The quality of your practice is much more important than the quantity. The old saying "practice makes perfect" is only true if the practice itself is perfect. Here are 7 tips to help make your practice more effective and efficient.

Practice motions slowly

The muscular memory of our bodies allows us to physically carry out patterns of motion with little or no conscious involvement. Examples of muscular memory include walking, riding a bicycle, typing, and of course playing a musical instrument.

In order to develop this memory, the muscles require training in the form of repeated conscious guidance from the mind. First the mind must learn the pattern. Then the mind must "teach" the pattern to the muscles.

The mind initially must control all the motions of the muscles. The more controlled and precise the motions, the more quickly the muscles will develop muscle memory.

Slow practice also allows the mind to teach "antagonistic muscles" to relax. Antagonistic muscles are those that move in opposite directions. By relaxing antagonistic muscles you can reduce tension and facilitate faster and easier performance and avoid potential injury.

Practice in small cells

A "practice cell" is simply a finite series of motions. Musical cells can correspond to anything from a few notes to an entire work. When practising, it is important to practice small cells of just a few notes. Practising small cells limits the amount of information the muscles have to learn at one time. It also facilitates the mind's focus and concentration.

Link the end of one cell to the beginning of the next

To help the muscles develop a sense of continuum throughout the piece of music, the last motion in a cell should be the first motion of the following cell.

Practice each cell in bursts

Once the muscles have learned a pattern, they will be capable of executing it without conscious control. Initiate the pattern through a conscious command and allow the muscles to execute it in a burst.

Don't practice mistakes

For every repetition required to learn a pattern of motion, it takes 7 times the number of repetitions to change the pattern. If in the course of your practice you make an error, stop. Review in your mind the pattern. And further reduce the speed of your motions.

Pause between repetitions

When dealing with repetitive activities, the mind is better able to focus when the repetitions are broken up by short pauses. After two or three repetitions, pause for about 30 seconds to regain focus.

Take frequent breaks and don't "over-practice"

B.F. Skinner and other experts have found that the mind's ability to learn drops significantly after prolonged intense concentration. Research shows that studying too long (i.e. more than four hours) can deplete chemicals in the brain necessary for learning. Therefore, it is best to take frequent breaks (a 5 minute break about every 20-25 minutes) and practice no more than 4 hours consecutively.

By applying these techniques, you can dramatically improve the quality of your practice. You'll be able to use your time more efficiently and increase the effectiveness of your practice.

What people understand and accept as music varies according to location, historical era, culture and individual taste. The actual definition of music is hotly contested; one definition of music may include only those sounds which are considered "pleasant" by the definer, while another may include any sound produced intentionally by an individual or a group. Other definitions may focus on defining music as a physical phenomenon (in terms of sound), as a psychological phenomenon, or as a social phenomenon. Thus music must contain physical, psychological, and social phenomena, including theory, performance practice, dance, and poetry.

Aspects of Music

The commonly defined aspects that make up music are:

• Timbre

• Pitch

• Intensity

• Duration

Timbre is the quality of a sound and varies between voices and musical instruments, which are tools used to produce sound. Pitch is how high or low a sound is, and may be further described as definite pitch or indefinite pitch. Intensity is how loud or quiet a sound is and includes how stressed a sound is. Silence is also often considered an aspect of music, if it is considered to exist. Duration is the only aspect common to both "sound" and "silence", being the temporal aspect of music. The spatial location or the movement in space of sounds may also be an aspect of music.

A musician is a person who composes, conducts or performs music.

The advent of blogging and free blog space has brought about a revolution in web publishing that pushes the boundaries of terms like "webmaster" and "website." In todays brave new world of Internet publishing for the masses, the traditional means of building and hosting a personal website has fallen out of favor for many new webmasters.

If you count yourself among the many bloggers who use a free subdomain blog account, you'll have to think about web hosting sooner or later. Unfortunately, most don't consider the ramifications until it's too late. In the beginning, a free blog account or ad-supported web hosting seems like the obvious choice for a personal site. Unfortunately, this decision - or lack thereof - can cause problems down the road. Issues with free hosting and subdomain hosting range from SEO complications to ownership and control issues. Both free and paid hosting have their own merits and drawbacks, of course, so the ultimate decision is yours to make. But understanding these pros and cons is the first step in making a good decision for your site.

Free Hosting

Pros

It's free

This is obviously the single most important advantage of free web hosting.

It's easy

Anyone can open an account on Blogger or any number of other free services and instantly get a free website requiring no more effort to publish than writing an email.

No experience necessary

Anyone can create a site using one of these free services, with no programming, technical, or even HTML knowledge required.

Cons

Branding

As your blog or website grows, a subdomain hosting account offers little in the way of branding, and may adversely affect your credibility

SEO

If you move away from a subdomain account to your own domain, you will have to start over building links to your new domain.

No control over ad content

With free hosting, you are at the mercy of your hosting company's discretion as to what type of ads will be displayed on your site. Pop-ups and ads for adult sites are not uncommon.

Limited or no accountability for site outages and other problems

When you're getting something for nothing, it's all too easy to become the victim of corporate apathy.

Paid Hosting

Pros

You can host your own domain

With paid hosting, you can brand your site with your own domain name (e.g. MySite.com) and add legitimacy to your content.

Control

With paid hosting, you control every aspect of your site, including design and advertising content.

SEO advantages

With a paid hosting account and domain name, you can build links to your site safely without worrying about whether or not you'll be changing domain names. In addition, a hosting account allows you programmatic and scripting abilities not usually found in free, pre-built websites.

Custom site development

Unlike free blogs, a hosted website can typically run a variety of CGI and scripting applications, and can be built any way you choose.

Accountability and Portability

When you pay for hosting, you hold more leverage over your hosting company in the event of problems. Additionally, by retaining control of your source code and data, you can easily move your site to a new host.

Cons

Expense

Though you can get hosting plans as cheap as $2-$3 per month, it's still a cost that free hosting does not incur.

Some assembly required

Though many paid hosts offer site builders and blog software as part of the package, it still requires more technical work than signing up for a Blogger account.

Maintenance

When you create a site yourself, you become responsible for the upkeep of your own code. In fact, you become responsible for just about everything involved with the site except for the server and connectivity.

So in summary, making the right choice between free or blog site hosting and paid hosting is heavily dependent on both you and your site. Though I've focused heavily on hosting for blog sites, much of the same information applies to free hosting vs. paid hosting for other types of sites as well. The important thing is to take a good hard look at what you want your site to eventually be, how much effort you're willing to put into it, and then make your decision.

After reading a blog entry on JenSense, about how "One poorly converting site can "smart price" an entire Adsense account", I got the opinion that many webmasters like yourself did not like the idea of smart pricing.

Here is the basis of how smart pricing works:

And this often used example explains how this works more precisely.

Advantages of smart pricing

A while back, I went through a phase of looking for an alternative to Adsense. Some of the alternatives were good, but so many of them require you to explicitly state which sites you are going to place their advertisements on. This is alright for people who own one site, but it can be a big hassle for people who own more than one site.

As Adsense does not require each website to be explicitly stated, it has opened the doors to alternative models, like revenue sharing forums. It is just one thing that makes Adsense a lot simpler than the alternatives.

The problem with not explicitly stating the websites that Adsense will be on, is that it is hard to tell where one site stops and another site starts. From Google's point of view, every domain and sub domain is a new site, but there are sites out there that cross sub domains and even domains. So as a result, Adsense smart prices the entire account.

What separates your site from the others?

Your site is unique for one reason and one reason only; it has been created by you. You have put your foot print on the site and your views and opinions have made the site unique. Even across all my sites, there are similarities:

• If I have a professional template created for one site, there is more chance that I will have professional templates for all my sites.
• If one of my site is written in British English, there is little chance of my others are in US English.
• If I have found an Adsense placement that works well, I will use it on most of my sites.

All these little differences affect Adsense and which advertisements work best on your site.

Facts about smart pricing

Keep sites with low click through ratios

The percentage of clicks that convert for an advertiser is the most important factor in an advertiser's ROI, so it's not only possible, but common, to have a low CTR and a high advertiser conversion rate. It's also possible to have a high CTR and a low conversion rate. Don't remove the Adsense code from your site just because it has a lower CTR - it may be one of your best converting sites.

Content is king

The best way to ensure you benefit from Adsense is to create compelling content for interested users. This also means driving targeted traffic to your site -- advertisers don't gain as much ROI when paying for generic clicks as they do for quality clicks that come from interest in your content. Good content usually equals a good experience for user plus advertiser, which can be much more valuable than CTR.

Google doesn't make money from 'smart pricing'

In fact, they make less money, since the cost to advertisers is reduced in order to provide a strong ROI. Ultimately, this leads to higher payouts for publishers by drawing a larger pool of advertisers and rewarding publishers who create high quality sites.

Many factors determine the price of an ad

More than conversion rate goes into determining the price of an ad: the advertiser's bid, the quality of the ad, the other ads competing for the space, the start or end of an ad campaign, and other advertiser fluctuations.

Since people associate particular colours with different emotions, the colours used on your website can have a psychological effect on visitors to your site. By using specific colours geared towards the emotion you want to invoke, you can actually increase product sales.

Here are some colours along with the emotions and symbols they stimulate:

White

Purity, innocence, peace, perfection, chastity, sterility, cleanliness. In general, white creates a cool and refreshing feeling.

Black

Night, space, authority, sturdiness, reliability, power, constancy, prudence, wisdom, classy, elegance, submission, mourning, demons, witches. Black is a controversial colour as it can symbolize both good and evil.

Red

Love, excitement, warmth, heat, fire, blood, passion, power, aggression, action. Use red as an attention grabber. It works better as an accent colour rather than a background one.

Pink

Love, excitement, warmth, heat, fire, blood, passion, power, aggression, action. Use red as an attention grabber. It works better as an accent colour rather than a background one.

Blue

Sky, ocean, water, temperature, ice, coolness, mist, shadow, travel, freedom, truth, solitude, wisdom, trust, loyalty, peaceful, calmness, intelligence, dedication, masculinity. Different shades of blue convey opposite meanings. Light blue is peaceful while dark blue is depressing.

Purple

Royalty, dignity, luxury, wealth, sophistication, feminine, passion, romance, sensitivity, coolness, mist, shadows, mysterious, mystic.

Green

Money, calm, envy, greed, nature, life, youth, renewal, hope, vigour, fertility, rebirth, freedom, guilt. Different shades of green have different meanings. Dark green-cool. masculine, conservative, wealth. Emerald green- immortality. Olive green- peace. Green is the easiest colour on the eye.

Yellow

Light, purity, understanding, brightness, warmth, playfulness, creativity. Lemon yellow is the most eye fatiguing colour. Yellow can increase irritability so yellow should not be used as a main colour, only as an accent. Yellow enhances concentration.

Orange

Autumn, youthful, fire, warmth, contentment, fruitfulness, wholesomeness, strong, generous, endurance, strength, ambition. Orange is the colour most associated with appetite so it would be a good colour choice for a website selling food products. Orange also makes a product seem more suitable for everyone and more affordable.

Brown

Wood, comfort, strength, earth, solid, reliable, credible, maturity, humility, conservancy. Light brown conveys genuineness.

Grey

Exclusivity. Enhances the psychological response of other colours.

Use the colour that symbolizes the emotion you want to convey as the primary colour on your website. Add 1-2 other colours to reinforce this emotion. The colours used for your background, header, graphics, text, highlighting, headlines, etc. will all contribute to your website's influence on your visitors.

A Sitemap file lets you tell Google about all the pages on your site, and optionally, information about those pages, such as which are most important and how often they change. By submitting a Sitemap file, you can take control of the first part of the Google  crawling / indexing processes: Google discovery of the pages.

This may be particularly helpful if your site has dynamic content, pages that aren't easily discovered by following links, or if your site is new and has few links to it. In general it offers:

• Better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages
• Fresher search results
• A smarter crawl because you can provide specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page changes.

When Google released their Google Sitemaps Program, there was a big influx in forums and news-groups, with questions such as

• Do I need a sitemap?
• How do I create a Sitemap file?
• Is there a module for my program that can generate Google Sitemaps?
• What is the quickest and simplest way to generate a sitemap for Google?

For me it seemed a lot of work for something that Google seemed to do alright already. I wanted a quick solution for my site that would be very useful for Google.

The result was to create an RSS feed with an unlimited number of entries, just for Google. As most websites and website systems allow RSS it was not hard to make a small change and allow the RSS feed that we give Google to have an entry for every news items that was ever posted.

Although the code may be different on your website, the general idea is to find the section of code that limits the number of items for each RSS feed. In my case it was along the lines of an SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM 'News' ORDER BY 'Date' LIMIT 20

By removing the LIMIT 20 from the SQL when the user-agent string contained 'Google', I allowed Google to get an RSS feed of every page on my site.

One of the reasons that today's browsers are so large is that HTML documents can be constructed much more loosely than XML documents. For example, the following is a perfectly acceptable HTML document:

But because the <p> tag isn't closed and the <html> and <body> tags don't match their closing tags, this isn't a well-formed XML document.

XHTML takes HTML as defined in version 4.01 and applies the rules of well-formed XML documents. In order to be an XHTML document, our example above would have to read as follows:

Flavours

XHTML is also broken down into several "flavours":

XHTML 1.0 Transitional

XHTML 1.0 Transitional contains all of the elements and attributes defined in HTML 4.01, with the notable exception of those related to the use of frames.

XHTML 1.0 Strict

XHTML 1.0 Strict contains only those elements and attributes related to structure, and very few of those related to presentation. For example, the <center></center> element is not part of XHTML 1.0 Strict.

XHTML 1.0 Frameset

XHTML 1.0 Frameset includes all of the HTML 4.01 elements and attributes, including those related to frames.

Other changes

With XHTML replacing HTML, there are a few more changes that are coming through, other than enforcing well-formed XHTML:

• The tags must be lower case, so instead of <IMG SRC="resource/frankisboat.gif" WIDTH="389" HEIGHT="227" BORDER="0" ALT="boat">, as we would do in HTML, we instead use: <img src="resource/frankisboat.gif" width="389" height="227" border="0" alt="boat" />
• All tags must close, either by using a corresponding closing tag which has a slash, like paragraph ( <p></p> ) for example, or some tags are self closing like the above img src tag and line break ( <br /> ). In HTML, many of these tags were simply left open.
• All tags must be properly nested, so if you start tag "a" and then start tag "b", you must close tag "b" before you close tag "a".
• Some tags which were previously allowed are no longer allowed.
• All attributes must also be lower-case.
• All values for attributes must be encased in single or double quotes.

There was a huge rush to sign up for Google Analytics when it was first announced a few weeks ago. Online Web site traffic analysis services are not new - search the Web for them and you'll turn up dozens, both commercial and free. But Web-savvy people have come to expect great things from Google over the past couple of years.

Personally, I have found Google Analytics lacks the innovation that Google should have put into it.

Profiles

The first problem with Google Analytics is that each website must have its own profile if you want to view the results separately.

• There is no way to compare 2 website profiles
• Setting up website profiles, each with their own goals, is time consuming.
• Setting things up this way means that you can not compare data from the 2 sites.
• Each website needs its own tracking code.

Google Analytics does have the ability to track many websites under one profile, but this also has problems:

• You can't look at a websites data individually.
• Data just acts as it would for one website.

One script to track them all

When Google Analytics was released, it should not have needed separate scripts to track each website, but rather a single script that will work on any site.

Questions

After failing to do many things with Google Analytics, I have sent a list of questions to them as follows:

• How do I track all my domains (and subdomains) so that I have the option to see data about all my sites together or about a specific domain?
• If I track all my domains (and subdomains) in one profile, how do I view the keywords for only one subdomain?
• If I track all my domains (and subdomains) in separate profiles, how do I compare the performance of my domains (and subdomains) to each other?
• How do I track more than 2 custom variables?
• How do I track which tags on my blog are most popular when there are only 2 custom variables?
• How can I track the performance of Adsense on each page?

Recently RSS has become the "in thing" and an example of the Web 2.0 craze. Many webmasters are adding RSS feeds to their sites because of this. When an RSS feed is added to a site, the RSS icon is used so that it is globally recognised. Alternatively, the feed icon is used to link to RSS or Atom feeds.

This would be alright if only these 2 icons were used, but many webmasters thought "RSS is XML so lets use an XML logo". They preceded to place an XML logo on their websites. The are a few problems with this:

• The user might recognise the XML logo and not the RSS icon or the feed icon. Why should the user be expected to recognise all three images?
• User jumps to the conclusion that XML is RSS. They both are used to point to the same files so they must mean the same thing. Later on this causes problems when they decide that since an Office file is XML then it must be RSS.
• Have you tried explaining what XML stands for?

If you do have a feed on your website, please use the RSS icon or the feed icon.

For those people who are still unsure of which is which, Wikipedia defines RSS with the following statement:

and also says that:

On a separate page, Wikipedia defines XML as the following:

Links building is a primary job for developing link popularity. Link popularity is one of the vital measures taken in consideration by the search engines to rank your web pages. The number and the quality of links on your website would also play an important role for raising your page ranking. Some sites get as much as 200,000 visitors a month from links. Remember, this is free traffic. You can use various strategies such as article writing, software and tools to raise your link popularity.

Methods to get links

Make your site worth linking to

Before other webpages are going to link to you, the want to know that your website is going to be liked by their visitors. A simple way to ensure this is to offer something for free. Free software, services or information all work.

Request larger sites to link to you 

Links from larger sites are worth more in terms of traffic and improving your ranking in the search engines. Adding your link to places like http://syncrat.com/add-link will do much more for your publicity than many links from smaller blogs.

Write Press Releases

Writing a compelling news-worthy press release about your site or related topic, can also result in multiple websites and news sources picking it up and linking to your site. This is a very effective way of obtaining numerous one-way links very quickly, but doesn't offer the long-term benefits that articles do.

Submit Your Website To Directories

This is a good way of getting one-way links to your site (if a reciprocal link is not required). There are numerous directories you can submit to, offering both free and paid submissions. When deciding on whether paid submissions are worth it, you should look at the page where your link is expected to appear and see if it has a reasonable page rank, and the number of other links that appear on that page, with the fewer the better.

Dmoz

Work on getting into the Dmoz.org directory

Exchange Links With Other Websites

This process, known as reciprocal linking, is common place on the internet, and is something most webmasters do. However, while it's something you should do, it's important to note that search engines place more importance on one-way links than two-way or reciprocal links.

Build A Network Of Websites And Interlink Them

When building multiple websites it makes sense to interlink them, preferably from a home page link for maximum benefit. This can be very beneficial if each of your websites is on a different server, but be careful if they are hosted on the same server, as the search engines will think you're deliberately manipulating their results, and will most likely prevent you from achieving higher rankings.

Write Articles

This is a very powerful method of obtaining a lot of incoming one-way links to your site. By submitting your articles, which include the all important resource box with the link to your site, to multiple article directories you can pick up backlinks from not only these article directories but from other websites who pick up your articles and include them on their website or blog.

Create A Blog

Blogs are very easy to create with multiple websites offering free services, so there is no excuse for not creating a blog related to and linking to your main website. You could post anything - your thoughts, articles, or affiliate program reviews, for example, but make sure you include a link to your site in the links section, and at the end of each post if appropriate.

Leave Comments On Blogs And Guestbooks

You've got to be careful with this method that you don't abuse it and start spamming other people's blogs or guestbooks. Leave legitimate comments, and make it look like you actually have something to contribute. For example, just saying “Great Blog!” and then leaving your link is rightly considered to be spam, and will also damage your reputation in the long run.

Post On Forums That Allow Sig Files

Sig files are the line(s) that appear at the bottom of each message and act as a discreet way of advertising your site. You won't get a great deal of benefit in terms of page rank, as most forums do not have a high page rank for their threads, but you will build up a good number of links, and as forums generally tend to get spidered by the search engines regularly, they will follow the links to your site and subsequently spider your site on a regular basis.

Write Testimonials

By writing and submitting testimonials to websites that you have previously purchased products or services from, you can get high-quality links to your site, often from the home pages of the sites in question.

Buy Links

The final way to obtain incoming links is by simply buying them. This can have a dramatic effect on your page rank and subsequently your search engine rankings if you can get links from PR6+ sites, however the only problem with this is that most links for sale are often for a set period of time, usually a month, and so you have to keep buying them to maintain your higher page rank and rankings.

Industrial robots make up half of the value of robots and the most common industrial robots are demolition robots, medical robots, underwater robots, surveillance and security robots, laboratory robots and agricultural robots.

Through out all industrial areas, there is a niche for AI. There are possible applications for AI in everything from rubbish collecting and cooking, to managing money and commercial interests.

A carillon is a musical instrument composed of a range of bells controlled by a keyboard.

Carillons originated in the 15th century in Flanders, when bell-makers perfected their art to the point where bells could be cast with an exact tone. The greatest concentration of antique carillons is still found in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the northern regions of France and Germany, where they were commonly put in place by rich market towns as tokens of civic pride and status. They were most often housed in church towers, clock towers, or on municipal buildings, and the same holds true for those carillons that have been installed in other parts of the world since the art of casting precisely tuned bells was rediscovered in the late 19th century. In Germany, such a carillon is also called a glockenspiel.

Since each separate note is produced by an individual bell, a carillon's musical range is determined by the number of bells it has. With fewer than 23 (two octaves), the instrument is considered a chime, not a true carillon. Average instruments have ranges of around four anda half octaves (47 bells), while the largest specimens, with as many as 77, can span six octaves. In comparison, standard grand pianos can play 88 different notes.

Seated in a cabin beneath the bells, the carillonneur presses down, with a cupped hand or fist, on a series of baton-like keys arranged in the same pattern as a piano keyboard. The keys activate levers and wires that connect directly to the bells' clappers; thus, as with a piano, the carillonneur can vary the intensity of the note according to the force applied to the key. In addition to the manual keys, the heavier bells are also connected to a series of pedals, offering the carillonneur a choice of two ways of playing the lower notes.

Noted carillons can be found in the following locations:

• Arlington, Virginia: The Netherlands Carillon. A 50-bell gift from the people of the Netherlands, with bells cast by all three major Dutch foundries.
• Mexico City: The Banobras Carillon. A 47-bell instrument in the world's tallest carillon tower (125 m), which is part of a Mexican government development bank office complex in the Tlatelolco district.
• Montreal, Canada: The Carillon of St. Joseph's Oratory. A 56-bell carillon installed in 1956.
• New Haven, Connecticut: Harkness Carillon in Harkness Tower at Yale University: 10 bells (a chime) installed in 1922, and an additional 44 bells installed in 1964, for a total of 54 bells.
• Norwood, Massachusetts: The Walter F. Tilton Carillon, in the Norwood Memorial Municipal Building. A 51-bell instrument made by Gillette and Johnston, with bells ranging in size from 6½" to 71" (16.5 to 180 cm).
• Ottawa, Canada: The Peace Tower Carillon, in the Houses of Parliament,. 53 bells.
• Mechelen, Belgium: The St. Rumbolds Cathedral contains two carillons.

A singer or vocalist is a type of musician who sings, i.e. uses the voice as an instrument to make music.

In classical music and in opera, voices are treated just like musical instruments, thus special careers were developed out of each principal pitch.

Voices are commonly classified into: Female voices:

• soprano
• mezzo-soprano
• alto

• countertenor
• tenor
• baritone
• bass
• castrato

Wordnet / HyperDictionary Definition

1. The perception of pleasant arrangements of musical notes
2. A succession of notes forminga distinctive sequence; "she was humming an air from Beethoven"

Wikipedia Definition

In music, a melody is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord. However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly gestalt) to be called a melody. Most specifically this includes patterns of changing pitches and durations, while most generally it includes any interacting patterns of changing events or quality. Melody may be said to result where there are interacting patterns of changing events occurring in time.

"The events occurring in time must involve change of some kind to be understood as related or unrelated...The essential elements of any melody are duration, pitch, and quality [timbre, texture, and loudness]" Melodies often consist of one or more musical phrases, motifs, and is usually repeated throughout a song or piece in various forms. Melodies may also be described by their melodic motion or the pitches or the intervals between pitches (predominately conjuct or disjunct or with further restrictions), pitch range, tension and release, continuity and coherence, cadence, and shape.

Most commonly heard music has copyrights. A copyright is a acknowledgement of ownership by law that permits the owner of a copyright to prevent others from reproducing, displaying, performing, or distributing ideas expressed in a fixed medium such as text, film, videotape, sound recording, computer disk, or 3-dimensional form. Music falls into this 'copyrightable' category.

If you play, perform, or record any music that you have not created, you are using copyrighted music. This is only exempt if the composer has been dead for more than 50 to 70 years (depending on the country). Which is the case for most classical and traditional music and from all around the world (excluding arrangements).

When is a license is needed?

You need a license to play or use any copyrighted music. When you buy to a CD, you have brought a licence to play the music on the CD for your own personal use. If you want to do anything more with the music, like playing it in front of an audience, use it in a work (like a video), reproduce or record your own version, you will need another licence.

What type of licenses are there?

There are three general types of licences.

• A performance license is required to be able to play copyrighted music "live" or recorded music in front of an audience.
• A mechanical license is written permission from the publisher to manufacture and distribute a record, CD or audio tape fora specific copyrighted composition. The amount of the royalty paid to a songwriter from a mechanical license is determined by how many recordings are sold.
• Synchronization licenses allows you to use copyrighted works combination with visual images such as music in films, TV, videos, computer programs.

How to get Licences

The process of getting permission to use a piece of music is often referred to as "clearing the rights" to the music or securing a "license" from the owner of the copyright. Since nobody can track down all composers or publishers to obtain such permissions, agencies have been established.

Which agency is responsible for your licensing depends on the country you live in, but each agency knows the others very well and they will direct you to the right one, if you come to them by accident. Especially in the USA there are several agencies doing the same type of licensing for only a part of copyright owners but all know of the others and have the address. If you are unsure, ask one of them and they can help direct you.

Canada

• Socan

United States

• ASCAP
• Sesac
• HFA

Germany

• Gema

United Kingdom

• MCPS
• PRS
• PPLUK

A musical ensemble can be defined as a group of several or many musicians that are playing a piece of music together. There are a few types of ensembles named according to their size and the instruments used.

The terms duet, trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, and nonet describe an ensemble by its size. The names range from duet meaning 2 musicians to nonet meaning 9 musicians. Some of these are found more often than others, below are some of the more common ones:

• String Quartet

  • 2 Violins

  • A Viola

  • A Violoncello

• String Quintet

  • 2 Violins

  • 2 Violas

  • A Violoncello

• Piano Quintet

  • 2 Violins

  • A Viola

  • A Violoncello

  • A Piano

When an ensemble has more instruments it is usually called an orchestra, with a small orchestra known as a chamber orchestra. Symphony orchestras have more than 20 and often over 100 musicians, divided into groups of instruments:

• Violins (I and II)

• Violas

• Violoncellos

• Basses

• Woodwinds

• Brass

• Percussion

• and more

The terms symphonic and philharmonic are mainly used to distinguish different symphony orchestras from each other.

Some other terms you may encounter are:

Sinfonietta

A smaller orchestra that is not as small as a chamber orchestra.

String Orchestra

An orchestra that only has strings, i.e., violins, violas, violoncellos and basses.

Concert or Pop Orchestra

An orchestra concentrating mainly on the light classical and more popular repertoire.

Band

A group that plays more popular music composed in the last 50 to 100 years.

Choir

A choir is a group of voices. Sometimes the group of similar instruments in an orchestra are referred to as a choir. For example, the woodwind instruments of a symphony orchestra could be called the woodwind choir.

Tempo
Dynamics
Style
Miscellaneous

Slow

• grave - very slow, serious
• largo - broad, stately
• lento - slow
• adagio - slow, tranquil

Moderate

• andante - moving; literally, "walking"
• moderato - moderately fast

Fast

• allegro - fast; literally, "cheerful"
• allegretto - fast; literally, "cheerful"
• vivace - very fast
• presto - very, very fast
• prestissimo - as fast as possible

Acceleration

• accelerando - with increasing rapidity
• stringendo - pressing, becoming faster
• doppio movimento - twice as fast
• piu mosso - at a faster speed
• piu moto or veloce - at a faster speed

Decreasing Speed

• rallentando - gradually slower
• ritardando - gradually slower
• allargando - gradually slower
• ritenuto - held back, slowed down
• meno mosso - steady, but slower than before
• meno moto - steady, but slower than before
• morendo - dying, fading away

Return to Original Tempo

• a tempo - resume previous tempo
• tempo primo - go back to original tempo

Continue Into New Section

• segue - continue into new section, do not stop
• l'istesso tempo - continue at the same tempo

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• pianississimo - very, very soft
• pianissimo - very soft
• piano - soft
• mezzo piano - medium soft
• mezzo forte - medium loud
• forte - loud
• fortissimo - very loud
• fortississimo - very, very loud
• forte-piano - accent strongly, diminishing immediately to piano
• crescendo - gradually louder
• decrescendo or diminuendo - gradually softer

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• agitato - restless, agitated
• amoroso - affectionately
• animato - with spirit
• brilliante - bright-sparkling
• delicato - delicately
• deciso - decided, with firmness
• dolce - softly, sweetly
• doloroso - sorrowfully
• furioso - furiously
• grandioso - pompous, majestic
• grazioso - in a graceful way
• legato - smoothly, opposite of staccato
• Maestoso - majestic, stately
• marcato - detached and accented
• passionato - with fervor
• pesante - heavily, emphatically
• risoluto - with bold, energetic resolve
• scherzando - playfully
• sostenuto - sustained, prolonged
• sotto voce - in a quiet, subdued tone
• spirito - with spirit
• staccato - detached, separate
• tranquillo - peacefully, calmly
• violento - with violence
• vivo - with life and animation
• volante - flyingly
• vivace - briskly, brightly

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• 8va - play one octave higher or lower than written notes
• a2 or a due - together, both performers play
• accent - play a note with added stress
• ala - in the style of
• coda - a closing section
• con - with
• poco a poco - little by little
• con sordino - with mute
• da capo or (D.C) - go back to the beginning
• da capo al fine - go back to the beginning, play to the fine
• dal Segno - go back to the sign
• divisi - divided for separate instruments
• fine - the end
• glissando - slurred smoothly in a gliding manner
• mezzo - half-moderately
• molto - much, very
• mosso - motion, movement
• moto primo - same as at first
• obbligato - counter melody
• opus - a work
• piu - more
• poco or un poco - a little
• poco a poco - little by little
• precipitando - speedily, hurridly
• senza - without
• sforzando - with sudden emphasis
• simile - the same
• solo - for one performer
• stretto or stretta - increase of speed
• subito - suddenly
• super - above
• tacet - do not play
• tempo - rate of speed
• tempo di valse - in waltz time
• tenuto - held for full value
• trio - for three performers
• triplet - a group of three notes
• tutti - all the instruments
• va crescendo - continue increasing

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Wordnet / HyperDictionary Definition

1. Recurring at regular intervals
2. The arrangement of spoken words alternating stressed and unstressed elements; "the rhythm of Frost's poetry"
3. The basic rhythmic unit in a piece of music; "the piece has a fast rhythm"; "the conductor set the beat"
4. An interval during which a recurring sequence of events occurs; "the neverending cycle of the seasons"

Wikipedia Definition

Rhythm (Greek ρυθμός = tempo) is the variation of the duration of sounds over time. When governed by rule, it is called meter. It is inherent in any time-dependent medium, but it is most associated with music, dance, and the majority of poetry. The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody; it is a topic in linguistics. All musicians, instrumentalists and vocalists, work with rhythm, but it is often considered the primary domain of drummers and percussionists.

In Western music, rhythms are usually arranged with respect to a time signature, partially signifying a meter. The speed of the underlying pulse, called the beat, is the tempo. The tempo is usually measured in 'beats per minute' (bpm); 60 bpm means a speed of one beat per second. The length of the meter, or metric unit (usually corresponding with measure length), is divided almost exclusively into either two or three beats, being called duple meter and triple meter, respectively. If each beat is further divided by two it is simple meter, if by three compound meter.

Some genres of music make different use of rhythm than others. Most Western music is based on divisive rhythm, while non-Western music uses more additive rhythm. African music makes heavy use of polyrhythms, and Indian music uses complex cycles such as 7 and 13, while Balinese music often uses complex interlocking rhythms. By comparison, a lot of Western classical music is fairly rhythmically simple; it stays in a simple meter such as 4/4 or 3/4 and makes little use of syncopation. In the 20th century, composers like Igor Stravinsky, Philip Glass, and Steve Reich wrote more rhythmically complex music using odd meters, and techniques such as phasing and additive rhythm. At the same time, modernists such as Olivier Messiaen and his pupils used increased complexity to disrupt the sense of a regular beat, leading eventually to the widespread use of irrational rhythms in New Complexity. LaMonte Young also wrote music in which the sense of a regular beat is absent because the music consists only of long sustained tones (drones).

Clave is a common underlying rhythm in African, Cuban music, and Brazilian music.

A rhythm section generally consists of percussion instruments, and possibly chordal instruments (e.g., guitar, banjo) and keyboard instruments, such as piano (which, by the way, may be classified in any of these three types of instruments).

Narmour (1980, p.147-53) describes three categories of prosodic rules which create rhythmic successions which are additive (same duration repeated), cumulative (short-long), or countercumulative (long-short). Cumulation is associated with closure or relaxation, countercumulation with openness or tension, while additive rhythms are open-ended and repetitive. Richard Middleton points out this method cannot account for syncopation and suggests the concept of transformation.

A rhythmic unit is a durational pattern which occupies a period of time equivalent to a pulse or pulses on an underlying metric level, as opposed to a rhythmic gesture which does not.

We do not fully understand why we sleep, but think that it restores the bodies energy supplies that have been depleted during the day. It is the time when the body does most of its repair work and when the body releases growth hormones in children. The required amount of sleep varies from person to person, but most need around about 8 hours.

What does sleep do?

• Gives the body time to repair
• Is the time when people grow
• Restores used energy supplies
• Allows us to to be more athletic

Symptoms of lack of sleep

• Lack of sleep affects our thinking
• Less coordination
• Feel more tired
• Difficult to make decisions
• May start to feel depressed

Tips for a good nights sleep

• Keep to a regular pattern of going to bed and getting up at the same time every day
• Make sure that your bed and bedroom are comfortable - not too hot, not too cold, not too noisy
• Get some exercise
  
• Stop drinking tea or coffee in the evening
  
• Don't drink a lot of alcohol
• Don't eat or drink a lot late at night
• If you've had a bad night, resist the temptation to sleep the next day
• Write things your are thinking about and then tell yourself to deal with it tomorrow
• If you can't sleep, read a book

Shyness can affect all of us in some way and if we do not learn to control it, it controls us. You are not alone when it comes to being shy as famous personalities and very successful business people experience shyness at times.

Here are a few tips to overcome shyness. If you are sacred to make conversation with familar people, you could always practice in another city.

• Try to look your best. Looking good makes you feel better about yourself and helps with your self-esteem
• Join clubs that interest you. It is easier to talk to people with common interests.
• Smile. A smile does wonders and makes you look approachable.
• Make a real effort to stop worrying about what you think others are thinking about you. People who are worth having as friends will judge you not simply by outward appearances but by the kind of person you truly are.
• Think positively
• Judge others fairly
• Learn to be sociable. Force yourself to smile, to greet others and to carry on a conversation. Remember that you have only 50 percent of the responsibility. The other person should carry the rest of the conversation.
• Try to develop a sense of humor about yourself. Don’t condemn yourself if you say something wrong. Just relax and continue with the conversation, perhaps adding, “That didn’t come out right.”
• Set realistic and meaningful goals for yourself. Start of with engaging in conversation with others, talking to people you haven’t yet met, acting in a confident manner.
• If you are faced with a tough situation like a speech or a job interview, be as prepared as possible. Practice well beforehand. Maintain eye contact with your audience and be convinced that what you have to impart is of real value to your listeners.
• But what really cured my shyness was joining a Toastmasters club (they are all nice people, honest)

PHP (now a recursive acronym for "PHP Hypertext Preprocessor", but originally "Personal Home Page Tools",) is a widely used open-source programming language used primarily for server-side applications, to develop dynamic web content. It can be seen as an open source alternative to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) system and to CGI/Perl system.

Its ease of use and similarity with the most common structured programming languages, most notably C and Perl, allows most experienced programmers to start developing complex applications with a minimal learning curve. It also enables experienced developers to get involved with dynamic web content applications without having to learn a whole new set of functions and practices.

One of the more attractive parts of PHP is that it is more than just a scripting language. Thanks to its modular design, PHP can also be used to develop GUI applications, and it can be used from the command line just as Perl or Python can be.

PHP allows, among other things, easy interaction with a large number of relational database systems (Oracle, DB2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.), while maintaining a simple and straightforward syntax. PHP runs on every major operating system, including Unix, Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X and can interact with all major web servers. The official PHP website contains extensive online documentation. The Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) architecture has become very popular in the industry as a way of cheaply deploying reliable, scalable, and secure web applications.

History

PHP was originally designed as a wrapper around Perl by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 to display his resume information and collect some data, such as how many hits it was generating. Others first used "Personal Home Page Tools" in 1995, which Lerdorf had combined with his own Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI. Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology rewrote the parser in 1997, forming the basis of PHP 3. They also changed the name to its current recursive form. After months in beta, the development team officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997. Public testing of PHP 3 began immediately and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans started a new rewrite of PHP's core, producing the Zend engine in 1999. In May 2000, PHP 4 powered by the Zend Engine was released. Development continues toward PHP 5 with Zend Engine 2.78.

Popularity of PHP

PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting systems on the Web. It's been widely adopted since the release of version 4, which was the first version powered by the powerful Zend Engine from Zend Technologies.

According to Netcraft's April 2002 survey, PHP is now the most-deployed server-side scripting language, running on around 9 million of the 37 million domains in their survey. This is confirmed by PHP.net's own figures, which show PHP usage measured on a per-domain basis growing at around 5% per month. In May 2003, almost 13 million domains were using PHP, based on the same source. [1]

However, PHP is not the most commonly used tool if measurements are made on a per-page basis. Another estimate in March 2002, based on searching for Web pages by their suffix, places PHP in second place at 30% of measured pages, behind 48% using Microsoft's ASP, but also shows PHP growing rapidly in market share. However, this method is notoriously inaccurate for measuring PHP popularity as some PHP systems dispense with the file names, using only directories, while other sites tend to dispense with the .php extension.

Due to PHP's popularity, a new breed of programmers has emerged who are only familiar with PHP, which in turn forced open the door towards a command line interface for PHP, along with support for GUI functions, such as Gtk or ncurses support. This is a major step for PHP, because it represents its adoption as a genuine programming language (i.e. running autonomously on a stand-alone machine, as opposed to its original purpose of serving web pages to client machines from a server).

Parts or all of this document has been reprinted from http://www.wikipedia.org.