Trance Frendz by Nils Frahm & Olafur Arnalds

I'm launching a little experiment. Every Wednesday I'm going to share five things that I've recently discovered and enjoyed. These things might be books, videos, interviews, podcasts, albums, playlists... You get the idea!

So here we go. Here are the five things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. Chase Jarvis interviews Seth Godin as part of CreativeLive's 30 Days Of Genius series — Seth Godin is one of my favourite thinkers and this interview is well worth the 62 minutes of your time. Seth is incredibly smart and he doesn't mince his words. I recommend you check out his books and blog too.
    
2. I really enjoyed the recent Freakonomics podcast on the debate over talent vs deliberate practice called “How to Become Great at Just About Anything”. It features a great discussion with research psychologist Anders Ericsson, who is an expert on the science of expertise and led the research behind the 10,000 hour rule popularised by the writer Malcolm Gladwell.
    
3. Last week I finished reading “So Good They Can't Ignore You” by Cal Newport in which he debunks the belief that following your passion" is good advice. The book came highly recommended by one of my heroes Derek Sivers. I found it to be quite repetitive but nonetheless full of useful insights. It's definitely worth reading and I wish I had done so sooner!
    
4. As the debate on the UK's membership of the EU rages on I came across this satirical video featuring Patrick Stewart “What has the European Convention on Human Rights ever done for us?”. Very funny and makes some good points. It also features some strong language, you've been warned!
    
5. For the last few months I've been listening to and loving Olafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm's most recent collaboration “Trance Frendz”. The album name is pretty daft but don't let that put you off. The music that makes up the album was recorded during sessions filmed at Nils Frahm's studio in Berlin, the video is up on youtube and worth a watch!

That's all for this week. Enjoy!

From time to time I answer drumming and music related questions on the q&a website Quora. This is one of those answers...

Question:

I've been playing with a metronome and I have it skip beats when I practice. I just feel that there is more I could be doing to get my internal clock as tight and solid as possible. Do any expert drummers out there have any secret ways or unique to practice keeping better time?

My answer:

Practicing to a metronome that skips beats is a great idea. Have you tried this with bars? Four bars on, four bars off for example.

A couple of other suggestions...

• Set your click to half time — Playing at 120pm? Set the click to 60bpm.

• Click on different subdivisions — Instead of assuming the click is on the 1, 2, 3, 4 try playing with it on the offbeat (1 e AND a, 2 e AND a etc) or if you're up for a real challenge the 'e' or 'a'. I strongly recommend doing this slowly with something you’re comfortable playing first. Benny Greb's book The Language Of Drumming has some great exercises to practice in this way.

Inspired by Derek Sivers, I've added a “now” page to my website. Check it out here.

Most websites have a link that says “about”. It goes to a page that tells you something about the background of this person or business. For short, people just call it an “about page”. 

Most websites have a link that says “contact”. It goes to a page that tells you how to contact this person or business. For short, people just call it a “contact page”.

So a page on a person’s website, that tells you what this person is focused on at this stage in their life, is called a “now page”.

Learn more about the ”now page” movement at nownownow.com/about.

ps. On a related note, highly recommend you read Derek Sivers' book Anything You Want.

Hey folks,

I'm running a Rock School from 4-8 April in Ipswich. There are a few places remaining so if you are interested it's not too late to book a place.

The Rock Schools run over five days during school holidays and are open to all 11-17 year olds regardless of previous experience. Under the guidance of professional musicians students write, rehearse and record original music at a popular Ipswich based recording studio, and on the final day perform a concert to friends and family. 

You don't even need an instrument; we provide everything you need to make music.

Learn more at the Kick! Music Schools website. If you have any questions drop us an email!

Ross

There are some great things on the internet, but this has to be one of my new favourites. The Chrome Music Lab is a collection of cool music experiments built using the Web Audio API (more about that here).

From the Chrome Music Lab website:

Music is for everyone. So this year for Music In Our Schools month, we wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works.

The experiments are great fun to play around with (the Rhythm and Oscillator are my favourites) and a great educational tool. If you are a learning an instrument, a parent of someone learning an instrument or a teacher — check it out!