The Practice Room

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1:35 AM

@aldy505 I listened to it and there were parts that I liked and parts I think could have been improved. I won't give you a full review, but I'll tell you what you should do. Find the parts you like and figure out what you like about them i.e. analyse them and do the same for the parts you don't like. It could be a rhythmic idea or a set of notes over a progression or even a jump in interval or any combination. By doing this you will learn more about your specific style and can learn a lot.

Also if you can record, just try soloing over different progressions and experimenting with different scales and you may be surprised at what you find. It is hard when improvising to hear the difference between something that sounds ok and something that sounds great, but if you can record it you can examine it and learn a lot.

Dom

1:53 AM

@NReilingh In reference to your answer yesterday on the jTab suggesting you said "It sucks, but the learning curve of our code blocks for new users is not the thing that's keeping us from graduating.". Can you give us some insight on what is keeping us from graduating? I have an idea, but I'm sure you have much better understanding of the topic then I do.

NReilingh

2:21 AM

Hey! I've got a couple of minutes to chat about this now

For starters, the site statistics on Area 51 are most informative on the issue:

1116

Musical Practice and Performance – music.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for musicians, students, and enthusiasts. Topics include practice & performance, composition, technique, theory, and history.

Currently in public beta.

Really the only thing holding us back is QPD - questions per day, and that has been rising semi-steadily

-- particularly in recent months. not too long ago it was below 5.

I know somewhere there's a graph that shows this over time, but I haven't been able to find it

@Dom In general, what I meant by that comment was that the oddities of the code block being a stumbling point for new users ostensibly could have an impact on their enthusiasm in spreading the word to even more people, but given that it usually takes new users some time to learn what code blocks are in the first place (if they've never been on a technical stack exchange before), I think we can safely assume that other factors have a far greater impact

in other words, I don't think anyone's saying "I want to tell my friends about this site, if only the code blocks would work right!"

It's interesting to note that many of our site stats are above and beyond sites that have graduated, but the QPD stat has been holding us back this whole time

The reason for that could be related to the nature of the field -- to make a comparison with learning a programming language, it's not like every time you sit down with your guitar you're going to find a new button that you don't know how to use... and composers who do find new and interesting things every time they sit down are a minority among us.

Huh, you know what, stats-wise we're actually past Travel.SE in every category:

Travel – travel.stackexchange.com

Launched Q&A site for road warriors and seasoned travelers.

And Christianity

Christianity – christianity.stackexchange.com

Launched Q&A site for committed Christians, experts in Christianity and those interested in learning more.

and RPGs, and Skeptics

So honestly, I don't know what we're waiting for.

Although it's possible that SE is waiting until we figure out some of these scope questions that keep popping up.

Or that those other sites had a drastically different rate of growth that allowed them to launch before all of their stats outstripped ours.

@Dom Would be likewise interested to hear your ideas on the topic as well!

1 hour later…

Dom

4:05 AM

@NReilingh I have a few things that come to mind. I think we need to be more consistent as a community. I feel like we go though periods where certain questions are on-topic and other times they are off topic. I think this is rooted in the fact that the scope hasn't quite settled yet. I hope once we lock down the scope then we will be more consistent in this area.

I really don't think the QPD is a serious problem at this point. While it would be nice to get more questions come in, we have steady income of questions now. I think the bigger issue is we don't really get many high quality questions. I'm pretty sure this is because we really haven't attracted many people at the mastery level of music practice and performance.

On the other side of this however I have noticed that a good portion of our questions end up in the hot network questions which means people do tend to view our new questions a lot.

A few days ago we had 4 questions in the hot network questions at the same time.

As you said we are well ahead of some sites that have already launched however Code Review stat wise excels in every category and is still in beta.

1213

Code Review – codereview.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for feedback on projects you're working on, by sharing your code with fellow programmers and getting extensive feedback/review of best practices, design pattern usage, application UI, security, etc.

Currently in public beta.

They have been trying many different approaches to get out of beta and their most recent attempt was the one below:

Q: The race has started. Are you running?

PCG.SE is going on a mission. And so the race begins. For Code Review!! -- syb0rg 2 days ago Let's see: Programming Puzzles and Code Golf Voting & Activity PCG.SE Voting and Activity Chart Compare to: Code Review Voting & Activity CR.SE Voting and Activity Chart ...

The main idea was to have a certain number of users in each rep bracket. i.e. 3 20k users, 10 10k users, 80 3k users, and 120 2k users.

I don't think we need hard goals, but I do think we need more high rep users. As it stands now, we don't have anyone who has 20k rep. You are the closest to 20k, but still short. We have a giant backlog of questions and answers for people to look though and 40 votes a day so I think we can find good questions and answers and upvote them.

@NReilingh Besides that, I think in general we need a stronger community. If the community is strong and united I think it will be clear the site should get out of beta.

NReilingh

4:56 AM

@Dom I think some of that has to do with our active user base changing over time. There are certainly a lot of users who gained a lot of rep (and had a lot of influence) closer to when we launched, but aren't active on the site now. Seems like we've had too much "turnover", causing the community consistency to be a bit off.

@Dom Yeah, I think the quality-of-question issue will definitely help attract more users of quality, but we may have already reached critical mass in terms of objective statistics--except for the subjective "quality review" topics that come up on Meta from the SE staff from time to time.

@Dom Ooooh, who wants to volunteer to dig into data.se and generate some sexy, sexy charts for us?

@Dom Heeeee... 500 rep in a weekend? I think I can do that. :P

I do wonder why they chose those benchmarks, since the a51 thresholds are much lower. Perhaps that's just in the context of competing with codegolf.se?

@Dom Agreed.

7 hours later…

aldy505

12:22 PM

@Dom right, thanks :D I'll working on it

10 hours later…

Matthew Read

10:00 PM

Hey folks, any sax players in here? I'm thinking of making it my next instrument to learn. I was wondering if a tenor is a suitable choice for a beginner? Most people seem to recommend alto, but I prefer the funkiness you can get with a baritone ... hence tenor as a compromise ;)

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