Malta, July 2019

This week’s Five Things…

1. Amazing photos and drone footage of the Icelandic volcano eruption. The live stream is pretty cool too — maybe cool isn’t the right word to describe a volcano?

2. What would happen if the world turned into gold? Kurzgesagt have all the answers.

3. Six degrees of Wikipedia. It only takes three Wikipedia pages to get from Tchaikovsky to Cream Cheese.

4. You might have seen on the news recently that songwriters aren’t very happy with streaming services right now. The Price of Song explains why.

5. George Harrison and Paul McCartney’s isolated vocals from Something. So good!

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Ipswich, July 2019

This week’s Five Things…

1. Some useful pointers if you’re learning a new language

2. The robots are coming for jazz drummers’ jobs

3. Talking of drummers. Email drumfill@hey.com and see what happens

4. Ian Leslie’s newsletter is always interesting. His latest one, How To Think Like Bayes, was particularly good

5. Some very useful advice on how to learn a language

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Berlin, May 2018

This week’s Five Things…

1. Nature is so weird and amazing

2. I’ve watched this far too many times. Very funny

3. This episode of The Listening Service on Tricky Timing was great. I’d never heard of the podcast but I’m now a fan! — “Two, three and four beats in a bar are pretty standard in music. But what happens when a composer decides to go with 7 or 5 or 13 as the underlying structure? And why would they do that?“

4. Olafur Arnalds on NPR’s Tiny Desk

5. I think this has broken my brain a little bit. Despite reading several explainers of “Superior Mirages” I can’t bridge the gap between what I’m seeing and being told. Very cool though!

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Edinburgh, April 2019

This week’s Five Things…

1. “A woodpecker’s tongue contains bone and cartilage, and it wraps around the brain to absorb shock when the bird is slamming its face against trees”

2. Disney used to reuse animations in different movies. I didn’t know this was a thing!

3. Oliver Burkeman on the provisional life: “Are you still under the illusion that you’ll one day reach a point in your life where you no longer have any problems?”

4. A Winged Victory For The Sullen have a new album.

5. The Switched On Pop podcast on the death of the chorus.

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(This is an archive copy of my now page update on 1st March 2021)

Teaching drums online

Relearning how to do my job over the internet has been a really interesting experience. There are a number of things that I want to introduce to my in-person lessons when they eventually resume. I’ll definitely be keeping the online lessons going into the future for those that want them. I now have students dotted around the UK rather than just East Anglia! I’ve even taught some lessons to people living outside the UK. Prior to 2020, I never had to consider time zones when arranging lessons!

Transcribing songs

During the first lockdown I started transcribing a lot of songs for my students. I also decided to put them on my website for everyone else. As that turned out to be a popular move I’m doing it a lot more often! I have a growing list of subscribers to my Drumlist newsletter for those that want to be kept updated about new posts.

Keeping fit

One of the great things about Ipswich, is the number of parks! There are loads of them. So I’m trying to go for a walk every day. I also subscribed to Apple’s Fitness+ app. I highly recommend it. The trainers are great and there are loads of different workouts. I started running regularly last year, but stopped when it got cold. Hopefully I’ll be running regularly again by the next update to this post!

Miscellaneous

I’m currently rereading A Gentleman In Moscow. It’s my favourite book and I looking forward to rereading it many times! I’m also reading Conflicted and The 99% Invisible City.

We just finished watching series three of The Sopranos and Black Books. Felt like a time for a break from The Sopranos so we’ve started watching The Wire and for the moments when we need something more light-hearted, Peep Show.

Since moving last year, we bought a load of house plants. Trying not to kill them has become a fun new hobby.