Manifold Thoughts

MCP one-click install seems awesome

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/desktop-extensions

I made one of these just to walk thru the concept, and it wasn’t too tricky to make, and then a friend was able to drag-and-drop install and use. Seems pretty cool!

is a key a manifold?

Playing piano recently, and had the thought: when a song is ‘in a key’, its almost like the key is a manifold on the larger space of all possible chords and such. Is that fair?

I’m interested in it as an idea because I’ve been finding recently…I started piano, from zero, about eight years ago. It’s been just casual practice since then, but I now find myself in a funny state where in some ways I’m more accomplished and able on the piano than I ever would have thought, but in other ways I still very much suck, and in unpredictable ways.

An example: I can’t for the life of me seem to remember songs. I learn a song, often with the aid of a youtube tutorial, and then I get to where I can play it without the tutorial. But then let some time go by, and it’s just lost. To the point where if I re-learn it, it really feels like re-learning almost from scratch.

I am wondering lately if it would be helpful to invest a little more in…not music theory or anything, but for instance right now I’ve learned King Of The Road (from this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX-RbWF6am8&t=2s). It’s in B-flat. So as I’m getting it into my head, I’m trying to be super conscious of B-flat. That’s our manifold for this song. My thinking is, if I can keep that front-of-mind, in a year when I’ve forgotten this song and I try to play it again if I can at least remember the key–or remind myself of the key by looking it up–I’m. now in a much smaller manifold of possibilities to remember how the song goes.