ivancdg

19 ms·

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by ivancdg 14y ago
Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was convinced that he was a major 20th century composer. That point of view put him in the minority. Now, 26 years after his untimely death, people are starting to agree. Classical music-lovers, numb from all of t
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by ivancdg 14y ago
There are websites that turn email into a game; it shocks me how good a motivator this can be (I guess part of me IS still a child). My recent favorite is http://emailga.me (NB: gmail only) The combination of timer count-down, smileys and
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Individualism in Overdrive (The Cult of Selfishness)(nytimes.com)
2 points by ivancdg 14y ago|0 comments
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by ivancdg 14y ago
"Learn the top 1000 spoken or written words of a language" Is there a resource that provides a list of the most frequent words for a given language?
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My Brush With a Patent Troll(jacquesmattheij.com)
221 points by ivancdg 14y ago|65 comments
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by ivancdg 14y ago
Jacques Mattheij's blog posts on burnout are very helpful. I recommend reading them and re-reading them: http://jacquesmattheij.com/Are+you+suffering+from+burn-out http://jacquesmattheij.com/dealing+with+burn+out There are various usefu
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by ivancdg 14y ago
Here in France, people use debit/credit cards to buy EVERYTHING. Some merchants discourage this by insisting on a 15 euro minimum charge. But by and large cards are used more often than cash. In restaurants it is common to split the payment
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by ivancdg 14y ago
I would add that often it is effective to write a reply immediately (ie get it out of your headspace)...but save it in your drafts folder, and send it only the next morning. This way you avoid much of the 'email ping pong' which is a real t
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by ivancdg 14y ago
I can not upvote this enough. I've met so many artists who are passionate about their work. But lack of organization, and lack of awareness of their daily inefficiencies stop them from succeeding.
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by ivancdg 14y ago
Comparing productivity porn (PP) to fast food is not very helpful. It would be more accurate to compare PP to reading about nutrition...then not following the advice one reads, despite being well informed. Of course it's easier to do things
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by ivancdg 14y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with Terretta. It sounds to me like cfinke made a poor choice when acquiring a used instrument, then extrapolated that to 'all old instruments are bad/can't properly hold pitch'. (/exaggeration). cfinke should've just
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by ivancdg 14y ago
Nothing could be further from the truth. Your metaphor is specious. (Sorry if that sounds harsh, it is intended more to be just a firm statement). The complexity of the piano sound is very, very difficult to duplicate, although we've been t
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by ivancdg 14y ago
The larger point about personal responsibility is more important than applying the metaphor to every possible case. No matter who you hire, in any context, it is up to you to make sure they do a good job with the tools available to you.
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by ivancdg 14y ago
Funny, when I read your 3rd paragraph, that made me think of the danger of putting too much faith in doctors. Doctors get really peeved at people who research online and self-diagnose. On the other hand no-one cares about your health as muc
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by ivancdg 15y ago
It seems to me that one of the reasons CDBaby was/is so successful is because its primary customers are musicians , rather than consumers of music. Strictly speaking CDBaby sells to both categories (it sells a service to musicians, and CDs
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by ivancdg 15y ago
The way I understand it, 'Muck Work' was meant to be a go-to place for people specialized in all the things musicians would like to outsource. To my knowledge, it never launched (Hey Derek: am I wrong?) Regarding trust issues, that is an ex
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by ivancdg 15y ago
One of the conclusions one could draw from your comment is that the wrong kind of people (professionals) have been the ones involved in developing musicians' careers. ie, lawyers, corporate marketing-type people, etc. As a professional musi
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by ivancdg 15y ago
No question that this is true. And there are a lot of people making a lot of money on selling 'self-marketing opportunities' to independent musicians. But to compare that industry ('huge'?), in terms of revenue, to what the majors did in th
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by ivancdg 15y ago
It's a fantastic time to be an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking, business-oriented musician. But that is a fairly small subset of people with the talent set necessary to stand out musically. The security of the previous set-up is gone but
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by ivancdg 15y ago
All of this is true. However, the implication that an outsider might draw from your comment is that, say, the band that wrote the original post might hope to make those kinds of royalties since they (presumably?) wrote the melody and lyrics
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by ivancdg 15y ago
The Earbits guys (frighteningly prolific bloggers) wrote about Spotify recently: http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/spotify-replaces-piracy... "The service may do a good job fighting illegal file sharing but it also does a great job of
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by ivancdg 15y ago
He probably did it in France; it is much more expensive here to do stuff like that than in, say, the UK or Germany. They're way behind the US in terms of competitive pricing for factory-produced goods. I ordered promo CDs pressed in Califor
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by ivancdg 15y ago
Spotify is such a rip-off for musicians; I love the way these guys highlighted that in a light-hearted way. But the economics of the alternatives are not going to make anyone rich, either. For future reference: if you sign-up via CDBaby, th
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by ivancdg 15y ago
This was a witty comment (the end made me chuckle)...but flippant. Ultimately it is not very helpful: it does not address the content of the original article, which is excellent. It is easy to fall into the trap of being so skeptical of sal