this song makes me feel like a kid: hall of the mountain king

a little disappointed with google’s movie-showtimes feature. i googled “redwood city showtimes” and got a result page with all the movies in the area by theater. i like having the IMDb and Trailer links right on the results page. what i don’t like however, is that the listings were not up to date.

i like animations, and i try to see every pixar film. today i tried to see igor (not pixar, but supposed to be pretty funny with decent graphics), but when i got to the theater, i found out that it wasn’t playing. funny though, google was telling me otherwise:

a little disappointed, but i guess it’s just a learning experience. note to self: don’t use google for showtimes.

I recently purchased The Conservatory Method for Trumpet, by J. B. Arban — it’s sorta like the brass bible. It’s got tons of really tough studies and exercises. This, combined with the berp training device, are really helping me build up my chops.

I came across some funny reviews of the book tonight:

Arban is sooo annoying!! It's funny though I managed to persuade my teacher to lend my copy to another guy she teaches, so I can't practice for the next week or so and he has to suffer it!!

My euphonium teacher just lent me her copy....although I did try and point out that I was likely to spill/break/ruin it in someway shape or form she insisted that I take it..... It's still sitting in the carrier bag next to the euphonium....ah well...

[Question:] May i ask what arban is?! [Answer:] It's a (is it originally for cornet?) book for brass players full of nasty studies and exercises! It's hateful!

You can read more of them here and here.

i decided to sign up for private trumpet lessons, and i just had my first lesson yesterday. i’m playing with scott weigum, who i found through the union street music store. i just had my first private lesson with him, and he seems pretty good so far.

first thing we did was play a piece of my choosing (i picked dvorjak symphony 8, which i just played with the band). then he gave me a few comments:

Breathe!

i’m not breathing correctly for trumpet. i went to an alexander technique workshop with the symphony about a month and a half ago, and they were very preachy about posture and breathing. i talked about this with scott, who thinks that alexander technique is great, but wasn’t specific to brass players. he says that being able to push out your gut while playing will make your tone a lot more solid. breathing from the bottom of my diaphragm, as opposed to with my shoulders will help with air flow, and improve my tone.

Buzz!

he also pointed out that my tone could be improved further with mouthpiece-only training. my notes crack every once in a while because i lack this type of skill. he wants me to think of the rest of the horn beyond the mouthpiece as just an amplifier, and that for every note i play on my trumpet, i should be able to play the note using just my mouthpiece. so he had me play a chromatic scale of whole notes, each note played first on my trumpet, followed by playing the same note on my mouthpiece detached from the horn. we did a similar exercise with some interval studies (Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method for Trumpet, p.125 #7, p. 127 #3). i was amazed after playing it on the mouthpiece alone how much better it sounded when i brought the mouthpiece back to the horn.

Sing!

he showed me “Last Rose of Summer” (ibid. p.192 #6), but he made me sing it. “no, no, you don’t want to hear me sing, i’m a horrible singer” to which he replied, “sing the way think this song should be played. think about how you want it to the sound - otherwise the trumpet is a roadblock to acheiving that sound.” meh, i sang it decently, though i’m pretty sure it would be my voice that is the roadblock to a good sound, not the trumpet. played it first on the horn, then just on the mouthpiece, then sang it, then played it on the horn again. the singing actually helped a lot, both in realizing how all the dynamics should (could?) sound, and in hitting the right pitches on my horn.

he also suggested buying a “BERP (Buzz Extension and Resistance Piece)” to acquire muscle memory in my lips for embouchure & tone. i bought one tonight from Bronstein’s Music in South City, and it’s pretty fun to use. it cost about $20, and it seems like it’s working already… placebo effect? possibly…


my homework: page 1 of “venezia carnivale” (ibid. p. 339)
someone told me this song was in my Arban’s book, but i couldn’t find it. yesterday scott showed it to me (it’s actually called “Fantasie and Variations” with “Carnival of Venice” in small type underneath. i listened to him play the first page, then i had to play each phrase on my horn, then on my mouthpiece, then sing it, then play it on my horn again. it feels stupid, but it’s a really good way to practice. i’ve never played this song before. the first page is very lyrical, and flowing… the lower half of the page is all 16th notes in 6/8 time, with tons of difficult slurs. the next pages get even crazier. definitely pushing my limits on this piece. i can handle sight-reading the intro, but the rest of it is a little out of my league. once i can play the first page slowly, i’ll try speeding it up.

we ended with a few duets.

here is allen vizuti, playing “the carnival of venice”:

There’s a lot of code for credit.com, and a lot of it is extremely spaghetti-fied (i re-factor code every day, but still haven’t had enough of a lull to plan the ‘grand’ re-factoring where all our site variables are contained in one place, all our javascript functions are documented and easily importable, and all our images and styles are cached in a css repository on our CDN….). While trying to get to the bottom of a JavaScript problem I was having with IE, I googled “javascript validator” and came across a very useful tool:

www.jslint.com

Which reminded me of a CS comparator rule, and showed me where the problem was. Basically I was testing a variable to find out whether or not it was null. When you test for null, you need to use an additional equal sign in your comparison operator:

“==” becomes “===”
and
“!=” becomes “!==”

Firefox allows the non-null equivalency operator to be used on null comparisons, but IE is stricter, and throws an error when this is done. So… though the problem was only apparent through IE browsers, it was a result of bad code. If Firefox were stricter about what it allows in JavaScript, this error probably would’ve been caught by my predecessor… It’s fixed now. The moral is: use “===” and “!==” with null comparisons, and when testing JavaScript, make sure to test in IE (duh!), consider building for IE, and then testing in Firefox after the goal is accomplished…..

while ‘youtubing’ for a good version of the hummel trumpet concerto, i kept seeing the name “alison balsom”.. i kept asking myself, why does she look familiar? oh that’s right, i saw her play this summer in the SF symphony’s “summer in the city” concert at dolores park. she played the hayden trumpet concerto, all three movements, (the first movement is the best, IMO). she was really good, but i didn’t know anything about her when i saw her. now i have all this background information, i’m more stoked about her, but… i don’t know when the next time i’ll see her play will be.

note to self: next symphony concert i go to, find out who the featured musician/artist is ahead of time.

wait for the trumpet to come in. it’s pretty amazing:

(here’s the sheet music, if you want to follow along)

wow.

we just had our dress rehearsal for the symphony concert at the conservatory. holy mother of god!!! that room is amazing!!!!!!!!!!

what a great feeling to play in there. i can’t wait for the concert. being on that stage and familiarizing myself with the building was a huge help in getting the nervousness out of my system. hearing myself play on my new horn, with the hard wood walls and flooring felt really solid.

during one of the songs that i’m not in, i sat and listened near the back of the concert hall. very nice blend. the difference between the concert hall and our practice space is profound (as it should be i suppose), but i hadn’t realized how good the group sounds all together! (that sounds arrogant… oh well). the building also features incredibly ornate walls and ceiling. there’s a choir balcony behind the stage, as well as a side balcony…. i then walked around the building trying to find access to the balcony. i got onto the choir balcony through the second floor (we might open this as overflow seating if we sell out the main seating area). then i asked around for the smaller side balcony/box seat. none of the conservatory students knew what i was talking about, but i eventually found a locked door on the third floor labelled ‘loge’, and i figured that was it.

anyway…. i’m super-excited about this concert! such a cool location, such wonderful music.

tomorrow is my freedom band dress rehearsal. it’s at ebenezer lutheran church, which will be another huge improvement, accoustically speaking. i’m sure it will also sound much better than our band practice space.

I’ve posted the press release for the symphony I’ve been playing with this past summer below. Our summer concert at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music is coming up this Saturday, 9/13. The tickets are priced at $16-32, sliding scale, which includes a free wine reception immediately following the concert.

You can purchase tickets online (http://bars-sf.org/Concerts.html), by phone (415-57-VIOLA), or directly from me up until Friday. The show may sell out (there’s only 400 seats), so reserving a place ahead of time is strongly recommended.

The press release:

Hope to see you there!

-Greg

p.s. If any of you are allergic to classical music, but still have the desire to hear me play, you can see me in the San Francisco Lesbian Gay “Freedom Band” on Friday night, at Ebenezer Lutheran Church at 8pm. The music in this set will be more modern, more geeky, more goofy, and possibly more fun. Admission is free.

More specific info about the band concert, if it interests you:
http://laughingsquid.com/squidlist/events/index.php?com=detail&eID=178658

i’ve been playing trumpet in two groups this summer, the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, and the San Francisco LGBT Freedom Band. they’re both coming to a close, and it’s been a lot of fun. i might have to do both again next quarter. that basically fills up my evenings for two days out of the week. i decided to sign up for private trumpet lessons, but it may only last until the next quarter of band and symphony starts up. i’m not going to have much of a social life outside of music, but c’est la vie.

also, i found a really good set of trumpet lessons on youtube, if you’re interested.

google analytics

so right now, homeslice is poking around google analytics, and kinda blabbering, repeating stuff from the previous speaker, showing us where on the analytics page we can the find stuff they were talking about….

someone from the audience pointed out, that for her company, the most useful tool in google analytics is:
visitors > benchmarking - benchmarking data allows you to compare your analytics to other companies in your category.

universal search

google bot searches across all of google’s content sources - of 1.2 billion queries 220 million contained a universal search result

• video 38%
• news 34%
• images 19%
• multiple placements 15%
• maps/stocks/weather 10%

including these types of media on your site should give you better rankings.. optimization techniques for maximum benefit include:

• google image search: keyword rich fil names and alt tabgs
• google video: keyword rich names for files title and descriptive tag
• google news: press release
• google maps: will give a local presence
• google blog search: tag it ( digg, del.icio.us, stumplebupon, etc.) submit to google blog search

Summary of Effective SEO Strategy

• have keywords that drive traffic and convert well
• ensure that design and site structure helps not hinders SEO
• have effective content for visitors and search engines
• ensure SE’s and visitors find pages through linking and submissions
• measure your success and improve SEO
• keep up with online innovations

no answers for

what is the best thing to do for internationalization? (i.e. starting a spanish section of the site) i wish i had recorded the answer to this. basically they told me to not translate literally. great answer guys.
SEO background images (another skirting of “i don’t know”)

efficiency

• search engine’s contributing the most to the bottom line
• search engine’s delivering biggest bang for the buck
• what should be allocated by spending to optimize PPC program?
• what will be the increase in organic traffic?

• why track

  • highly competeive space
  • different factors affect success
  • measuring shows affects of changes
  • incremental improvement

  basic seo and ppc tracking

  • traffic measures
    • clicks
    • entries or lands
    • page views
    • visits
    • visitors
    • outcome measures
      • conversions
      • engagement
      • revenue
    • efficiency measures
      • conversions per click
      • conversions per visit
      • conversions per visitor

    Basic SEO and PPC Tracking

    • Clicks - Someone selects your search engine result on the SE or your PPC advertising
    • Hit - Single request to your website for some object
    • Entry or Land - a visitor comes to your site
    • Referring Site - full URL of the site and page from which the user came
    • Visit - also called a session. all the pages viewed by a user on a single browser session (usually ends if there is a 30 gap between requests)
    • Cookies - most common technique for measuring visitors. tracks a specific computer - not a person. not accepted by all browsers
    • PPC visitors - visitor: the generic term that applies to a single cookied cocmputer
    • Daily Unique - count of daily visitors from unique IP addresses
    • Conversions - events that your care about. the goal of your PPC campaign. e.g. purchase, request information, complete survey, signup for newsletter, etc…

    the speaker from microsoft is pushing this for “SEM Measurement”: http://webmaster.live.com/, which keeps track of basic SEM goals:

    • amount of traffic to your site
    • traffic to target keywords for optimization or purchase
    • success rate / conversions
    • users’ interests for targeting landing pages
    • what search terms drive the most traffic? (and which aren’t driving traffic)
    • what search terms dive the most organic traffic, and paid traffic?
    • what search terms generate the most conversions?
    • how deep are visitors going? measure how many page views visitors have by engine and search term. time spent on site
    • what search terms and search engines are sending the most engaged visitors
    • which search terms and engines generate the most engagements per visitor
    • tracking over time
      • visible impact changes in SEO are having
      • compate with PPC probem - which is sourcing better qualified visitors?
      • has your SEO produced more traffic and visitors who are more likely to become engaged?
      • has SEO improved or declined with respect to a particular engine?
      • has amount of traffic from natural vs. paid shifted over time?

    the speaker from icrossing is pushing paid search in addition to organic. basically he’s saying that if you appear in both the paid search results and the organic ones, the user is more likely to trust your site. go figure…

    tracking tools

    • Server Side (on your own server)
      • click tracks
      • web trend analytics
    • client site by 3rd party:
      • google analytics
      • omniture
      • hbx
    • specific tools:
      • webceo.com
      • adgooroo.com
      • website manager ranking pro
      • digital point

directories:

• yahoo
• open directory project (google)

local:

• google
• yahoo
• city search
• aol

yellow pages:

• super pages
• city search
• info usa and info usa business
• msn yellow pages
• yahoo! yellow pages

vertical ad networks:

• business.com
• it.com
• golfhelp.com
• vetmedsearch.com
• gowholesale.com

social media

• universal search makes this more relevant
• video, news, podcasts, blogs, social networks
• note: he didn’t mention forums

here they are:

http://www.searchingforprofit.com/SES-SJ08.pdf
title=”http://www.searchingforprofit.com/Seattle08.pdf

my notes from the afternoon session of the SES conference… hopefully i’ll learn a few new tips & tricks… the speaker is offering a free SEO consultation to a lucky few volunteers… about 10 people have submitted their URL’s, hopefully he’ll pick mine.

first thing he’s doing is showing us how to pull up the cached version of a site. basically search for your URL in google, and then click on the “cached” link on the results page. from here, he’s showing us the text only version of the site, because this is an approximation of what the search engine’s see when they visit your site.

next tool he’s suggesting, is yahoo’s site explorer.

also you can search google using the “site:” prefix to filter all results to a particular site. (e.g. in the google search text input field, type “site:http://www.credit.com”)

at this point we’re discussing someone’s site who’s been blacklisted (kaiserquotes.com)… a bunch of people are speculating as to how he can fix the problem and be re-included in the search results… someone else who was in the same situation is recommending to try to contact yahoo with an explanation until they finally get back to you.

we’re discussing a vacation travel site (www.homeaway.com) that is apparently getting pretty good search rankings. the problem i see with it though, is that it has a ton of spammy keywords below the fold of the homepage. i just googled for “google search spam” and found a page where you can report/blacklist people’s sites. hmm… i’m not going to do anything to them, but i hope there is a stringent filter to prevent the abuse of this tool.

someone has a website analytics company (zimana.com). his recommendation is to become a publisher to give him an advantage over other analytics companies… he’s also recommending to add press releases. recommends: prnewswire, prweb, businesswire, as distribution services.

some old guy is repeating what we’ve been talking about all morning. thinking about leaving this session and checking out another track at this point..

page content is king

for search engines:

find pages to optimize for primary and secondary keywords or keyword phrases (see below how to optimize those keywords)

for readers:

• write for your audience (use a persona)
• write to acheive a goal (focus on benefits)

theme:

• subject of the page is important to SE’s
• words that describe that theme = keywords and keyword phrases

phrases:

• people target their searches using 2-3 word phrases
• pages should target keyword phrases and single keywords

incorporating keywords:

• primary keyword phrase and context
• in the first paragraph and in throughout copy
• balance copy b/t purpose for human reader and keywords for search engine results page

emphasizing a theme into semantic page elements:

• title element
• meta description
• meta keywords
• h1 & h2 headings (page title)
• page body, text
• image alt text
• linking

(note: he doesn’t mention keywords in the URL)

keyword density:

• ratio of # of times your keyword phrases appear on a page
• no hard and fast number, some suggest 2-5%, or as little as one mention of the keyword in the first paragraph
• don’t go overboard repeating

“latent semantic indexing”

• search engine looks for other related words on a page to know what a page is about
• so make sure if you’re talking about “bass” (the fish) for exampe, that you also mention words that relate to the meaning you are going for (examples for “bass” would be fishing, lakes, other names of fish…)

formatting:

• based on eye tracking studies
• guide the eye with headlines and bullets on a page
• use images on the page when necessary to emphasize a point

beginning middle end:

• headline
• opening paragraph
• additional paragraphs
• end and refer back to the beginning
• call to action

expertness

• web content establishes expertness and provides info
• become the expert linking out to others who know more
• well-written, quality pages will attract links
• use quotes from other people to establish credibility

review copy after time - come back later to ask….

• achieve the objective
• capture attention
• summarize at end and have call to action
• written for your audience
• clear and concise
• have primary keyword phrase from top to bottom
• establish you as an expert

titles - description & keyword meta tags - headlines

the rationale:

• seen & unseen
• standing out from the crowd

browser titles

• try not to lead with company name
• different web page, different title
• keep it short

keyword meta tags

description meta tags

• may be used in results page
• use a different description for each page
• use keywords and keywords phrases in the description

headlines

• use one high-level tag
• emphasize attributes
• duplicate the browser title keyword being emphasized

lunch…

Head Element

<meta name=”description” content=”This sentence describes what the page is about, and should be readable to humans.” />
<meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” />

• INDEX - include page in results
• NOINDEX - tells Google not to index the page
• FOLLOW - tells google to follow all links on the page
• NOFOLLOW - tells Google not to follow the links on the page
• NOARCHIVE - tells Google not to store a cached copy of the page

Server Configuration

• Correct server errors
• Full 300 redirects
• Have a clean IP address and c-block (someone asked whether switching your domain to a new IP will affect your rankings… he replied “no”, but i’m pretty sure it does..)
• Reverse DNS lookup

SEO Roadblocks

• Dynamic URL’s (avoid using ? parameters in url)
• Session ID’s
  • web is a stateless environment
  • each request is a new connection to the site
  • session id allows site to remember
• Don’t use cookies (??????)
• Poorly formed and broken HTML (causes engines to ignore content) (note: he mentions the w3 validator but doesn’t give a URL)
• robots.txt - text file in root of site telling search engines which pages to index (note: he doesn’t mention robotstxt.org)
• splash pages - blocks crawlers from your site
• Frames - frames won’t be indexed
• Login & other user entry form pages - won’t be indexed
• javascript - search engine spiders do not execute javascript.
• flash sites & other rich internet applications - presents a crawling and indexing problem for search engines
• graphics - use alt text elements so that search engines can understand what the image is about (note: doesn’t mention using title attribute, until someone asks about it). doesn’t mention the ‘longdesc’ attribute
• pages can be hard to access because of url structure
• redirection & canonicalization issues
  • proper redirection
  • use 301 permanent redirect (instead of 302 temporary)
• duplicate content
• search engine spam - use of a technique to artificially improve ranking (see google webmaster help center)
  • too legitimate optimization too far
  • use an optimization that doesn’t follow SE guidelines
  • write content for humans, not spiders
  • don’t stop spiders from indexing your site
  • don’t spam
  • doorway pages
  • cloaking
  • hidden test
  • automated content generation
  • keyword stuffing
  • reciprocal links
  • link triangulation
  • paid links
  • linking to/from ‘bad neighborhoods’
• note to montana:i just asked the speaker, and he (albeit, kinda a dumbass) does acknowledge value in inbound links

break…

Home Pages

• Home pages must be clean, information and usable
• home page should have significant text explaining what your site is about
• keywords in your text, and be sure that all links off the home page are using appropriate anchor text
• clear navigaionstructure, preferable in text links, so that search engines can go deper into the site from there
• keep navigation consistent across the site

Site Maps

• simple page that lists all the pages on your web site in an organized fashion
• you home page should link to the site map
• use keyword phrases in your site map links in order to support the theme of the pages
• never have more than 99 links on a page. if there are more than 99 pages in your site, consider breaking the site map into several sub site map pages by categories

Directory Structure

• proper hierarchical order of a siloed site
• using virtual and structural silo-ing ensures a strong theme
  • note: the speaker doesn’t know the difference between virtual and structural siloing, but you can read about it somewhere else
• utilize breadcrumbs to support theme, as well as to give the user a mental map of the web site
• keep your site fairly shallow, if possible
  • While search engines no longer index only two directories deep, very deep silos can be difficult to support and often fail to have enough good content
• Do not create categories with fewer than five supporting pages. if you do not have at least five pages and often more content pages, you will not support your theme adequately

the bastards aren’t letting us download the powerpoint file, but luckily i can type super fast. here is the page that they showed during the break:

• google traffic estimator
• google trends
• google suggests
• google adwords editor
• wordtracker
• keyword discovery
• generate local keywords
• keyword mapper
• object graph - suggest tool
• yahoo keyword bids
• nichebot
• quintura
• combine words
• collection of seo tools
• keyword elite
• keywords analyzer
• we build pages toolset
• comscore marketer
• hitwise
• compete