Kind Of Blue

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. What happens in the brain when someone improvises? Musician and researcher Charles Limb put jazz musicians and rappers into an fMRI to find out.
    
2. Last week, NASA's Juno spacecraft completed its first close flyby of Jupiter. The data it's sent back to earth has revealed Jupiter has a few surprises in store...
    
3. I was very sad to hear the author Denis Johnson died last week. His collection of short stories, Jesus's Son, is one of my favourites: Denis Johnson’s Perfect Short Story.
    
4. Billy Collins on finding your voice.
    
5. This week's musical recommendation is The Look by Metronomy. It's from their excellent album The English Riviera. I'm a big fan of the music video and that keyboard sound!

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

The Basilica of Saints Justus and Pastor

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Channel 4 has a new series called The Trial. The idea behind the show is rather clever: "In a pioneering series that reveals the inner workings of the legal system, a fictional murder case is tried in a real court, by eminent legal professionals and a jury of 12 members of the public". I really liked the first episode so will most probably watch the rest of the series.
    
2. Drummer's have their quirks, and so it appears do drum books. Drumset = You is an entertaining look at the eccentricities contained within the pages of drum method books. This quote was the highlight for me: "A tree has an organic shape, and I can play that shape on the drums. I can play like a bear moving, like a bird flying, or like children rolling in the grass " — erm what?!
    
3. This is pretty cool: "The Autocanonizer ... takes any song and tries to make a canon out of it". Some songs work better than others, but my favourite is the autocanonized version of Over The Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. 
    
4. I'm currently reading Creating Freedom by Raoul Martinez. It's a powerful, thought provoking book that explores the notion of freedom and how "We are far less free than we like to think." It's currently free on Kindle, I recommend you download a copy.
    
5. This week's musical recommendation is Disparate Youth by Santigold and it's a teensy bit different from previous week's picks. I'm not really sure how best to describe the song, except that it has a great drum beat and that it's a good song to listen to now the sun is out! Have a listen and see what you think.

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

This guy is a beast! The ideas Matt shares in this short video could fill a lifetime of practice. Although what he's playing sounds pretty complicated, with a little bit of patience, it's something you can easily apply to your own playing.

To start, pick a simple groove (start really simple) and try shifting it either forwards or backwards by half a beat — like in the example below. It'll sound and feel strange to play at first, so it's a good idea to practice it to a click and to count as you play. Once you feel comfortable playing your new displaced groove, try alternating between it and the original version. 

As Matt demonstrates in the video, you can have a lot of fun with this idea!

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The Round Tower, Copenhagen

Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. Brian Eno on children, play and art via a fun comic by Austin Kleon (the author of Steal Like An Artist).

2. Wiltshire has its very own Iron Man. Richard Browning has developed a flying suit consisting of a lightweight exoskeleton and six gas turbines that are strapped to the arms and back. According to Browning it has the potential to reach speeds of up to 450 kilometres an hour, though it hasn't been tested at speeds anywhere near that yet.

3. Learn to code for free! freeCodeCamp is a non-profit with approximately 2000 hours of free lessons and challenges. I've just restarted my quest to work through the course and so far I'm really enjoying the challenge!

4. Ableton have made a cool interactive website that teaches the basics of songwriting and beat making — a really great resource for anyone interested in learning how to make music.

5. This week's musical recommendation is Requiem For Dying Mothers, Part 2 by Stars Of The Lid. SOTL have been the soundtrack of my week as I work through the freeCodeCamp lessons. Their sound has (according to Wikipedia) been described as "divine, classical drone without the tedious intrusion of drums or vocals."

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next one delivered to your inbox.

Cromer 2

Every Wednesday I share five things I liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

1. A great post on how to learn more effectively: Let Go of the Learning Baggage.
    
2. Vantablack is very black: "Vantablack is a substance made of vertically aligned carbon nanotube arrays and is the blackest artificial substance known, absorbing up to 99.965% of radiation in the visible spectrum."
    
3. A cool time-lapse video of the Milky Way shot from an airplane cockpit.
    
4. An interesting interview on How Creativity Drives Human Evolution with the author and anthropologist Augustín Fuentes. — "What's distinctive about humans is that we can imagine something and then make it real."
    
5. This week's musical recommendation is So It Goes by the ambient musician and composer Greg Haines. If you like this, check out his albums "Where We Were" and "Moments Eluding".

That's all for this week. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and you'll get the next Five Things delivered straight to your inbox. You can check out previous Five Things posts here.