What decides chords in a scale?

was going through a book (from: http://www.true-piano-lessons.com/piano-player.html), which I like.

There it is written:

Within  every  major  or  minor  scale,  there  are  seven  chords    —  one  for  each  tone  of  the  scale,  and  numbered  accordingly.    As  an  example,  if  you  were  to  number  and  name  the  chords  of  the  C-­‐major  scale,  you  would  get  the  following:  the  I-­‐chord is  C  Major,  the  ii-­‐chord  is  D  Minor,  the  iii-­‐chord  is  E  Minor,  the  IV-­‐chord  is  F  Major,  the  V-­‐chord  is  G  Major,  the  vi-­‐chord  is  A  Minor,  and  the  vii°-­‐chord  is  B  Diminished.  Every  major  scale  has  the  same  pattern  of  major,  minor,  and  diminished  triads....

How are these patterns decided? If I just start and play the major keys in 1-5-8 pattern I will just get all the major chords. As described below:

 

C

?

D

?

E

F

?

G

?

A

?

B

C

*

*

*

C#

*

*

*

D

*

*

*

D#

*

*

*

E

*

*

*

F

*

*

*

F#

*

*

*

G

*

*

*

G#

*

*

*

A

*

*

*

A#

*

*

*

B

*

*

*

There must be some logic behind it. What is it?

Learning Music

Since childhood I wanted to learn music, but was so stupid that never really tried that.

Once I went for my MTech at IIT Bombay (The place to be), I bought an acoustic guitar. With my crazy research ideas, work load at IIT B and lack of concepts from my BTech days, hardly left me any time for guitar (or so I thought).

Still learned few songs. All the people at IITB (whom I interacted with) who were guitarist (with just one exception) started playing some musical instrument from 7th grade or even earlier.

Playing bar chords was not tough. Practicing half notes also came with a little practice. But switching from one chord to other (especially when later is a bar chord) was tough. In fact was the root cause why I.... Other thing which always eluded me is music sense.

I tried to master few songs. But whenever I play chords for them, for almost all of them I was not able to feel the music (that, the song is being played). For very few songs for which I was able to feel, that yes! song is being played (like: O Soniyo from Raaz 2), I felt that strumming pattern was what causing it (and chords were not the major cause producing music).

Well my guitarist friends didn't agreed. After completing my MTech, while working as well I tried it but I guess musical sense is very tough to acquire...

Few of my friends suggested practicing on piano and I bought one (CASIO CTK-2300 Standard Keyboard). So far it looks much-much simpler than a guitar. I also found the lessons at:http://www.true-piano-lessons.com/
Also there book: http://www.true-piano-lessons.com/piano-player.html

AI and Vipassana (Mindful meditation)

If you want to find out about meditation or AI search the web. Here I am asking few questions which I feel are mere myths in otherwise pure meditation technique: 'Vipassana'.

I did the 10 day silent meditation course twice. What I felt:

• Bodily sensastions.
• On the first night I was able to hear my blood flow in my ears (I mean veins carrying blood in ears, no injury, just listening to blood flow as it is pumped by the heart).
• When I was asleep, I knew I was asleep. When I was dreaming then also I knew I was dreaming. This was an awesome state except I was physically exhausted by continuous sitting and meditation (but let's hope that will go away with practice).
• For a very small moment (fraction of a second), I was able to get a glimpse that mind is continuously active. Always churning thoughts. And in that fraction of second I realized that even when I thought I was calm and focusing on breathing, instead, there were at least three thoughts which entered my mind. As soon as the first thought entered I brought back my mind to focusing on breathing instead of thought, and then other thought entered and then again I repeated the procedure and yet another thought entered and I was like 'Whoooo, and I thought my mind was calm.'. I always thought brain has parallel architecture, but these thoughts came sequentially.

So here is what I agree to:

• Continuous practice of this meditation technique (with right diligence and focus (yes these are very essential else it will take exponentially long time, there is no other way)) will  definitely give tremendous mind control. I believe I would be able to check each and every thought entering my mind.
• This will increase my focus.
• Make me calm and peaceful.
• I will greet everyone and all situation with smile under all condition.
• Cultivating metta is crucial and should be done. There is no point in self chastising etc.

Here is what I want to believe ...

...so badly, but at some level know is BS as I have no proof of it otherwise. I want proof, faith is brain-washing and can give rise to Jihad.

• Law of karma. Vipassana says (putting me in my words so don't quote me on this) that whatever we do condition us and impression is stored in our brain (samnskara). And when we meditate and do not add any new karma, then it starts coming out in form of bodily sensations.
• I do not know why this would have been added. It has to be true as it is so deep in vipassana. But I have absolutely no proof of this.
• Past life: It says just like a flame could be passed from one candle to another (when first candle is about to be finished), similarly w/o any soul (aatma), due to our own karma and conditioning we pass from one body to other.
• Again it sounds as deep as the previous one. But some traces of Hinduism is mixed in it.
• The 6 paramitas: (Giving, Precpets (not commandments but u get the idea), Endurance/Patience, Vigor, Meditation/Samadhi, Wisodm/Prajna) Again I believe this is a mind game and these are included to:
• Help in conditioning the mind.
• Make it more cultish. So that a society can work through it.

       Howsoever novel the intention it made it impure.

Now comes the AI part

• Why do we believe that we are something other than bundle of neural networks? Even if say we have soul and God (a self contradictory concept) do exist, as per our accepted understanding there actions are also rational and thus logical. So why can't it be simulated via a program (Ok not neural n/w then sth else which we do not know yet).
• When we try to code we find so many bugs. But our complete impressions are passed life after life! Hah! Either we are talking about a huge thing (a big server at the back end) and we are just tip of the ice-berg or this is not possible.
• Law of karma: We can and we will very soon create robots which will be able to talk to us and perform some action with a lot of autonomy. Is it entitled to Law of Karma as well? With whom does its Karma lies (all the actions which it performs)?

Can anyone give me some guidance and clues from there own experience which can help me understand this more clearly? Hindu rishis and monks talk so much about superpowers, can someone perform a tiny miracle as a token of proof?
 

Boredom

Today, let's talk about importance of boredom in an "unsupervised intelligent entities in time".

Let me first elaborate on what are "unsupervised intelligent entities". As humans are good at understanding things by giving examples, the only available example of this, as per my knowledge: "Living Organism". Let's exclude all and talk about 'us', humans.

We evolved from primordial soup. I don't know if it was designed/started by some intelligent entity, but I do know that we have potential to make AI. Anyway, in evolution there is struggle for existence. Each entity has some potential and intelligence which helped them. Although ultimately only intelligence would matter, but so far body and intelligence both has mattered.

Now after setting the context let's talk about the importance of boredom. Boredom is just a feeling. And feeling has so far been very elusive (Buddha described feelings as perception of thoughts on body, that is bodily sensation which we feel due to certain thoughts). So let's talk about it in what is the purpose which it serves? When we feel fear, we take steps for protection. When we feel happy, we note that this is what gives me happiness and so I will do it again and again. But 'boredom' is a special feeling.

Let's try to break down intelligence. It is nothing, but a search (and heuristics are major component of time bound search). Now, in day-to-day life the entities needs to take decision and needs to reach a conclusion. For that, they use search (or their intelligence). But in real world time is limited. The response needs to come in real time. So heuristics are important. But imagine starting of evolution. At that time heuristics were not coded, they also evolved!!! For brain it was very easy to stuck in infinite iteration (in supervised code this happens, so what to speak of unsupervised ones). So only those entities survived which circumvent this problem. For this, a part of brain watched at signals or patterns generated by another. And if it finds the task repetitive it knows that something is wrong, so it lowers the importance of that task.

Usually this is not noticeable (and I doubt in lower species this noticeable at any point). But if there are not other tasks, than it becomes noticeable in form of : 'Boredom'.

So next time when you feel bored, think about what all tricks your mind is playing, and ya it's a survival instinct.

I was busy with my office work (totally unrelated from all this, and that is also interesting), so just to take a break from there, I am jumping to all this. Not exactly but ... life goes on
Still exploring on how to convert point cloud to mesh.

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/openkinect/0qSRx8f9KPc is mostly referring to pcl libraries like surface reconstruction etc., and is also a while back. I should invest on these:-
• I have explored answers.ros
• May be need to explore a bit more.
• Issue with this is all data is old, so I guess I should explore PCL. BUt that will come after exploring the MeshLab. This I need to do anyway.
• Explore how to do this in MeshLab
• At this link: http://sourceforge.net/p/meshlab/discussion/499533/thread/5e67bc69/ I found that .asc files could be used. They seems like the mesh file. They use three points to form a triangle. Say point 1,2,3. Then next triangle is formed by set of points 2,3 and 4. Then 3,4 and 5 and so on...
• May be I should post it to MeshLab forum. Posted at: https://sourceforge.net/p/meshlab/discussion/499533/thread/315ecae1/
• Also now I should see PLY and OBJ format.
• Both these formats are for polygon, so it seems there is no way to represent only point cloud in MeshLab. Abandoning that.
• PCL libraries
• Before starting investigate, I know that they are there. :-)
• Here: http://re.je/notes/2013/create-a-mesh-from-pointclouds/ it has been explained step by step but again it is not mentioned how to open the pcd file in Meshlab. I tried installing the latest build of meshlab but am getting a compilation error, which I am unable to debug further.
• /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -ljhead
• collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
• I posted my question at: http://answers.ros.org/question/178901/creating-a-better-mesh/