I just moved this site over to a newer/faster server. Everything seems to test properly but there's always the chance I missed something. Please let me know if you see any strange behavior.

TRAFFIC UPDATE

Traffic to this site has picked up nicely as of late. This increase is partly due to the reciprocal links I've gotten from a few jazz blog sites (thanks, guys!). Another good portion of traffic seems to have come from the increased popularity of blogs in general. There have simply been a lot more "blog"-related searches lately and I happen to be pretty well indexed for such queries. If you do a Google search for "jazz blog" you'll see my site on the second page. If you do a search for "jazz trumpet blog" I'm the first site. That's a lot of pressure!

Anyway, it's great to see the number of visitors grow!

UPDATES UPDATE

Things have been really hectic for me lately at work and with the server move, so I apologize for the delay in getting the "Learning to improvise" series finished. I've been trying to whittle away at the "Vocal Improvisation" feature, but it's hard to think clearly when I've only got 10-minute increments to work on it. I don't really know if visitors care about the series or not, but it's still important to me that I get it done.

After I finish the learning series, I'm going redo my ear trainer in Flash. I wanted to make a tool that anyone could use and the recent Java issues have made that goal somewhat unreachable. The Flash version won't be as powerful due to the inability to control midi sounds, but it should still be pretty close in functionality. I've also got some new features in mind, such as random sequence generation (different than the current random melody feature).

Before I begin work on the Flash ear trainer, I'd like to get some feedback from regular visitors about the existing version. My traffic logs show little use, even from visitors who tell me they need to work on ear training. So, why don't you use it? Is it failing on your system? Is it confusing? Are you using a better tool? Do you not have enough time to use it? Do you disagree about the importance of ear training? Are your ears already great?

If you'd like to comment about the current ear trainer, please do so via the "SEND ME A MESSAGE" link at the left. If I have time, I might even put together a little survey page to help collect feedback.

That's all for now.