Tag Archives: 30days

30 Sound Bites for 30 Days

Another 30 Days Challenge! I’ll record small snippets of music / sound every day for 30 days and will upload them to soundcloud.

Some background information:

  • 1: Composed by me when my project at work suffered a huge setback, which was also kind of a relieve at the same time.
  • 2: Composed by me when trying to see the positive side of aforementioned setback.
  • 3: Recorded during a random band rehearsal.
  • 4: Composed by me when realizing that if management doesn’t want to listen, I shouldn’t care either.
  • 5: Composed by me after learning that my sister was pregnant! Feeling happy and queer at the same time.
  • 6: Composed by me with some of my roots in Jazz in mind.
  • 7: Cover song – Teardrop.
  • 8: Composed by me with a G as rhythmic constant.
  • 9: Composed by me as a byproduct of 8.
  • 10: Variation on Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor.
  • 11: Composed by me in 2008 while in Los Angeles.
  • 12: Composed by me after listening to and playing some Boogies.
  • 13: Recorded during a rehearsal for the drummer’s entrance examination at Johannes Bruckner University Linz.
  • 14: Birds in the City – With the US leaving the Paris Climate Agreement this seemed worthy a recording.
  • 15: Composed by me after listening to some Monk tunes.
  • 16: Composed by me with the goal in mind that the left hand should play the melody.
  • 17: Composed by me with the goal in mind to write something in E Major.
  • 18: Composed by me with the goal in mind to write something that could pass as Jazz ballad.
  • 19: Composed by me with the goal to create some variations of the same harmonic material.
  • 20: Transcription – Album version Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau’s “The Old Shade Tree
  • 21: Composed by me with the goal to let off some steam.
  • 22: Composed by me with nothing but the form ABA in mind
  • 23: 8th note improvisation over blues in F, trying not to default back to the F blues scale too often.
  • 24: Composed by me by trying to “phase around” right and left hand.
  • 25: Composed by me by shifting a #11 motive in whole tones. It’s funny how the same thing can be perceived as light-footed (at the beginning) or menacing (at the end).
  • 26: Composed by me by overdubbing some vocal percussion.
  • 27: Composed by me with Dave Grusin in Mind
  • 28: Composed by me with the constraint that the C-G-G Ostinato (heard in the second half) should work over the whole tune.
  • 29: Johann Sebastian Bach – Prelude in C Sharp, Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Buch 1, BWV 848. I still can’t decide whether I like the “Dah-Dap-Dah-Dap” phrasing (first half) or the “Dap-Dah-Dap-Dah” phrasing (second half) better. I found recordings from renown artists both ways. The first phrasing feels better suited for Bach to me, while the second has more groove.
  • 30: Composed by me with the goal to write a good night / good bye song.

Active for 30 Days

Another 30 day-project: I bought a new gadget while I was in the US 4 weeks ago, a Misfit Flash activity tracker. The idea: It costs only 30 USD and if it would motivate me to stay active for 30 days in a row, this would mean a cost of 1 USD per day. In other words way less than your average gym membership. And I did it – I achieved my activity goal for 30 days in a row.

image

Misfit measures activities in points and I set my target to 1200 points (roughly 12000 steps) per day. While achieving this goal was never physically demanding, I had to schedule additional walks regularly. Especially on days with no other workouts (I run and swim about 1-3 times a week), and on days that were filled with meetings or travel.

I think I’ll move back to using Polar Flow as my primary activity tracker, because in addition to activity in general it can also track running, swimming, cycling, hiking and more using GPS and heart rate sensors. However the idea of tracking my activity and trying to avoid days without activity should stick.

Microblogging for 30 Days

Since blogging apparently doesn’t work for me lately I’ll try microblogging for 30 days. Here’s my twitter feed.


No Beer for 30 Days

Another 30 day-project: I don’t drink any alcohol for 30 days. For me alcohol = beer. I don’t usually drink anything other than beer. But beer, I drink a lot. Not as in large quantities at a time, but being Austrian a beer here and there just seems natural. Once you are conscious about it, you realize how many opportunities there are for that one beer.

beer

I am into this project for 16 days now. Honestly I would not have felt comfortable letting everybody know about it on day one – chances were I would not be able to stick to my plan. But now I am certain that it will work.

If that makes me sound like an addict on detox, it’s not what I wanted to suggest. It’s just that during the first week my resolution was tested 5 out of 7 days: You know, friends and colleagues asking about an after work beer. The obligatory beer after the jazz gig. The waiter at that Italian restaurant asking me if I would fancy a Peroni. “No” became an important word. Some people around me keep teasing be, but it only makes me stronger now, because it reminds me about my decision of not drinking beer for 30 days.

Try Something New for 30 Days

A while ago I stumbled across a TED talk in which Matt Cutts presents the idea of trying something new for 30 days.

If you are as bad at sticking to resolutions as I am, I highly recommend giving it a try. 30 days really seems “just about the right amount of time“.

Here are some of the 30 days projects that I have done and blogged about so far:

Food Porn For 30 Days

Today’s my birthday.

Your birthday is kind of like your personal new years eve. A moment when you review the bigger picture, reflect on the past and the future and make resolutions.

I am not good at resolutions but the 30 days thing has worked for me. So here’s my new challenge: Knowing that I do often eat/drink way too unhealthy stuff I’ll take a picture of (almost) everything that goes into my mouth for the next 30 days. No I’ll not include water too often, and I’ll feel free to skip anything that has 50 kcal or less.

If everything works out you should see things pop up on my newly created pinterest board soon. Happy eating!

Happy Eating

Decluttering #p30.2014.2

This time the next 30 days will be about subtracting rather than adding.

My life has become pretty cluttered again. Too much stuff around. Too many things – including skeletons – in my closet, too many things on my table, too many random folders on my computer, too many empty boxes in the basement … way too little focus on the important things.

Every day for the next 30 days I’ll clean up some of that mess – sometimes with before after photos, sometimes not.

Blog Post #30

The goal was to come up with a blog post every day for 30 days. Well, I didn’t blog every day, but in the end I wrote 30 posts, which concludes my experiment. There were days without blog posts because either I didn’t have anything to say, or because I decided not to publish certain things. What can I say: I will not continue to blog that regularly. Not only because it takes a lot of time, but also because it feels way too self-centered. Still it was a good exercise. Here’s a list of all 30 blog posts:

Good thing: now I’ll have to find another 30 days project ;)

Another Round of “Try something new for 30 days”

When looking at the last couple of my blog posts, you could think that I spend most of my time around computers. I guess that’s mostly because I rarely blog about other things. That’s about to change for the next 30 days.

A couple of years ago a came across this TED talk entitled “Try something new for 30 days”.

I’ll do it again and this time the challenge is to write a blog post every day, for 30 days. Many of the posts are going to be boring and are not going to be relevant to anyone, so I am not going to push them through facebook, twitter or anything else, but they will be here.