Usually C Major is the starting point for looking at scales because it just uses the white keys and therefore has no nasty key signatures to confuse the rookie but I find this subject is a lot easier to understand when you start with its relative Natural Minor scale. That scale is the foundation of the keyboard and note naming – A B C D E F G A.

First, let’s divide the scale into two halves: the first four notes and the second set of four. The proper jargon for each set of four is “tetrachord”. That’s not just a boring bit of theory or a buzzword for you to throw around, the lower and upper tetrachords are important building blocks of these scales and will help you get the picture of how they are constructed and how they relate to each other.

Here is the scale of A Natural Minor: A B C D E F G A…

Natural Minor scale

To keep things simple in the diagrams I’m showing the treble clef alongside the tab for the 4-string bass guitar. I think you can handle that even though the notation is pitched higher than the tab. There’s good reason why I’ve included tab – studying this with the guitar gets away from the distraction of all those black and white keys and enables you to focus on the intervals. The finger patterns are the same wherever you start off so if you know the scales of A, you know all of them including the ones with nasty key signatures.

The lower tetrachord is A B C D and I shall refer to this as the lower minor tetrachord. The upper tetrachord is E F G A and I shall refer to this as the upper natural minor tetrachord. Notice that rather than picking the easiest way to play each scale on the guitar I have split the tetrachords onto adjacent strings so that you can easily identify them as you play. I want you to take note of two things: the intervals and the sound of each tetrachord. The Natural Minor has a bluesy feel thanks to the minor 7th.

Next up is A Harmonic Minor: A B C D E F G# A…

Harmonic Minor scale

The Harmonic Minor starts with the lower minor tetrachord A B C D but the upper tetrachord has the 7th raised by a semitone E F G# A – the upper harmonic minor tetrachord. This gives the harmonic minor scale a classical feel compared to the bluesy feel of the natural minor scale.

Now we take a break from the minors and take a look at A Major: A B C# D E F# G# A…

Major scale

Compared to the Natural Minor scale, the lower tetrachord has the 3rd raised by a semitone A B C# D – the lower major tetrachord. The upper tetrachord has the 6th and 7th each raised by a semitone E F# G# A – the upper major tetrachord. Notice that the interval pattern and therefore the finger pattern on the guitar is the same for the lower major tetrachord as for the upper major tetrachord. That is handy to know when you get into the Circle of Fifths.

Now for the big challenge… the Melodic Minor scale. This one is tricky because it’s different on the way up than on the way down: A B C D E F# G# A then A G F E D C B A…

Melodic Minor scale

Have you spotted it yet? Did you recognize the tetrachords? I hope so, because the mystery of the Melodic Minor is revealed. On the way up it is the lower minor tetrachord A B C D followed by the upper major tetrachord E F# G# A and on the way down it is the upper natural minor tetrachord A G F E followed by the lower minor tetrachord D C B A. Seems pretty straightforward now doesn’t it?

So, play around with these. If you’re using a guitar as I have suggested, change your start position to play in different keys. The fingering stays the same. When you’re comfortable that you know what the scales sound like and you understand the intervals, you can take it to the keyboard.

…Mike.

© Mike Ellison.

The Capability Maturity Model counts up but the Capability Immaturity Model counts down.

How many times have you come across these?
0: Negligent – they just talk about CMM
-1: Obstructive – yes they have processes but the processes are enforced whether they are effective or not (and their efficacy is not measured).
-2: Contemptuous – processes? they don’t need no stinking processes – they’ll just fake it!
-3: Undermining – you may have CMM 5 but they’ll get you.

Having very recently gone through this kind of situation outside work, I am back to one of my favourite tools: Go/No-go readiness checklists. These have been crucial at work to bring indecisive situations to a head but rather stupidly I didn’t see this as being a context where a readiness checklist would have been needed. I would have saved myself and my stakeholders a lot of grief had I done so.

What’s a readiness checklist? It is a list where everything is on hold until every item is Green for Go. Photoshop project management discusses this further but the key point is that WE are not ready until EVERYBODY is ready.

So how does this apply? I should have at least had a mental checklist and as soon as the stakeholder was giving a different story to me I should have seen that as a Red for No-Go and got him in touch with the other key stakeholders prior to going ahead with either his version or the original.

Another important factor is that I didn’t have all the information I needed to proceed with the initial decision. That made the clarity of the modified decision even more attractive and I got sucked into a mistake.

Hopefully I’ve learnt my lesson.

Readiness checklist

• Precise specifications. Y/N
• Fred approves. Y/N
• Wilma approves. Y/N
• Betty approves. Y/N
• Barney approves. Y/N
• ——————
• Proceed? Y/N

Actually that’s not what I mean. I’ve been reading The Genius of Design by Penny Sparke. I like to take one concept (in this case the design of physical objects) and apply it to another field that on the face of it isn’t related at all – the abstract concept of a “project”.

One core concept from the book is the separation of the act of design from the act of construction. What had previously been executed simultaneously by an artisan was now separated. Where we are at the moment in project management is the artisan stage. Yes, Project Management Offices try to bring some kind of order to the individualism of project managers but the requirements that enable division of labour have not yet been met. The design of a project cannot easily be separated from the project manager. This is not the same as having one person plan the project and having another person manage it – the latter will pick and choose what they keep through necessity. So, the design of the project must be able to withstand the shocks and bumps where the ship of management dreams is facing the rocks of reality.

It struck me that the weak-point is that currently within the vague realm of “planning” the design of the project is implicit. Some things aren’t so hidden such as the communications plan but other things are mixed-in with the details of how the product of the project is going to be created i.e. they are too implementation-specific.

The problem with implicity (or is it implicitness?) is that things tend to happen without thought. Luck starts to overtake judgement in the way that the project functions. Also the design of the project is hard to review as a singular entity and that makes it harder to evaluate whether the project is going to “work”. I think that it is important to be able to view the project as a designed mechanism rather than a collection of processes thrown in a box.

Apart from having a nice clean concept of the project in the project manager’s head and the project documentation, the benefit of having an explicit design would be that it is easier to communicate to the team and stakeholders so that they understand how the project is going to work and where they fit into that.

What I would like to see is a generalized design that can be re-used for different projects e.g. the weekly cycle is already defined. Then it is a question of adding in the project-specific layer. This is not the same as adapting the plans from previous projects. There should also be reduced risk of missing important items.

More thoughts on this as the concept solidifies. However it’s not just an intellectual exercise. What I want is to have a standardized design that I can apply to all my projects so that set-up is swifter and it is possible to predict a level of performance.

…Mike.

Later… I think it’s a limit on export file sizes. I’ll try assigning individual tags to the troublesome ones and export them individually. It worked for the Amphicar.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

This worked a treat. Thanks gfra!

Some people think it’s lipsynced but it could be a mix of live and dubs – watch for the guy in the middle drop his arm onto the guitar at the end. Anyway I don’t really care – it’s a great example of a cool video on a budget.

…Mike.

For a long time I always felt sorry for people working hard on a task where it’s taking a long time to get from being “almost ready” to “done”. It seemed unfair when tasks were recorded using the 0/100% rule. They weren’t 0% done, they were 95% done and with a little luck would be finished very soon. But then I started seeing things from a customer perspective – incomplete is incomplete. If a deliverable has not been delivered to the customer, the customer has received 0% regardless of how close to 100% the deliverable is.
 
I was once part of a project team where a go/no-go was allowed to pass because the team was “almost ready” and no-one was brave enough to re-state that as “not ready”. That was a big mistake that took months to recover from. So, that added another binary decision point and I now had a list!
 
Adding pass/fail for test results to this new list of binary decisions was a no brainer and that led to a growing awareness that careful design of binary decisions brings clarity. The design of each binary test must be careful to avoid inappropriate results but I can see that effort is worthwhile. It puts the project manager in a position of strength. You can say “Yes, because…” or “No, because”. If particular stakeholders are unhappy, they will be forced to argue for a change in threshold that is acceptable to the other stakeholders. Either that or they will have to over-rule the project manager and by doing so will be responsible for the consequences.
 
So, how do you track these thing? Checklists are the easiest tool. A readiness checklist will have all the criteria listed with a Yes/No box for readiness. If any of the criteria are No, the overall status is also No. I have found that this really focuses attention on the criteria that are status No. It also helps you obtain the assistance of major stakeholders. They might be attention deficient but they can understand that No is bad and will push for whatever is needed to convert that to a Yes.
 
To summarize, when you see fuzziness take a positive step to convert the issue into black or white by finding a way to define a valid threshold that will make any decision into a simple Yes/No. Ask yourself and the stakeholders what is needed to get over the problem and take a step forward.

…Mike