Musical Motivation

This morning I watched an amazing documentary about the culture of art in media. You can watch it here: PressPausePlay

It's inspiring and cautionary all at once. That is, I want to produce MORE (books and music and inventions and more), but there are more talented people that are doing exactly that and not getting noticed because of the grey goo of everybody else, so I actually also want to produce LESS.

So of course I had a good idea while watching the end: What if I composed music that WAS the training program for getting off the couch and out jogging?


There are plenty of Couch-to-5K programs out there, but you choose your own music. And there are plenty of music playlists out there available for different BPM training -- that's along the same lines of what I'm talking about. RunningMusicMix.com is a good example of that. Running to music according to BPM makes sense to me, it's motivational and gets results.

But what about actually creating a varying musical rhythm that is in itself a song? A song for running? A song created specifically for your training program?

Run2Rhythm is more like what I'm talking about but not exactly -- they just produce fun beats and drums and instruments to jog to -- it's quite repetitive and boring. I want dynamic music. When I'm jogging, I want variation in my music but I don't have time sort it out myself. I want a package I can download quickly and know that it is the right program for my level of exercise.

I wonder what I should call it? Jog Pulse? Musical Motivation? Rhythm Racing? Any other ideas?

Pistachio Nut Case

You know those hard-to-open shells you get sometimes in a bag of nuts? Well, here I am at work thinking, Great, how am I supposed to open this little guy? Gosh it's hard to open. (I'm paraphrasing.) Now, my desk may be strewn with electronics and papers everywhere but somehow I managed to find the perfect substitution for those absent nutcrackers: handy-dandy needle-nosed pliers. Crack!

Speaking of Nuts: en route to the gym yesterday, I stopped to photograph a store sign boasting it was the "Uptown Nut House" -- and in the window, they also said they gave away free foccacia. Now that's nutty.