seem to have completely forgotten their wargaming roots! How can one call himself a wargamer, a master of kriegsspiel, when you do not play the oldest of all wargames? A game of war that is as sublime as it is economical?

Of course I am referring to the royal game of chess.>

<[...] But that hasn't stopped the close relationship between chess and the military. In 2004, Swedish and Australian teams studied the game anew for any lessons it may be able to impart to our current understanding of warfare. While both research efforts differed in their approach, both found that chess offers a unique insight into warfare. Jan Kuylenstierna, one of the Swedish researchers, remarked that Chess "resembles real war in many respects. Chess involves a struggle of will, and it contains what has been termed the essentials of fighting---to strike, to move and to protect." Indeed, Jason Scholz of the Australian group even found the initial stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom to confirm the results they were receiving from their chess wargaming: [...]>

Two excerpts from a well-documented article, which can be found in its entirety here:

http://wargamerscott.tripod.com/swo...

Some other links:

http://www.intuitor.com/chess/

http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j...

http://www.hyw.com/books/wargamesha...

Peace.

1. <The name 'chess' is derived from the Sanskrit Chaturanga which can be translated as 'Four Arms' referring to the four arms (or divisions, if you prefer) of the Indian army--- elephants, cavalry, chariots, and infantry. In this regard, Chess is very much a wargame that simulates what we would now call the combined arms operations of the ancient world. It is because of this combined arms approach that both strategy and tactics can be taught by the game (unlike Checkers, which is entirely tactics, or Go, which is entirely strategy). In this regard, Chess is unique. As a result, it is a most remarkably balanced wargame.>

2. <So, you see, the pieces of chess all are derived and based upon actual military units. Even when chess was changed by the cultural conditions of medieval Europe, the alterations involved little more than a cosmetic change in focus---a shift from the tactical to the strategic elements of battle. James Dunnigan, noted military historian and wargame designer, has done the best job of summing-up the wargaming roots of chess: "Chess is one of the oldest surviving ancient wargames. Games similar to chess go back thousands of years. Chess is also one of the more accurate wargames for the period it covers (the pre-gunpowder period). Chess is a highly stylized game. It is always set up the same way, the playing pieces and the playing board are always the same. The board is quite simple. Each of the pieces has clearly defined capabilities and starting positions, much like soldiers in ancient warfare. Given that ancient armies were so unwieldy and communication so poor, it is easy to see why each player in chess is allowed to move only one piece per turn. Because the armies were so hard to control, the battles were generally fought on relatively flat, featureless ground. Then, as now, the organization of the army represented the contemporary social classes. Thus the similarity between chess pieces and the composition of ancient armies.">

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec-F...

My reference to semantics was based on <Daisuki>'s reference to an article defining "war games" in a more modern form than has been used historically. In fact this newer branch of games tries to replicate war to a higher level and degree than an abstract game like chess ever could. And yes, if you choose to define your terms to say that a "war game" MUST replicate war directly and not symbolically, then chess is indeed a very poor war game. But it then becomes a question of how you are using the language and defining your terms. And I think that <Daisuki> is using a very strict and restrictive definition of terms in choosing to define chess as a very un-warlike game. If you accept her definitions, the conclusion follows that chess is not a warlike game. However, I disagree on the definitions, and therefore must disagree on the conclusion.

Chess was built on war, to symbolize war, and contains elements of war. All are abstract and symbolic, and therefore cannot be likened to war beyond analogy, but once you enter the realm of analogy and symbolism chess indeed becomes a VERY warlike game, in fact the most warlike abstract strategy game that exists imo.

I apologize that this again will be only a fly-by; I just do not yet have free cycles for more. Still I hope you will find this info interesting:

We all know that physical skills of youth rises partly from training, but partly simply from growing and maturing. An important technical question is: How steep is the age-dependent component of performance?

We have now quantified this age-dependency part of performance for youth soccer, boys between ages 11 and 18 years.

('We' being my significant other -- she does the lion's share of the work -- me, and a couple of most helpful volunteers that scraped the results of tens of thousands games by a couple thousand youth teams.)

http://lastplanetranking.blogspot.c...

Here is the for me most intuitive way to think quantitatively about our result:

Take any team of young players and produce two copies. Keep one frozen in time and instantly age the other by 8 months. (Assuming that we can do tricks like that.) The older team will be stronger, of course, but by how much?

Well, if in the original setting the two teams produced on average game results 2:2 per game, then the 8-month older team would on average clobber the younger copy of itself by the score of 4:1.

You refer to the book "Outliers"? I totally agree with that assessment, and it's sad that there have to be practical limitations for setting league age limits. The player who is 8 months older because of some predetermined age of entry will be a class better during all of the formative years, and this will by the nature of a "Well we've got a gem here" approach attract his coaches to give him more encouragement, training, and one-on-one attention. His parents will make sure he practices more, and that will make him better. The snowball effect is exponetial in that regard, as seen in the first case study done in Outliers (the book). Fantastic literature.

But I thought we were talking about whether greater population size of necessity produced more talent?? I wanted to do an "all other things being equal" thing, but as you mentioned within that paradigm there is no "all other things equal" as the entirety of society and socialogical interactions shift and jump based on population size and dynamics. In fact there was an interesting TED talk about that very thing wherein one of the presenters said you could determine a number of very important societal factors (such as crime, GDP and the like) simply as a function of population. He said( and I'm not sure if I agree with him, although he has the data and I do not) that the data suggest that in essence these things are ONLY a function of population, and that as the size of a city increases you see increases in things like crime as a percentage of the population and the like.