natalia lafourcade

 a ukulele clearly but this is what's constituting spanish practice this week. what a voice! and a killer band... 

marta pereira da costa

 portuguese guitar? nope, never even seen one. so here's marta pereira da costa to show us how it's done. lovely. but those tuners!? 

reggare style oldies

 old school 

start photography

 modern cameras are great. that said, you can pick up a 10+ year dslr cheap as chips and get started. so what's stopping you? likely the offputting manual download and then trying to figure that out. worthwhile then to have an overview which this handy, and long, video is. fear not, there's content notes! and there's a setup one after. watch this instead of netflix and tomrrow, get yourself out (this doesn't count for northern europe at the moment as the light is flatter than a pancake and about a smuch use as a candle in a gale! 

*i don't necessarily agree with all these tips but you get to pick and choose

*my current digital setup is an old canon body and a holga lens. you don't have to do anything with the holga lens but you will have to fiddle about with the manual settings. it's a good way to learn a camera, have a bit of a laugh and you can pick up the bits for very little money. despite what almost every video on yt will tell you - it's not about the gear but your eye. work on that rather than emptying your bank account! lol

bass lines

after yesterday - what i have been doing (tho, as always, not as often as i should) is playing with my bass. a lot of guitar/ukulele/bass players seem to have problems around notes and shapes on the fretboard so this, to me, seems clear and useful, and should be applicable across instruments

easy ukulele

for no good reason i haven't played any ukulele for ages. but i heard this guy the other day and got one down from the hanger. a super easy progression but also handy if you're wanting to think a bit about chord construction. and sounds lovely.  

fun with filters

one thing i've noticed about photography vids online is that (aside from being very male, very white) there just doesn't seem to be a lot of larking about going on. really, nobody cares, so you may as well have a laugh. came across these the other day and this sort of thing seems an ideal way to fritter away an afternoon! 

*i'm not denying there's a time for seriousness but let's face it, a lot of the time you're just grinding and getting the job done. if you can't remember the last time you just let go and had a giggle, now's the time to start

more old people

 it's unwise for me to have opinions but this guy knows what's what lol

old people

back in the day i remember being fascinated by old people. people who had lived in and been involved in ww2 were commonplace and, altho the average was lower than it is now, i remember having conversations with guys who had volunteered for the first world war. and then everything inbetween : shipyards, mines, tenements, steamies, the works. that said, bertrand russell's 'my grandad knew napoleon' story would've taken the win! lol 

stalker

 the whole film! while the festive season's great for rubbish movies it's worth remembering that, not so long ago, there was such a thing called film and it's just not so easy to see anymore. not for everyone for sure, but just watching the opening sequence of this was like a breath of fresh air! 

*try and get a tarkovsky box set these days (subtitled not dubbed). more and more i see these types of films either not available, priced way beyond what you'd expect on the disappearing format of dvd, or just absent on streaming. what a shame. when i was young (and even our video shop stocked such things!) and we watched everything, we didn't realise how lucky we were!

framing your head

i've taken to using a holga lens on an old body of late and i'm finding it a very different form of practice than my pinhole camera, so much so i had to reset myself a little bit (and definitely not take two different types of camera out on the same outing!) and think about what i was doing. this is a lovely wee vid about just that and, to me, would seem useful for most creative activity  

the christmas story

and, because we're nto that far out from christmas, here's some more oe. i ndon't speak it now and my accent is different, but this guy makes it work. if you've not heard this before and it's up your street, have a google for some spoken extracts of me from the wycliffe bible. worth it!  

the battle of maldon

now this is what lego is for! it's a shame it's not in oe but, as they say, they wanted it to be more accessible. i'm not sure accessibility equates to interest which is a great shame. nevertheless, good effort! 

el estepario

i got a drum pad recently and, much like my balance board, i'd massively recommend it, even if only to challenge your brain and amke your body do something it's not used to - plus you'll get a whole new appreciation of drumming! at the pinnacle of technique madness is el estepario, who puts his crazy skills down to hours and hours and hours of practice (which, tbh, works - my intial playing around and being frustrated has been replaced, in large part, by metronome sessions working on basic patterns, consistency, time keeping and speed. which is working and enjoyable!), here's rick beato's take on him 

easy project

 new year, new reolutions? get your creativity on! this one is super easy but, as with everything super easy, tricky in its own way. no excuses!