audiot

something triggered a memory today and got me thinking when and why i first wanted to be a musician. back then i was about 13-14 years old and on a summer holiday in turkey, when i noticed that i forgot bringing tapes to feed my walkman. i listened to whatever was on the radio those days and even taped some of the shows. but being stuck without any tapes left me no choice but to go to some streetmarket and buy some new ones. nothing they had to offer sounded any familiar so i bought one tape because i liked the cover. it was “Live After Death” by Iron Maiden and it blew me away. the next day, i went back there and bought all the other Maiden-tapes they had. this holiday triggered my way of life. in the months and years that followed i became a true metalfreak, got into Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and similar bands and didn’t want to hear anything else…

well, a lot has changed since those days – my taste in music as well. it got a lot broader, i still love those bands but i love lots of other stuff nowadays. and that’s the reason why i haven’t listened to any of the above mentioned in years. but now that i’m thinking back again, i’m gonna take those old albums and listen to them again. and i can only recommend this, because – believe it or not – this was f***ing great music! go ahead and listen to the first few albums of those three bands, just to see how they started. Judas Priest for instance released their first album (“Rocka Rolla”) in 1974 – 35 years ago! and i bet you’d be surprised how it sounds.

anyway, maybe you should think back as well to the time and the reason why you’re into music. you ARE into music, right? it might shed a new light on things today….

hehehe, and once again i uploaded the album to one more site, added a button to the sidebar – i know it’s not exactly where it should be, i simply don’t know how to put it in the center, but at least it works – and added the link to the “other audiot stuff” section. this time it’s last.fm and if you know any other artist whos music is similar to mine (…) then please feel free to make the connection over there. and as always: tell others about it :-)

so small beats large, eh? didn’t i talk about that already? well, this time it’s more like short beats long and i’m talking about periods of time. did you know that it’s impossible for us to really concentrate on something longer than a few minutes?  it’s true, although i don’t know the source of that information anymore. we think we could do something for hours and being focused the whole time but we can’t. by the way, this might be the reason that the ideal length for a song, which is played on radio, is somewhere around 3:00 minutes – keep that in mind when you record your next 70s-sound-alike-mammoth-intro…

anyway, learning is most effective if you do it for short periods of time – about 5 to 10 minutes and then take a break. there are two reasons for this: first, the above mentioned ‘concentration-span’. and the second reason: remember the puppeteer-and-datahighway-building-guys? those fellows are quite assiduous people. when you start learning, they start building – nothing fancy here but when you stop learning, they go on building for at least a few more minutes. ok, if you’re learning for five hours and then you win 5 more minutes, it’s nothing. but if one of your learning units is only 5 minutes and you still get a 5 minute bonus, that means – well, you do the math. depending on how long you need to dig in, learning periods of 10 minutes might be better, you need to check this out for yourself.

so go ahead and make up a plan by first breaking down the task into small pieces (that can be done in 5-10 minutes…), then do one at a time -  slowly and focused and after each of those periods give your brain a break, so the tiny workmates up there can finish up. you don’t need to doze off into standby mode, just do something else you don’t need to focus on. for example, you’re working for 7 minutes on that new arpeggio, playing it slowly and focused up and down the guitar neck. then, as a ‘break’, you crank up the amp and thresh your favorite punkriffs out to the universe. and after that mr. brain is ready to take another bite…