obamarama

as some of you may know, obama spoke to congress yesterday (tuesday) about the economy, his focuses during his term, and some important goals.

one goal is to cut his country's deficit by half at the end of his first term - that's quite ambitious.

obama's other goal is that by 2020, America will (once again) have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. that is, despite obama acknowledging that America has one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation, and half of the students who begin college never finish. he also requested that "every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training."

"we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.. (and) I speak to you not just as a president, but as a father, when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home. That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. That's an American issue." i don't think it gets much truer than that.

obama may have a lot of lofty goals, high expectations, and overly-optimistic views of the future,
but you know what?

"we are not quitters."

obama's placed his faith in the american people, and i think that now it's time for that to be reciprocated. feel free to comment/bash this!

obama's full speech

brett dennen

so a friend said i should recommend some more music to her. there's a lot of weird music that i listen to, so i thought that i'd try something more listener-friendly. this is where Brett Dennen comes in. he's got one of the most uniquely beautiful voices in the world. he was at the edmonton folkfest last summer, and i missed him. don't you hate it when you fall in love with an artist AFTER they visit your hometown? it's happened too many times to me. anyways, i'll list three songs i like from his most recent album 'Hope for the Hopeless'.

San Francisco:


Make You Crazy (complete with his own cheesy video):


Heaven:

Juan Enriquez: How mindboggling science will outlast the crisis

you MUST watch this talk. this is a recap of some of the most important technological advancements you DON'T know about. absolutely incredible. and yes, i know it's long, but trust me, your mind will be blown.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/juan_enriquez_shares_mindboggling_new_science.html

look around the site for an endless amount of deliciously interesting presentations on anything and everything.

you HAVE to see this!

wow, this is absolutely and positively the coolest music video i have ever seen. there is really no match for this. seriously. you HAVE to watch it. please, do it now.



thanks goes to kaitlin hickey for showing me all these cool things at work today.

black cab sessions

at work today someone showed me a very cool site, called 'Black Cab Sessions.' they're video recordings of musicians playing a song in the back of the cab. they've got some nice ones on there like death cab for cutie, the new pornographers, and fleet foxes.

http://www.blackcabsessions.com/

one of my favorite artists is ryan adams, and he does a song from his new album 'Cardinology' called 'Sinking Ships.' it's a great song with a really awesome bridge. take a listen!

http://www.blackcabsessions.com/sessions.php?id=1231499191

my solo piece

so i was going to describe my guitar practice schedule, but holy crap that'd be boring for you so i didn't do it. instead i'll share a song that i'm working on. it's called 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore' by Duke Ellington. ironically this was one of my first big pieces as a drummer, and now it's one of my first as a guitarist! it's a fun tune that sounds better when you try to play it like your drunk. i called up Michael Buble and he decided to do me one last favor and record it on youtube. thanks again mikey. so here ya go:

what i've been listening to lately...

for the past few weeks i've been pretty crazy about radiohead. most of you would know them from their big hits 'creep' or 'karma police.' at the grammys last night they performed '15 Step' from their recent album 'In Rainbows', accompanied by the USC marching band. yep, you heard me right - a marching band. there were two versions of this on youtube, and i picked the one that has slightly worse quality only because the other one had no bass (and what a crime that is). might i add that thom yorke (the vocalist) looked pretty darn stylish last night. here ya go:



i'll briefly list a few of their songs that i have been obsessed with lately:

wolf at the door (with a neat user-made video):


no surprises (watch thom yorke almost drown!):


paranoid android (a classic with an interesting music video):


if you've taken the time to listen to any of this stuff, please let me know what you thought and leave me a comment! i'd love to hear what you think about this stuff.

some material from ted greene

ted greene was an amazing guitar player, but was most famous for his role as a guitar instructor. he released four famous guitar books during his lifetime, which are a must-read for many guitarists: chord chemistry, modern chord progressions, and single-note soloing vol I & II. i'll link his website, where you'll find some of his lessons in pdf. 

http://www.tedgreene.com/teaching/default.asp

there's also a great recording of him on you-tube during a workshop, playing on his signature telecaster. he's got just great tone and amazing vibrato as well. 

Fender used his collection of vintage telecasters as a reference when they made their 52' vintage reissue telecasters. truly an amazing guy. he was taken away much too early from us.

amazing - the four finger pianist

no joke! it’s absolutely incredible how well this girl plays with her limitations. what a wonderful mother to see and foster the potential in her daughter like that. what an inspiring story.

my first blog post (with a useful theory site)

so i come by a lot of useful info throughout each workday (i work at the Winspear Centre). i thought it’d be good to blog some of this stuff, so others can get what i get out of these things.

for my first blog, i’d like to share what has for the last while been extremely helpful. that would be 
- www.teoria.com -. if you’ve got a crappy ear like me, or you want to hone your already perfect aural skills (which i’m extremely jealous of), this is the perfect place to do it. not only does it have several ear-training exercises, it has double that in theory exercises. now i know musicians are quite divided when it comes to theory junk, but i’m on the liking-theory side of things. i’m preparing to go to grant macewan for guitar, and because i’ve only been playing this tonal instrument for a year (and three years of percussion/drums before that) my ear is just taking it’s first baby steps. anyways, i hope this is as useful to some of you as it is to me. now go and flex those ear muscles!

www.teoria.com

www.good-ear.com - this is another good site that focuses just on ear-training

note: i’m cross-posting my blog on facebook, and i’ve tagged you if i think you’d like it.

credit: i’ll have to thank my guitar teacher, Lane Arndt, for pointing ‘teoria’ out to me.