Federal judge and oboist Diane Wood is reportedly under consideration to fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
Wood has demonstrated a willingness to challenge her fellow jurists without offending, say lawyers and clerks who have observed her in court. Those attributes may be an asset as President Barack Obama considers her to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on an often-divided U.S. Supreme Court…
Wood, 59, who plays oboe in the Chicago Bar Association Symphony Orchestra, was one of four people interviewed by Obama last year before he picked Sotomayor.
I have just released version 0.6 of the Fingering Diagram Builder. It’s almost a maintenance release, that mostly just attempts to fix a few problems and add a little polish. Your suggestions and bug reports are, as always, welcome (as are your donations, social media pings, links, etc.). Go play around with it or read on for the details.
New hotness
Here’s what’s new:
The user interface got a minor facelift and some usability improvements. For example, if you dare to use the “Keywork details” tab, you may notice that the menu stays a little more manageable size-wise, and if you’re working at a desktop monitor you can tweak things without losing sight of the diagram.
Several of you wrote in to point out that the Dropbox functionality had become broken. Dropbox changed some things on their end and I got a little behind on making the necessary adjustments on my end. Long story short, the FDB now uses Dropbox’s slick little popup thing if you want to save your fingering diagrams there. You might have to enable popups for the FDB in your browser. Also, if you’re not using Dropbox yet, how do you even survive?
Valved brass instrument diagrams have been around since version 0.2, but they were little-known because for some reason I lumped them in with the simple-system flutes. I know. They are much easier to find now. You can stop writing in to ask if I know of a website that does diagrams for brass instruments.
If you are into creating custom styles, you can now include your selected instrument as part of those if you wish.
The Creative Commons license has been updated to version 4.0. That really just means that some of the legalese underlying it has changed. You’re still totally free to use the diagrams for your not-for-profit projects, or to hit me up and make the necessary arrangements if you want to use the diagrams to make something you’re going to sell. (Here’s a cool example of something made with literally one bazillion FDB diagrams: it’s a book.)
I did a bunch of other stuff under the hood to improve stability and speed and to lay groundwork for future improvements.
As always, there are more improvements in the works. I usually wait until I have more of a “wow” feature to show off before doing a release, but I wanted to get a fix out there for the Dropbox users. Enjoy!
The following is a suggested curriculum for teaching jazz style and improvisation to students from junior high school through college. The materials listed are geared toward the developing saxophonist, but may be substituted or adapted to meet needs of other instrumentalists. The curriculum assumes the student has a basic command of the instrument, and should be used in conjunction with classical study. The layout of the curriculum suggests materials for junior high, high school, and college, but will of course need to be altered to fit each individual student’s needs. Read More “A jazz improvisation curriculum: Junior high through college”
The Fingering Diagram Builder didn’t get any new features or improvements this year, but I have a new version in progress with some improvements I hope you will like. No promises at this point about release date. These days I’m seeing FDB diagrams pop up in virtually every issue of some of the major woodwind organization journals, plus I’m hearing at least a few times a month from people working on books, articles, dissertations, and other things. I love to hear from anybody who is finding the FDB useful (and of course I expect people working on for-profit projects to touch base). I did write a blog post about using created diagrams: Creating fingering charts with diagrams from the Fingering Diagram Builder.
The big list of woodwind doubling in musicals continues to be a cool way for me to connect with woodwind players from all over the world. The list grows larger and more accurate on nearly a weekly basis. Thanks to all contributors, and I hope to hear from you some more in 2017.
I did another 12 months’ worth of my favorite posts from other blogs. I welcome tips on other woodwind-related blogs I should be following, including yours.
It has long been an ambition of mine for the things I write on this blog to crystalize into a book on woodwind playing. I’m pleased to report that I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel on that project, and am 85% on track to release it in the first half of 2017. It’s something that I am hoping will be useful for college woodwind methods classes, for school band directors and private teachers, and for woodwind players (especially doublers). If you’re interested, consider joining this mailing list so I can let you know when it’s available. Or make sure you’re following my blog posts on Twitter and/or Facebook for that eventual announcement, plus of course all my latest blog posts.
Thanks for reading, commenting, sharing, and otherwise connecting in 2016. See you next year!
A little over a year ago I made the Random Note Picker, a small web app for generating groups of random pitches. I mostly use it to quiz students on their scales. It otherwise hasn’t gotten much use, but if anyone is interested there is now a slightly improved version. Check it out.
