This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

Welcome to The Musical Elements Tutorial.    The goal of this site is to enlarge the tools that you have for enjoying music. By working through these pages one by one and listening to the musical examples provided while reading the descriptions, you will be able to gather the vocabulary that will help you understand and enjoy whatever kind of music you listen to.

The musical elements are the building blocks of musical sound.  The word element means “a separate, identifiable part of something;” the musical elements are the separate, identifiable parts of musical sound and include pitch, melody, rhythm, pulse, meter, form, timbre, texture, and dynamics. When creating music, musicians manipulate these elements separately and together for expressive and creative purposes.   Listeners hear these elements separately (“this song is slow”) where the listener hears and identifies the element of tempo, and together, which usually is interpreted as the expression the song conveys (“this song is sad”) where the listener hears not only a slow tempo, but also will hear aspects of the melody (possibly a conjunct melody that moves primarily in downward motion) and harmony (possibly a consonant harmony in a minor key) that can be interpreted into a sad expression.

Learning the vocabulary for these elements helps a listener hear music in more detail and understand what they’re hearing better.  The vocabulary provides the key to the concepts and tools the music is created with, so that the more concepts the listener recognizes and the deeper the listener understands the concepts, the more enjoyment the listener will get out of all music heard.

If you are just starting this tutorial, then begin with “Basic Elements.”  If you have already begun this earlier and are returning to it, continue where you left off.