Friends are like the stock market. Whether your investment appreciates or depreciates, you have to have patience and not bail out. When things are down, that is when you invest more. In the end, you will be rewarded handsomely.  

a child. Oh, you can spend time with it. Attend to the details and give it a lot of love, but in the end you send it into the world (online) and it is out of your hands. You then sit back and hope that you "did good." That is the hardest part. You may not understand why your child or your website is not doing well but you put in the work. Sure, with a website, you can tweak it 'till the cows come home but its essence is that entity you birthed. Like a child, the important aspects of your website are at its very core and if you really want to do something different, maybe you should have another website, but that is a lot of commitment. I have three kids and one website - I have my hands full. I write this post with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.  

It is so important to practice with a reference tone, whether that be a piano note or another instrument holding a pedal. Today I am going to record myself playing long tones so that I can play my scales against the root. In this way, I can play back the drone and tune the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. against the root of the scale. This is much more rewarding than using a tuner and much closer to "real world" playing. The same goes for lip slurs. Use that drone as the fundamental tone as you slur upwards in the overtone series. It may even make these daily drills enjoyable as you fine tune the intervals and really hear the timbre of them. Hope this helps. Additionally, the same drone can be recreated by hitting low octaves on the piano while keeping the sustain pedal down. As a trombonist, you have to twist your body so as not to hit the piano with your slide, but it is worth it. You will know if you are really playing in tune if after you are done, there are no small reverberations in the body of the piano. Get to it!

I just wanted to say that I am very excited about the new layout for my arrangements. It is much less cluttered and people may actually stick around for a while and check out the "merch." I never can figure out why big band leaders and teachers do not take the free stuff. Well, maybe we are all giving it away so it is hard to tell the wheat for the chaff. I'm all wheat!