Fictional online bank program

It is patently obvious that he is asking for someone who has written this kind of thing before to offer some pointers. As for the requirement, it's actually common for banks to ask for this type of verification - the Verified By Visa system, for instance, uses exactly this approach: https://www.3dsecure.icicibank.com/ACSWeb/EnrollWeb/ICICIBank/main/vbv.jsp

Rather than spending all this time berating the user, you could have expended far less energy actually offering some constructive advice. Just because you don't like the requirements of his assignment doesn't mean that he shouldn't be able to ask for help on it. You could have guided him into crafting a better question or you could have just ignored it - instead, you chose to take a negative stance.

Imagine this scenario. You're learning the guitar. You've only been playing it for a couple of weeks but you decide to reach out on a forum and say that you're learning a simple song, has anyone ever played it because there's one chord you cannot finger correctly. Then along comes the resident site bully and has a go at you and says that you can't learn like that. Where's your understanding of scales? What evidence do you have to show that you have correctly mastered modes and harmonic devices? Now, imagine that you're that beginner. Would you thank this big bad bully, or would you leave, never play the instrument again because of the abuse, and even if you did continue playing, would you ever visit that site again?

Just something for you to consider.

What a pity we can't give you lots of 5's for that.

I've actually just put that on the TODO list: Upvotes for comments in QA.

When I read this, my morning-mind (GMT+7 here) jumped to ... Macbeth: "bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague their inventors."

Then one hemisphere-or-the-other segued to: upvote-qa-comments is to rep-bloat as ebola is to virii.

At that point, I bit my tongue to stop from going to the idea of down-voting QA comments.

More caffeine, soon, should repair the neurological damage.

Thank you, Pete, for giving me good analogy, and you concern in general.

I'll use you analogy to explain some really positive idea in all my escapade on the present question. I guess it was my fault that I failed to bring this positive idea, which I perhaps tried to express too indirectly, and, as many perceived, negatively. But, with your help, I'll try to do it better.

So, let's go back to this guitar chords. Imagine some faced the chord in notation, and that chord reads: "F#m/7-/9+". What would be the productive way to get help from the community playing guitar? How productive would be to ask: Did anyone played the chord "F#m/7-/9+"? Who would be able to answer this question at all, and who would be able to answer it in the best way? I can answer who. Most likely, it would be a person who either never try to play that particular chord or don't remember that. Chances are, it will be one of the many players who know enough of the theory of harmony and knowledge of the instrument and can build any chord in some applications and estimate its technical feasibility for certain technical level of the player. Why such person could be expected to also give the better answer? Because a decent expert can go further and ask about the chord progression or maybe the style for which this chord is intended. This information can help to suggest the best choice for the chord applicature. Moreover, there will be a chance for getting some recommendation of chord building and recognition.

I hope now you can see my point. Besides, I hope you could learn how not to consider the negative negatively. :-)
Negative response is just the negative response; it is not supposed to hurt anyone. If something is wrong, getting the feedback "this is wrong" is a positive useful thing, especially if such assessment is explained and the explanation is useful. If something in unclear, I'll readily try to explain.

Please also see my other comment below, in reply to the comment by Bill Woodruff. It could help to understand something.

Thank you.
—SA

Interesting, except for the fact that exploring the use of that chord in alternative sequences is not what the person who came along has asked. They have asked how to use a chord in relation to that particular track. Sometimes all someone needs is to know how to play that chord - the rest comes later; and I speak here as someone who's helped out on a lot of guitar forums as well as teaching it.

I appreciate it may be a cultural thing, but sometimes negativity comes off as just being plain rude. It may not be what's intended. It might be a genuine offer, but the newbie generally doesn't have the necessary armour. People can be as negative to me as they like - I've been in this game long enough, and have enough experience to fight back, but for someone who's just starting out it's intimidating. That's something we all need to remember, and I speak as someone who used to have a bit of a reputation on this site for being sarcastic to the newcomers if they didn't meet some ever changing hypocritical criteria of mine. I learned to moderate my tone, and to remember that cultural mores differ, so while I thought I was being witty, I was really just being a jerk.

Yes, yes, I understand that "expect". Note that I mentioned that only as "extra". My main point was: the person who will most likely gives appropriate (that is, useful in any way) answer, and also who will give better answer, is not the one who happen to play this exact chord. Please try to separate my primary statement from some "advanced" considerations.

Now, (sigh...) about the rudeness. This is unpleasant talking, but I hope some constructive discussion, even not very pleasant, can come out for common good. Please don't consider this is offense; my goal is to try to normalize the situation. To start with, I can say that I, too, learned to moderate my tone and learned a lot more behavior-related things, in part because I try to listen to the advice and criticism. So, what is that negative thing I wanted to tell you? I have the feeling that you are uneven in your assessment of rudeness. To me, sarcasm is nothing (normal thing), as long as it is addressed to particular saying, idea or opinion, but using bad words (cultural thing, I agree) should be tabooed in certain environment, and attach on the personality is not acceptable. However, I think you tend to protect people from sarcasm while tolerating bad words and personal attach. In other words, if #1 says: "your post is gibberish, because...", and #2 says: "shut up, you f** ***" (or even just "you understand nothing only pretend"), you tend to support #1 and blame #2. You seem to fail to see that #1 criticize the post with some arguments, pleasant or not, and #2... you know. Please tell me if you think I'm wrong about it. Besides, I can see a trend to protect the weak and rude. Please tell me if you think I'm wrong about it. Also, please understand that I never ignore your advice and criticism. It's just that I agree or disagree with it. See the difference?

(Uf-ff... I said that and can breath much easier. I hope you are going to understand me and appreciate it for being honest with you. Your apparent moments of self-criticizing which I value a lot gives me this hope.)

And I have something else to discuss with you...

—SA

Pete,

Some more of off-topic... :-)

As I understand, you provide help on some guitar forum. I did not know that and am interested.

I play classical guitar more or less seriously and even created few arrangements which were accepted pretty well (more exactly, very few; as playing trivial accompaniment for very simply songs just doesn't count). I have serious difficulties in expressing the musical thought and in understanding and reproducing of the well-known motion and expressive device of known styles, and so on. Of course, some advanced techniques is also a problem. I am self-taught, understand in depth some theory (very little of it), but most professional musicians are too far from understanding of arrangement and, say, improvisation. I noted that there are more educated people on guitar forums than elsewhere, but I did not really use them.

I would highly appreciate if you could talk to me on the topic and perhaps give some advice/links. May I know what forums do you contribute to, whats good about them? and so on...

Thank you very much.
—SA

Sorry it's taken so long to reply. Okay, I'm fairly active giving advice right now on a couple of Facebook forums, "Guitar addiction" and "Jazz & Fusion guitarists in Facebook". I've also occasionally been known to help out on Guitarforums.com as well as the paid-for GuitarControl.com.

So, right now, what advice would I give? Well, if you're looking to expand your theory - especially with regards to extending your improvisational skills - you really need to understand how modes fit into your playing. Okay, what are modes? Well, a mode is merely the pitch structure in scales. By this, we tend to mean that a mode reflects a part of the scale starting at a note offset from the tonic. What does this mean exactly? Well, consider the C-Major scale. We know that we have 7 notes make up the scale starting at the tonic, so we have C, D, and so on through to B. If we play each note in that scale, we have the major.

Now, this is where things get interesting. When we look at the scale, we see that we don't have equal intervalic differences in there, so C to D is two intervals (C# then D), D to E is two intervals (D# then E), E to F is one interval (F#), and so on. You know all this, but this has a major relevance to what we call modes.

So, let's start with the Ionian. This is the first mode in the sequence, and corresponds to playing all the white notes from C through to B. Now, I mentioned the sequence of intervals because this is incredibly important. Ionian (or the major scale) has the intervals as W, W, H, W, W, W, H.

Now, let's imagine that we've decided to play from the D. The intervalic sequence has changed to W, H, W, W, W, H, W. This mode is known as the Dorian. So, if we are to play over the II of the C-Major, (it's a D-min), we can play the Dorian. What this actually means is that whenever we have a D-min, we can actually play C-Dorian over it.

As you can see, moving up to the next note in the sequence (the E) changes the sequence to H, W, W, W, H, W, W. This is the Phrygian mode - it's a very middle-eastern sounding mode.

Continuing up the modes, we have Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian and Locrian. These correspond to moving up each white note on the piano. Again, they correspond to the chord in the sequence that you can play them over. So, for the guitar, in standard open tuning, playing the E Aeolian scale (i.e., starting with open E), you would have

E Aeolian,
F# Locrian,
G Ionian,
A Dorian
B Phrygian
C Lydian
D Mixolydian

(Note, that what we have just described here is the modes of the G-Major scale).

How I got started with this is I sat down and drew out a load of fretboards and then, for each mode, I drew out what they would look like for each key. I would then record the chord that corresponded (e.g. E-Minor for the E-Aeolian in C-Maj), and I played the notes over the top, corresponding to that sequence of Whole-tone/Half-tone, until I had drilled the sound into my head. It's a great way to learn the notes on the neck, and also to learn what fits over what chords.

Wow, I did not expect you to immediately jump there.
I am of course familiar with all those modes and related concepts, even though I don't clearly remember them and fail to recognize by ear, and generally, how tones and their combination work. I understand that it can be trained, given enough effort. By the way, I did not get what do you mean by "chord that corresponded". What correspondence between what? Why, say Em (which is the I-bIII-V triad) corresponds to E-Aeolian (which is one of 7 degrees)? (That's naive, I know...) By the way, you show a very good way of explaining things, right to the point, would be interested to see how you put other things.

Perhaps my problem is the lack of observation of connection between formal/traditional modes and harmonization and the musical ideas. Everything circulates around already well-familiar combinations without connections with less familiar music styles surrounding us. What kind of instrument and kind of music do you play, I wonder?

Thank you very much for advice and the links, I'll try to look around at some forums, and then let me ask you if I have some questions.

—SA

Well, I'm lucky enough to have formal guitar training under my belt, so I spent a lot of time learning music theory. The reason I mentioned the Emin to Aeolian is that the root of the Emin is the 6th note in the G-Major scale, so it corresponds to the 6th mode in the sequence. Basically, this means that every chord in the sequence corresponds to a mode. Now, as to why I mentioned all of this - when you are improvising a sequence, it helps to be able to understand the chord relationship to the notes that are appropriate to it. Modes open the sequences up for you.

This understanding of modes was largely what helped composers such as Rodriguez, Bach, Paganini and so on, produce pieces that were aesthetically pleasing because they knew how to tie sequences together so that tonics produced harmonically interesting lines. Indeed, it's based on the understanding of how the scales work that we can build tension and release through V to IV and VI to V resolution.

Over the years, I have been lucky enough to learn and play styles ranging from classical, through blues, rock, jazz, fusion and so on. Indeed, recently, I have been contemplating starting a blog on music theory and training. At one point, I even considered writing an article and posting it here on CP.

Very, very interesting. I actually happened to do some research on atonal/microtonal music, but it was more to understand thing for myself, doesn't have original value.
Even despite listening a lot of jazz for years and probably feeling it well, I remain specifically illiterate in the harmony of the music along the lines of blues, rock-n-roll, jazz, rock; probably understand classics more. By the way, I listened a lot of new Baroque performances lately, especially so called "authentic", and came to understanding that big part of Baroque is analogous of jazz of that time. For example, the technique of "floating bass" resembles me the riffs, and there were a lot of improvisation...

All right, thank you; hope to socialize with you more on those topics...

—SA

Very interesting to know you are self-taught classical guitar player, as I am. I worked out some pieces by Tarrega (one of my guitar "Gods") note-by-note from notation, not TAB, when I was in my late 'teens, but have forgotten parts of them now, and, I am sure, play them poorly.

I write my own music in altered tunings like: D A D a# c# e with harmonies perhaps more influenced by dark Al Andalus, Sephardic, Gesualdo, Bartok :)

Do you know the playing of the twenty-eight year old prodigy: Tatyana Ryzhkova: she's an Angel !

playing Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonata II BWV 1003, Fuga:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olW6-jhSgMg

Her web-page is here:

http://www.tatyana-ryzhkova.de/Info?lang=en

Her stunning performance of Tarrega's Capricho Arabe is linked-to on her site's home-page, and here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=06GVrYP6NKs

How lovely that she is a poet (poems on her site in Russian, and German), and writes her own songs; on her site, the songs are available in video, or audio.

Uplifting !

Tarrega, that's serious. Very interesting. I'm playing something much simpler and very different, long time to explain what is that. Trying to arrange myself, including something played in different instruments. Usually it's something related to songs, even if it's only instrumental.

Thank you so much for the links; I did not know her. Just starting to listen. I like to find some new performer/authors, and right now it's great time to listen to something new. By the way, I have a question: do you know such thing as baroque guitar and somebody playing it? In Europe, the real revolution in Baroque performance is going on, especially so-called authentic style. I recently found and listened a lot, very interested. (But leaned about the guitar only recently, never listened.)

Some links I can find pretty fast are amazing, if you are interesting to listen to classic/folk Russian/Gypsy 7-string guitar? Did you hear about Sergey Orekhov? Duet of young virtuoso players Sumin and Markushevich? Wonderful instrument and amazing music. Interested?

—SA

Sergey, This response is not worthy of your fine mind. If you really dislike a question, and see no hope of improving it, why not just down-vote, and ignore it.

Bill, thank you for your advice and your concern.
It will be a good advice (and it is very good in general), if not one thing: all my posts on this page have the purpose of conducting some positive idea, which I might have failed to make clear. Please take a look above, at my reply to Pete O'Hanlon (starting with "Thank you, Pete, for giving me good analogy, and you concern in general."), where I tried to explain the idea.

I would like to understand that I'm driven not by negative/dislike vs. positive/like, but rather interesting/useful vs boring/trivial. I have bad feeling when I happen to say trivial things. The idea I tried to conduct here doesn't seem too trivial to me.

By the way, I want to say how much I appreciate your own negative comments and even down-votes on my posts. Criticism (even non-constructive, I mean it) is one of the critically important driving forces. When I make some mistakes, other people can help me realize them. Constructive criticism helps to find the fixed, but non-constructive (but properly argumented) criticism just helps to see that something's wrong and stimulates the search for the fixed.

Thank you.
—SA

Our words go into the arena of public discourse, and, while we cannot, so often, know the intentions (conscious, unconscious) of the writer, so often interpret them in our own light (bent in our inner space-time by our own black-holes, and neutron stars), in utter ignorance of the context in which the writer speaks to us ... Yet we can, if we believe the writer has written something which, in the gestalt of our times, may appear as ad hominem, disclose this in the hope that it contributes something to the "common wealth" of discourse ... at the risk of exposing our own prejudices, and feeling guilty because, in a way, we have been "judgmental."

That may be why it feels so mint-all-over-fresh to just say something like: "this sucks" :)

Well, that's right... :-)
—SA

That sounds horrible.

Absolutely horrible; please see my new comment above. :-)
I think it's enough to close this discussion...
—SA

Well, welcome to CodeProject ! I think you can improve the response to your question by showing us some code you have written: you see, often questions that are perceived as just "asking for code," without specific details, are not answered here.

It is unlikely that we can teach you how to get started programming in C# here, but questions about how to start, such as questions about good books to start studying, are frequently asked and answered here.

Please don't be discouraged by this initial response.