To those of you who wonder what I do.

My website is a hobby, not something I do as a job. Which means that I can work on it whenever time permit. It does not always do.

I have been working a lot "behind the scene". I have built a database to support the site, and most of the information have been entered into the site. But there is still work to be done before I can get it on the net. And for technical reasons this cannot be done before my ISP has upgraded their servers to asp.net 2.0 (as this is the technology I am using). It has taken more time than I had expected when I started - as things tend to do.

When I relaunch the new site, the content will be more or less the same as I have not produced much new content. But the reason for the change is that it has grown out of hand, and it is very hard to update with the current technology and structure. When this is done, it will be more easy to update and develop the content -- which I am looking forward to do.

Web development

As mentioned in an earlier posting, I will redesign my website to make it more userfriendly and more easy for me to update. A website that is not updated tend not to be very userfriendly.

As will be very obvious from my questions, webtechnology and databases are not my field of expertise. Just as in music, too many of those who are trying to explain tend to take some basic knowledge for granted, and do not explain the very basic concepts. This is why I am posting these questions, hoping to get some feed back from those of you who know these techonolgies. I need to test if my understanding is correct and get i corrected when it is needed.

I am using three different databases, CATraxx, BookCAT and CatVids to keep track of my CDs, books and videos. So far I have been using them for my own books, CDs and videos. (They are among my favourite programs, highly recommended!) But I want to use the same programs as a kind of "back office organizer" for information I put on the web. There are many reasons for that. One obvious reason is that I have been using these programs for years, I know them and I like them, and I still have not seen anything that come close. They can do more than you ever will try, and they are flexible. I can use Custom fields to register guitar tunings, keys, chord progressions, etc. This is not the kind of information a normal collector will be interested in, and you need a flexible program to be able to include this. I want to use the same program to organize the books I have in my bookshelves, as well as well as the books I put in my "book store". It means that I do not have to learn another program, and it will be easy to make more information available on the net. The same goes for CDs and videos.

These programs are based on MS Access. The hosting service from my ISP is based on Microsoft, with asp and asp.net, and MS SQL database. What I am hoping to do, is to transfer the data from the Access databases to MS SQL. And here comes one of my questions on "what you always wanted to know about databases, but where afraid to ask":

Will it at least to some extent be correct to say that databases have three major components: A user interface used to enter and process the data that goes into the tables, the tables where all the data is stored, and then a component used to extract and present the data. My understanding is that many of the fancy scripts that go into the making of a database is in the "data entry module". The result of this process is a number of tables with "static" data. I am not saying that the tables as such are static, but what is stored in the tables are basically static text and numbers, as well as binary files (pictures, formatted text, etc). There may be parameters defining what kind of data that will be allowed, but the data is not processed. (It is a matter of definition when it comes to data such as dates that are stored as a number, but presented in a date format.) The "Query" or "search" component search, combine and present data from the tables.

My idea is to use my favourite databases to organize the data, export the tables to the SQL server, and then add some procedures to extract the information from the SQL tables and present them on the web. I do not need all the search and presentation facilites in CATraxx, BookCAT and CatVids on the net, and I do not need the data entry and data manipulation facilities. But I have not made up my mind on how I will present this. I will probably start with the same sorting options as today (artist, genre, level etc), with not too detailed information. I will include basic information, internal links to pages on my site that are relevant for their guitar playing (when applicable), and include data on books, CDs, videos, instruments and other equipment. I hope that it will be more flexible and offer more options than what I have today, and that it will open up for further development. An important question for me is if this is a workable solution, and if there are ways to export data tables from Access to MS SQL that are not too complcated. (To export the data in XML format is an option. CATraxx, BookCAT and CatVids have good export procedures for data on books/albums and tracks/content, but unfortunatly there are no procedure for exporting the data on artists/persons. So for at least some of the information, there seem to be no way to avoid exporting Access-tables.)

If I manage to get the data into the SQL tables, the next challenge will be to present the data. As I am thinking now, I will probably go for an XML-based solution, based on XSL-stylesheets. CATraxx, BookCAT and CatVids all have many XSL-templates which I think I can start from. But I need to learn a little more about XSL. I wish I could find a WYSIWYG XSL-editor. When I am working with presentation, I prefer to see what it actually looks like while I am working. So far I have only found text-based editors, and I find it hard to imagine what all these lines of code actually will look like.

The rest of what I am planning seem to be more straightforward, at least there are many products available that promise to do the job. I will add some blogging software, better linking management and maybe a little bit more.

Probably to the disappointment to some of you, I will also develop the advertising a bit more. I am signing up with a few more affiliate programs, and will probably add some software to manage advertising. Geotargeting is the most important feature. I does not make sense to advertise in Europe a supplier that will only deliver in US (like MusiciansFriend), or advertise European services in US. It is the little stream of money generated from sales through the affiliate links cover the expenses related to maintaining the site (as well as giving some pocket money to spend on music ...). But I will only pick products and services that I like and use myself. There will be no online casinos, no "viruses" like adware, no pop-ups, etc. I am buying from Amazon US and Amazon UK, as well as from SheetmusicPlus and MusicRoom. I have been using CATraxx, BookCAT and CatVids for years, and Earope is still my favourite ear training program. I would have been buying from MusiciansFriend if they had shipped to Europe, I am using the Kelkoo service every time I am looking for a flight or any other product or service at a good price, I enjoy music on my iPod, I am writing this on my Dell laptop, etc. These are the kind of products and services you will see advertised on my site. In all advertising there is a kind of endorsment.

If some of you could answer or comment some of the questions raised about webdevelopment, I would appreciate either comments in this blog or an e-mail.

PS:
I sometimes wonder what is the secret of the small Norwegian town Moss. It is a small town 5o km south of Oslo, previously most know for its pulp factory which created a peculiar smell over the town. I found the programs CATraxx, BookCAT and CatVids when surfing the net to find a good program for CD organizing. I tried several, and decided to go for CATraxx. Some time later, I realized that this program is developed by a small company (my understanding is that is is a one man company) in this little town. My favourite reference for web technology is w3school at http://www.w3schools.com/. After having used w3school for a while, I realized that this service is run by another small company in the same little town. It is also the home of Helly Hansen, one of the few Norwegian brand names known globally in the consumer market. But despite excellent software and web development and internationally orientet business: They have not been able to make a webpresentation of the town in English. So I include a link to Galleri F15 instead - one of the leadning contemporary art galleries in Norway.

My Guitar Site will be redesigned

Dear guitar friends.
In the weeks or rather months to come, I will redesign my website.

I never really planned to make to make a large website. But I got positive response for the historic lessons published some time back in the 80s. I put these and some other materiale at my site at University of Oslo. Then one day a friend told me that my guitar pages was among the most visited webpages at the University. Inspired by that, I got my own domain close to six years ago.

It was then just flat HTML-files. Later I change to ASP, which made it easier to keep things up to date. But I have to move on. I is needed to put at least the bulk of the material into a database. And I have to add some blogging software. The blog that I am using now should of course be a part of my site, and it will be. I will also include tools to help me keep links up to date, and to better follow up when people are suggesting links.

I plan it as a gradual process, with new functions added when they are ready. When this work is done, then I hope I can do something with the back log of things that should have been done with the content.

I appreciate comments. When the redesign is done, you should be able to comment on the site. Look back to http://www.torvund.net/guitar from time to time, to see how it develops.

I have reorganized my guitar blogs

I have opened another blog for questions and comments at http://olavsguitarq.blogspot.com/. I will forward questions and comments sent to me by e-mail to this blog. The question asked or the comment may be relevant for more than one person. The blog you are looking at now will be for news, my own comments and views, etc. But you are of course welcome to comment.

But in the transition period the situation may be a bit confusing, as you may find the same postings in both blog.

Error on web page

Your information is terrific. Sometimes I feel it will take the rest of my days to just learn what you have already forgot. It seems I am often reading and re-reading your pages and information. Many thanks for having this on line. Your efforts are appreciated sincerely.

On the we page at http://www.torvund.net/guitar/chords/Minor.asp , in the second paragraph you comment

For this reason I will start with major, where the primary chords are I - IV - V, or C - E - G in C-major. Our first minor chord is then Am the relative minor chord, labeled vi,

I believe you meant C - F - G for the I IV V progression.

****
You are right. I should be C - F - G. I will correct this next time I update the site.

Trying to find tracks minus guitar

Dear Olav,

I just found your site this evening and it's great. I've been playing
for many years but only at home or occasionally jamming with other
players. I'd like to get tracks of popular songs minus the guitar part
so I can perform alone at small clubs like I see many other guitarists
do. Can you direct me to a site that would have backing tracks
for popular rock ( 70's to 80's) or rock/blues...Allman Bros., Clapton,
SRV etc. without the guitar?
I would genuinely appreciate any help you could offer .

Sincerely,

Ottavio
---
I do not know any websites with such material. All the music-minus-one
material I know about is listed at
http://www.torvund.net/guitar/BookLists/Lists/BluesBacking.asp

About perfect fifths

I do not play guitar but I am enjoying your web site on theory. To
answer your question about the use of the word perfect the way I learned
it was this: if the upper note of an interval is found in the major
scale built on the lower note- it is known as a diatonic interval (C-G
diatonic 5th C-Ab not diatonic 6th). If the prime, fourth fifth or
octave are diatonic they are called perfect intervals. I hope this helps
Thanks

Re: Links are broke

At 04:02 28.07.2005, you wrote:
>I'm getting Page Cannot be found error on many of the links from the main
>page.
>
>http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Blues%20Guitar/index.asp#Part%201
>
>http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Blues%20Guitar/12_bar_in_E-introduction.asp
>
>I took out the space character, "%20" and made it to the page.

I do not know how you got to that "main page". You should not have been there ...
I changed the folder name from Blues Guitar (Blues%20Guitar) to BluesGuitar. But I must have forgotten to change this index page to a forwarding page. Now I have done this, and you should not be able to stay at this main page any more.

Olav Torvund
http://www.torvund.net

Re: sus2 chords

At 15:40 16.08.2005, you wrote:
>Dude, there are no such things as sus2 chords. The
>tension exists in the 4th replacing the 3rd. A sus2
>chord is a sus4 (or simply sus) chord in 1st
>inversion. Accordging to you a Csus2 is CDG, but a
>Gsus is GCD. You may as well call an Am (ACE) a C6
>without the 5th - CE_A.

If one should apply correct theory strictly, there are no such thing as a 5-chord either. The "power-chords" that are often notated a 5, for instance G5, are just an interval (a fifth) with a double root. By definition a chord has three or more notes, and a 5-chord has only two. But it is common practise to call them chords and notate them as 5-chords. I stick to practise, not the theory.

This takes me to the sus chords. One may say that there is no such thing as a sus2 chord, just as there is no such thing as a 5-chord. But if you read music notation for guitar, you will often see sus2 chords. So even if they do not exist in theory, they do exist in practise. The relation between the sus2 and 2us4 chords are explained in
http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Theory/11-2-The_sus4_chord.asp.

If one should apply the theory to very common and very guitaristic phrases notated as
D - Dsus4 - D - Dsus2 - D or A - Asus4 - A - Asus2 - A,
it should have been
D - Dsus4 - D - Asus4 - D, or A - Asus4 - A - Esus4 - A.

But this would also be misleading, as the chords in these two sequences function as variations of either the D chord or the A chord, and should be notated in some way or another as a D chord or and A chord. And common practise is to notate them as sus2. And after all, the tension in the
"sus2" - to the extent that there is any tension - against the root and the fifth, comes from the second.

As I write in http://www.torvund.net/guitar/chords/sus2.asp , the sus2 is sometimes written as add2 or add9 chords, but this is not really correct either. So I think I will stick to the sus2 notation.

Olav Torvund
http://www.torvund.net

Alfred Music sale at SheetmusicPlus

Message from SheetmusicPlus:
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through August 25th. In addition to our Homepage Bestsellers
Sale, you'll find 10,000+ Alfred Publishing titles at 25% off!"

Go to SheetmusicPlus for more details.

Re: Open-G.asp

At 21:39 26.07.2005, you wrote:
>Olav,
>Greetings from Seattle, Washington, USA.
>
>I am confused by your description of open G tuning.
>First you say "tune the high E string to E". Then you give the resultant
>tuning as D-G-D-G-B-G. Then you say the "The chord has the voicing
>5-1-5-1-3-5 ". I believe the last to be correct resulting from tuning the
>E string to D.
>
>This from the page: http://www.torvund.net/guitar/OpenTuning/Open-G.asp

You are right. The high E string should be tuned down to D, giving the
tuning D-G-D-G-B-D. Then the voicing is correct.
I have sent the answer bcc to my guitarblog at
http://olavsguitar.blogspot.com/

Olav Torvund
http://www.torvund.net

RE: Broken link in www.torvund.net

>There appears to be a problem on this page of your site.
>
> On page http://www.torvund.net/guitar/Links/Guitar%20manufacturers.asp
> when you click on "Ovation",
> the link to http://www.kamanmusic.com/ovation/
> gives the error: Not found.
>
>As recommended by the Robot Guidelines, this email is to explain
>our robot's visit to your site, and to let you know about one of
>the problems we found. We don't store or publish the content of
>your pages, but rather use the link information to update our map
>of the World Wide Web.
>
>Are these reports helpful? I'd love some feedback. If you prefer
>not to receive these occasional error notices please let me know.

Thanks.
It is a great help to receive such error messages, as I cannot keep track of
all the links. The correct link now seems to be http://www.ovationguitars.com/
. I will correct this in a not too distant future.

RE: Feedback!

>Hey, Olav!
>
>Nice pages, thanks much!
>
>I had to find a G5 powerchord near the lower frets
>and your page at http://www.torvund.net/guitar/chords/G5.asp
>showed me how.
>
>Since you ask for feedback, how about differntiating the
>root from the rest by showing it with a red circle instead
>of black? Just a thought...
>
>Many thanks again,

It may be a good idea. The problem is that I will have to redraw all the
diagrams to do this, and this will be many hours of work ..

I have also posted this reply to my guitar blog at
http://olavsguitar.blogspot.com/

RE: Your site

>Hi Olav, Nice work on the guitar website. I am a newbie to guitars
>...your site helps. I have a question on scales though, wonder if you
>can help me. Ionian is a whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half scale,
>correct? An A Ionian starts on 6th string, 5th fret, correct? An A
>Dorian would still start with 6th string, 5th fret, am I correct? I
>found a site (cyberfret) that tells me otherwise ... got me all
>confused.
>
>
>
>Oh, noticed that you're a lawyer ... well, hi from a fellow lawyer from
>afar :-)
>
Thanks for nice words. Your description of the Ionian scale, which is the same
as the standard Major scale, is correct. But when you are referring to frets,
I am not sure what you mean. If you think of A-major (Inonian A),it will start
on the 6th string 5th fret. I you change mode and stay with the same root,
then A-Dorian would start on 5th fret. But the Dorian that is closely related
to A-Ionian is B-dorian, and the you will start at either 5th string 2nd fret
or 6th string 7th fret. Which of my pages is causing this confusion?

(By the way, I am copying the answer to my guitar-blog at
http://olavsguitar.blogspot.com/ )

Django Festival in Turin - Italy

This is something from my mailbox:
If you should happen to be in Northern Italy 16-18 september, the Django Festival should be worth visiting. Take a look at http://www.djangoreinhardt.it/eng/home.htm for more information.