From June, a bunch of us are doing a Tropicalia DJ night at the Bulls Head in Moseley.
There’s a big launch on the 21st that we’ll all be playing at (and it’ll be a great party – with 2 for 1 caipirinhas & mojitos) – after which we’ll each take a lead on one night of the month with drop-in guest DJs.
My night will be the first Thursday of the month – and I’ll be playing classic Brazilian bossanova, Venezuelan salsa, Colombian cumbia – and lots of other stuff from similarly warm places. We’ll be mixing in a bit of reggae as well – but mostly there’ll be a latin rhythm going on. You’ll want to wear your dancing trousers.
Can’t wait. Stick it in the diary – and I’ll see you there on Thursday June 21st. Tell your cool friends.
Tagged: DJ
- Published:
- May 30, 2012 – 8:23 am
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- By dubber
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Photo by Tomas Whitehouse
I travel a lot, and I do a lot of public speaking. Mostly about Music in the Digital Age, but also about other things – from creative enterprise to time management, the music industry to radio. Whisky too, on occasion.
I’m NOT going to be travelling in June, for various reasons – mostly to do with my passport being away at the cleaner’s. But that doesn’t mean you can’t book me for an event of some kind.
In fact, it might mean that you will be able to, where ordinarily I might not have been available – or getting me to your thing might not have been cost-effective.
Since I’m not going to be moving around and speaking at music industry events and academic conferences or doing any guest lecturing for the whole month, I thought it would be nice to do a June-only thing, where I’ll offer to present at any kind of conference, event, get-together, class or just to you personally – and I’ll do it from my home, via Skype… for a flat fee of £100.
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Tagged: Skype
- Published:
- May 22, 2012 – 12:26 pm
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- By dubber
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I’ve spent this weekend (so far) working on the audiobook version of Music in the Digital Age, and you can get it at Bandcamp. Each section of the book has been released as an album.
Part 1 is the overview, which I call ‘Understanding Music in the Digital Age’. It features the chapters about the way in which I think about music, and ways in which to understand the online environment as a conversational space.
Part 2 is The 20 Things Revisited – which goes back to my original ebook from 5 years ago, ‘The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online’, and addresses and updates each point along the way.
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- Published:
- May 19, 2012 – 9:07 pm
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- By dubber
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I gave a keynote presentation at the Fremtidens musikalske entreprenører conference, which was held at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen yesterday.
My topic was ‘Musicians are Media Producers’ and I spoke for about half an hour with about 15 minutes of questions afterwards.
A couple of people asked if my slides would be available, so here they are.
It doesn’t help that they don’t make sense without the speaking that I did (or if you can’t read my handwriting) but the session was recorded, so once that’s available I’ll link to the talk that I did. Hopefully that will help unravel the point of the slides.
For iPad users – yes, I used the Paper app to draw the slides, exported each image to the Photo Library and then imported into the Keynote app. I did the presentation straight off the iPad, which works well for me. Not sure I’ll do the “handwritten” keynote presentation thing again – but I might. Makes a change…
Tagged: presentation, Seminar
- Published:
- May 11, 2012 – 10:12 am
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- By dubber
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Photo by ĐāżŦ {mostly absent}
I started asking people for their ideas about stuff on this blog this time last week. I thought it might be an interesting follow-on from the project where I came up with an idea each day for thirty days.
It was inspired by the guys from Ideas Improv who stopped people in the street to ask for their ideas for a documentary project. Really interesting stuff.
I chose a range of topics and just threw the gates open. “Tell me your ideas”, I said. And some people did.
But I don’t think I thought this through well enough – and so now I’m going to stop. I feel as though rather than contribute to the value of this blog, just throwing out a topic and asking for your suggestions is getting in the way a bit.
So this is one 30-day project I’m happy to abandon.
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- Published:
- May 8, 2012 – 3:00 pm
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- By dubber
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For the past few years, I’ve been running a whisky blog with my friend Clutch. We’ve visited some lovely places (mostly in Scotland), tasted some wonderful whisky, met some fascinating people – and even made some music as part of that little venture.
Plus, people sent us whisky to try. Bonus.
This year, we’ve kind of let it slide. Clutch has moved up to Aberdeenshire and no longer lives just around the corner, he’s focusing on his expanding family (child number 2 due any moment now) – and I’ve been concentrating on other stuff. Writing books mostly.
In fact, I think I may have only had whisky about three times so far this year – and then only when we’ve had visitors over. It just hasn’t been something I’ve focused on or paid much attention to in 2012. Maybe we’ll get back into the swing of it next year.
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Tagged: writing
- Published:
- May 8, 2012 – 10:02 am
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- By dubber
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Photo by stevendepolo
06. FOOD
Big topic today with lots of scope for inventiveness.
I want to hear your idea about food. Whether it’s about solving world hunger or preventing food wastage, creating home gardening kits, halting the obesity epidemic or creating ways in which kids can get more nutritious lunches at schools, I want to hear what you’ve come up with.
Maybe you’ve invented a new type of sandwich or designed a machine that poaches the perfect egg. Let’s hear your idea about food in the comments please.
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- May 7, 2012 – 1:22 pm
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- By dubber
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Photo by Rupert Brun
05. COLLECTING
Today’s call for ideas is about accumulating things.
Whether it’s an idea about how to shelve and display a DVD collection, thoughts about archiving or cataloguing, ways to start and keep a collection of interesting things, or perhaps you have new ideas about collectible products that will see you create the next Pokémon or Cabbage Patch doll phenomenon… we want to hear about.
Let’s have your idea related to collecting (or, indeed, ideas about anything that the subject of ‘collecting’ makes you think of) in the comments please.
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- May 6, 2012 – 2:08 pm
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- By dubber
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Photo by Telstar Logistics
04. TIME
Here’s an opportunity to get creative. You might have an idea for saving time, or for a time-management technique. You may want to think about keeping time, or doing something that involves altering the tempo in a piece of music. You might come up with a new type of watch, or some way of making things last much longer. You might have an idea about overcoming the problem of different timezones, or even decide to invent a method of time travel. It’s entirely up to you.
Put your ideas in the comments. Criticisms of the ideas will not be published – just the ideas. So feel free to be as imaginative as you like with it.
Look forward to seeing what you come up with.
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- Published:
- May 5, 2012 – 2:40 pm
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- By dubber
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Photo by bies
03. HOUSEWORK
This time, let’s think about something completely mundane. Everyone has to do it, and I think there’s room for it to be a lot less onerous, more environmentally friendly, more fun and more fairly distributed.
Whether you have an idea for a service that takes care of chores, delivers household goods or performs certain tasks; whether you have a clever way of doing the dishes that takes less time or a special system for getting the housework done; whether you’ve got a way to divide up or incentivise tasks so that the kids practically beg to get involved… or whether it’s an idea for grass-stain resistant kids clothes or compostable underwear that saves you laundry time – let’s hear it.
What are your ideas for housework-type chores?
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- Published:
- May 4, 2012 – 2:20 pm
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- By dubber
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