My Latest Obsessions: Voodoo Floss, Pu-Erh Tea, Electronic Gypsy Music, and More

One video letter from my quarterly mailings.

Every three months, I ship out a box of wonderful physical products, along with a video “letter” explaining how I found them and how I use them.

One such video letter is above.

The theme of these quarterly mailings is obsession–the ideas and objects I can’t get out of my head.

Obsessions enter my life from odd places.  Currently, my gadgets and gear recommendations are coming from Cirque du Soleil performers, chess prodigies, Fortune 500 CEOs, and military snipers.  It’s the randomness that makes it fun.

More than 1,500 people subscribe to these boxes through Quarterly.co. They are making 130 more slots available for my next shipment, which is going to be killer. You can subscribe here. If you miss TIM05, you’ll be first in line for TIM06.

Below, I describe the goodies from the last two boxes, so you can explore them a la carte.

Enjoy!

[Note for those asking about the TFX TV show -- 13 episodes are coming soon, plus extras for iTunes season pass holders!]

Scroll to below the photos for descriptions and links.

1. Vagabonding book — one of my all-time favorites — signed by author Rolf Potts - This is one of two books I took around the world with me for approximately 18 months. I love it so much that I bought the rights to the audiobook, worked with Rolf to add new case studies, and had him narrate an updated version. Listen to a free sample here.

2. Soma Water Filter - The water filter I use and show off to friends. More details in the video at the top of this post.

3. STX Lacrosse Ball - My all-around fix for muscular issues including foot ache (e.g. plantar fasciitis), tight chest (which can cause back pain), and more.

4. Rogue Fitness VooDoo Floss Band - This contraption is half torture and half miracle. Created by Kelly Starrett of SF CrossFit, it has helped me turn around nasty injuries in 24-48 hours.

5. Blue Bottle Coffee, 17ft. Ceiling - One of my favorite coffee beans from one of my favorite roasters on the planet. I like to hand grind and then brew using an AeroPress.

6. Red Blossom Pu-erh Tea - This is the tea I currently drink every morning, especially when experimenting with Intermittent Fasting (IF).

This box was an experiment that included both physical and digital items, including one-of-a-kind remixes and welcome videos from band members and movie directors.

Even excluding the value of the 15 extra and remixed songs from Beats Antique, the People in Motion extras, and the Kumare extras, the box has a retail value of $209.25.

1. Clean Bottle, The Square, $45.00 — My favorite water bottle, bar none. Click the link to see how easy it is to clean. Genius.

2. The Five Minute Journal , $22.95. This is how I’ve been practicing gratitude and focus for months now. 2.5 minutes in the morning, another 2.5 minutes at night. Simple and effective.

3. Steve’s Grass-Fed Paleostix, $5.50. Need a slow-carb or Paleo snack? This one will do the trick.

4. CLEAR card, 4 months free trial, $60 value. This is how I skip airport security lines, saving my sanity and hundreds of hours a year.

5. Kumare, $21.73, including two albums of unreleased music, as well as behind-the-scenes photos. This is one of my favorite documentaries of the last 5 years. It blends reality and illusion into an amazing fabric. Check it out.

6. Beats Antique custom drive containing 7 (!) of their albums, as well as a special group of remixes and extras. I fell in love with Beats Antique at one of their live performances in SF. Their “electronic gypsy” music (as they’d describe it), combined with sensual dance, was mesmerizing.

To understand exactly what I mean, skip to 7:15 in the below video for one of my favorite songs (“Beauty Beats“). For the full sexy, play all 25+ minutes in the background while you work:

Here are the albums I included in the box:

Collide 2008, $8.99

Tribal Derivations 2007, $8.99

Contraption (EP Vol.1), $6.23

Contraption, Vol. II 2012, $7.92

Blind Threshold 2010, $8.99

Elektrafone 2011, $8.99

The Trunk Archives, $3.96

7. People in Motion – Documentary on parkour and freerunning, including custom-designed bracelet drive and extras.

###

Want to get the next box of random goodness?  Just sign up here! Wait until you see what’s coming…

Question of the day: What types of items would you like to see in future Quarterly mailings and blog posts like this?

View the original article here

Biohacker meets Willy Wonka: Lucy McRae on the making of the incredible edible music video for Architecture in Helsinki

Fellows Friday

TED Fellow Lucy McRae (watch her TED Talk) is a body architect — an artist who explores how technology and the body may someday meet and merge. Her latest project is a fantastical and frothy music video for “Dream a Little Crazy” by Australian band Architecture in Helsinki. Watch the mouth-watering video above, and then read all about how McRae and her collaborators wove futuristic ideas about synthetic biology, food-as-sculpture and 3D printing technology into a mad lab full of flying gloop and powder.

How do you describe to people what you do?

I do speculative story-telling. I create parallel, alternate worlds — underpinned by science fiction. The idea is to render possibilities to how technology will change, thinking about how people will embody the future in technology. But I do it in playful ways. In a way, I’m designing the connective tissue between science and imagination. I’m not a technologist, I’m not a scientist. I’m an artist inspired by scientific thinking, and I use that to steer the narratives of my films and concepts.

How did you come to collaborate on the video with Architecture in Helsinki?

A lot of my projects begin with serendipitous encounters, and this project was no different. I got an email from the band at a completely random time when I was at the LimeWharf, a cultural innovation hub in London where I’m now doing a residency. I’d been a Architecture in Helsinki fan for years, while the band’s lead singer, Cameron Bird, had seen my work, but had no idea who was making it. Then he investigated and saw that I was Australian, too, and was like, “Huh? Why haven’t we ever contacted her before?”

So he wrote to me and said I’d love for you to interpret the song. They had no brief, except that they wanted a surreal, infectious, absurd clip, and to have a strong synergy between the album artwork, made by this Finnish illustrator Santtu Mustonen, who hand-crafts analog, globby, dripping illustrations over sharp 3D geometries.

How did this lead to the concept of the biological bakery?

Our concept was to explore how synthetic biology might enter the home, but in a humorous way — using music as a superhighway to illustrate quite a complex idea. My collaborator Rachel Wingfield and I were interested in synthetic biology and the way food is industrially mass-produced, the way balloons or candies are made. We looked at how we could merge these industrial machines with the representation of the body. We started experimenting with the concept of printing the band’s faces with multicolored bacterial strands — using different-colored edible liquids composed of flour and water to symbolize this.

Everything in the film was edible. The band were scanned in Australia with a medical-grade 3D scanner, all the files were sent over to us in London, 3D printed and made into miniature versions in pop-confectionery.

There’s a scene where Cameron’s face-planting the band’s faces into corn flour. This is the way that candies are molded in factories: they create huge, big trays of corn flour, and they emboss, for example, Haribo shapes into the corn flour, and then the liquid is poured in. We piggybacked some of these confectionary techniques and made them for an installation gallery setting.

Two days after the music video, we re-created and built the whole set for a live event. We invited the audience to enter into this world, and we performed the scenes from the music video, exploding the liquid and painting this sort of fantastical tattoo skin over the body. In the end we were merging film and experiential art into the gallery setting.

Did the audience actually get to eat the props from the film? What were they made of?

Yeah, we worked with a chef at the LimeWharf and used the 3D-printed molds to make edible faces with a Prosecco, pear and thyme jelly. The audience members were eating the band. We made chocolate versions of the band as well. Everyone was asked to wear white, so it was kind of like this Willy Wonka–esque experience. Cameron was playing music, it was sort of like this chamber where this liquid was overflowing and spilling everywhere, and people were eating the props.

Now, back in Australia, the band has collaborated with a confectionery company, so the molds we made are being turned into lollipops, which they’re launching as part of their album release. It’s interesting how the evolution of this project started as a conversation, became a music video, then an experiential installation, and now a real-life biological bakery!

I’m interested in transforming materials, and food is a great material to sculpt. By representing the anatomy through food, it’s a way of experiencing sculpture in a different way. You can touch it — eat the contents of a gallery — breaking down the barrier of just being a viewer.

And you’re ingesting into your anatomy the anatomy that was represented by the food.

Exactly. And this points to the bigger picture of whether, in the future, we actually will clone ourselves, or eat ourselves in order to enhance our senses. So it’s kind of tapping into those different areas of research, but in a playful way.

View the original article here

Can Music Improve Athletic Performance?

Can music act as a performance enhancing drug?

Brian is a Lifehacker who covers all sorts of tips for life. He is also fascinated with new technology. Contact him at brian@lifehack.org

View the original article here

Are classical music competitions judged on looks?

Looking at the evidence behind a recent news story

The headlines

The Los Angeles Times: People trust eyes – not ears – when judging musicians

Classic FM: Classical singers judged by actions not voice

Nature: Musicians’ appearances matter more than their sound

The story

If you wanted to pick out the musician who won a prestigious classical music competition would you listen to a clip of them playing or watch a silent video of them performing the same piece of music?

Most of us would go for an audio clip rather than video, and we’d be wrong. In a series of experiments, Chia-Jung Tsay from University College London, showed that both novices and expert musicians were better able to pick out the winners when they watched rather than listened to them.

The moral, we’re told, is that how you look is more important than how you sound, even in elite classical music competitions.

What they actually did

Dr Tsay, herself a classically trained musician, used footage from real international classical music competitions. She took the top three finalists and asked volunteers to pick out the real winner – with a cash incentive – by looking at video without sound, sound without video, or both.

Over a series of experiments she showed that people think that audio will be more informative than video, but actually people are able to pick the real winner when watching video clips. But they aren’t able to do this when listening to audio clips (these test subjects only perform at the level of chance). The shocking thing is that when people get sound and video clips, which notionally contain more information, they still perform at chance. The implication being that they would do better if they could block their ears and ignore the sound.

Follow up experiments suggested that people’s ability to pick winners depended on their being able to pick out things associated with “stage presence”. A video reduced to line drawings, designed to remove details and emphasise motion, still allowed people to pick out winners at an above chance rate. Another experiment showed that asking people to identify the “most confident, creative, involved, motivated, passionate, and unique performer” tallied with the real winners.

How plausible is this?

We’re a visual species. How things look really matters, as everyone who has dressed up for an interview knows. It’s also not uncommon for us to be misled into believing that how something looks isn’t as important as it really is (here’s an example: judging wine by the labels rather than the taste).

What is less plausible is the spin put on the story by the headlines. We all know that looks are important, but how can they really be more important than sound in a classical music competition? The most important thing really is the sound, but this research resonates with a popular cliché about how irrational we are.

Tom’s take

The secret to why these experiments give the results they do is in this detail: the judgement that people were asked to make was between the top three finalists in prestigious international competitions. In other words, each of these musicians is among the best in the world at what they do. The best of the best even.

In all probability there is a minute difference between their performances on any scale of quality. The paper itself admits that the judges themselves often disagree about who the winner is in these competitions.

The experimental participants were not scored according to some abstract ability to measure playing quality, but according to how well they were able to match real-world competition outcome.

The experiments show that matching the judges in these competitions can be done based on sight but not on sound. This isn’t because sight reveals playing quality, but because sight gives the experimental participants similar biases to the real judges. The real expert judges are biased by how the performers look – and why not, since there is probably so little to choose between them in terms of how they sound?

This is why the conclusion, spelt out in the original paper, is profoundly misleading: “The findings demonstrate that people actually depend primarily on visual information when making judgements about music performance”. It remains completely plausible that most of us, most of the time, judge music on how it sounds, just like we assumed before this research came out.

In ambiguous cases we might rely on looks over sounds – even the experts among us. This is a blow to musicians who thought it was always just about sound – but isn’t a revelation to the rest of us who knew that when choices are hard, whether during the job interview or the music competition, looks matter.

Read more

The original paper: Sight over sound in the judgment of music performance. Tsay, C-J (2013), Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Special mention for the BBC and reporter Melissa Hogenboom who were the only people, as far as I know, who managed to report this story with an accurate headline: Sight dominates sound in music competition judging

The interaction between the senses is an active and fascinating research area. Read more from the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at the Univeristy of Oxford and Cross-modal perception of music network at the University of Sheffield

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.

View the original article here

Workout music and your supplementary motor cortex

Why do we like to listen to tunes when we exercise? Psychologist Tom Stafford searches for answers within our brains, not the muscles we are exercising.

Perhaps you have a favourite playlist for going to the gym or the park. Even if you haven’t, you’re certain to have seen joggers running along with headphones in their ears. Lots of us love to exercise to music, feeling like it helps to reduce effort and increase endurance. As a psychologist, the interesting thing for me is not just whether music helps when exercising, but how it helps.

One thing is certain, the answer lies within our brains, not the muscles we are exercising. A clue comes from an ingenious study, which managed to separate the benefits of practicing a movement from the benefits of training the muscle that does the movement. If you think that sounds peculiar, several studies have shown that the act of imagining making a movement produces significant strength gains. The benefit isn’t a big as if you practiced making the movement for real, but still the benefit of thinking about the movement can account for over half of the benefit of practice. So asking people to carry out an imaginary practice task allows us to see the benefit of just thinking about a movement, and separates this from the benefit of making it.

Imaginary practice helps because it increases the strength of the signal sent from the movement areas of the brain to the muscles. Using electrodes you can record the size of this signal, and demonstrate that after imaginary practice people are able to send a stronger, more coherent signal to the muscles.

The signals to move the muscles start in an area of the brain called, unsurprisingly, the motor cortex. It’s in the middle near the top. Part of this motor area is known as the supplementary motor cortex. Originally thought to be involved in more complex movements, this area has since been shown to be particularly active at the point we’re planning to make a movement, and especially crucial for the timing of these actions. So, this specific part of the brain does a very important job during exercise, it is responsible for deciding exactly when to act. Once you’ve realised that a vital part of most sporting performance is not just how fast or how strong you can move, but the effort of deciding when to move, then you can begin to appreciate why music might be so helpful.

The benefits of music are largest for self-paced exercise – in other words those sports where some of the work involved is in deciding when to act, as well as how to act. This means all paced exercises, like rowing or running, rather than un-paced exercises like judo or football. My speculation is that music helps us perform by taking over a vital piece of the task of moving, the rhythm travels in through our ears and down our auditory pathways to the supplementary motor area. There it joins forces with brain activity that is signalling when to move, helping us to keep pace by providing an external timing signal. Or to use a sporting metaphor, it not only helps us out of the starting blocks but it helps to keep us going until we reach the line.

Of course there are lots of other reasons we might exercise to music. For example, a friend of mine who jogs told me: “I started running to music so I didn’t have to listen to my own laboured breathing.” He might well have started for that reason, but now I’ll bet the rhythm of the music he listens to helps him keep pace through his run. As one song might have put it, music lets us get physical.

This is my BBC Future column from last week. The original had the much more accessible title of “The Psychology of Workout music“, but mindhacks.com is our site (dammit) and I can re-title how I want.

View the original article here

On our reading list: David Byrne’s book, How Music Works

Many people simply listen to music. Not David Byrne, the solo artist and former frontman of the Talking Heads. Even beyond making music, Byrne thinks deeply about how music functions on a perceptual level.

At TED2010, Byrne spoke about how the nature of a space effects what kind of music is played there, from a gritty club like New York’s CBGB to the echo-filled chambers of a gothic cathedral. Now, Byrne has expanded the ideas from the talk into the book How Music Works, published on September 12 by McSweeney’s.

BoingBoing calls the tome “possible the book [Byrne] was born to write.” Reviewer Cory Doctorow continues, “Though there is plenty of autobiographical material in How Music Works that will delight avid fans (like me) — this isn’t merely the story of how Byrne made it, or what he does to turn out such great and varied art. Rather, this is an insightful, thorough, and convincing account of the way that creativity, culture, biology and economics interact to prefigure, constrain and uplift art.”

Meanwhile, fellow TED speaker Kathryn Schulz writes in New York Magazine, “Byrne’s style and energy are as apparent on the page as on the stage.”

After the jump, watch Byrne’s TEDTalk and his latest music video.

Here, Byrne speaks at TED2010 about the relationship between architecture and music. Read what he had to say to the TED Blog at the time >>

And while we’re reading How Music Works, we’re also listening to Byrne’s brilliant collaboration with songstress St. Vincent, Love This Giant. Here’s their first video together.

View the original article here

Transforming energy into music: Cameron Carpenter at TED2012

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Opening Session 6 of TED2012: Cameron Carpenter, one of the world’s top organists — he’s brought the “king of instruments” out of the church and into concert halls.

He starts with “Slaughter on 10th Avenue,” by Richard Rodgers. The organ sounds are first out of place, then mesmerizing. He then moves into Chopin’s Etude in C# Minor, and the extraordinary variety of his travel organ brings a wonderful perspective to the piece. The experience is simultaneously novel — when was the last time you heard an organ at a conference? — and old.

Watch a gorgeous video of Cameron Carpenter performing Naïades.

Carpenter explains the one simple thing about the organ: energy. “The organ is literally a machine that transforms energy into music, and therefore into emotion.”

He wondered why a machine of such “violence, vulgarity, obscentiy, high drama, subtlety, and understatement” would have a sinecure in, of all places, church. He wonders if the power of the early organ comes from its energy — because, before electricity, the wind-powered pipe organ was the most sustained experience of sound energy many people ever heard.

Today, there are two types of instrument: the traditional pipe organ, and the digital organ. It’s actually unusual for a professional organist to prefer a digital one to a pipe organ. But one great thing about digital organs: they can be moved. And Cameron wants a deep relationship with his instrument — something very difficult to achieve when you can’t move it.

So, his dream is to make the greatest organ in the world: a digital touring organ that can be transported, both around the world and into the 21st century.

#TED2012 cameron carpenter makes the organ sexy hot and contemporary giant sparkling talent in great shoes

—
Sunny Bates (@SunnyBates) February 29, 2012

View the original article here

The beautiful math behind the ugliest music: Scott Rickard on TED.com

Scott Rickard set out to engineer the ugliest possible piece of music, devoid of any pattern, using a mathematical concept known as the Golomb ruler. At TEDxMIA, he shares the math behind musical beauty (and its opposite). (Recorded at TEDxMIA, September 2011, in Miami Beach, Florida. Duration: 9:46)

Watch Scott Rickard’s talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 1,000+ TEDTalks.

View the original article here

Music Trial Recap

Yesterday was Day 30 of my 30-day music learning trial. My aim was to invest at least 30 hours in learning to compose music. In actuality I put in considerably more time. I found it pretty addictive.

I spent the first half of the trial mostly writing simple electronic songs using GarageBand loops. That allowed me to get some quick experience with arranging songs and noticing how different sounds and instruments can work together.

Here’s an example of a song I created mostly from using loops:

Wanderlust – Enhanced by Steve Pavlina

After that I felt it was time to learn how to create songs without using loops, meaning that I wanted to write my own songs note by note. But this territory seemed so wide open that I didn’t know where to begin. Should I try to write a drum loop first? Could I start with a melody? Just pick an instrument and try to play some notes? How was I going to make different tracks mesh well together?

I could have started messing around, but that approach felt too blind at the time… like trying to write an article by typing random words until something meaningful emerged. I wanted a bit more guidance before going that route.

So I spent much of the second half of the trial learning about music theory and composition techniques. This included some reading (online and offline) plus Skyping with musicians. I didn’t worry about composing new songs during this time. I wanted to gain more clarity about how I might attempt to write a song from scratch.

This was challenging but helpful. Sometimes I felt lost in a sea of unfamiliar terminology. It took me a while to decipher what people were saying, especially since words can have multiple meanings depending on the context. Is C Major a key or a chord? Were you speaking English or Italian? Yesterday I joked with someone that I could totally understand why many musicians turn to drugs.

I especially loved it when people would say, “Oh yeah, then there’s this whole other thing beyond that, but getting into that now would just be scary.” More than one person said something like that to me during our Skype calls.

Learning music reminds me of learning computer programming. There’s tons of theory to be studied, but much of the theory isn’t of any practical value unless you’re doing very specific things, like writing your own compiler or building an operating system.

Now I feel I’m settling into an approach that looks something like this:

Get inspired by an idea for a new song.Dive in and try to create as much of it as I can, using whatever skills I currently possess.When I get stuck due to a lack of skill or a lack of understanding, discuss it with an experienced musician.Apply the advice along with some trial and error experimenting to get unstuck and keep making progress.Repeat from step 3 as needed.

That’s how I learned to write computer code, starting at age 10. I’d start with an idea to write a new program, like getting my Atari 800 to draw color fractals. If I could write the program with my existing skills, I’d do so. If I got stuck, I’d buy and read more programming books or ask someone for advice to get me past that hurdle.

This goal-based approach is proving very helpful. I learn faster when I can immediately apply what I learn to a current project. Without an immediate goal in mind, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of theoretical ideas that I may end up forgetting anyway.

Yesterday I started working on a new song, but since I’m trying to compose each track from scratch, it’s much slower going. So far I’ve created a drum loop, a melody, and one other track, and I feel they mesh well together. The composition is pretty thin though, so I’d like to add more layers to it.

One thing I want to learn next is how to incorporate vocals. I don’t quite know how to do that. I wrote some lyrics, recorded myself singing, and added them to what I have so far, but it doesn’t sound very good. I probably didn’t sing very well, but the bigger issue is that the vocals sound like they’re floating above the other tracks, if that makes any sense. I don’t yet know how to process vocals to mesh well with such music.

So presently I’m on Step 3 of learning the basics of how to add vocals. I already have some ideas to experiment with there.

I enjoy writing my own lyrics and singing them, but I’ve had no voice training whatsoever, so I can’t say how long it will take to become decent at this. I’d love to be able to sing my own songs and have the vocals mesh nicely with the music. Otherwise I’m sure I could find someone with more experience to let me record them singing the lyrics I wrote. In fact, I think doing something collaboratively now and then would be fun — especially for cross-pollinating skills and ideas.

In the long run, I’d like to build enough skill with music such that I can use it as another channel for expressing inspired ideas. I’m already starting to get song ideas, but I don’t know how to express them musically yet. It’s nice to know that the inspiration will be waiting for me when I get my skills up to speed.

I’m really glad I took on this trial. It got the ball rolling in a new direction, which is what I wanted. My 30-day commitment to put in the time helped me get past the “I don’t even know where to begin” excuse. I was never at a loss for something to do for the next hour or two. I could always play around in GarageBand or do another Skype call. Worst case I could simply listen to music and really pay attention to what was going on in each layer; I learned a good bit just from doing that.

Perhaps the coolest aspect of doing this trial is that 30 days ago, I’d never written a single song. Now I’m written a few of them.

I end this trial with a feeling of gratitude. It was a very rewarding experience.

View the original article here

Learning Music – Day 9

I’ve been having a wonderful time with my 30-day trial of learning music. Here’s a quick update to share how it’s going.

First, I’m truly grateful for the flow of support and encouragement that’s been coming my way, especially from experienced musicians. Several people have offered to tutor or help me in various ways, and I’m taking a few of them up on those offers.

The confusing part is that I don’t yet know enough about music to discern what would be wise to learn and in what order, so I’m just going with whatever seems interesting in the moment. That’s working fine so far, and I’m learning something new every day. I’m also raising my awareness of what I don’t comprehend yet, which is helping me figure out what I may wish to study down the road.

While I’ve often written about using 30-day trials for installing new habits, I’m doing this trial to explore and learn, not to condition a new habit. This approach has been very helpful. There’s a lot about music that still confuses me, but I don’t find it frustrating. It’s an adventurous sort of confusion. I feel a bit like an inquisitive toddler: What’s this? What can you do with that? Show me how this part works!

My initial plan was to spend 1-2 hours per day learning music. In practice I’ve been averaging more than that. One day last week I put in 8+ hours, and I probably invested a good 4 hours yesterday.

With this trial I’m not going to fuss over the time investment since it hasn’t been difficult to get myself to take action. I’m in a good flow right now, my motivation to learn remains his, my environment has been extremely supportive, and I have plenty of social accountability to keep going. As I do with my writing, I’ll stick with this flow of inspiration however it shows up.

When some people want to develop new skills, they often do so quietly at first, exploring new interests in private without telling many people. This is especially common if they feel others might judge them.

I recommend the opposite approach, as I mentioned in Broadcast Your Desires. When you open up and tell the whole world your intention as if it’s the greatest idea you’ve ever had in your life, a few things will typically happen.

First, many people won’t care one way or another. But you’ll have made those people aware of your interests, and if they stumble upon something that may help you (coincidentally or synchronistically), they may share it with you. These leads can be helpful, so why not invite them?

Some examples include:

By the way, just thought I’d mention that the music store near your house is having a big sale this weekend.By the way, we have an old keyboard we don’t need. It’s not the greatest, but it works. You can have it for free if you want it.By the way, my aunt is a music teacher and says she’d be happy to give you a free lesson.

If you keep quiet, you won’t receive these leads. By broadcasting your desires openly, you create new pathways for information and opportunities to flow to you.

Secondly, some people may respond negatively to your new pursuit. That’s also fine. Just don’t give your power away. Hold your ground with such people. They may try to talk you out of it, but if it’s something you want, don’t let them. I like to regard negative feedback as a test to see if I’m really serious. The more doubtful I am about a particular decision, the more resistance shows up in the form of people telling me I’m making a mistake.

Some negative resistance can be useful. It can strengthen your resolve and help you clarify whether you really want what you claim to want. When you finally commit, resistance greatly diminishes. Often it stops showing up. Other people can tell you’re committed, so they don’t bother trying to derail you since they know they don’t stand a chance. Even when some resistance does show up, it’s no match for your iron resolve, so it just bounces off you.

If you worry that you’re making a mistake, the world will reflect that worry back to you. If you stop second guessing yourself and direct the full force of your power in the direction of your desires, that resistance dries up.

Lastly, some people will actively support you in your new direction. Like attracts like. When you broadcast your desires, you’ll come into resonance with powerful new vibes that will attract different people to you. This can happen so quickly that it will make your head spin. Lately it seems like almost everyone I connect with now is a musician of some sort.

Try not to resist these social shifts when they show up. They’re supposed to happen. You’re not going to dive into some new venture and not see shifts in your social circle. Some shifting is inevitable. Embrace that dynamic. Let the naysayers complain themselves right out of your reality. Let the supportive people move closer to you. You’ll be much happier if you relax and flow with these shifts. Don’t get clingy with the past, and don’t try to force anyone to approve of your new direction if they seem resistant.

If you’re unwilling to broadcast your new intention shamelessly and publicly, how strong is your intention anyway? Your reality responds to your entire vibe, not just one selected aspect of it. If you’re holding back, your vibe is corrupted by inner resistance, fear, timidity, etc. What the universe will reflect back to you will be just as stunted.

Interestingly, with this music trial I haven’t seen much, if any, resistance. Some people are neutral about it of course, but I haven’t seen anyone screaming “No, you idiot! Don’t do that!” That’s a refreshing change. Perhaps more resistance will show up when 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job gets put to music.

We could say this isn’t a particularly contentious trial, but if some resistance does show up, I probably wouldn’t notice it. My energy is too focused on moving forward, and I’m having way too much fun on this path, especially when it comes to connecting with musicians.

When I began this trial, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. There was a lot about music that I wasn’t even aware of. Now I’m gradually gaining awareness of what I don’t know. That’s a positive step forward.

This increase in awareness is helping me figure out what I want to learn. As I see it, there are two big pieces I’d like to understand better.

The first element is learning how to actually write a very basic musical piece, something that could be played with a single instrument like keyboards or a guitar, with or without vocals. I can play a simple song like Mary Had a Little Lamb, but I don’t yet know how to put notes in a sequence together to create something original that sounds good.

Some musicians suggest that I should start by studying music theory. Others advise me not to bother with theory right now — just dive in and try to play something, and I’ll learn what works through trial and error. I suspect that both approaches could work. I don’t know enough to predict which approach will work best for me, so I’m actually going to explore both paths simultaneously… at least till I can gain a better sense of where each path might lead.

The major goal in this area, which may take longer than this trial, would be to create an original composition on my own. It doesn’t have to be stunning, but I’d love to be able to create and play one basic song from beginning to end, most likely with a keyboard.

The second element I’d like to learn is how to construct compositions with many different layers, especially in the genre of electronic music. I’m gradually getting a sense of the different pieces of a composition, but I don’t know how to do very much yet when it comes to creating interesting arrangements.

A major achievement in this area would be if I could learn how to engineer something similar the songs on Depeche Mode’s Violator album, which is more than 20 years old. I’ve heard that album many times and listened to it again this morning, but this time I heard the songs with fresh ears. I noticed details I hadn’t paid attention to before. I was struck by what masterpieces of composition some of those songs are — songs like Personal Jesus, Halo, Enjoy the Silence, and Policy of Truth. They’re just so rich and complex. If I could someday learn how to create pieces like these, even if they don’t sound nearly as professional, that would be amazing.

For a modest step in this direction, I’d be delighted if I could figure out how to engineer much simpler songs like Depeche Mode’s See You or Just Can’t Get Enough. I think I would learn a lot from studying them in more depth. What would it take to learn how to create something with similar structural elements. Those songs aren’t particularly complicated by today’s standards, and surely the technology and software of today is far more capable than what was available 30+ years ago. I don’t know how long it would take me to achieve such a goal, but at least this gives me something to work towards.

I know there’s a major skill component when it comes to making music that sounds good, but at this point I’m more interested in the how-to aspects. There’s so much I don’t even know how to do yet. I can’t concern myself with trying to do things at high quality when I don’t even know how to do them poorly.

If I could learn enough to make a piss-poor version of a song similar to Just Can’t Get Enough, then perhaps I could eventually figure out how to create a piss-poor version of something like Enjoy the Silence. And then once I’ve figured that out, I can work on getting good.

So far I’ve been working solely in GarageBand on my Mac, and much of my time has been devoted to learning the software. I also bought an inexpensive Akai MIDI controller, based on some musicians’ recommendations. It’s about the size of my laptop’s keyboard and connects to my Mac via USB. The Akai gives me a compact interface for inputting some notes and tweaking parameters. It only arrived yesterday, so I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but it’s another step ahead. I can always get something bigger and more robust down the road, but for now simplicity is good.

My daughter also graciously loaned me her 61-key synth keyboard. It has no external outputs, but we played around with it together on the weekend. She’s good at playing by ear and enjoyed the challenge of deciphering some early Depeche Mode songs like Photographic, Strangelove, and Never Let Me Down Again.

Several people have asked if I’d be willing to share some of my early music creations as I go through this trial. Sure, that sounds like a nice idea, especially if it helps or inspires others who are interested in learning music as well.

A few people suggested that I use SoundCloud, which is a popular music-sharing site. I’ve never used it before, but apparently it’s similar to YouTube, except that on SoundCloud people share audio instead of video. You can play the audio through your browser, and it works on mobile devices too. You can also comment on the pieces, although I think you need to have a free account there to do that.

I set up a SoundCloud account yesterday and posted a couple of clips so far, both of which I created in GarageBand. You can find them on my SoundCloud page here: soundcloud.com/stevepavlina.

The 12-second piece is just me messing around with loops in GarageBand. I wasn’t trying to compose anything musical. I did this mainly to learn the software and to figure out how to export an MP3. So be warned it’s pretty hideous! Hope you like the Brontosaurus wail at the beginning.

The 2-minute piece is something I created yesterday, also using GarageBand loops. This was another learning experiment, but it was also my first attempt to create something that sounded like actual music. It’s pretty basic, and there are only 5 tracks, but I learned a lot by creating it. It took me about 2 hours to make it: about 45 minutes to get the basic structure going, plus 75 minutes of tweaking. I probably could have created this in half the time if I was more skilled in using GarageBand.

I really enjoyed making this second piece. I have no education in musical theory or composition, so I just picked some loops and arranged them in sequences that sounded moderately interesting. I also learned how to do fades with the surf sounds at the beginning and end of the song.

Since SoundCloud will host up to 2 hours of audio for free, I can use it to post more clips as I go along. Just don’t expect anything on a regular schedule.

I’ve already received some encouraging feedback and helpful suggestions from musically experienced people on what I can do to improve my next attempt.

I know I have a lot to learn about music, and I’m glad I’m finally taking action on this. I’m approaching this trial as a form of play, so there’s really no way to fail.

Based on where I was when I began this trial, I feel I’ve already made tremendous progress. In a little over a week, I learned to use GarageBand well enough to create a short piece of music. I’ve never done anything like that before. So I’m celebrating these little achievements.

Update: I made a couple more songs today. You can listen to the latest one here:

Wanderlust – Enhanced by Steve Pavlina

View the original article here

Learning Music – Day 11

Yesterday I decided to try inputting a simple melody into GarageBand by playing it via my Akai MIDI controller. I’m still very new to this, so I came up with a very basic C-major tune, not much more complicated than Mary Had a Little Lamb, but it’s a start.

After a few practice runs — till I could stop screwing up and hitting the wrong notes — I was able to play and record the sequence into GarageBand. My timing wasn’t great, but it’s pretty easy to edit the notes in the software once they’re recorded.

Once I had the recording on screen, I spent a few minutes tweaking the timing and velocity of the notes till it sounded right to me. That part went just fine, and I was satisfied with the result.

Then I decided to try adding a few GarageBand loops to make it more interesting, starting with a basic drum track. I wanted to see if I could get my melody to mesh well with the drums. In fact, when I recorded the melody, I had the drums playing at the same time, so I could play along with the same rhythm.

GarageBand has a feature called a groove track. You can specify one track to serve as your groove track, and GarageBand will slightly adjust the timing of the notes in the other tracks to mesh with the groove track. You don’t have to use this feature, but it’s there if you want it. The benefit is that it helps make multiple tracks sound good when played together. Otherwise small differences in timing can make the different instruments sound a bit out of sync.

It seems you can also specify the granularity of this feature — match to nearest 1/4 note, 1/8 note, …, 1/64th note.

Since I’m new to this, my timing is far from perfect, so I’d definitely like to use this feature if possible. When I listen to my melody with the drum loop added without using the groove track feature, I can tell the timing is a bit off. The notes of my melody don’t quite mesh with the drums at some points.

When I set the drums to be the groove track, and I have my recorded melody sync to it, the result is pretty good. It fixes my slight timing problems, and the melody seems to mesh nicely with the drums. I can’t hear any timing errors at all.

If I try specifying my melody as the groove track and then have the drums sync to it, it doesn’t sound nearly as good. That may be partly because my melody has only a fraction of the notes that the drum loop has. Intuitively it seems sensible that I should set the drums to be the groove track and have my melody sync to that. Is that a reasonable choice?

Now for some reason, when I have the groove track feature enabled and then try to do even the most basic copy-and paste work with this sequence, something goes awry. If I take my short melody and copy and paste it to a different location on the track (perfectly aligned with the start of a new measure), GarageBand shifts some of the notes a little. In fact, it not only shifts notes in the pasted copy — it also changes some notes in the original version! Why is it doing this?

This also happens if I try to move my recorded sequence one or more measures to the left or right. Some of the notes get time-shifted, even if I shift it based on measure-aligned boundaries.

Furthermore this also happens if I create a new track with the same or a different instrument and copy or move my recorded sequence to that track, whether to the exact same measure in time or a different measure.

It’s easy to show you what’s happening visually.

Here’s a piece of a screen capture from GarageBand that shows part of the melody that I recorded and edited. This sounds reasonably good timing-wise when it’s played, and it syncs well with the drum loop too.

And here’s what GarageBand does to this same sequence if I try to copy and paste or move it somewhere, either to a different place on the same track or to a new track. It does this not just to the copy but also to the original.

Notice that it changed the timing of notes in the triplets. Notes that were played at different times are suddenly shifted to play at the same time. When this sequence is played, it doesn’t sound right.

The timing issue seems to have to do with the triplets — those are the sequences it keeps corrupting. I can drag the notes around to fix the timing issue after the fact, but it seems I’d have to do that every single time, which would be quite tedious, especially if I’m going to experiment a lot with this sequence.

Why is GarageBand messing up the timing of my notes when I do simple operations like copying and pasting, or moving a sequence to a new location?

What am I doing wrong here? Is there some obvious mistake I’m making that I’m just not seeing?

I tried experimenting with different settings, and I even see some that include the word “triplet”, but no matter which setting I’ve tried, similar problems still occur — they just show up in different ways, but it always seems to affect the triplets. I think this problem is being caused by using the groove track, but if I disable that feature, then I lose the benefits it provides.

I don’t know enough about music or music software yet to discern the best way to remedy this problem. Was I not supposed to play something with triplets if I’m trying to sync it with drums? Honestly I didn’t even know what a triplet was till I saw the number 3 appearing above my notes, and Rachelle informed me that it means I played a triplet. I just played what intuitively sounded okay to me.

Apparently these are 8th note triplets, meaning that three 8th notes are being played in the span of what would be equivalent to a quarter note (one quarter note = two 8th notes).

Perhaps what’s happening here is something of a mathematical problem. It looks like the quantization of notes is based on the division of powers of two (1/2 note, 1/4 note, 1/8 note, 1/16 note, etc), and maybe the software is rounding to the nearest interval, and it can’t keep the correct alignment of those triplets when it does this.

It seems that no matter what settings I use for the groove quantization effect, it still shifts some of my notes enough to make it sound off.

I don’t know enough about music, GarageBand, or groove tracks to know what to do about it, so I thought I’d blog about it, and maybe someone who’s much more musically inclined than I am could explain what’s going on and how I should remedy it.

Perhaps one solution would be to disable the groove track feature till the very end, and then I could just do one final editing pass to correct any notes it messes up. But I like having this feature turned on along the way — it’s easier for me to tell if a combination of instruments sounds good if their timing is nicely synced. Even between different loops in GarageBand, this seems to make a difference.

I guess another option would be to re-engineer my melody so it doesn’t include any triplets, but that seems a bit lame to me. If I can stumble upon this as a newbie in writing my first melody, and if there’s actual notation for it, I have to imagine it’s a valid way to construct music. It sounds reasonably okay to me when the triplets are played, so why not keep them? It even meshes nicely with the drum track.

The part I find the most frustrating is that I can get everything to the point where it sounds good, and I’d love to be able to copy and paste those segments exactly as is (either on the same track or a different track), but whenever I do that, GarageBand corrupts not only the copy but also the original. I can fix those changes after the fact, but that requires a lot of extra checking and editing, which I’d rather not do — surely that isn’t how someone with more experience would solve this problem, is it?

The benefit of running into this problem is that I know I’m going to learn something new as a result. Until I got stuck here, I didn’t even know what a triplet was, nor did I know anything about groove tracks.

Despite this little snag, I’m still enjoying this music trial immensely. Diving in and composing some songs using GarageBand loops was a great place to start, and learning to incorporate basic effects like echo and reverb was a nice step beyond that. It was fun to do this a few times, but I’m already feeling limited by what I can do with the built-in loops in GarageBand. I can create something that sounds okay, but I don’t feel like I’m really able to express myself with those tools. The songs I created thus far were valuable learning experiments, but I feel very constrained creatively. I’d like to explore new avenues and build new skills, so I can have more options for expressing myself through music.

I figured the next step would be to try playing my own sequences of notes. I’m sure I have a lot to learn when it comes to composing sequences that sound good together, but I think if I can figure out how to do that, then I can build out a complete song. I’m not worried about being good at it — I just want to understand the process that I have to go through in order to create a complete song from start to finish that incorporates at least a few segments I composed. I can focus on getting good later. For now I just want to learn the how-to.

One really cool development has happened, one that took me by surprise. When I began this trial, some of my musician friends gave me advice and suggestions based on the assumption that I’d be learning how to take “the music in my head” and input it into a computer. I couldn’t relate to that because I didn’t hear any songs in my head, other than what I’d heard someone else play. I certainly wasn’t hearing any original tunes in my mind.

But I could understand this in the broader sense of having inspired ideas come to me. This happens all the time with my writing. An idea shows up, and I feel compelled to write about it (as already explained in How I Write). With all the experience I have as a writer, it’s very easy for me to take such an inspired idea and express it through words. If it’s a bigger idea, then I know how to express it in the form of a workshop. But I have no experience expressing these inspired ideas through music. I wondered if those musicians were implying that I was somehow going to figure out a way to express these same ideas through music.

Well, a few days ago, I actually started hearing music in my mind — just a small snippet or two, but it seemed to be original — nothing I recall hearing elsewhere. I still don’t know how to get those sequences out of my head and into the computer , but I imagine that with time and practice, I can develop the skills to do that. Even so, I think it’s really neat that musical inspiration is beginning to show up for me already.

These musical idea waves come to me in essentially the same fashion as my article ideas do, but the energy signature is different. I can easily tell that what’s showing up is musical in nature — I wouldn’t confuse it with the inspiration for a new article. This is exciting to me because if I’m able to tap into a similar abundant source of inspiration for musical ideas as I’m able to do with articles, it means that I could potentially write lots of music over time. It’s just a matter of building out my skills.

I’m well aware that my skill set isn’t yet a good vehicle for taking those musical ideas that show up and getting them into the computer, but this is a long road. With persistence I can get there eventually, just as I did with learning to program, to write, and to speak. I love the idea of building the skill set to express inspired ideas through yet another medium, so when the inspiration for a new song shows up, I could serve as a proper channel for getting that idea into the physical world.

There’s a part of me that wants to keep tacking on qualifiers to everything I do in this beginner phase with words like, “I know I suck at this, so…” or “Don’t expect this to be any good, but…” I think it’s time for me to stop doing that. It’s true that I’m a beginner, and my current skill level surely reflects that, but deep down I know I’m going to become really good at music. It’s only a matter of time.

I’ve worked hard to gain the ability to express inspired ideas through other forms over a period of many years. I started learning computer programming in 1981, but I didn’t see my first computer game published till 1994. I began writing articles in 1999, but I didn’t really start making a good living as a writer till 2006. I joined Toastmasters in 2004 and invested a solid 5 years in gaining comfort with public speaking, but I didn’t start doing my own workshops till 2009. At least these cycles are getting shorter, partly because I’ve gotten better at learning how to learn quickly. Sharing my journey along the way, for instance, helps me learn faster.

Even though I’m only on Day 11 of my music trial, I’m enjoying it enough that I already feel committed to this path of skill building for the long haul. I expect to stick with this line of development well beyond the 30 days. It doesn’t mean I’ll be blogging about it forever, but I do intend to keep working on it.

The benefit of having a long-term ambition is that it accelerates skill-building, especially during the beginner phase. We can acquire new skills much more quickly if we expect to still be using them 5, 10, or 20 years down the road.

I genuinely expect that 5 years from now, I’ll be writing music in some fashion. It’s possible that some new interest might grab my attention between now and then, but if I hold this expectation now, I’m able to learn a lot faster. The most important factor in learning is to have a strong purpose. I feel there are some ideas I can express through music that I can’t express through other media, and I wouldn’t feel good about leaving that channel forever unexplored.

I see new skills as adding to each other, not replacing each other. So I don’t expect to un-become a writer or speaker and shift to being a musician. I want to explore and integrate a new avenue for creative expression while continuing to use and further develop my other skills. Learning music won’t be the end either. There will be other forms to explore beyond that as well.

So I’m going to do my best to stop playing the helpless newbie card. It doesn’t mesh with how I see myself. I may be new at this, but internally I’m already feeling the mastery vibe calling to me. It’s like I’ve already done it, and I’m just waiting for physical reality to narrate the story of how I got from A to B.

So if you catch me doing the qualifying thing when I share my musical progress henceforth, please give me a good smack upside the head. If I’m going to master the ability to express inspired ideas through music, however long that takes, I might as well start getting comfortable where this path will lead. I want to get used to feeling what it will feel like to be able to competently express myself through music. I don’t have to wait 5 years to start practicing that aspect.

And if GarageBand can’t handle my triplets, then its days in my simulated reality are numbered!

View the original article here

Learning Music – Day 12

Writing music is addictive! I was up till 3am last night working on a new piece and reading about music production. This music vibe doesn’t seem to mesh very well with being an early riser! Is there something about music production that transform people into vampires?

Oh, it’s already past midnight… better get to bed… wait… one more little tweak… should only take a minute…

Two hours later…

Frak… it’s past 2am already… okay, one last edit and then that’s it… for real this time!

Thirty minutes later…

Okay for really real now… I mean it! Save and close… Don’t even think about it… save and close! Click it! Now!

Finally lying in bed…

Wait… I wonder if I should try a…

I don’t feel this new piece is mixed very well, nor is it my preferred style of music (it’s a bit funk-like), but I’m okay with that since my goal for this project was to work on incorporating some bass. I wasn’t even going to finish it last night, but I got it to a state I felt was good enough to call it done.

I used the electric bass as more of a foreground instrument than a background one. I’m still a little uncertain about how to incorporate bass with a melody on top. That’s something I’d like to learn soon. I’d probably be better off if I could learn to compose with instruments instead of relying on loops so much. Presently I find it difficult to identify a bass and a potential melody snippet that I feel would mesh well together.

If you want to give it a listen, here it is:

Electric Bass by Steve Pavlina

I also bought a book called the Dance Music Manual by Rick Snoman. Thanks a bunch to Marius van Dyk for the recommendation. This book got rave reviews on Amazon (no pun intended), and it covers many different aspects of music production: music theory, different styles of electronic music (house, trance, techno, etc), processing (compression, effects, etc), using samples, incorporating vocals, creating drum loops, mixing, mastering, and more. I thumbed through it for 30 minutes last night and already learned a few things. What struck me right away was the incredible attention to detail that goes into creating top quality work in this field. For me I think that will come later. First I want to learn to compose with broad strokes.

A few people also told me about an iPhone app called NanoStudio. Thanks to Ariella Baston for providing the final nudge to check it out. NanoStudio has tons of 5-star reviews, and I’m impressed with what people have been able to do with it. I wouldn’t have thought someone could make a decent DAW for a phone (DAW = digital audio workstation, i.e. music production software — I’m learning the acronyms!), but apparently someone did. I decided to buy a copy (only $15), so I can play around with making music on the go. It also works on iPad, so it may be easier to use on the larger screen.

When I want to learn something new, I consciously apply the 7 principles that we use at the Conscious Growth Workshop and that I wrote about in Personal Development for Smart People. These principles are growth accelerators, so they help me make faster progress. The principles are universal, so they can be applied to all sorts of goals and pursuits, even when you don’t have a clear destination in mind. I also think it’s a lot more fun to learn quickly… as opposed to slogging ahead at a snail’s pace.

The 3 core principles are truth, love, and power. There’s no specific order they need to be applied. They actually work best when you apply them together since they synergize so well.

For this music learning pursuit, I started with the principle of power, which means diving in and taking action right away. No excuses. No hesitation. Just go.

If you don’t feel quite ready, go anyway. If you have a really good reason not to go, go anyway. If other people don’t want you to go, go anyway. If you don’t have time, go anyway. Nothing happens till you’re in motion.

If you stumble, trip, fall, or otherwise fail, that’s fine. You’ll learn from it. Fail because your lack of skill or some genuine obstacle knocked you back. Don’t fail because you defeated yourself in your own mind. Do your best, and let that be enough. There’s no shame in doing your best and falling short. There is shame in holding back.

To me this means diving in and trying to create some music. I already had GarageBand on my Mac, so I watched some tutorial videos and started trying to compose something with it.

To apply this principle, just go. It really is that simple. If you don’t know what to do, frakkin guess. Be totally impulsive. Go with the first thing that pops in your mind. Embrace mistakes, invite feedback, and keep learning. Your impulses will calibrate themselves over time. Initially you may look like a chicken running around with its head cut off, but eventually you’ll identify something shiny to run towards, and you’ll already have some momentum on your side.

I also began to apply the principle of love. This is one of the most underused principles. People overlook it all the time — and very much to their peril. Love is an incredibly potent growth accelerator, and it greatly enhances all the others.

In terms of practical application, love is essentially social support. It’s encouragement. It’s advice. It’s mentoring. It’s plain and simple, good old fashioned, 100% natural, biodegradable… HELP.

To apply the principle of love, you basically shout to the world, “Help me!”

But don’t be the kind of person who asks for help and then does nothing about it. When help shows up, welcome it, receive it with gratitude, and apply it immediately. Otherwise you’re squandering your social support, teaching others that you aren’t worth helping.

People generally like offering help, support, and encouragement to those who will truly benefit from it. It’s frustrating to try to help someone who isn’t serious and wastes your time. It’s rewarding to help someone who will respect and apply your advice. This will often make you want to help this person even more, especially if your help is being leveraged to create further positive ripples.

If someone asks me for advice, and I give them what I feel is good advice, and a week goes by and I see they’ve done nothing with it, how likely will I be to take this person seriously the next time they ask for advice? Most likely I’ll ignore them and direct my attention to people who seem serious.

When you ask for help and it shows up, respect the help that arrives. Even if you think you’re getting bad advice, do your best to harbor a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the fact that someone is trying to help you even a little. This is an important vibe to cultivate.

I respect the heck out of musicians who are much more skilled than I am. I know I could learn a lot from them. So when I ask for help, and such people give me some tips, I try to apply them quickly if I’m able. I can’t follow every lead simultaneously, but I can follow a lot of leads. And when people see that I’m serious and that I appreciate their help very much, it invites even more support.

You can try to go it alone, but why bother? It’s much faster — and a lot more rewarding — to make your journey a social one.

Another way to apply the principle of love is to be open to collaborating on projects, like trying to co-create a song together.

I won’t blindly follow someone’s advice if it doesn’t feel right to me, but if I’m on the fence, I push myself off the fence and onto the side of trusting and taking action. So if I’m not sure whether to buy that book someone recommended, I buy it and read it. If I’m not sure whether incorporating bass is the next thing I should work on, I do it anyway.

I recognize that other people know a lot more about music creation than I do, and their advice is likely to be more helpful for me than my own default decisions. I don’t have a clear enough understanding of what steps to take in order to learn what I want to learn. But other people already have clarity about those steps. They can often envision my next steps better than I can. Over time I’ll be better able to guide my own learning, but for now I’m still developing my music instincts, and so I typically get more mileage from relying on other people’s advice. This can shave a lot of time off my learning curve.

This power-and-love approach has been working wonderfully so far, and now I feel the time is right to start incorporating some truth. So I expect to devote more time reading about music and educating myself to fill in the gaps in my experiential knowledge.

It’s one thing to have a DJ advise me, “you should apply a compressor here.” I’m sure his advice is good, but I don’t understand why I should do that or what the alternatives are. It’s therefore helpful to read several pages on the mathematics of compression, to see pictures of what it does to the sound waves, and to read some do’s and don’ts about its application. This is a nice complement to my experiential learning.

Experientially I still think the next step for me is to figure out how to incorporate some bass and a melody in a song and have them mesh well together. Presently the how-to aspects of that are a mystery to me.

It’s past 2pm already? Okay, one last edit and then that’s it!

View the original article here

30-Day Trial of Learning Music

The Subjective Reality Workshop this past weekend was very rewarding. I smile when I think back on all the amazing people who came together to explore SR as a group. After doing 6 Conscious Growth Workshops in a row, it was a special experience to deliver a new workshop this time.

This was the first time I’ve talked about subjective reality in depth with more than a few people. I really loved the energy of this particular group. With about half of the attendees being alumni from previous CGWs, it felt like a big family reunion.

We officially ended at 4pm on Sunday, but I didn’t leave the meeting room until about 6:30. Many people hung around afterwards to ask more questions, share stories, and to offer feedback and suggestions. A few people told me afterwards that they were sad to see it end and would have loved to go for 4-5 days instead of just 3 days. I can see how SRW could be extended into a longer workshop. At present there are no specific plans to do another one, but I’m open to it happening sometime in 2012.

Personal growth workshops can provide intense transformational experiences for those who attend them, including the facilitator. It typically takes me about a week to make sense of how each workshop impacted me, but I’m already seeing how SRW’s lessons are unfolding, so I wanted to share some about that. This shouldn’t be a surprise to those who attended the workshop, since I already discussed this with the group on Sunday.

For quite a while I’ve been thinking about exploring music in some fashion, such as learning to play an instrument. This isn’t something I’ve really explored before, so I have very little experience. When it comes to music, I don’t even know what I don’t know, nor do I have a clear sense of what I’d enjoy, so I’m not in a position to set a crisp goal or to define a particular desired result.

The more I ponder it, the more my reality keeps affirming that this is a path worthy of exploration. In lieu of contemplating it for a few more years, I’ve decided to commit to a 30-day trial of exploring and learning about music for 1-2 hours per day.

My musical knowledge is so limited that I wouldn’t even know how to map out what to do each day, so I’ll simply follow the guidance that shows up as I go along, whether it comes in the form of inspiration, a seemingly logical next step, or help from others who are musically inclined.

The trial is already underway in fact. I started on Monday, so this is Day 2. So far I’ve spent some time sharing this intention, I read a little about music theory online and discussed it with some people, and I bookmarked some resources that people shared with me. I installed a couple of keyboard simulator apps on my iPad, and I ran Garage Band for the first time (pre-installed on my MacBook Pro) to poke around with it. I installed a 1.2 GB file of loops for it when the program prompted me to do so.

This is a totally exploratory trial. I have no set agenda or end goal in mind. I simply want to learn more about music, both mentally and experientially. I’m not attached to any particular outcome here.

Some people asked what kind of instrument I might like to learn, but I can’t answer that with any certainty. If I had to choose, I’d say that I feel most drawn to learning to create some kind of compositions with computer software. I don’t feel drawn to learn the guitar, piano, or any specific physical instrument.

My favorite style of music is electronic, so the computer seems like a logical choice for exploring that. Depeche Mode is by far my favorite band of all time, and I probably listen to their music more than all other groups combined. Some other favorites include New Order, Erasure, Duran Duran, Anything Box, Sting, The Smiths, Enya, Pet Shop Boys, REM, and The Cure.

If I were going to learn how to compose something on my own, electronic would be my preference.

Other than being able to play a few simple songs on a keyboard like Mary Had a Little Lamb and some basic recorder lessons in grammar school 30 years ago, I haven’t learned how to play any instruments.

I’m left-handed, so I’m not sure if that makes it much different to learn to play a keyboard or piano than it would be for a right-hander.

Several musicians have already shared some advice and tips on where to begin, so I imagine I may spend a few days just exploring various resources people have suggested — reading articles, learning some music theory, trying out software, and messing around a bit. I’ll see how it goes.

I probably won’t blog about this day by day, but I’m happy to share some updates along the way if I think I have something interesting to share.

One reason I’m doing this is to explore another way to express myself creatively. Music seems like a good choice for that.

For now I’m committing to a 30-day trial for education and exploration, so I can learn a little something about music and invite new learning experiences into my life. I expect that this will be an interesting path to explore regardless of what, if anything, I might be able to learn and accomplish in only 30 days.

View the original article here

Watch the TEDActive 2011 music video

Aboard the Lennon Bus, a crew of TEDActive musicians created this lovely song — and a video! — in one week. Feel the vibe of TEDActive …

Musicians on this track include Jill Sobule, Wendy Melvoin, St. Vincent (Annie Clark), Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Lisa Coleman, Aaron Sterling. Video created by Hiro Murai / Isaac Hagy. Lennon Bus crew: Brian Rothschild, Hans Tanner, Kevin Hoy, Ryan L’Esperance.

View the original article here

Fisher Price - Learning Music Playerâ„¢

HP Smartbuy EliteBook 2740p,Intel Core i5-560M Processor (2.66 GHz, 3 MB L3 Cache) 12.1-inch diagonal LED-backlit WXGA UWVA with Digitizer & Touch (1280 x 800) 2MP Webcam 250 GB 5400 rpm 1.8-inch hard drive 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2D) Integrated Fingerprint Reader Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (2x2) + Bluetooth 10/100/1000 NIC 56K v.92 Modem Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD (integrated) HP 6-Cell 44 Wh Li-Ion Battery HP Protect Tool Security Manager, Kensington lock slot, TPM 1.2 Embedded Security Chip, HP Fingerprint Sensor, Integrated Smart Card Reader Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 OS10 Recovery Media-Win7 32, Win7 64

Price: $12.99

Click here to buy from Amazon