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Nicholas Chen tuesday, october 12, 2021
journal

Scheduling

In line with the thoughts yesterday on Computer Science being a social science, it turns out a lot of insights into operating systems scheduling come from management research, on the most efficient ways to distribute tasks in a factory. I'm not sure how this supports the point, but it seems tangentially related and interesting.

A new piano strategy

During the height of the pandemic, I decided I wanted to pick up the piano again, so I made a plan to get better (you can see it in Goals for Spring Quarter). For a period of time, I tried practicing as many scales as I could, and reading new sheet music.
I'm giving up on that, because I hate it, and also because I've realized I can learn songs by ear. Not only is that a lot more fun, I feel like it comes in handy improvising, because stealing licks from songs I've learned by ear comes much easier to me.
My new regiment for getting good at piano is to find songs I really really really like (hopefully synesthesia will help me organize them!). Then, when I'm noodling on the piano, I'll try figuring them out by ear.
I know some music theory, so reading random articles on theory actually helps quite a bit. Something I want to mess with - saving songs into synesthesia, then tagging them with music theory concepts that they embody. For example, I was reading about quartal harmony today, and I really want to mess around with the concept on the piano when I get home. If I could find songs that use it, and tag them all in synesthesia, that'd be great for inspiration before a noodling session. music piano
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