July 26

Got an email this morning from Derek Sivers (formerly CD Baby). Derek has recently returned from the TED Talks at Oxford. Honestly, with so much information flying at me, I had forgotten about TED. Just check-out the website and the videos of the speakers from all the previous TED Talks. What a great resource for creative material. Topics are just completely all over the grid. As a creativity exercise, it's fun to try to connect seemingly totally unrelated ideas/topics to come up with fresh new perspectives.
TED
Derek Sivers blog about TED

"For example, I plan to live in a dozen different countries around the world, for 1-3 years each. Most of my friends think I’m weird for this, but at TED I met four separate people who have done this or are doing it now." Sivers

It was just last week that I talked about this same idea with some friends. I was thinking more like a 5-year plan. That gives plenty of time to immerse in the language/culture.

Brother Paulus at TED


Brainpickings.org


Recently, I've been doing a lot of ear training. I've played a lot this past few years and gotten caught up in the flow of practicing at home and running out to do gigs/rehearsals. Now I'm in a stage of going back and doing all the things I was doing when I was 23-26 years old. I'm back to doing Ran Blake and Marc Copeland exercises daily. So, I've been wondering about the effects of perfect pitch on one's creativity and /or improvisational ability.
Abosolute Pitch

Wiki Perfect Pitch
Research on Pierfect Pitch

Interesting little piece on "jump-starting" the creative process.
Stimulating Creativity Using Forced Serendipity
Stimulating Creativity Using Forced Serendiipity

I was scanning over some books on Amazon and ran into several books that I read back in the 1980's and 90's. Going to have to go back over them soon. As I recall, the most important page in Think and Grow Rich is page 32 or 36. Here Hill gives the common steps that all of the successful folks he interviewed seemed to take on their path to greatness.

Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
Winning Through Enlightenment - Ron Smothermon
Transformation #1 - Ron Smothermon
Transformation: The Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard - Robyn Simon and Walter Maksym
Actualizations: You Don't Have To Rehearse to be Yourself - Stewart Emory
Handbook to Higher Consciousness - Ken Keyes