– blues riff #1 –

Here is my newest video for you! I intended for it to be shorter than it turned out, but I think you will enjoy going through this riff with me. As an added bonus, this time I actually show you how to play the piano. I hope you enjoy this video. This riff is one of my favorites because it is the first jazz/blues riff that I learned and helped me start down the path towards becoming a better musician.

After watching & practicing this you will be able to use it in various songs. And, if you will just take it step-by-step you’ll be able to master this and use it regularly. If you have any questions, just post it in the comments below and I will get back to you. Practice well!

blues riff #1 from danieljohn on Vimeo.

You can also view this video on a mobile device here

my tilt-shift perspective

A few months ago, I happened across a band’s blog where they had these really unique looking photos. When I first saw them, I thought I was seeing pictures taken from the Mister Roger’s Neighborhood intro (you remember how the show had all those miniature houses leading up to Fred’s house). This mystery effect causes full-sized photos to appear as pictures of miniature scale models simply by “shifting” the perspective in a photo.

Interesting.

Later, I googled it and found out that this effect is actually called tilt-shift. So later that night, I went on a bit of a tilt-shift binge (thank you flickr!) obsessively searching for photos. The next day I was so taken with tilt-shift that I completely forgot about it….

Until yesterday – I was doing some work, and suddenly the interweb took over and brought me to this site – artandmobile.com – and their FREE TiltShift app for your computer (you can also purchase their app here, if you have an iPhone). So I took a regular old photo from my Blackberry, and turned it an über-cool photo using the TiltShift app.

Here’s the before photo:

huskers_normal

And here is the after (using the TiltShift free app):
huskers_tiltshift

Pretty cool, huh?! I showed theses pictures to a few friends, and it opened up some interesting conversations regarding perspective and life. I won’t give you the long drawn out versions of our talks; I’ll just give you the thoughts and questions that drove these conversations:

1. Go Huskers! Okay…that was actually just my thought. Here’s a few others:

2. Maybe all the life issues that seem HUGE today would actually be quite small if we stepped back and took a different perspective on our situations? Or maybe if we took on someone else’s perspective? Or maybe if we just let the little things (the ones that take too much of our attention) fade out, blur, and take a back seat to the central focus of our lives?

That’s just my perspective – what’s yours?