Vivacity

This has become quite a heated debate between runners, some can’t run without music and others prefer to completely concentrate on their run, so run without.

Read through the pros and cons of running with music and decide for yourself, it might change your mind, it might not!

Running with Music = Good

 

Lots of scientific research has gone into proving whether listening to music helps or hinders a runner and the research conducted proves it does (as long as you’re listening to a certain type of song).

Dr Costas Karageorghis is a sports psychologist lecturer and author, his research has found that listening to music whilst running can improve performance by, up to, 15%. On what type of music to listen to, Karageorghis found 4 factors which contribute to making a song motivational for your run- tempo, music type, cultural impact and association.

The tempo and music type relate to the song itself and how it can keep a solid pace or push your pace to another level. The cultural impact and association are to do with how the song makes you feel; this can give you a euphoric feeling and take your mind off the difficulty of running and your exhaustion.

Other runners, me included, comment that without music running can become quite boring and the sound of your pounding feet and breath can actually become distracting. The addition of music can distract you from these sounds and take your mind off the miles which still need to be run. Sometimes runners don’t have the luxury of running around beautiful countryside so listening to music can drown out the monotonous sounds of cars and busy streets.

 

Running with Music = Bad

 

The biggest argument for not listening to music whilst running is that you are unable to hear how you’re running or your surrounds, which can be dangerous.

Your breathing and footstrike are important sounds to listen for when out running and give you instant feedback on how your run is going. If you’re landing a little heavy or your breath is out of sync with your pace than being able to hear these things will allow you to adjust instead of trudging on in your own little world.

If you wear noise cancelling headphones and/ or your music is too loud this can be dangerous as you are unable to hear anything around you. In busy, built-up areas you need to be alert and able to react to other people/ vehicles/ random obstacles etc. and on race day you need to be able to hear other racers and officials for instructions whilst racing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every guitar players has their own subtle and not-so-subtle differences, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the best recording possible, no matter what their set-up is.

It would be silly to say this post is the be-all and end-all of guitar recording, it’s not. What it is though, is a collection of helpful hints and tips to achieve great, consistent results.

1 – Look after your kit

When you come to record, make sure your guitar is in as good a condition as possible. Change the strings the night before (allowing them to “bed in” overnight), check all your cables to make sure they don’t have any unnecessary buzz, check the rest of your equipment to make sure it’s all in full working order and then double check it all in the morning before you leave. There is nothing worse than turning up to the recording studio with a crap lead or snapped string.

2 – Tune, tune, tune

Check you tuning before EVERY take. I could go on for days about how important this is, but I don’t want to bore you, just tune your £$%&*# guitar!

3 – Spares and repairs

Things break, things snap, things crackle. If you keep a spare set of strings (or two sets), spare picks and spare cables, and you’ll have covered as many bases as you reasonably can. Of course, if you have a spare guitar/ amp/ pedals, then bring them with you just in case, you never know what will happen/ break whilst recording.

4 – Mix it up

When recording more than 1 guitar using overdrive or distortion, try to mix them up by recording one guitar using the single coil pickup setting and the other with the humbucker setting. Also, don’t use as much overdrive/ distortion as you would normally use live, this can muddy the sound too much and really lose the actual tune. Remember- when mixing the track, distortion can be added but not taken away.

5 – Less is more

If the guitarist is using pedals, try to dissuade them from over doing it. Sometimes the guitar part is completely dependent on the perfect mix of the guitarist pedals, but if it’s a simple bit of distortion or reverb, this can be added when mixing and is much easier to control.

6 – Amp and Mic Play

You want a big sound, so you get a big amp. Wrong. Something as small as a practice amp can still produce a great sound if you place it in the right part of the room and mic it correctly. If you enjoy what you hear when standing next to you amp, then place your mic at head height. Don’t be afraid to try placing the mic at the side or even behind the amp, you could discover a sound you didn’t realise was possible.

Most Expensive Trumpet

Dizzy Gillespie’s Martin Committee trumpet – $55,000

Dizzy Gillespie was a jazz musician who was very much central to the bebop movement and is famed for his stage presence. This first bent horn was due to an accident but Dizzy enjoyed the sounded it created so much, that he continued to play bent horns throughout the rest of his playing career. His Martin Committee trumpet is named so because it was designed by players and teachers for the Martin Band Instrument Company.

 

Most Expensive Bass Guitar

Jens Ritter’s Flora Aurum – estimated $100,000- $250,000

Jens Ritter is a German electric bass guitar luthier and he creates exceptionally beautiful looking and playing bass guitars. In 2006 he built the Flora Aurum, the most expensive bass in the world. Gold, diamonds, extremely rare quilted maple, platinum and 10,000 year old Siberian mammoth ivory all go into creating this incredible one-of-a-kind instrument.

Most Expensive Drum Kit

A portion of Keith Moon’s drum kit – $252,487

Moon used the kit between 1968 and 1970 and, fortunately for the buyer, some of it survived his very wild lifestyle!

Word’s can’t describe Keith Moon and his style, so I’ll just show you how amazing he was -

 

Most Expensive Piano

John Lennon’s Steinway Model “Z” piano – $2,080,000

John Lennon bought this piano as a present for his wife Yoko Ono for only $1500. In 2000, 20 years after Lennons death and 30 years after Lennon originally bought it, George Michael purchased the piano in an action, beating fellow muscians Robbie Williams, Noel and Liam Gallagher.

George Michael went on to record an album with the piano before loaning it to Liverpool Museum, he described the piano as “the cheapest-looking piano you’ve ever seen. I wasn’t expecting the big white one — I knew it wasn’t the big white one, but I didn’t expect something you’d get in a very, very underfunded school.”

 

Most Expensive Guitar

Reach out to Asia Fender Stratocaster – $2,700,000

This guitar was auctioned in 2006 to help support charities in Asia, especially those affected by the boxing day Tsunami and was purchased by Her Highness Sheihka Miyyassah Al Thani.

The guitar is signed by- Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, Queen’s Brian May, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Paul McCartney, Bryan Adams, Jeff Beck, Oasis’ Liam and Noel Gallagher, the Who’s Pete Townshend, the Kinks’ Ray Davies, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Mark Knopfler, AC/DC’s Malcolm and Angus Young, Sting and Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi. Basically every living guitar great!

 

If you’re planning on taking some great band promo shots or quality gig pics, then you need to read this -

A digital SLR camera, also known as a Digital Single Lens Reflex camera, is one which uses an interchangeable lens for shooting images along with a much larger sensor size. Unlike a normal compact digital camera or a bridge camera which has common features from both a SLR and a compact camera, it can use several different types of lenses and converters to shoot images.

A digital SLR camera would have a bigger sensor size compared to a normal digital camera. The result is an increased performance and reduced noise when images are shot in low light or using higher ISO. Larger sensor size means more light retentive capacity which means the images are sharper and the colours are truer. Even if a DSLR camera sensor has only 10 megapixels compared to 14 megapixels of a compact camera, the image quality and performance in low light will be better.

Since a digital SLR can use different types of lenses, it is possible to shoot with incredibly wide angle lenses such as a 10-24mm, which is perfect for shooting wide landscapes and architectural shots. At the same time it is also possible to use telephoto or zoom lenses with incredible ranges of 500mm or more. Various specialized lenses are also available such as fish eye, tilt-shift, manual and macro lenses for specialized photography requirements.

Most normal digital cameras don’t have an optical viewfinder, which is a basic requirement in the case of digital SLR cameras. Since a digital SLRs camera sensor is bigger than a normal digital camera, the crop factor is negligible on it compared to the normal camera. A DSLR can come in two varieties; one is a full frame which uses the same sensor size as a 35mm camera does and the other that uses a slightly smaller APS-C or APS-H sized sensor.

All digital SLR cameras also come with shutter priority mode, aperture priority mode and full manual option to control the exposure. These cameras also have a wider ISO range which allows them to shoot in very low light. A lot of compact cameras and bridge cameras also have shutter priority and aperture priority but then these are not standard features of the normal digital cameras. A digital SLR camera must have these.

High end digital SLR cameras also come with a live histogram that gives an accurate estimation of the colour saturation and tonal distribution in a digital image. This gives an indication of the correct exposure of the image. Simply by looking at this histogram a photographer can decide whether his image is washed out or is under-exposed. While a lot of digital SLR cameras have this feature, only a rare few compact digital cameras have it.

Most of today’s digital SLR cameras come with HD video recording. Some even come with manual focusing in the movie shooting mode. With variable frame rates and the ability to shoot in full HD, DSLR cameras are a perfect alternative to using heavy and bulky professional video cameras. A compact digital camera, on the other hand, doesn’t often have the ability to shoot full HD videos at 1080p with variable frame rates. As such a digital SLR camera is ideally suitable for users who have more confidence in their shooting abilities and want to have more control over the different aspects of the camera. At the same time digital SLR cameras are suitable for professional photographers who want to take advantage of the larger sensor and the better image quality and can invest a lot of money in their equipments.

There are a lot of songs out there with the name “Heartbreaker” but this is, by far, my favourite -

It is one of the few songs I could listen to over and over again and never get bored of it, quite an incredible feat indeed.