Posts tagged austin kleon
Five Things #104
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Every Wednesday I share five things I've liked and think you might like too. Here are this week’s Five Things…

  1. A great video explaining the "hidden" syncopation in one of my favourite Radiohead songs. I forget just how good Radiohead are at times.

  2. The sound illusion that makes Dunkirk so intense.

  3. What a world we've created: "Of all the mammals on Earth, 96% are livestock and humans, only 4% are wild mammals"

  4. Austin Kleon asks "What do you want to learn?"

  5. As it's above, here's a wonderful live version of that Radiohead song.

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

ps. There'll be no Five Things next week, but normal service will resume the following the week!

Five Things #102

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

  1. It seems like everyone I overhear playing music is listening to The Middle. Here's a great little video explaining how the hit was made.

  2. "The most important skill you can develop is an innate sense of curiosity about yourself"Daniel Gross (his blog is great)

  3. It all comes down to luck.

  4. Fame, what is it good for?

  5. A tonne of new music by Sigur Rós just landed on Spotify 🎶

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

Five Things #97

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

  1. I hadn't listened to Adam Buxton's podcast in quite a while (silly me) so this rambling chat with film directors Wes Anderson and Garth Jennings was a good reminder of what I'd been missing!

  2. This quote from a recent Austin Kleon post really jumped out at me: "if you really want to explore ideas in an environment conducive to good thinking, you should consider hanging out with 'people who are not so much like-minded as like-hearted,' people who are 'temperamentally disposed to openness and have habits of listening.'"

  3. What an incredible man: Johan van Hulst, Who Helped Save 600 Children From the Nazis, Dies at 107

  4. An interesting TED talk about how we experience and process emotions by Lisa Feldman Barrett.

  5. 🎶 I'm really enjoying Poppy Ackroyd's latest album Resolve.

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

Five Things #95

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

  1. I finished reading Tara Westover's memoir Educated last week and somehow forgot to include it. Her story is incredible. It's one of the best things I've read in ages.

  2. BBC Radio 4's In Our Time podcast recently explored the life of Beethoven. I didn't know much about him beyond knowing he went deaf and you know, made some pretty famous music! This was a good introduction to the man behind the music.

  3. Rhythmic displacement is a great tool in the toolkit of any musician. This video shows how Harry Connick Jr. masterfully put it to use to get his audience clapping in the right place. Really impressive!

  4. A great post by Austin Kleon on the importance and role of copying in the learning process.

  5. All eight hours of Max Richter's album Sleep are now on Spotify! Sweet dreams 😴🎶

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

Copying is how we learn
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You start by imperfectly copying someone or something that inspires you. You keep copying, making mistakes and drawing inspiration from other sources. And eventually, you find you've made something new and original.

This short post (and its title) was inspired by a far more insightful one by Austin Kleon called Copying is how we learn. If you like that you should also check out his book Steal Like An Artist, which is excellent.

Five Things #67

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

  1. Episode #1 of Radiotopia's new mini-series Ways Of Hearing explores how digital audio changes our experience of music and time. If you are a musician or big music fan, I think you'll love it.

  2. Austin Kleon hits the nail on the head in his post You can be woke without waking up to the news. Give it a try, no phone, no social media and no news for the first couple of hours of your day.

    "A friend of mine said he didn’t know how long he could wake up to such horrible news every day. I suggested to him that he shouldn’t wake up to the news at all, and neither should anyone else. There’s almost nothing in the news that any of us need to read in the first hour (or two or three or four…) of our day."
  3. This is quite the long-read, but if you are a big user of Facebook and have any concerns about your privacy, it's probably worth your time: You Are the Product.

  4. I've just rediscovered James Clear's excellent blog. He has a wealth of articles exploring habits, thinking and learning. I found this one particularly interesting: Mental Models: How to Train Your Brain to Think in New Ways.

  5. Over the last week, I've been making a concerted effort to listen to more albums by artists I like, that I've not really listened to previously. This week's music recommendation is Blanck Mass' self-titled album, which in spite of liking their other music, I'd neglected to listen to at all!

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