Good questions. Let me take them one by one.

I'll first say that the portfolio is the only truly important thing. When I first came out to NYC to work, I interviewed at 17 different companies/startups/studios. Not a single one even looked at or asked about the school I went to. We just talked at length about my projects. That being said, I think design school is important. Design is complicated. There's a lot to learn. I know people who swear by just going it your own way and not going to school. Those people don't see what they don't do well. They struggle with the fine details. They think their work is fine, but they haven't figured out why it could be better.

Design school taught me a lot. It taught me how to think differently. How to get thick skin and take critique. How to work with grids. How to manage type. All of these skills don't come from hard and fast rules. They come from ethereal concepts that you have to learn. They're much easily learned through someone who can mentor you. You can figure it out on your own, but it will take longer. The cap on your ability to grow in the industry will fall short. I've even interviewed people who had some nice work, but when I discussed with them their process or their theory, they didn't know what they were talking about. They learned how to copy good work, but not how to generate their own creative output.

If you want practice here's what I would do.

1. Sketch. Even if you aren't good at it. I'm still not. Lot's of designers aren't. Sketching is about a quick method of generating ideas.
   
   
2. Read and write. Design is about communication, not visuals. Visuals are important, but if they don't say anything, no one cares. Great designers often tend to be great writers/readers. Don't just read about design. Read about architecture. Read about theater. Read Science Fiction. Just read.
   
   
3. Take pictures. Learn to frame a shot. learn how to compose something beautiful.
   
   
4. Fill your well. Your greatest resource in design will be culture. Learn about things. Experience a full life. If your creative inspiration comes from a design website, you're doing it partially wrong (those things have their value, but they are a simple tool, not a means to good solutions). Dig deep into different things and become broadly experienced.
   
   
5. Play with the software. If you're sketching, try the software too. Learn Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. This leads to my next thing.
   
   
6. Find good work and copy it. Literally. Don't copy to give to a client. Just copy in the privacy of your own studio space. You learn to play the guitar by first playing songs by bands you love. Do the same with design. Copy their work and try to learn their techniques.
   
   Regarding whether I practice, I do. Side projects are a big part of what we do. Client work is always constrained by their needs. Side projects are a good way to push your creativity. Working with constraints is good and important, but balance it with side projects. Design an app. Make a children's book. Do whatever it is that seems interesting to you.
   
   I still struggle with whether my work is good or not. You'll never get over expecting more than you can deliver. If you like the challenge of that and can live with yourself, you'll be a good designer. A good part of knowing what's good is learning to see. Study masters. Find out what makes good work tick. This is a hard question for sure. This is part of why I tell people to go do design school.
   
   Design books I recommend... this is hard. A few to get started...
   
   Steal Like an Artist is good for a newly creative
   
   The Creative Habit is amazing for people who think creativity is magic... it demystifies that notion and explains how Creativity is about practice and routine. Very smart book.
   
   DeBono's Thinking Course is heavy reading but very good in learning how to think creatively. It's a must, in my opinion.
   
   Grid Systems is bland but essential. Learn it. By one of the great masters.
   
   Art & Visual Perception is also mega heavy, but will teach you how to understand how good creative work is composed and why it works. Very interesting if you can take it.
   
   A Smile in the Mind is a great book that shows how wit and messaging in design makes for powerful and memorable work. It's a good primer on how designers work concept into their visuals. It's about discovery and the bliss that comes from that (that's why our honey bottles were so successful... discovery is everything).
   
   Also check out www.designersandbooks.com. It's a long running list of great books that are recommended by designers much more skilled than I am. These are the greats.
   
   Hope this all helps.

Okay here's the list. I spend some time on this. If you have any specific questions, let me know:)


***

On Composition:

Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies - Dennis DeSantis
Amazon Link
This is a fantastic book. Each page has a general idea on boosting creativity, workflow, and designing sounds and tracks. I recommend you read and digest one of the tips per day and really think about applying them.

Music Theory for Computer Musicians - Michael Hewitt
Amazon Link
Really easy to digest book on music theory, as it applies to your DAW. Each DAW is used in the examples, so it is not limited to a specific program. Highly recommend this for someone starting out with theory to improve their productions.

Secrets of Dance Music Production - David Felton
Amazon Link
This book I recently picked up and so far it's been quite good. It goes over all the different elements of what make's dance music, and get's quite detailed. More geared towards the beginner, but it was engaging nonetheless. It is the best 'EDM specific' production book I have read.

Ocean of Sound - David Troop
Amazon Link
Very well written and interesting book on ambient music. Not only does David go over the technical side and history of ambiance and musical atmospheres, he speaks very poetically about creating these soundscapes and how they relate to our interpersonal emotions.


***

On Audio Engineering:

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio - Mike Senior
Amazon Link
In my opinion, this is the best mixing reference book for both beginners and intermediate producers. Very in-depth book that covers everything from how to set-up for accurate listening to the purpose of each mixing and mastering plug-in. Highly recommended.

Zen and the Art of Mixing - Mixerman
Amazon Link
Very interesting read in that it deals with the why's more than the how's. Mixerman, a professional audio engineer, goes in detail to talk about the mix engineer's mindset, how to approach projects, and how to make critical mixing decisions. Really fun read.

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook - Bobby Owinski
Amazon Link
This is a fantastic companion book to keep around. Not only does Owinski go into great technical detail, he includes interviews from various audio engineers that I personally found very helpful and inspiring.


***

On the Industry:

All You Need to Know About the Music Business - Donald S. Passman
Amazon Link
This book is simply a must read for anyone hoping to make a professional career out of music, anyone wanting to start their own record label, or anyone interested in how the industry works. It's a very informative book for any level of producer, and is kept up-to-date with the frequent revisions. Buy it.

Rick Rubin: In the Studio - Jake Brown
Amazon Link
Very interesting read that is a semi-biographical book on Rick Rubin. It is not so personal as it is talking about his life, experiences, and processes. It does get quite technical when referring to the recording process, but there are better books for technical info. This is a fun read on one of the most successful producers in history.

Behind the Glass - Howard Massey
Amazon Link
A collection of interviews from a diverse range of musicians who speak about creativity, workflows, and experiences in the music industry. Really light, easy to digest book.


***

On Creativity:

The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Amazon Link
This is a must-read, in my opinion, for any creative individual. It is a very philosophical book on dealing with our own mental battles as an artist, and how to overcome them. Definitely pick this one up, all of you.

This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel S. Levitin
Amazon Link
A book written by a neurologist on the psychology of music and what makes us attached to it. It's a fairly scientific book but it is a very rewarding read with some great ideas.


***

On Personal Growth and Development:

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Amazon Link
Although this seems like an odd book for a music producer, personally I think this is one of the most influential books I've ever read. Knowing how to be personable, effectively network, and form relationships is extremely important in our industry. Whether it be meeting and talking to labels, meeting other artists, or getting through to A&R, this book helps with all these areas and I suggest this book to all of you.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
Amazon Link
Similar to the recommendation above, although not directly linked to music, I assure you reading this book will change your views on life. It is a very engaging and practical book, and gets you in the right mindset to be successful in your life and music career. Trust me on this one and give it a read.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Amazon Link
You know the feeling when you're really in the groove of jamming out and all worries tend to slip away for those moments? That is the 'Optimal Experience' according to the author. This book will teach you about that experience, and how to encourage and find it in your work. This is a very challenging, immersive, and enlightening read, which deals with the bigger picture and finding happiness in your work and life. Very inspiring book that puts you in a good mindset when you're doing creative work.

The Art of Work - Jeff Goins
Amazon Link
A very fascinating book that looks at taking your passion (music in our case) and making the most of it. It guides you on how to be successful and turn your passion into your career. Some very interesting sections touching on dealing with failure, disappointment, and criticism, yet listening to your intuition and following your passion. Inspiring and uplifting book to say the least.


***


Phew. That was a lot of work. Hopefully you guys get some usefulness out of this list. This is put together after years of reading dozens upon dozens of books on these topics.


Enjoy!

Can’t comment on the Hanon, but I do have a recommendation you may be interested in. I’ve been playing classical for a while, but in the last year decided to take jazz improv on top of it. There are a few things that if you really work at then will show stellar results.

First thing is chord voicing, these are truly your bread and butter as a jazz pianist. If you ever play in a group, then these will give you a great sound with many many options to choose from.

It would take a very long time to write out a bunch of voicings, but here’s an example. For major chords there are two main interchangeable voicings which we’ll simply refer to as A and B voicings..
-A voicing is formed by starting at the root, then moving up a major third, then building a minor 7th chord. For example C root, then E minor 7. If you look at it, you’re really just playing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th. You can drop the root once you learn minor and dominance chord voicings, but seeing not only the expanded C major chord, as well as the chord writhin a chord (E Minor 7 within the C major 9) is extremely helpful.

-B voicing is a major third up from the root, then a minor 7th chord, finally inverted twice. This will give you another voicing option so you don’t use the same chords over and over. Now for any major chord, you have three options (Root, Rootless A, Rootless B).

There are more chord voicing beyond that, but that brief example should give you an idea of what’s out there. There are A and B voicings for Major, Minor, and Dominant chords, with Dominant chords having many many options.

For now I would recommend learning you major 7th, dominant 7th, and minor 7th chords in all 12 keys. Play the root an octave lower, then with both hands play the given rootless voicing above it. This will give you an excellent foundation to build from.

Next most important thing is Modes and Scales. Each chord has a corresponding scale with notes that will sound great over a particular chord. Again due to the vast array of options, I’ll give you a starting place to go from.
-Major chords can be paired with major scales. Pretty cut and dry.

-Minor chords will be paired with the mode Dorian. Dorian is similar to a minor scale, but instead of being formed with a flating the 3rd, 6th, 7th Of any major scale, it’s formed by flating the 3rd and 7th of any major scale. So D Dorian would be all white keys.

-Dominant chords can be paired either the Mixolydian Mode. Mixolydian is formed by flating the 7th note in a major scale. So G Mixolydian would be all white keys.

Now there are many MANY options just like with chords, but this will give you a very firm place to begin improvising. As an exercise to get you playing the right scales with the right chords, play in your right hand a particular scale up two octaves and a third, while playing in your left hand the corresponding chord every 8 notes. You’ll see it line up perfectly. When you can do that reliably at 80 bpm with you major, minor, and dominant chords/scales, you’ll be in a great places.

Last but not least is basic Roman numerals theory. If you know what Roman numerals sound good going to each other, then you’ll be in a great place to not only improvise, but to even write and improvise your own songs on the fly. Again, there’s a whole lot we could cover, but to give you a taste, we’ll talk about probably the biggest progression in Jazz. The ii-V-I.

If you break it down a ii-V-I is the culmination of what we’ve talked about so far in this post. First, why this progression. Well the V-I is a common pull in music. The dominant is one of the first in the overtime series, and it’s pull to I is extremely strong. Almost if not more in some cases powerful than the pull of a vii-I. That’s cool, but what about the ii? The ii-V is actually a very strong pull in its own right. So ii now leads us into V, which then takes us home to I.

For great examples of this in action listen to Afternoon In Paris, and Take The A-Train.

Now once you have those chords in place from earlier, you can fill in the minor 7th chords for the ii, the dominant 7th chords for the V, and the Major 7th chords for the I. So in the key of C this would look like d minor 7th for ii, g dominant 7 for V, and C major 7 for I. Once you can do a ii-V-I in every key, practice playing the corresponding scales while you ii-V-I. Or you could also add rootless voicings to the ii-V-I by doing ABA voicings (Minor A, Dominant B, Major A), or BAB voicings (Minor B, Dominant A, Major B).

I would highly recommend buying a copy of The Real Book. This is a set of over 150 standard lead sheets for famous and great jazz songs. Both songs I mentioned above are in the book. Take the book, find a song, and break it down using Roman numerals. After a while things will make sense as far as what chords go where, and things will really start to click.

If you’re interested in further reading, I would highly recommend The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine. This book covers many many topics, and will take you far. I like the book a good bit because by any topic, it will show a real excerpt from a jazz standard of a chord used so you can see how what you’re learning is utilized.

I know this is a lot to do, but just pace yourself. You can’t build a house in a day, but if you’re patient and diligent, the world of Jazz Improve is a fun and exciting one. Best of luck, and if you have any questions feel free to comment or shoot me a dm.

How did you get started?

Hiphop fan in the late 80s, got into rave in the 90s, got into DJing in 2000 cause all my friends were either ravers or djs.

How did you get money for your gear?

Got a job/begged/borrowed

What gear did you start with?

A Technics SL-1600 and a Technics SL-1700. Neither were meant for DJing and were hand-me-downs from my dad. They were terrible for DJing actually.

A Stanton SK-5 - shit mixer - didn't even have EQs

What gear do you have now?

2 Tech 1200 M3Ds

Rane 62

Pioneer DJM-707

VCI-380

Various midi controllers (Dicers, LPD8, Trigger Finger)

Small sound system (2 QSC K12s, 2 Yorkville NX720S)

How many different setups do you think you have been through?

So many. After struggling with the non-dj turntables, I bought one of the tech 12s and a numark table and then promptly returned the numark for another tech within a week.

Been through 3 mixers in between that stanton and my current Rane 62 (Roland DJ-1000, Pioneer DJM-707, Rane 57)

Owned a VCI-300 before upgrading to the 380.

How did you get your first gig?

Friend was a DJ, asked me to play with him.

How do you get your gigs now?

I hustle. A lot. It's my only source of income. Club, bar, and opening and headlining gigs are via reputation and networking. Most of my mobile and corporate gigs are either through networking or word-of-mouth.

I also have several different agencies and companies getting me different types of gigs. I have at least 3 companies locally - 2 for local corporate and mobile gigs and one for in-store gigs. Just landed a proper touring booking agent for doing headlining gigs so I'm hoping I can ditch the mobile and corporate gigs sooner than later. Stoked cause I hate booking tours myself.

What marketing methods would you say are most effective for a dj trying to get big?

How big? Local? Build a following that will come see you play - doesn't matter how good you are or what you play really - if you can guarantee a certain number of people to your gigs whenever you play, you will get gigs.

Beyond local? Produce, or try to make something that goes viral (or better still both). Neither are easy or guaranteed to work tho.

How much did you make when you started?

Very little - most gigs I did for free or drinks (usually opening slots for local electronic nights). I remember getting paid $150 early on for a gig and that felt like a lot.

How much are you making now and how did you negotiate that kind of payoff?

Anywhere from $100 - $1000+

I charge what I'm worth depending on the gig, what I get to play, who I get to play for, and how much work I have to put into it. I used to be very firm in my fees, but after a while I started only getting booked for certain kinds of gigs (mostly ones I didn't like doing) so now I charge less the more fun I get to have. If someone lowballs me or isn't offering what I think I'm worth, I decline.

Do you use Facebook to promote and if so how do you use it to promote?

Yes - engage the fans, give out my own tunes and mixes.

Have resources to show us how?

Just be social and engage people beyond just self-promotion.

Do you use youtube or soundcloud to promote and if so how do you do it?

Youtube - not enough. Soundcloud - lots.

I put up stuff and promote it and if people like it, they share it.

Where all do you promote your work online?

Everywhere. Facebook, message boards, soundcloud, twitter - need to get onto instagram and vine...

What is the best way you have found to sell your music and beats?

I haven't found a good way yet. I have 14 releases on various labels - some releases have done well, some haven't but I've barely seen a dime.

There's very little money in the music itself these days unless you get a big licensing deal (and most of my releases are exempt as most of them are on under-the-rader bootleg labels and contain unlicensed samples). The tunes are more for marketing to build your following and fans.

I'd rather give most of my stuff away for free nowadays.

What style of music do you play?

just about everything. I play music I like which is a lot of different styles, and I play music I don't like if I get paid enough. What I'm known for is breaks and funky music, but I'll play anything except maybe country and trance. Been really into mixing rock lately...

What are the best blogs or websites are the best to learn DJ stuff?

techtools, dj worx, serato forum, r/beatmatch

Best thing to do is just experiment though.

none of this was around when I first started so I just taught myself which I still think is the best way to learn, although learning some basic music theory will help a lot (was classically trained in violin for 13 years).

What books are the best you have found for learning to DJ for beginners? What about pro level?

for both: How to DJ Right

How would you go about getting started in DJ if you had to start over? (in terms of money, gear, style, and other basic stuff you can think of)

same way. collect vinyl, get turntables, learn to dj the old fashioned way.

Gearwise, I would have saved more and bought quality gear first instead of trying to be cheap and get shitty gear first cause I would have saved money in the long run. My techs are still working great after almost 13 years.

I should have also chosen a different name for my personal passion djing than my money/top 40/mobile djing.

Where is the best places to find gear?

Anywhere - ebay, craigslist, online stores like musiciansfriend.com agiprodj.com turntablelab.com - lots more

How do deal with the bar owners and patrons that show up to listen to your tunes?

uh, what?

How do you price your skill level?

I ask for what I think I'm worth.

Very basic beginner tips:
You're spot on with picking up sticks and a pad first (I should also mention a metronome because drumming is ALL about keeping time, but this is bare basics so for the sake of my bad typing skills and your wallet I'm going to omit it, but know this HAS TO BE YOUR NEXT PURCHASE (also there's dozens of free metronome apps FYI)).

This is all you will need to begin drumming and it shouldn't cost you more than $30. As far as for what kinds/brands, just buy two matching sticks that feel comfortable in your hands and a pad that's 'bouncy'. (Don't worry about wood types or tips for the drum sticks yet, you're still a far ways away from that being a concern)

Now that you have sticks and a pad, the next move is to learn how to hold them. This is going to be hard without any visuals, so bear with me here lol. Hold your right hand forward as if you were to accept a handshake. With your left hand, place the stick in the center your palm so that the blunt end of the stick is facing the ground. Now close your fingers around it to create a fist. Adjust the height of the stick in your fist so that only 1 inch of the blunt end is protruding(sp?) from the bottom of your fist. At this point, it should seem like your holding the drum stick the same way that you might hold a hammer; you're close but there's two more VERY IMPORTANT steps. Next, adjust your thumb so that it rests on the shaft of the stick. (Imagine that with your fist you're trying to now give someone a thumbs-up and that your stick is just a big extension of that thumbs-up, that what this should all look like) Finally, while maintaining this hand position, turn your wrist 90 degrees so that your palm and stick are both facing the ground.
Now repeat with your left hand.

If done correctly, you should be making a 'V' shape with your sticks. As well, if done correctly, you should be able to hold both stick with only your thumb and fore-finger. (Just to cover all bases, your middle, ring and pinky fingers are simply there for minor support, most grip strength and stick control comes from finding the fulcrum (or balancing sweet spot) of the stick and pinching it with your thumb and fore finger)

Confused yet? Good! Just a few more things and I'll feel like I'm really doing you justice here lol:

Just start off at first by trying to get your sticks to hit the pad and bounce back at you. Don't 'bury' them into the pad; make them work for you, not against you. Don't worry about speed, intensity or consistency just yet, it will all come in time.
Obviously, alternate your hands. You'll find that you have a dominant hand (99.99% chance it's your writing hand) but don't forget that, unless you plan on starting a Def Lepard cover band, your going to need both hands, so give them both the appropriate amounts of attention they deserve!

Once you got both hands hitting with equal confidence, just go back and forth with your right and left hand and try to focus on making them both sound, look, and feel as even as possible.

New drummer LPT's:
-Buy a metronome ASAP.
-Forget about speed, it WILL come naturally.
-Buy, download, torrent, steal, GET this book and go through it. It is the golden standard for pre-drumkit drumming. If you master this book, you have mastered the concept of drumming.
-Hold off on a drumkit. They're big and expensive; you'll really want to make sure that you REALLY want to commit to drumming first.
-Finally, YOUTUBE will teach you all this and more for FREE!

Good luck, sorry for the novel but I really hope this helps.

Sources: drumming 12 years, currently professional touring drummer, tried to teach a friend how-to a while ago and he's... not terrible :P

Hey there!

Glad to hear there is another potential animator/artist in the world :)
A lot of your question depends on your budget as tablets can get very expensive very quickly based on size and quality. For instance buying something that lets you draw directly on the screen is going to run you several hundred dollars for the lowest tier models (Wacom Cintiq's are currently considered the gold standard but their monitors and tablets start at over $1000 new so that is out of the question for most people and definitely not worth it for a beginner). So if she's just wanting to explore, a drawing app on a samsung galaxy tablet is a cheaper option that works great for beginners and allows them to work directly on screen. Plus is she loses interest you'll still have a tablet to use for other things.

However most people start with something like a Wacom Bamboo tablet. They are high quality, very responsive, and made by Wacom (the current industry leader) for a much more reasonable price. However you're drawing on a tablet placed on a desk while watching your work on a separate monitor and this can take some serious getting used to. Once you've got it figured out though they're great (they come in various sizes and are used by professionals throughout various industries)!

As for software consider these:
Art/Drawing - Sketchbook Pro

Animation - Anime Studio 10
keep in mind animation programs can be tough to learn so she'll definitely need to watch tutorials online. However this is an awesomely priced option with a lot of great features to make jumping-in easy



If she really catches the animation bug there are two books that are wonderful (although they are thick and may be better for when she is a little older? Up to you but they could make great future gifts):
Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams

and

The Illusion of Life by Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas - Two of Disney's original master animators known as the Nine Old Men

Anyway that's a quick rundown of where equipment and resources stand. If I were you I'd probably go for the bamboo tablet and Sketchbook Pro to get started (for drawing) + Anime Studio 10 if animation is definitely something she wants to explore as all these items are an outstanding value for what they offer.

If things get super serious as she gets older prices begin to jump up very quickly (especially on the software side) but I believe the items listed above should suit her perfectly for at least through all her high school years. As she improves and explores you'll naturally learn what all the tools and options are on your own, as well as what her preferences are.

3D animation as a whole is a different beast that is very computer/technical heavy with a steeper learning curve. So if she wants to start trying that it becomes a whole different realm as you'll need a solid PC and a lot of time and patience when it comes to learning one of the various computer graphics programs out there.

Hope this helps at least a little! Good luck, and feel free to PM any time :)

Thing is, not every potential comic artist out there wants to draw actual sequential images. There are many, many artists that get far more enjoyment out of drawing pinups/covers than they do comics. Nothing wrong with that.

Also, suggesting the OP focus more on the art of drawing a sequential page than learning how to improve their drawing skills is the wrong way to go about things. A person could lay out the most wonderful sequence of panels ever seen, however if they are unable to fill said panels with good art then it is completely pointless.

Drawing comes first.

--------------------

To the OP:

-------------

As the top voted comment has stated: never, ever give up. The first thing that I should drill into your head is that you shouldn't expect to become a talented artist overnight; drawing well takes years of toil and practice. There are times when you'll feel like giving up, but don't (in fact, any artist worth their mettle will never feel like they've truly mastered their craft, no matter how talented they are).

Anyways, if you are serious about learning to draw well, you need to start focusing on the basics first (basic underlying shapes, volume, how light affects basic objects, perspective, etc.). If you do not learn the basics, you will not become a good artist. Full stop.

It is only once you have a good grasp of the basics that you can hope to achieve more complex stuff. For example (and please don't take this the wrong way), your drawing is solid enough but there is a complete lack of any kind of underlying shape or perspective to the character; as a result, the whole image just feels completely flat. Whenever you draw a figure, you must keep its underlying shapes and its perspective in mind.

For example, when I draw a figure, I start off with a basic 'mannequin' (egg shape for head, a roundish box for the chest, spheres for the joints, cylinders for the limbs, etc.) and then start gradually adding more and more detail on top. Drawing in this manner allows the artist to get a good idea in their head of how their character will look in 3D space. Even the most basic of cartoon characters tend to be created this way.

If there is no underlying shape to your character then there is no hope of convincing those viewing your work that your character is a living, breathing being.

Also, your pencil lines are very, very scratchy right now. Obviously, this is because you're not entirely confident in your skills as of yet (don't worry about this, it's only natural). When drawing, try to draw with your arm rather than drawing with your wrist. This takes a lot of practice to pull off but you will find that it will allow you to create smooth, flowing lines. As you get better at your art, you will find that you will start using less and less lines in order to build up your creations.

One thing I would highly recommend you do is to start keeping a 'daily draw journal.' Just draw every day. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, even if you only do a few scratchy doodles, it still counts! The important thing is that you're drawing. You would be utterly amazed how much you will gradually improve over time (I often look back at some of my older work and cringe!).

If you have the money, I'd recommend picking up a 'Moleskine' sketchbook as they are compact, solid and very high quality.

Anyways, sorry about the huge block of text! I hope that this may have been of some use to you. The best of luck to you and your drawing!

----------------

PS:

---------------

Some books I would highly, highly recommend you check out:

• How to Draw on the Right Side of the Brain: I bought this book nearly 10 years ago and it is still one of the most important books I've ever read. The book doesn't so much teach you how to draw, but rather teaches you how to see the world about you with an 'artist's eye.' That may sound utterly pretentious but, believe me, it works. My drawing skills improved immensely thanks to the lessons I learned from this book.
  
  
• Various instructional books by Andrew Loomis: While many of these books are out of print, most of them are available in digital form (I've provided the link). These books are an absolute treasure and need to be in any self-respecting artist's collection, be they professional or amateur (Alex Ross, for example, is a huge fan). Loomis covers just about every single thing you will need to learn, so you should seriously give these books a look.

Hey there, I'm a game designer working in AAA and I agree with /u/SuaveZombie that you'll probably be better off with a degree in CS. BUT... don't give up on wanting to be a designer!

 

You should realize that it's not giving up on your dream at all, in fact, it's great advice for how to reach that dream. A designer with an engineering background is going to have a lot more tools at their disposal than one who doesn't.

 

Design is way more than just coming up with a bunch of cool, big ideas. You need to be able to figure out all the details, communicate them clearly to your teammates, and evaluate how well they're working so you can figure out how to make something people will enjoy. In fact, working on a big game often feels like working on a bunch of small games that all connect.

Take your big game idea and start breaking it down into all the pieces that it will need to be complete. For example, GTA has systems for driving and shooting (among many other things). Look at each of those things as its own, smaller game. Even these "small" parts of GTA are actually pretty huge, so try to come up with something as small as possible. Like, super small. Smaller than you think it needs to be. Seriously! You'll eventually be able to make big stuff, but it's not the place to start. Oh, and don't worry if your first game(s) suck. They probably will, and that's fine! The good stuff you make later will be built on the corpses of the small, crappy games you made while you were learning.

 

If you're truly interested in design, you can learn a lot about usability, player psychology, and communication methods without having to shell out $17k for a degree. Same goes for coding (there are tons of free online resources), though a degree will help you get in the door at companies you might be interested in and help provide the structure to keep you going.

 

Here's some books I recommend. Some are specific to games and some aren't, but are relevant for anything where you're designing for someone besides yourself.

 

• Universal Principles of Design

• The Design of Everyday Things

• Rules of Play

• The Art of Game Design This and the one below are great books to start with.

• A Theory of Fun This is a great one to start with.

• Game Feel

• Depending on the type of game you're making, some info on level design would be useful too, but I don't have a specific book to recommend (I've found pieces of many books and articles to be useful). Go play through the developer commentary on Half-Life 2 or Portal for a fun way to get started.

 

Sounds like you're having a tough time, so do your best to keep a positive attitude and keep pushing yourself toward your goals. There's nothing to stop you from learning to make games and starting to make them on your own if that's what you really want to do.

Good luck, work hard!

I would and still do approach them very systematically. Do was /u/Capn_Crusty said going around 5ths or 4ths. Try to get them all to a workable tempo. Use this book for reference on fingering.

I'd suggest 2 octaves. Some teachers really like more, but if you want to make it part of your daily routine and really make progress, 2 is as good as 3 or 4 and you can hit them more efficiently.

At first it will probably be very slow going. I'd actually recommend against the metronome at this point. Just get the scales comfortable despite unevenness and hesitation. Rather than forcing yourself to keep going, make sure you're taking time to very deliberately think about what comes next... which note, which finger.

Go one hand at a time as will likely be necessary and maybe even only a single octave at first. A good strategy for getting the feel, especially of crossing under is to play up to a given note and back down several time... then keep adding notes. C up to E and back down until comfortable... then up to F... then up to G, etc. Same concept for all the scales. Make sure each hand is confident before trying to put them together. Run each one several times alone without errors before putting them both together at a much slow tempo.

Once you have all of your scales somewhat comfortable at 2 octaves, you can start finding a good metronome tempo. Find out how fast you can play your weakest scale and play all scales at that tempo. Try to hit them daily if possible bumping up the metronome 2 clicks per day.

If you find them getting out of control, bump it back down 10 clicks and see how much more control you've gathered since you were last at that tempo. Continue moving up 2 clicks a day. Some scales will be very easy and you'll be able to fly by them each day, but some will be much rougher. These are the ones that need the most attention. You'll eventually find that you're more or less equally comfortable with all of them, which is a great place to be. Just keep aiming for evenness and consistency. Try not to have overly heavy thumbs or heavy notes on certain beats or at the ends of octaves. Try to keep them smooth. As you get better, you can try doing them quietly, or loudly, or crescendoing as you go up and dimenuendoing as you come down.

Eventually, add minors, or even other patterns using the same concepts.

A couple of tricks to really working on consistency (once you get to the metronome stage) is to be able to play each one up and down at least 3 times without a mistake. Also, until you get to very fast tempos, try playing them alternatively very legato and moderately staccato. I find that playing the scales staccato forces me to be much more deliberate with my fingers and enforces evenness that works into my legato playing.

I generally run all of my major scales up and down 3 times over 2 octaves in under 5 minutes. It's a very small part of my day and very worth it. It will take a long time to have them at that point, but it's worth it to keep at them consistently. You'll find that so many other things come easy when your scales and arpeggios are second nature to you.

I live on the pacific coast so I can’t help with the teacher part but I have just started jazz piano about a six months ago after playing piano for a year, I feel that you should first familiarize yourself with piano in any way you can before moving into jazz and paying for lessons, once you’re experienced you should buy the sixth edition of the real book and learn how to read jazz standards. These are songs that are in the book (400+ songs) are classics that pretty much all experienced jazz musicians can pick up on and can play along to. It’ll only have the melody on the chords to go along with it, you should learn the melody and play it the way you feel is best and play around with it and then harmonize it with the chords. Once you get familiar with this you should try your best to solo over it along with the chords, you might sound like ass but you’ll have to practice to get an ear for soloing, eventually you’ll get better and pick up and learn techniques. One of my favorite jazz pianist YouTubers made a great video that gives a list of some of the easier jazz standards that are mostly in the real book, they are great for gaining a foundation in jazz. It’s important that you know how to play all types of chords to best play jazz standards, if you’re interested message me and I’ll send you directions for a good exercise for this. Lastly when learning jazz standards it’s best to listen to the song and the chord changes a lot first to get a feel for the song, learning the vocals also helps with expression. Once you get a foothold for all of these basics then you should look for a teacher, I suggest taking a few months before that.

Alright bro rather than critique your work I'm going to directly answer your question on how to improve. I got two pieces of advice for you based on what I see.

First off, and it may sound a little vague but ask yourself honesty what do you want out of art? You say you tend to draw on and off in short burst, so do you really enjoy it? What do you see yourself creating if you possessed the required skills to do so? Try to find an answer to that question so you have a direction to work towards.

Secondly, "realism" in arts, to quote Wikipedia "is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements" in other words to not add your own style to a drawing and capture purely what you see. Its really just life drawing, and I'm not exaggerating when I say you cannot become a competent or confident artist without learning, appreciating, and devoting time to mastering it. Realism is not a genera of art its the foundation, drawing as an art form has no shortcuts, that boring stuff an art teacher tries to make us do in art class such as drawing straight lines towards a horizon, or drawing a mannequin over and over aren't options that an artist can opt out of if he so chooses, like any science it's the basic background you require to frame your thinking and let creativity flow naturally through the canvas. If a musician doesn't know his scales how can he concentrate on giving the performance? Forget drawing freehand if you cant properly life draw. A human cannot be learned in sections, if we focus on things like eyes, the head, and hair, every other part will lack definition and consideration resulting in them fading into the background, the whole body must be considered. A regular adult male body is measured in about 8 heads in length starting from the actual head and moving down dividing the body into sections ending at the feet. If you study these landmarks along with the more specific ones than life drawing will become simplified and much more enjoyable.

I'm not leading you astray here, this is the hard truth about drawing, we all started for a reason but sooner or later we gotta decide how far are we gonna take this and how exactly we get there. If you really want to get serous about drawing, learn anatomy, learn perspective, and never focus on development a style, just concentrate on drawing and the style will occur. Start here for anatomy, because when it comes to anatomy Loomis is the authority and we are his students, he has many good books but this is probably his most popular. Though all of his books should be considered as they go into more detail on specific body parts such as hands and the head.
Then go here, it really is perspective made easy and is should probably be read first as a good understanding of perspective is required to properly frame drawing. Almost all of these books have PDFs that can downloaded for free since they were out of print at one point but were put back up for sale. If Loomis isn't your style you can check out this list, most of these have free PDFs as well which can simply be google searched.

But know that there is no foolproof formula to make you a great artist from books or even other great artist, its simply the courage to stand on ones own two feet and seek out enlightenment. I'm no art genius, all of this wisdom is from my personal experiences and lots of books. I just recognized your path as similar to mine and wanted to give some honest advice.

you have potential and its your choice if you want to see how far can you take it.

I think the best way to spend a solitary birthday would look like this:

Wake up whenever the hell you want, but try for no later than 10AM, you want to enjoy the day after all! Make yourself your favorite breakfast even if it is just a bowl of cereal. While eating, watch your favorite show or movie. I would pre-schedule a massage! Massage envy has a special rate for first time guests (I am pretty sure) or look into a nearby massage school - you can generally get a 1-hour massage for about 20-30 dollars. Then snag a Jamba Juice to tie you over till dinner. Depending on if you are a home body or not this could then go one of two ways; either go home and play your favorite video game uninterrupted or go see a movie! If nothing is playing that day, then gift yourself some Fandango tickets to a showing later on in November. Several awesome looking movies are coming out in Nov. Then I would suggest ordering in for dinner, have a pizza delivered or chinese, whatever you prefer or if you are comfortable, go out and treat yourself to something awesome. After that, probably more video games or a new movie you haven't seen yet or maybe just some time on reddit, relaxing. You could also read a comic, manga, or book with some scented candles and a beer or glass of wine.

I think it would be awesome to gift yourself this book. I have looked at it and it is crazy awesome!

I hope those are good ideas! I hope you have a wonderful birthday!! :D

Holkan Turns 24 !! :D

Yes, as you've mentioned the head is tiny, knowing is half the battle I guess. The contours are pretty nice, but the picture is missing value/shadings so it looks incredibly flat. A lot of folks here will recommend anatomy lessons, which would certainly be a good start. Understanding how the the arms relate to the chest, the chest to the head and neck, all the processes in the skeleton that compose the human figure and how they all interact with one another will greatly improve how you see those things.

If I may, I'd like to elaborate on something that is easy to miss as an upcomer: people in real life almost never stand up perfectly straight or are never seen straight on by the eye in a perfect symmetrical orientation. The body is not perfectly symmetrical in most cases. In this picture, we see your model looking off to the side while holding the bow, but it looks uncanny and stiff. The hand on the hip exacerbates this flaw because usually when the hand is on the hip, the body's weight is usually leaning into it even if it's only slightly. Shifting the body's weight will help make the pose less stiff and more natural.

My recommendation is to draw from a photograph or some other reference (real models are awesome)! If you don't have a friend that likes being drawn, there are some sites out there that can help you refine your chops. Then, you can revisit an imagined piece like this and be able to make the adjustments that will make her come life. One site frequently recommended on here is the Pixel Lovely Trainer (also in the side bar); it cycles through tons of different pictures that you can sketch out at your own pace.

Some books about Anatomy:
Artistic Anatomy
Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist

An awesome tome about Figure Drawing:
Figure Drawing for All It's Worth

Gesture Drawing Tutorial (video) - something that may help you develop your skill

Additionally, and some folks may not like this, but taking some kind of drawing course might help you build your skills efficiently. I know when I did a 101 Drawing class for a college elective, it kept me focused, forced me to explore different elements of drawing that I would never have considered, and really helped me understand the relationships of different shapes and objects in a space. (another thing it helped me do was force me to work within a deadline window, which becomes fairly important when looking for confidence).

All in all I think you are onto a great start and with a little direction you can improve pretty quickly. There's a shit ton of information out there and it's all waiting for you to check it out!

OK, the negative numbers thing is confusing at first, but there's a reason behind it. This will be easier if you understand logarithms, but hopefully it will make sense even if you don't.

Basically, an equalizer works by splitting the sound into different frequency bands, then passing each band through an adjustable amplifier.

An amplifier's job is to take a sound and make it louder. Well, really it's dealing with electricity, so it takes an input voltage and makes a higher output voltage. For example, using numbers I just made up, suppose the input is 0.02 volts and the output is 2 volts. It's basically multiplying the voltage by 100. If the output were 0.2 volts, it would be multiplying it by 10 instead of 100. So you've got ratios of 10 or 100 or whatever else.

In the audio world, logarithms are used when talking about these ratios. This is partially for convenience (the ratios can get really big), but it's also because it corresponds more closely to the way the ear perceives sound.

Continuing the example from above, the base-10 logarithm of 10 is 1, and the base-20 logarithm of 100 is 2.

Actually, I sort of lied. In audio, decibels (symbol: dB) are used. A decibel is simply a way of writing a ratio. It's the same as a base-10 logarithm, except then it's multiplied by 10. (Hence the "deci-" prefix.) So in the example above, the amplifier whose output is 10 times its input is increasing it by 10 decibels. Because 10 decibels means "a ratio whose base-10 logarithm is 1". The amplifier whose output is 100 times its input is increasing the voltage by 20 decibels, because 20 decibels means "a ratio whose base-10 logarithm is 2".

To summarize what we have so far:

input voltage | output voltage | ratio | base-10 logarithm of ratio | decibels
-|-|-|-|-
0.02V | 0.2V | 10 | 1 | +10 dB
0.02V | 2V | 100 | 2 | +20 dB

But not only can amplifiers (and equalizers) multiply voltages and make them bigger, they can also make them smaller. That is, they can cut the volume level instead of increasing it. This corresponds to a fractional ratio, like 1/10 or 1/100 instead of 10 or 100. And when you take the logarithm of a fraction, you get a negative number. So let's extend the table a bit:

input voltage | output voltage | ratio | base-10 logarithm of ratio | decibels
-|-|-|-|-
0.02V | 0.0002V | 1/100 | -2 | -20 dB
0.02V | 0.002V | 1/10 | -1 | -10 dB
0.02V | 0.2V | 10 | 1 | +10 dB
0.02V | 2V | 100 | 2 | +20 dB

You may have noticed that this table could use another row right in the middle. If an amplifier can either increase or decrease voltage compared to its input, can't it keep the voltage exactly the same? Yes, it can, and this is called unity gain. Updating the table:

input voltage | output voltage | ratio | base-10 logarithm of ratio | decibels
-|-|-|-|-
0.02V | 0.0002V | 1/100 | -2 | -20 dB
0.02V | 0.002V | 1/10 | -1 | -10 dB
0.02V | 0.02V | 1 | 0 | 0 dB
0.02V | 0.2V | 10 | 1 | +10 dB
0.02V | 2V | 100 | 2 | +20 dB


So that's what the numbers on the equalizer knob mean:

• -15 dB (all the way counterclockwise) means you are multiplying the voltage by about 0.0316, because log(0.0316) = -1.5, and 10 * -1.5 = -15 dB.
  
• 0 dB (pointing straight up at 12 o'clock) means you are keeping the voltage unchanged, i.e. multiplying it by 1, because log(1) = 0, and 10 * 0 = 0 dB.
  
• +15 dB (all the way clockwise) means you are multiplying the voltage by about 31.6, because log(31.6) = 1.5, and 10 * 1.5 = +15 dB.
  
  More or less, a practical implication of this is that a good starting point is to have all the equalizer gain knobs (the blue ones marked -15, 0, and 15) set to 0. That's the neutral position where they are neither increasing nor decreasing their frequency band.
  
  If you look elsewhere on the mixer, you will see these dB ratios show up several other places. For example, up at the top where the mics plug in, you will see a GAIN knob that goes from 20 to 60. That means the voltage from the microphone is being amplified anywhere from 20 dB up to 60 dB, depending on where the knob is set, so it is being multiplied by something between 100 and 1,000,000.
  
  You'll also see the dB indicated on the main fader at the bottom of the channel strip. You'll see that the 0 dB point is near the top, which means when you have the fader close to the top, you are passing through the signal without changing its level, and if you have the fader all the way at the very top, you're boosting it by relatively little.
  
  And you will see that the LED lights in the channel's meter are marked in dB as well, with 0 dB and +6 dB.
  
  Anyway, (finally) back to practical issues and trying to actually answer your question. My suggestion was you could try boosting up to 5 dB at around 2-5 kHz. To do this, you'd basically do something like:
  
  
• Set the MF1 frequency knob (green) to 3kHz (pointing straight up).
  
• Set the MF1 gain knob (blue) to 0 dB (pointing straight up), then turn it 1 or 2 notches to the right. The first notch would be +3 dB and the second +6 dB.
  
• Now you will have a little bit of boost around 3kHz, but that may not be the best frequency. So try moving the frequency knob around in a range from about 2 notches to the left to 2 notches to the right. This will change where the boost is, and you may find that a certain frequency works better with a particular person's voice.
  
• Sometimes, once you've found the frequency you really wanted, you don't need to boost (or cut) as much, so you might move the gain knob part of the way back toward 0 dB.
  
  Of course, this idea might not help. It's kind of a case-by-case thing.
  
  Sorry that was so long!
  
  By the way, a really good resource, if you're in the mood for something book length, is the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook. It's chock full of useful practical and theoretical information. Of course, mixing sound is a bit of an art and takes practice, so no book is a shortcut to perfection, but it does help.

I don't have much experience with Garage Band, but also do not frequently hear much about its use amongst solid engineers. My first suggestion is to download another DAW before you put too much time into learning ones ins and outs, keyboard shortcuts, etc.

A solid option if you are of humble beginnings is to go with Reaper. They give you an unrestricted demo version on their website. When you inevitably love it and get the hang of it and get your paycheck do go back and pay them for their hard work making it.

Next I'd say learn to download plug-ins. There are many free options online that sound fantastic compared to even paid ones just a few years back. Browse this sub and others, and by all means I always advocate Sound on Sound because man have they got the slew of articles.

Just use the googs. Find some sites you like and learn, learn, learn. Finally when you're speaking of "prepping for release" I would say don't try to learn mixing purely on your own.

Go find someone who is willing to talk about their mixing theory and talk to them about how they go about it. Even if it's just someone from Reddit in a Skype session there are people who have done it and who do it and they're usually willing to talk. That way your questions can get some answers and you get better faster. However, if you're taking their advice make sure you hear their stuff and know you like how it sounds.

Finally, if you're pretty sure you've got the mix and want to release a few songs in an EP or good gracious even a CD (ahh!) then have a mastering engineer get their hands on it. That's how it goes. They don't have to be the $2000 a day kind of guy but someone who identifies as a mastering engineer who you research and read good things about will be helpful. Always always always listen to someone's work before having them do a service you're signed up to pay for. If they do it and you don't like it you still owe them money.

In the way of direct answers:
Q: What is the common practice to EQ'ing everything?
A: Start with subtractive EQ (cuts instead of boosts) and cut out spots that overlap on two instruments so that one shines bright and the other shimmers in the background. You want to cut out all of the sounds with EQ so they fit together like a nice little puzzle. When two instruments are competing too closely maybe shift the octave on one. (Yes, when you're the artist it pays to be thinking of EQ blends as early as the songwriting and even brainstorming process.)

Q: What sort of compression should be looked at for all the instruments?
A: It shouldn't. If you don't understand compression you will not make it sound good by flipping on compressors on everything. Tweak tweak and tweak anything and everything and go online once again and learn the compression. In the meantime put your vocals in a 2.5:1 ratio with a fast attack and medium release and barely use the compression as need and leave the rest alone. Let that mixing engineer we talked about do the compression, and ask again what their theory or ideas when setting compression are.

Q: other general 'effects' and alterations that should be made
A: Use those plug-ins we talked about. Also in the way of phasing it sounds like you don't understand phasing. I'll let you dig up the articles this time. You should have some sites you like now. Phasing is about how time and space affects the way sound waves line up with one another and also flipping the phase can do things. You'll figure that out. But in the mean time you can also play with plugins that do interesting stereo effects.

I don't really know why I chose this to respond to, but if you do these things you'll be off to a good start. If you have Half Price Books (or the Internet and a finger that can click these links) go find yourself a copy of the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook and become a master. Or Modern Recording Techniques. Or even a Dummies book. as there are good ideas everywhere. You find them by hearing things and deciding what you like and what you don't. Information is a buffet! Take what you need and leave the rest.

Hey man, I'm kind of the in the same boat you are. By that, I mean
I used to play for about 7 years with lessons once a week, but I never really practiced much and put effort into it. At the beginning of this October, I started to take it up again and started playing every single day, making sure to do scales, play from Hanon, trill exercises, argpeggios, etc... and then moving on to playing my pieces. I play anywhere from an hour to seven hours a day depending on how I'm feeling instead of playing video games or watching tv and average about 3-4 hours a day. The last piece I had played before quitting a while back was Chopin's Nocturne Op.9 no.2, but it was an absolute wreck. I was able to completely refine it within the month of October and I moved onto other stuff. I tried tackling some Rachmaninov and Beethoven, but they were beyond my skill level for now so I decided to table them and I'm currently in the middle of refining Claire de Lune and taking another stab at Rachmaninov waltz I tabled. Claire de lune a fairly simple piece, at least technically, and if you've learned a basic George Winston song, it should be well-within reach. You might have fingering troubles with the chords and the key is a little hard to play in, but that's about it.

Practice your major and minor scales. They are a huge part of fundamentals that people overlook way too often. They help with fingerings and memorization of the keys on the piano.

buy a copy of this http://www.amazon.com/Hanon-Virtuoso-Exercises-Complete-Schirmers/dp/0793525446
it has a ton of exercises ranging from trill exercises, scale runs, arpeggios, chord trills, etc... Play a few of the first 10 exercises every day maybe 3-4 times and it's a great warm-up. It's immensely useful in building up your hand strength and stamina so doing it everyday is a must. Use a metronome while doing this because keeping tempo and not rushing/dragging will be very important. It also helps to monitor your progress as you get faster and faster. Play the exercises as fast as you can without messing up 3 times perfectly before moving onto the next tempo.

Break the piece into multiple chunks. They are pretty clear sections of the song so work on each section individually until you get each section down perfectly. Write down fingerings on tricky chords or runs so that you can remember them and not have to fumble around the next time you come across it. Take it nice and slow. Rushing it will only take more time in the end. I wouldn't worry too much about tempo and just worry about getting the notes right for now.

In the end though, getting a teacher is probably your best bet as they can give you more detailed instruction. What I said for you is if you're looking to pursue this without any instruction similar to what I'm doing right now. My goal by the end of this year is to be able to play Chopin Etude Op. 10 no. 4 by the end of this year practicing about 3 hours a day at least a tempo of 140 (I think I can do it). I currently am not taking lessons either, but I personally am not at the level yet where previous training hasn't covered me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIKdCTmcTLs
This is my goal for the end of the year if you're interested.

I'm going to disagree with a few people here. Getting an education to get a job in audio engineering is most definitely a bad idea in my opinion. Is this education worthless? No...but it's usually not worth what they're asking.

Audio engineering is a hard career to be successful in. I should know, as I've been doing it for quite some time. I've finally gotten to the point where as a free-lancer I can afford a car and house note, which is good. But there were plenty of sacrifices along the way. None of which I regret, of course. But I wouldn't have wanted to tack on extra debt going to school to get a job in a field that does not require a degree.

In all my time doing this, probably around 15 years professionally, nobody has ever asked me how to prove I know how to do this stuff. My resume speaks for itself. I've worked in studios in LA, Hawaii, Az, and now I'm a production sound mixer in Louisiana. I run sound for bands in venues around my city when I'm not on a movie. I own a recording studio for music and for foley and ADR for films. Currently, I'm on a shoot in Florida where I've been for 3 weeks. I got to shoot foley with one of the worlds greatest foley artists (Ellen Heuer). it's a great life!

My advise is do what most of my peers did. Get an internship at a studio. Or if your interested in movie work, assist a sound editor or a production sound mixer. Offer to be a sound utility for free. Or approach a local sound venue and offer to assist the live sound guy, wrapping cables and plugging in mics. Or call a local sound company that does festivals and other events, and offer to clean the snake at the end of the night.

Even if you do decide to get an education, the school will always be there, waiting for you if that's the route you decide to go. But a healthy amount of time in this field not paying for that education will both help you do better in school if you decide to go, and help guide you into a program that's right for both you and the specific set of skills you want to garnish. Or, you might find you don't need it.

The point is that yeah, just "looking things up on the internet" is not a good way to educate yourself. It's a good supplemental thing to do, to be curious and read. But hands on experience is much more valuable than any education I've ever come across in this field, and worlds ahead of just reading a book.

Now, not going to school isn't an excuse to not work. You simply have to take responsibility for your own education. Read books, talk to people who are doing the things you want to do. Learn from them. Help them, and make yourself invaluable to them. Make them wonder how they every got along without you there.

There are far too many opportunities to learn from within the industry than on the outside of it in a classroom or technical college. My career has been quite all over the map, ranging from music production to movie work. Here is a list of books that are about those various fields that I recommend.

The Daily Adventures of Mixerman - A great look at a recording session, and honestly one of the funniest books I've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Daily-Adventures-Mixerman/dp/0879309458

Zen and the Art of Mixing - mixerman

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Mixing-Mixerman-ebook/dp/B004CYE7OU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397229955&sr=1-1&keywords=zen+and+the+art+of+mixing

Zen and the art of Producing - Mixerman

http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Producing-Mixerman/dp/1458402886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397229992&sr=1-1&keywords=zen+and+the+art+of+producing

Behind the Glass vol 1 and 2 - Howard Massey - Great interviews with producers and engineers. DEF check this one out. one of the best books i've ever read about recording.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Behind%20the%20glass

The Recording Engineer's Handbook - Bobby Owniski - General information about gear, mic placement techniques, fundmentals of sound, etc...

http://www.amazon.com/Recording-Engineers-Handbook-Bobby-Owsinski/dp/1285442016/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397230109&sr=1-1&keywords=recording+engineering+handbook

The Sound Reinforcment Handbook - Live sound techniques

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reinforcement-Handbook-Gary-Davis/dp/0881889008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397230178&sr=1-1&keywords=Yamaha+Live+sound+manual

The Location Sound Bible - Ric Viers - Great entry into sound for TV, Film, ENG, and EPP. Pretty much covers the bases of recording on location

http://www.amazon.com/Location-Sound-Bible-Record-Professional/dp/1615931201/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397230229&sr=1-1&keywords=Location+Sound+bible

That should get you started. Whatever route you choose, good luck!

Welcome to dangerscarf's school of data visualization!

Theory

Although you could just wing it, knowing some of the why's and why not's of data visualization will help put your creations an inch or two above the rest.

I highly highly recommend picking up Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. After you read it you'll be able to make jokes about inside jokes about pie charts and be everyone's best friend. On a first read-through it might not make too much sense, but once you start working on projects light bulbs will start going off.

Practice

These days the major thing to learn in the world of data visualization is D3. It's a big hunk of JavaScript code that can help with everything from drawing maps to making graphs.

If you want to learn D3 (which you now should), the best place to start is Mike Bostock's Let's Make A Map. The end result is a pretty boring map of the UK, but it steps you through the hows and the whys of every single piece of code. When I first started with D3 I could have saved myself a lot of headaches by reading it closely.

Once you get your feet wet, [http://bost.ocks.org/mike/selection/](How Selections Work) is great for clarifying some of the concepts behind how D3 deals with data display.

There's also a tutorials page on github, but the shortest and most efficient path to making cool visualizations is just plain copying. How to make great visualizations, in 3 steps:

1. Visit http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock
   
2. Scroll around until you find a couple examples of the kind of visualization you want to make
   
3. Copy the code, then hack away at it until it does want you want
   
   Since you've already got some coding background you might be all set. JavaScript can be an insane beast at times, but if you start simple and from existing code you should get the hang of it without too much work.
   
   A Brief Introduction To Coding For The Web
   
   OK, so maybe you do need to learn a little HTML/CSS/JavaScript first. But let me stress the little - it's easy to get bogged down in the details, and the skills you need to edit a visualization to do what you want aren't exactly the same as when learning JS from scratch.
   
   Fundamentals: HTML, CSS and Javascript. HTML is the information on a page, CSS is what makes it look nice. JavaScript it what makes it move around or be interactive. JS is the toughest, while HTML and CSS are easy (the basics, at least).
   
   Go ahead and learn HTML and CSS from Codacademy first. I disagree with the way that every single place on the Internet teaches this stuff, but so it goes.
   
   Check out these recommendations or these recommendations for JavaScript. If you don't feel like reading through them I'll just blindly point you toward Codecademy - JavaScript track, jQuery track.
   
   Sidenote: jQuery is a big hunk of JavaScript that makes common web programming tasks easier.
   
   But really, honestly, truly, you should read the links that aren't Codacademy.
   
   What do I make visualizations about?
   
   Any time you hear something interesting or read an interesting article or just think, "could I make a visualization out of this?"
   
   Other resources
   
   Pretend you're a developer for a news organization. Read up on Source, Data for Radicals, and a million other things I'm neglecting. If you want to get real crazy subscribe to the NICAR email list to see how people who do "computer-assisted reporting" think.
   
   But honestly, just do it! That singles map was the very very first visualization I ever made, and 5 years later it's still getting plenty of traffic. Throw a bunch of nonsense up on a site, submit it to reddit, and eventually you're bound to have something work out.
   
   Good luck!

Mics- 414s are fantastic mics no doubt. But there are many,many other more affordable options out there that are competitive in quality. I'd suggest checking out some higher end MXLs, they are super versatile and pretty too.

don't worry about thunderbolt. people were recording low latency drums and etc....long before thunderbolt came out.

monitors...well, the NS10s are pretty standard. if you can make a mix sound good on those it will sound good on anything.every major studio but one (studio a in dearborn) I've been in has them. If you are really burning for something new I'd suggest some genelic 1030a there the older model but they were used on pretty much every hit song in the early 2000s. Everybodys got them. I know the speakers and trust thier response. and they're affordable.

preamp- This is where I personally invest the most money... there are as many preamps as snowflakes. I like the Focusrites ISAs, Rupert Neve designs, go high end... but honestly I have been fooled by the stock original MBOX pres. You're not a true engineer till you have fiddled with a non functioning micpre and thought "that sounds better" lol.

compressers- plug in compressors are great. which is why i suggest spending the money on the preamp. however it never hurts to have a hardware tube compressor/limiter handy. I recommend the ART VLA II.

plugins- trident EQ, fairchild 660, old timer, PSP vintage warmer, 1176, LA2A, smack!, MC77, there are a TON of good plug ins to choose from.

headphone monitoring? Not to sure about that one, Headphones are for performing only. I have the 80 dollar sonys for clients. ,they come with a nice bag to store them in. I don't mix with headphones( thats a whole can of worms dealing with psychoacoustics)

drum mics- shure makes good durable kits, I see them in use all over the place. CAD aren't to bad either. don't go cheap..but don't go overboard either. Approach it like preamps, go with a trusted brand name, they're selling a set of mics specifically for drums, kinda hard to fuck that up right? (IMO its more important to have a good room.)
this kind of reminds me of a joke.

how many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?
none. they have machines for that now. just throwing it out there.

computer and software- I say go protools. but thats all i know, i was certified in 2002 and havent had a need for anything else. I have never been in a studio that wasnt using it, there are a couple in nashvile that use sonar...well, that was a few years ago.

I am not here to shit on mac. but i have used both in the industry throuought the years and they both perform fine. The last studio I was at used a quadcore w 4 gigs on XP with PT8 and never had so much as a hiccup, recording 24 tracks at once @ 24/96. I take the policy of if it isnt broken, don't fix it. I also have a person issue with avid, I refuse to upgrade to 9 or 10 because they allow any interface to be used...except there older ones. bullshit.

Trust me on this one...the client isnt going to give a shit what OS you are using until it your computer crashes. if you load up your computer with tons of cracked plugins and have poor organization and maintenance, its gonna take a shit on you.

further reading- this is probably the most important advice i can give you. read a little bit and get a total understanding on what everything does, because there is a lot of bullshit in this field.

http://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Engineers-Handbook-Audio-Series/dp/0872887235

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reinforcement-Handbook-Gary-Davis/dp/0881889008/ref=pd_sim_b_10

http://www.amazon.com/Master-Handbook-Acoustics-Alton-Everest/dp/0071603328/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348852030&sr=1-1&keywords=room+acoustic+music

http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Glass-Record-Producers-Softcover/dp/0879306149/ref=pd_sim_b_24

good luck

I know it's a contentious group of pieces, but I've had incredible luck with Hanon. If you can read music and play hands together, I highly recommend it.

I took lessons for 13 years, but since I've been in college I've been self teaching. I've always really loved piano and I have decent technique, but I never really learned things in a way that wasn't sloppy. I decided I wanted to change that, and I sat down and learned all 3 parts of Hanon exactly as instructed in the book. It's not a perfect method, but I play through it every day now and honestly my technique is miles beyond what it used to be. I wish I had learned as a beginner so badly it hurts.

So my suggestion to you is this: buy this book (http://www.amazon.com/Hanon-Virtuoso-Exercises-Complete-Schirmers/dp/0793525446/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414561983&sr=1-1&keywords=hanon), play through it every day (no matter how boring it may get) exactly as instructed. It takes a little under an hour to play the whole book at tempo, and I imagine you'll be preoccupied learning all of the etudes for quite a while.

I'm a firm believer that we can all craft ourselves into excellent pianists, and all I think you need to do that is repertoire and a will to practice and make a sound that you like. Once you have the technique from the Hanon down, you can get started on any number of pieces. Another very good method is Bela Bartok's Mikrokosmos, which my mean, Hungarian teacher made me slave away at for years. It comes in 6 volumes, the first of which is (http://www.amazon.com/Mikrokosmos-Pink-English-French-Hungarian/dp/1423493044/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414562208&sr=1-1&keywords=mikrokosmos).

If you were to learn a significant amount of the material from either of those methods, you would be a significantly better pianist. If classical piano isn't necessarily the route you want to go, you'll still be well served by either/or.

The most important thing is to play whenever the urge strikes you, in my experience. It becomes a bit of an addiction, but there's such a huge world of piano music out there that you'll never grow bored with it, and you'll certainly never run out of things to do. Best of luck.

My best advice for you is to find a project for focusing your improvement. It's fun to be able to jam in different styles and settings, and it's a worthy long-term goal, but it's impossible to tackle so many things at once. Find a band to start/join, doing covers or originals. Or find some people to jam with every week. Or take lessons. If you can find a good teacher, lessons will be the best thing for you. Even if you can learn a ton on your own, you'll always have questions along the way that are best answered in person by a master player.

Once you find that project to focus on, center your learning around it. Figure out what theory will be useful. (I second smackhead's endorsement of musictheory.net. Also, Music Theory for Guitarists is a great theory book.)

Learn songs by ear as much as possible. It improves your ears, fingers, and mind. Even if you forget how to play it later, you'll improve through the process, and have that extra experience with you. Imagine learning 1000 new songs in the next year. You'll develop the ability to hear a song in your head and know how to play it, so that you'll never have to remember how the tabs go.

And for some serious motivation, check out some articles on my guitar blogs: From the Woodshed and Deft Digits. Good luck!

UMMMMMM lets see. I can take two routes. School or munchies.

I just recently graduated (video production) and there are a couple book's that I've been really wanting to get.
One for editing, And these for inspiration and reference to how my shots should look like

1

2

3

And I've heard anything from this guy, film related, is an amazing read for filmmakers

Ever since I graduated (I went to a really artsy school instead of a production school :( )I feel like I have way more to learn. Like it didn't fully leave me ready for what I want to be so what I'm trying to do is take all these books that are highly recommended in my field and learn as much as I can on my own. Hopefully to inspire me to make better films and really push me in the right direction. Any book would be perfectly fine.


As for munchies. I've been training for a fight for a couple months so my diet has been pretty strict. Fewer calories, no sweets, very low carbs. One week, my trainer goes to Japan to visit his GF and once I found out, I asked him if he can buy me some kitkats. In japan if you guys didn't know, they have a store dedicated to every flavor of kitkat you can think of and me having the biggest sweet tooth, I begged him if he can buy me a box. Since I was still on my diet when he came back, he was holding the candy for me so I wouldn't get tempted to eat it on my own time (I was 13 pounds away from my goal weight). He ended up getting me a pack of Strawberry Kitkats. So one day as he was in his house studying, he walks past the candy and says, "Hey, it's been here for so long, I think I should try one. I got a sweet tooth. There are 12 in the box so 11 will still be a good gift. So after about 30 seconds of having an orgasm in his mouth due to kitkats, he says, "ok one more." The only problem there was, one turned into 11 more. All my sweet precious kit kats are gone! One of the many foods I was planning to demolish after my diet are gone!!! Drops on my knees, lifts my arm and scream NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Sooooooo yeah. Since I don't really have the funds to go Japan I would have to use amazon until one of my friends returns to japan to give me one of those crazier flavors. They have things like mango, chili, red bean, guasabi, green tea, ice cream, pudding and I really cant think of the other ones but its really cool.

But these are the two boxes I have on my list. Either one would be more than perfect. I don't really know exactly what's inside those two packs but I recognize some like apple, strawberry and cheesecake so I wouldn't mind the surprise.

1

2



And if anyone else is interested in trying them, just remember they're all mini bars, not the full sized bars you would buy in the store. Sorry for the essay, I hope it was good enough lol. Thank you for the contest.

Oh wowzers.

So starting with your gear:

• I don't see any sort of system processor or even basic crossover. How are you getting the right frequencies to the tops versus the subs? That also leads to the fact that you've already blown one of the tops. That's part of Ye Olde School of Hard Knocks - "Back In The Day," like before the Internet, that's how people learned about their system- blow something up? Learn to re-cone, and then figure out why it happened to avoid it in the future.
  
  
• As noted re the vintage of the mixer. An entry level digital board would have served you better.
  
  
• Can't comment on the "various performing & recording mics" without knowing just what you have. Did you get any DI boxes?
  
  >All the speakers are beautiful wooden cabinets, handmade, w/ high quality neodymium tweeters, JBL parts, etc.
  
  "handmade" means proprietary- they won't meet riders (if you ever encounter one) for the most part. More importantly- they'll be frowned upon because there's no consistent specs that an engineer could look up. I'm not saying they won't work in the long run, but start setting aside money now for a replacement plan. On the same thread, you're going to need to learn about the specs of your PA to set appropriate limiters to protect your speakers going forward.
  
  > Still working on monitors, looking at active EVs at the moment.
  
  Having monitors (if you're looking to provide for bands) is going to be vital. Ideally, they're all the same, but as you grow into this... you might start with two and then add two more once you have money coming in.
  
  > Though part of me is worried about more equipment when I haven’t started recouping investment on what I have yet.
  
  At the same time, if you don't have a "full package," it's going to be harder to recoup ANY of your investment. I'm going to be blunt here: No wedges? Home made boxes? A bit outdated mixer? If there's another option for a provider in your area that does have these things under control, that's who is going to get the business. If you're not getting the business, there won't be a cash flow to allow you to get the things you need to complete your package.
  
  Story time! Couple friends of mine were big into the EDM scene in the area, back ca. 2000-2004 or so. Decent JBL SR-X rig. Now, they weren't getting it out enough to really be viable, but that's not really the point of my story. What happened to them is that one show, they blew out one of the 18" cones. Since they hadn't been charging enough to be setting aside cash for repairs, they didn't have the money to repair it. Because of this, two things happened: They had to charge a bit less going forward because they didn't have all of the capabilities that they previously had, and they had to run their remaining subs a bit harder to compensate. I think they eventually blew at least one more sub-- and the downward spiral continued.
  
  Education Opportunity: Start with the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook. It's dated in that it doesn't cover a lot of more recent developments with types of equipment, but the underlying theory and principles of live sound haven't changed. This will help you to learn gain staging, setting limiters, and really how your gear is doing what it's doing.
  
  Building a Business Plan
  
  So to be candid, this step should have been completed prior to buying ANYTHING. Without a solid plan of how to move forward, you find yourself wasting money on things that don't fit the plan. Believe me, I've been there. My shop has piles of stuff that were purchased in the "early years" that aren't in use now, and most likely won't be used ever again. I have a couple things that were purchased and have never been used on a show; I "thought" they were needed, but they weren't. [We also have a collection of randomly mis-matched cases. That makes a truck pack really challenging, but that's just something I never realised was a thing early on.]
  
  > already been running into issues w/ lots of friends wanting free/discounted use. And my own confusion about whether to focus on renting or producing my own events
  
  Being "the person with speakers" is always attractive to people who want them for free. :-) As for the second part, I think you're a ways off from producing your own (people paying for tickets to attend) events. Being a "promoter" is really something that takes a lot of work to make profitable, and to be blunt, you don't want to also be worrying about the sound at the same time.
  
  > (I think the answer short term is renting w/ a contracted sound guy).
  
  Hiring a sound tech is going to eat into your profits. At the moment, you need to be able to "bank" as much of your event income as possible. So, that's where it's going to be vital that you learn how to best deploy your limited resources. As you grow, and either the events are complicated enough that you need an assistant, or you have a second rig and you need them both deployed at the same time, that's when you'll bring in another person.
  
  This whole situation may seem daunting, but you can do this. Learn about the specs and capabilities of your rig. Figure out how you blew that top (did you kill the whole thing, or just the HF or LF of the top?), and implement protection into your system. And then learn how to repair the damage- those skills will help you in the future, if you can recone a speaker instead of needing to pay someone else to do that!
  
  Feel free to reach out with specific questions, or post "I'm confused!" threads here, and we'll help the best we can.
  
  -Ray

Yeah, the particular album with Oscar Peterson isn't the best for study - as you won't be able to listen to what an experienced jazz drummer would do in those situations - but it is a great practice tool since drumless jazz recordings are so rare. In particular I love "Pennies from Heaven", it's a great mid-tempo swing to jam along with. And if you can work up to up-tempo swing, "I want to be Happy" is a serious workout. 7 minutes of 250 bpm spang-a-lang to really build those chops.

Oh, and if you haven't yet, invest in a copy of the real book and encourage your friends to as well. You can flip to almost any random page and have a great jam sesh. And with a little rehearsal you can gig those tunes as well. Not the most avant-garde stuff, but you've got to start somewhere :) Now go give that ride a good spank for me. Happy jazzing!

hmm. Where to get started. Learn the gestalt principles of visual design. If you're designing interfaces - these little tips will help you associate, and differentiate well enough to be able to direct attention like a conductor.

Learn to do everything deliberately. If you don't have a reason for something, you're not designing, you're arting. Know the difference and when each is appropriate. For example - want a big splash screen with a fancy colorful image? Is it so you can attract the user to a particular part of the screen? Or is it because you have some extra space and feel like filling it with something. If it's the former, go for it. If it's the latter - you're just making an art project.

Learn about design methodologies, from a university if possible. Industrial design technique is very good for digital problem solving as well. Defining a problem, exploring solutions, and determining a valuable path are things that will help you in every project.

Understand why you are doing what you are doing. And who are you doing it for. Never go past page one without establishing those facts.

Stats will help you in that do everything intentionally part. If you can say 80 of people do this, 20 percent of people do that, you can from this say, that this gets center position, bright colors, dark shadow and lots of negative space. That thing that 20 percent of people do, gets bottom right, lowER contrast, and is there for people that expect it.

Good luck, conferences will help. Podcasts will help. Reading interviews from design teams at larger companies will help.

Asking reddit will help. What you should ask for is paid time off to study lol. Good luck.


edit:
Also get this book universal principles of design I think there's a pocket version. This teaches you what works and why and when to use it.


Get the design of every day things. This book teaches you what good design is. It asks the questions - what is design. When is design good. What is an affordance? How do we signal what things do what? How does all that work? Is a coffee cup good design? What about a scissors? How about google.com vs yahoo.com...

Check out don't make me think... or just think about the title for an hour and pretend you read the book.

a popular one now is hooked. Pavlov's dog experiments except with people, basically operant conditioning for designers.

And learn about grid systems and bootstrap for prototyping. Get a prototyping account. For something, proto.io, invision, framerjs.... Invest in omingraffle and sketch, get a creative cloud license if need be. You will need to show people things a lot. You will need to convince people of your ideas and your paths. You will need to constantly throw together quick and dirty visualizations of what you want to say. Invest in tools that make it simple.

Learn how to sell your ideas. You will be asked a ton of questions as people poke holes in your design. You need to figure out how to soothe their worries. They will your decisions, and you will have to show them that you have the answer. Learn how to present. Learn public speaking. Learn how to communicate with superiors. Learn how to talk with programmers. Learn how to give the programmers what they want from you. Learn how to negotiate, learn how to deliver on time. Learn how to handle stress.

Good luck.

As a pseudo-musician/sound engineer here's a couple of tips I learned over the years.

• Avoid being a gear head. It's great to get all the latest and greatest equipment but it really isn't necessary to make great music. A simple pro-audio card for your computer, a small mixer (12-16channel), and a couple of SM57/SM58 mics will give the power to make great music.
  
  
• Try and bring as much of your own gear to live shows with extra back up cables. Don't depend on the venue to have it. Nothing worse than showing at 5-7pm for a 9pm door open scrambling to find a music store that's still open over a bad cable.
  
  
• Learn some audio engineering and sound reinforcement. It helps in creating a dialog between you and production studios and live gig engineers. If I ever had to recommend a book it would be Yamaha's Sound Reinforcement Handbook
  
  
• Keep detailed notes about the songs you create including settings, equipment used, etc. It saves a lot of time trying to reverse engineer a song if you try and recreate in a studio or on different gear.
  
  
• Utilize the internet for creating connections other musicians to create music and collaborate. You can even get feedback by doing live 'jam' sessions on sites like ustream.com or justin.tv
  
  
• Learn the basics of copyright law and contract law if you plan to get signed and/or go public with your music.
  
  
• Your live performances should focus on the performance. Don't worry about recreating you studio songs exactly. People come to your show to be entertained and less about hearing the music.
  
  Lastly, have fun. Learn to accept your mistakes. Even the best bands in the world don't replicate their album songs exactly for many reasons most of which is because you can't and it detracts from the energy of the performance.
  
  I hope that helps

Piano teacher for 5 years here. This is more or less a directly copy and paste from a previous comment of mine.

Obviously, I'm going to recommend you find a teacher as soon as is possible if you really want to advance. BUT there are a lot of things you can do on your own to learn effectively.

• First, do not practice to the point of frustration. This may sound odd, but 20-30 minutes spend at the piano at the same time each day is much more effective then an hours on end. It more about building up patterns of behavior that are conducive to learning. Set a pattern that you follow every day and be sure to set aside extra time to experience more piano music. Listen to jazz, classical, pop, broadway, film scores, anything that is mostly piano and is recorded by a professional. This ear training will be much more valuable then hours at the keyboard.
  
  
• Secondly, aim a little lower at first. There are tons of method books out there and all of them have value. At this point in your education note reading and ear training are the most important to focus on. Get books that you can easily understand (even if they are children's books!) and read, read, read! the more you read, the better you'll get! Think of how you learned to read when you where a child. At first everyone reads small books with three or four letter words and they read a hundred of them. Then they move on to pop-up books and read hundreds of those. Then short stories, also in the hundreds. This processes is not up for debate, it's how we learn. Apply that to you piano study! The pieces you have already learned are great but have obviously left a few holes to fill in your education. Don't be discouraged, it takes years to become proficient at music reading but you can do it if you put in the effort!
  
  
• Third and finally, learn your scales. There are a few books used by almost all piano teachers to teach basic technique and dexterity. I like to use Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist in Sixty Exercises and start with #32, 33, and 34. Then move on to #39, which is all the major and minor scales. I start my kids on this after a year or two, and my adult students as soon as possible. You will also benefit greatly from learning the fist twenty or so. Those focus solely on the practical study of hand coordination and dexterity, rather then the more theoretical study of major and minor keys. Another is Czerny: Art of Finger Dexterity for the Piano. There are also few others I'm not super familiar with. I would NOT recommend the Czerny without a teacher! that book is an asskicker and could seriously hurt your wrist/forearm without proper guidance.
  
  I hope this helps a little. Remember that you have just started and you have to crawl before you can walk. Take it easy and make sure you understand everything before moving on to the next step. Good luck and have fun!!

Whoa, I started with those exact 3 songs when I started learning the piano almost 10 years ago! Anyway, I suggest you start with this book to learn some fundamental music theory. I like this book because it has multiple scales and lists the chords and arpeggios for each key signature and goes through the circle of 5ths. You don't necessarily have to go through this book in order, just make sure you follow the fingering patterns carefully and play the scales, chord progressions and arpeggios slowly so you can internalize them and familiarize yourself with the layout of the keyboard.

If you'd like to become a proficient sight-reader (which I highly recommend, being good at sight-reading will help you in the long run), start practicing with reading some simple pieces. Go through the Alfred's book and see how well you can read through those pieces on the first run. If you feel like you need more sight-reading practice, the Mikrokosmos books will provide you with plenty of material to sight read. I also like this book of hymns. Remember, if you can't play it nearly perfectly (at least in terms of getting the notes right) on the first run, it probably means you should work on reading through that piece. So keep practicing!

If you have the money, you might be interested in investing in this series of books. Each level contains Baroque, Classical and Romantic pieces, as well as etudes and music theory, which really helps with building up a well-rounded foundation. But then again, the best use of your money would be ideally spent on a good teacher.

If you'd like a song at a similar level to what you're currently learning, I also learned this version of Canon, Ballade Pour Adeline, A Thousand Miles (because it's a fun piece and why not :)), and Summer by Joe Hisaishi during my early piano years.

But to be honest, I don't recommend learning any of the pieces I just listed above, because they will take you too long to learn. In the same amount of time you spend learning those songs, you could be progressing much faster if you focused on learning fundamentals and picked much easier pieces. And I mean pieces as simple as Minuet in G major and Minuet in G minor, maybe even simpler.

I feel obligated to write all of this since you're starting from a similar place that I was when I first began learning piano. Jumping into pieces that sound beautiful or amazing isn't the most efficient method of learning. Take this from me who went from being fixated on learning the entire Fur Elise → River Flows in You → Canon in D → Rondo Alla Turca and other songs wayyyyy beyond my level, to dropping all of it in and just starting from the very basics because I realized I sounded like utter ****, even if I could play the notes and it sounded fine to my family/friends who didn't play piano. I also wasn't making much progress in terms of learning, since each new piece would take me foreverrrr to actually learn. Building up your fundamentals is the way to go, because once you get to the level where you can actually play those beautiful pieces, the learning process will be so much faster. I know starting from the bottom and working your way up can be a slow and sometimes even tedious process, especially when you have to go through all these pieces that seem really easy or boring, but trust me, it will be worth it and far more rewarding in the end. :)

There are a lot of great books on film out there. Don't listen to other possible saying watch YouTube or wrote your own screenplay. Well, do those things too, but learn some wisdom from some of the masters while you're at it.

You are going to want to read the following:

Hitchcock by Truffaut (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0671604295). One of the greatest directors of all time, interviewed by another of the greatest.

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1879505622/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=1), one of the greatest editors ever. A pretty great director too.

On Directing Film by David Mamet (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140127224). A great book on directing by one of the great writer/directors.

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0452271878). He wrote this after El Mariachi, before he went on to big budgets. It's one of the most inspiring books you'll ever read-- you'll want to make a film tomorrow. Basically, how to make a movie wit nothing but enthusiasm.

My advice would be to focus on learning music theory, and applying said theory to your play. Everyone here loves to recommend justinguitar.com, and I'd agree. I'd also check out Steve Stine on YouTube (index of playlists). Best theory teacher I've seen in a long while. I'd also absolutely recommend musictheory.net.

Lastly, the Berklee guitar method books will simultaneously teach you to read music and to play your instrument. These books are the single best thing I did to progress my guitar skills.

Reading music helps greatly with understanding theory. Despite what you may hear from old-timers, reading music is extremely useful.

Another very useful skill to practice is ear training, which when combined with your theory knowledge, allows you to play music by ear. I'd suggest playing back some slower jazz guitar tunes on YouTube and figuring them out measure-by-measure. There's also Matt Warnock's Play Jazz Guitar group on Facebook which combines all of the above. Matt has a doctorate in Jazz Guitar Performance. He picks a tune each month, and everyone in the group works on it throughout the month, starting with the melody, to comping chords, to improv soloing. There are players of all skill levels, and I mean all. He provides excellent, free critique to everyone. I'm going to throw him a bone and buy a few of his books shortly since his excellent group has helped me so much.

Edit: I'd like to add as well that I don't really consider myself a jazz player; it's just that jazz skills are very useful and may be applied to virtually any genre.

This probably isn't the most helpful answer, but any resources I might have used to learn the fundamentals myself are probably pretty outdated now. Honestly I'd just try to find highly rated books on Amazon that are reasonably priced. I haven't read this one for psych research methods, but looking through the table of contents, it covers a lot of what I'd expect (ethics, validity and reliability, study design and common methods) and according to the reviews it's clear, concise, and has good stats info in the appendix. I had a similar "handbook" style textbook in undergrad that I liked. For practicing stats, I'm personally more of a learn-by-doing kind of person, and there are some free courses out there like this one from Khan Academy that covers the basics fairly well.

But if you can, take courses in college as electives! Chances are you'll have a few to fill (or maybe audit some if you can't get credit), so go outside of HCDE's offerings to get some complementary skills in research or design. I usually find classrooms to be more engaging than trying to get through a textbook at home on my own, and especially for psych research methods, you'll probably have a project that gives you hands-on experience doing research with human subjects (most likely your peers). There are lots of free online courses out there as well if you aren't able to take them for credit.

You guys are making me miss school.

Getting specifically into UX self-study, in addition to a UX-specific research methods book (this is a newer version of one I read in school) I'd also go through the UX classics like Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things and Emotional Design, Krug's Don't Make Me Think, and Casey's Set Phasers on Stun (this last one being more of a fun read than a practical one).

Please let me stop you.

As I did the same because of Mega64...5 years ago. Flash forward to this past spring where I graduated from broadcasting school, moved to LA, interned, got fucked over, moved back to my original state got a last minute offer and moved back to LA within a month. It is not easy. College will not make it any easier. Film and TV really only exist in LA or NYC. It's extremely hard to find work anywhere else. Mega64 is a group of guys who got lucky by finding an audience online that comes back every week to give them love and views. Going to school for broadcasting only threw me into a already over saturated market. What I learned most in LA is: a friend who went to NYU told me this as I was an assistant editor for him for a month, "any dummy can edit, it's the motion graphics where the money is." so with that I say go to school for graphic design with a focus in motion graphics. Not only will you get a degree from a place that values you, you can work at an agency in any city...anywhere. The people I interned over the summer were all self taught by youtube and books. That's all it takes in filmmaking is experience; going to broadcasting school did nothing in that category for me. I had to research, network and go out of my way to keep up with NYU/Florida State film school big leagues HOWEVER unlike them my college debt will only take 5-10 years to pay off. NYU(not Florida State, holy shit their tuition is cheap and their program is amazing so if you're in florida GO THERE! Otherwise read the rest of this)'s tuition will follow you past your death. Editing/filmmaking is much like painting or any other creative outlet, it takes time and the more you do it the better you get; the more you work with people who are better than you; the better you get; the more hungry you are for opportunity the better you get.

Some books I recommend for pursuing your interest in anything creative further:

In The Blink of An Eye

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be.

Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential

And some helpful links in what it's going to take. You can't learn everything in college, it's only a gate to your journey that opens the day you graduate and enter the real world.

Ash Thorp - Steps On A Creative Path

Say No To Spec

Fuck You, Pay Me

Here's what film school taught me: How to order my own DSLR, tripod, memory cards, case and a second lens. How to download the creative cloud and pay for it using a student license. How to play with Avid but not really learn how to edit in avid. How to make shitty short films so you get that out of your system and never try to make some deep bullshit story ever again, you're 21 years old you have no life experience stop throwing 20 minute films about pills down other peoples throats. How to understand 3 point lighting. How to waste money on courses for information I could of gotten off research. Now for the good stuff I got out of going to college: friends, mentors, experiences, memories, and chances to work(without pay). I was able to learn how to get burned but I was also more driven than the other students in my program. It's all about drive, and Mega64 has an unstoppable drive that's why they've been successful for the last 10+ years in keeping interest alive. You gotta take that inspiration that drive to want and keep moving forward with you to the future. Let mega64 be your inspiration but for the love of god don't waste your money, talent or time on broadcasting school.

Lots of great recommendations in this thread; I've added a few to my reading list. Here are my suggestions (copied from a previous thread):

• How to Win Friends and Influence People - Everyone with a mother should practice this.
  
• Tao Te Ching (S. Mitchell translation)
  
• Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy - I never cared about economics until after I was done with school, and didn't remember anything from university class. This helped explain a lot of common fallacies many people make.
  
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - As Taleb says in the beginning of the book, anyone from any profession could have written this book, but a financial background makes this much more interesting. Anyone interested in science and what we can learn from the world of past experience should read this. This led to the next book:
  
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne - A biography of Montaigne, a great skeptic, always curious, interested in what it means to be human. I found I could relate a great deal with the man, as many others have in different ways. The dust-jacket description made it sound like a boring historical overview, but I think the book flowed pretty well and was always interesting.
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Anyone that ever creates a slideshow, or attempts to represent data visually should read this book. More than once. I'd say it changed my life.
  
  And, the following two are a look into the lives of two great men that lived in the 20th century; both offer many points worth emulating.
  
  
• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
  
• The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer (once available in full on PBS website, seems not to be the case now ...)

(30+ years experience as a commercial artist, animator, broadcast designer and special effects designer speaking here. Plus I got into digital graphics back in the late '70s before anyone even knew what it was.)

The best place to start is to learn to draw. Anything else is a distraction and an attractive nuisance. Software is the least of your worries for quite some time. And even then, a cheap scanner or digital camera and some simple software are all you need to do a whole lot of learning.

And by drawing, I mean drawing from life. Find a life drawing class in your community if at all possible. I can not stress this enough. This may or may not be what your daughter has in mind, but it is like learning your scales to a musician. It's certainly possible to become a cartoonist without this type of training, but if you succeed you succeed in spite of the lack not because of it. I would say it is not possible to succeed as an animator without formal training. To become good enough to do this for a living, or even for fun, is a lot of work. But very satisfying.

Some books I recommend are:

• _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_ by Betty Edwards
  
  
• _The Natural Way To Draw_ by Nicolaides
  
  
• _Figure Drawing For All It's Worth_ by Andrew Loomis (and back in print after 30 years for a very reasonable price! $25 at Amazon!)
  
  
• Animation by Preston Blair. This is a Walter Foster How-To-Draw book and it is the best introduction to cartooning for animation. It is a very fun book, and very worth while, but don't neglect the other areas of study.
  
  When she gets a little farther along, get a copy of _The Animator's Survival Kit_ by Richard Williams.
  
  Edit: Your biggest expense isn't going to be software or computers, but time and paper and pencils. I recommend cheap printer paper, 8.5 x 11 and 11 x 17. Regular pencils work just fine. Get them at the office supply store. Better art supplies can make a difference when you are much farther along, but the main thing when starting out is to do lots of drawings, and make lots of mistakes. Ward Kimball, one of Disney's master animators used to joke that, "the first hundred thousand drawings are the hardest." And it's not really a joke.

Hey, Retlih!
How awesome that you're looking to start drawing! You've gotten some good advice in the thread already(taking your time, especially) but in the event that you're looking to learn more, I've got some great books to suggest you work through.

Andrew Loomis - Figure Drawing for All Its Worth

Bridgman - Complete Guide to Drawing from Life

While they may seem very human anatomy-focused(and in a way, they are), they also describe some great general principles and advice to start your journey down pencil road. They also heavily emphasize looking - no, I mean really looking - at things in everyday life and doing your outmost to depict them, which is a great exercise of the hand, the eye and the mind. (practicing this will make you much better over time, but it will take time, much, MUCH more than a month. I'm a concept artist by trade, and I have never met a person even half-decent at drawing who wasn't already a few years or decades into drawing)

If you're serious about this, do avoid focusing too heavily on making and sharing - be it facebook or instagram - pretty portraits of celebrities or dogs or cats or fruit, or you'll be forever trapped in mediocre-pencil-portrait-land where praise comes easy and you'll always feel like an impostor and/or artistically handicapped charlatan. Learn to draw for yourself and in your own pace, making sure not to rush through the process. Think of how you would train your muscles; don't immediately go and try to pull an airliner with your teeth, start with the core and work from there - let it take time, and find ways to make the journey enjoyable.

if you can read sheet music decently I'd recommend William Leavitt's Modern Guitar Method - It's fairly tough for new guitar students because most of them don't know how to sight read, but if you can do that then this is a really great resource and will teach you scales and chords in different areas all over the guitar. This book doesn't hold your hand, so go in expecting that it's dense and might take time a long time to get through.

Outside of working through books, it sounds like you want to know the fretboard notes more than anything, so I'd recommend learning in this order:

• Memorize the notes on the low E string and the A string. (playing e minor and a minor scales vertically [up one string] are useful for this so you don't have to worry about accidentals much yet)
  
  playing vertically is important to know but isn't very efficient
  
  
• Memorize the notes on the 5th fret (ADGCEA) and come up with an acronym to speed things up and to be able to find notes between 5th and 12th frets much faster - A Dog Got Caught Eating Apples for example
  
  
• Check out an app (also an online version) called [Tenuto] (https://www.musictheory.net/exercises) and practice Fretboard note identification, and eventually interval training (learning chords tricks you into doing this too). I especially like this on mobile because you can learn the fretboard pretty well when you're on the bus or taking a dump or whatever. Use the test mode and you'll see yourself getting way faster over time and eventually you'll start to see frets as letters instead of numbers.
  
  
• My biggest advice to most guitarists who want to be well rounded is to learn chords. Chord knowledge is super useful on guitar - you can start to see intervals/arpeggios/scales really well by knowing chords on guitar - they're like the skeletons that outline scales and arpeggios.
  
  my advice for this is to learn E shape, A shape, and D shape barre chords, assuming you already know CAGED+F open chords. That paired with a good knowledge of the E and A string and you are off to a great start. Guitar takes a lot more work than piano in order to see chords and be able to move around efficiently.
  
  Tl;dr get the app Tenuto, also available on pc here and work through William Leavitt's Modern Guitar Method (i'm in no way affiliated with either - I'm a professional musician and teacher and they're both tools that I use daily)

A great theory book for guitarists (starting from the basics) is this. Definitely nothing in there about "polytonal rhythms" (whatever they might be, they certainly ain't "fundamental")!

You'll see it goes as far as "chord substution and reharmonization", but by that point I would be starting to take it a little less seriously, and maybe moving on to something more in depth. (Those "jazz theories" can get controversial.)

Of similar level - less guitar-based - is this. This is more like an exercise book, with the information in each chapter followed by test questions, with answers in the back. (Just one of the answers is wrong in my very old edition... hopefully fixed now.)

I really recommend at least two sources when reading music theory. Every author has their own angle, and their own readership in mind. It may be that one book (or website) clicks with you, but the others will always fill in gaps here and there, and what's not clear in one may be clear in another. When all sources agree, you can be sure you've got good info. When they don't ... more research needed!

Best general theory website is probably https://www.musictheory.net/lessons - very well organised, right from the basics. It will "walk you through" if you resist skipping pages and take it steadily, step by step, in order. You may need the first book above (or something similar) to help translate notation to the guitar.

Don't forget to always play the stuff on the guitar as you're reading. If you don't know how to play it, don't try learning it. musictheory.net provides sounds, so you can at least hear the stuff, but best if you can play it yourself.

Just some I like:

Dev

• [You Don't Know Javascript (series)(]https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS). Short and sweet mostly. Well written. Some are still pending publishing but there are a couple available now. I believe you can read them for free online, I just like paper books and wanted to show some support.
  
  
• Elequent Javascript (second release coming in november). Current version here if you are impatient. I have not personally read it yet, waiting for the next revision. I recommend it due to the high regard it has in the web community.
  
  
• Professional JavaScript for Web Developers. Sometimes called the bible of js. Big ole book. I have not read it through and through, but have enjoyed the parts I have perused.
  
  

  Design
  

  
  (I am weak in the design side, so take these recommendation with a grain of salt. I recommend them off of overall industry cred they receive and my own personal taste for them.)
  
  

• The Elements of Typographic Style. Low level detail into the art and science behind typography.
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited. I read the original, not the new one that I linked. It is an easy read (morning commute on the train was perfect for it) and covers UX stuff in a very easy to understand way. My non-designer brain really appreciated it.
  
  below are books I have not read but our generally recommended to people asking this question
  
  
• About Face.
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things.
  
  
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.
  
  
  You can see a lot of these are theory based. My 0.02 is that books are good for theory, blogs are good for up to date ways of doing things and tutorial type stuff.
  
  Hope this helps!
  
  
  Battery is about to die so no formatting for you! I'll add note later if I remember.
  
  EDIT: another real quick.
  
  EDIT2: Eh, wound up on my computer. Added formatting and some context. Also added more links because I am procrastinating my actual work I have to do (picking icons for buttons is so hard, I never know what icon accurately represents whatever context I am trying to fill).
  

If you can spare the money I most definitely recommend finding a teacher. You will want to start with rudiments (they can be boring, but you'll be glad you did them in the long haul) and while you can pick them up from books, having a teacher giving feedback helps a lot. You don't have to stay with a teacher on the long-term, if you make it clear that you just want a solid base most teachers know what you mean and want.

If you don't have that money, these are three books I highly recommend to anybody who wants to play any percussion instrument:

http://www.amazon.com/Stick-Control-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764040/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Description: This book is full of rudiments. Like ctrocks said: This book is evil. You will most likely both grow to hate and love it. Hate it for both how boring rudiments can get (to me, at least) and how hard they get. But love it for the results and seeing how all those rudiments advance your playing immensely. I suggest picking this up as soon as possible.



http://www.amazon.com/Accents-Rebounds-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764067/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343162586&sr=8-1&keywords=Accents+and+Rebounds

Description: The 'sequel' to Stick Control. This book adds accents and even more difficult rhythms. I would suggest picking this up at an intermediate level.

http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Steps-Syncopation-Modern-Drummer/dp/0882847953/ref=cm_lmf_tit_5

Description: Don't let this book fool you. It all starts out really simple. But this is one of those books that really lays down a foundation you will be very grateful for. And when you're getting to a more advanced level, you will see how you can translate a lot of these syncopated rhythms to the entire drumkit. I suggest picking this up as soon as possible.


http://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

Description: This book is very well named. You will want to grab this book after you got the basics down, imo. You want to work on the independence of your limbs as soon as possible, but not too soon. Yet again: rudiments. But now rudiments that require all limbs.


http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-For-Modern-Drummer/dp/0757995403

Description: We're starting to get into the bigger leagues with this book. I honestly don't quite know how to describe this book except for the word: challenging. Challenging in a very, very good way. I recommend picking this up once you're starting to get into a more advanced stage.


These books are for the basics, imo and in the opinion of many fellow drummers as far as I know. But don't forget: the books are merely tools. You don't want to be only playing rudiments, you'll go crazy. I tended to go for a trade: every half out of rudiments rewards me with a half our of putting on tracks and rocking out. Resulting in one-hour sessions a day. Hope this helps!

Edit: Feeling bored so added more books and descriptions.

Thing is, that sort of thinking doesn't really work too well in jazz - there isn't really "repertoire" in the same sense as in classical music. Some standards are more complex than others, sure, but the difficulty is really what you make of it. In jazz, you generally work from what are called "lead sheets", where all you have is the melody and the chords. Here's one for When I Fall in Love. Pretty simplistic, right? Here's Oscar Peterson playing it. The lead sheet is the basic framework for what he's playing, but all the embellishment and runs and extra chords and everything is just coming from him. So you can't really say whether When I Fall in Love is an "easy" standard or not.

As for how to learn, the single best way is to get a teacher. But if you just want to start dabbling, I would suggest getting some books of transcriptions of famous jazz pianists, just to start getting the feel and sound of it in your mind. Those books will have real performances transcribed note-for-note, so you don't need to know how to read lead sheets or improvise to play them. I would also check out Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book to start learning the theory behind it all, and a Real Book to start practicing with. If you're good at teaching yourself things, the combination of those two books will give you years and years of material.

But I want to re-emphasize that getting some kind of teacher or mentor will help enormously. It's good for classical music, as you know, but jazz is even more like learning a foreign language, because it's improvised. If you just want to dabble for fun, that's fine, but if you get serious about jazz, find someone to guide you, even if it's just an hour a month.

I think it's not bad, I would say the biggest things are around typography.

1. Add more padding around some of the typography.
   
   
2. On the second image that "intro paragraph" is kind of weird, its two paragraphs I think, but in it's own style? Usually those type of things are one headline sentence which leads into the content.
   
   
3. Fix what is called a "widow" basically one word on the last line of a paragraph.
   
   
4. If you are using InDesign, select your text, go to paragraph styles and uncheck "hyphenate" to remove all the hyphenated words.
   
   
5. Some of your text is just oddly aligned, the yellow box quote, each line starts more and more to the left
   
   
6. Look at the "Working in the industry" page, I would redesign to be left aligned, the "rivers" pattern (white space between words) as we call them in typography looks more like lakes in these pages.
   
   
7. I like the fifth image, but add more padding around the text so it's not to the edge of the bounding box.
   
   
8. Pros & Cons page, I like the title design, nice job here; But the box below again with justified text, not working too well.
   
   
9. On the note of the above, make sure your paragraphs have a clear space between the previous paragraph.
   
   
10. You've got a lot of different font types, and styles going on each page, which is fine, but you should come up with a look and feel, that makes it so if each page were looked at separately (like we are here) someone could say "Yes these pages are from the same magazine."
    
    
11. On the contents page (last screenshot) left align the text, it's generally not a good idea to right align text as it makes it difficult to read. (the numbers can stay right aligned)
    
    And Finally:
    
    If you can - try to learn more about grid systems and typography, there are some great books out there that if you have cash or can ask your parents to buy you a couple books, here are some recommendations (even to just look at for inspiration):
    
    Grid Systems in Graphic Design: A Visual Communication Manual
    
    Thinking with Type - This one is one of my favorites
    
    The Typography Idea book
    
    I hope this helps :) And keep at it!! Definitely better than I was doing in high school!

And done!!!

1. Blue the best for obvious reason.
   
   
2. Summer what’s better than beer pong? Pool beer pong.
   
   
3. Usual Food the best because it’s a local thing.
   
   
4. Gift for another for my love of Disney animation.
   
   
5. Book to read great insight into the human race.
   
   
6. Cheap because yummy.
   
   
7. For the doge because adorable.
   
   
8. Useless yet so awesome.
   
   
9. Movie because it’s my favorite.
   
   
10. Zombie to destroy their brains.
    
    
11. Life changing to adapt to in work life.
    
    
12. Add on because my kids are always getting sick.
    
    
13. Fandom because it’s an awesome show and these are in apparently.
    
    
14. Pricey for when the lights go out.
    
    
15. Sharks because it’s badass and my daughter would love it.
    
    
16. Good smells one of my favorite scents.
    
    
17. Childhood feels spent so many playing games on this.
    
    
18. Writers was helpful for me once upon a time.
    
    
19. Obsessed my life of Disney is strong right now.
    
    
20. Weird because lol.

Listening to a lot of mixes is certainly a great idea, I didn't even think about DJing for years, I just love music so much, I realized after a while I had a serious collection going and people seemed to like my taste in music.

I started using Virtual DJ without a controller for a LONG time, just putting together mixes with a mouse and keyboard (painful, but it works). I'm always listening to music, always looking in various places for music new and old. Beatport is a great finger on the pulse of electronic music, but certainly don't limit yourself to one place. Did you hear a song, a band or producer you like? Type that shit into pandora and have a listen, you won't find gold every time, but it's a good way to discover new stuff.

My buddies in the IRC channel (look how to access this room on the right hand nav bar dealie, we'd love to talk to you about getting into DJing) are usually linking this book and this one as well to newcomers. I haven't read them myself though.

Your passion for music will drive you forward, just keep listening and do some practice transitions, keep mixing, all the time. The different styles and techniques you can employ in your DJing can be overwhelming, but just focus on the basics. Learn your style, your niche, your SOUND, work on blending tracks and whatever else you want to do will.. present itself in time. Good luck homie and I hope to see you in #r_djs!

Do yourself the biggest favor possible and pick up a copy of In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch; that will teach you the core concepts of editing and audience psychology and I believe it to be best and most enjoyable. Murch is the master, and his discussion of old film editing techniques, as well as modern nonlinear systems, will not only teach you a lot of terminology, but also the history of it (which should help in understanding it).

Then, you can move on to video tutorials specific to the editing software you are using. They are ALL over youtube, or if you are willing to spend a little money, lynda.com is great and will be much more in depth. For your application, I would suggest Adobe Premiere or FCPX (despite the complaints filmmakers people have about it, it's because the newest Final Cut has been geared more towards videography). I know others who do professional video work that swear by Vegas Pro, but it just doesn't fit my style, but feel free to look into it. Of course, you can start doing simple things in iMovie or Final Cut Express, but you are going to hit a limitation ceiling fairly quickly.

The reality is that your greatest teacher is going to be experience. Edit as much as you can, develop your craft, and keep things simple and clean until you've mastered basics; then play with bells and whistles. And please, please, please be upfront with people about what you do and do not have experience doing. A lot of what I do is clean up for nonprofits and other groups who had a videographer promise a big product and then couldn't deliver. Then I have to make magic happen and restore faith in the industry. I hope this helps.

As far as the art goes I want to recommend a few things- If you go to an art school or have ever taken any kind of art class Im sure youve heard about the importance of drawing from life. It's something any artist worth anything will tell you, but its not always the most fun thing to go out and draw buildings or trees. The thing is, if you can learn to enjoy it your drawing skills will improve like CRAZY. Carry a little sketchbook around with you all the time and ONLY draw from life in it until it's full. Draw people on the bus or in class or just go sit on a bench and do quick sketches of people you see. Draw buildings and trees and moving things, take life drawing classes or find an open model session and draw naked people until youre sick of it. Then keep drawing. Your characters are oddly proportioned, your backgrounds are muddled and unclear, your city at the beginning there looks like a cubist painting, and its all wonky and unclear. Draw one or two things or more from life every day and you will be BLOWN AWAY by how much your work improves in a short period of time. I'd also recommend grabbing a book like this one- http://www.amazon.com/Perspective-Drawing-Kenneth-Auvil/dp/1559346973 and reading through it. Itll break down how to draw things in perspective in a way that will help you understand it and itll make your stuff improve drastically. You can snag it used for under 5 bucks. Another great book is this one- http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333872627&sr=1-1 Its a little more pricey but its considered by pretty much any comic artist to be the best book on figure drawing that exists. Your work has potential, but it's clear that you lack some basic drawing skills that need to be honed to make your work really pop.

Are you asking how to become a better designer, or how to recognize good design?

They are different, but not separate things.

This might help, if you're after the former.

If it's the latter you're after, there's a wealth of books out there: this one among them. But really, learning to recognize good design is a long process of ingestion, regurgitation, trial and error, and experience.

Good design can mean many things. Does it look good? Is it usable? Is it actionable (Does it make you want to do something)? Does it convey a certain mood? Does it reinforce the brand? Does it speak to the target audience? Is it fast? Does it get across a certain message as fast as possible? Is it memorable?

You really have to ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish when it comes to design. What are your goals?

You might not look at something like Amazon and say, "That's great design!", but having your design as understated as possible and maximizing usability is as good design (for their purposes) as much as something like this is meant to be the opposite.

It all really comes back to: What are you trying to accomplish?

Okay, first thing to know is that you're not alone. Animation is a pretty time-consuming and daunting skill to try and learn at first, but everyone has to start somewhere - and honestly, drawing skills aside, I think that animation is one of those things where with enough practice you can get the hang of fairly quickly.

I'm guessing you probably aren't out to hear the typical "just keep practicing and you'll get better" so I'll try and stray away from that.

Speaking as a current animation student, the best thing you can do for yourself is to view as many animations from skilled and professional animators as you can.
And I'm not talking just "watching" animations; Sit down and try and critically analyze a piece of animation. Find something where the movement is interesting to you and try and reverse engineer how that animator may have constructed that scene.
After sitting through a bunch of those, find animations from more amateur or beginner animators, could be of your own animations or someone else's. Compare and contrast between what makes these professional animations work and look good, and why these other ones just don't seem to match up.

I've also taken a look at some of your animations and I don't think they're totally awful. It's clear that you're making an effort to show movement and life in the characters, despite your minimal technical understanding.

​

So, educate yourself on the technical side of things.

Read up on the principles of animation, essentially the core rulebook many industry professionals follow when creating animations. Here is a video which has a pretty thorough look at each concept, and here is a considerably shorter summary of each principle with short examples.

The Animator's Survival Kit is one of the most popular books people recommend to people just starting out in animation - it lays out a lot of the key parts of the 12 principles in deeper detail and focuses a considerable amount of the book to timing and walk cycles.
Here's also a playlist to the book in, more or less, a simplified video form.

Some other books you might want to look into are Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair, and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas.

​

As for the program you're using, I found that Adobe is one of the more simpler and intuitive platforms to use when first learning animation that's still considered an industry standard.
Pushing through and learning the program will help you considerably if/when you decide to move on to a more advanced program.

However, if the difficulty of the software is what's keeping you from animating, I'd recommend using flipbooks and indulging in more traditional forms of animation.
Not only will you be developing a skill in an area of animation not many people today seem to be very skilled in, but it'll keep you from being distracted by all the flashy buttons and options on some digital programs.

​

Hang in there man, and keep animating.

Thank you. Yeah, it was a quick sketch so not as accurate as some other portraits but it was one I had on hand. Some level of drawing is obviously innate; I was about 15 when I drew that and I could draw portraits when I was 10. But a big part of drawing is not your ability to do, and more of your ability to see. How you perceive shapes is a huge factor. A lot of people can learn to draw if they can learn how their brain interprets what they're looking at. When a lot of people try to draw faces they start out ok but when they notice that it doesn't look the same right away, their brain freaks out and starts to make up for it by making lines where there shouldn't be lines and filling in things that shouldn't be filled in. This results in the amateur looking portraits of heavily outlines eyes, noses, and mouths which don't exist in the real world. When you draw upside down, your brain isnt as used to seeing these shapes so you focus more on recreating what the object actually looks like versus what you think it should look like.

This book is a great resource and I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0874774241
I just noticed that its a newer edition but it seems to be getting good reviews. The 1989 version is a classic and is excellent if you can get a used copy. Cheers.

Hey there! I'd like to consider myself a pretty experienced drummer, so hopefully I can be of some help to get you started.

If you aren't too familiar with reading music, I would highly recommend getting Syncopation for the Modern Drummer . It's a great starting book for reading music and familiarizing yourself with common snare & bass drum patterns that can be applied to the drum set.

If you want to learn more how to play the complete drum set, which I'm guessing you'd like to do, check out The Drumset Musician . It provides a basic intro to coordination and ability to use all your limbs separately. (One of my biggest struggles when starting out was forcing my hands and feet to not do the same thing at the same time on the drum set)

Other than those books, YouTube will definitely be your best friend, so don't be afraid to use it!

Best of luck to you, and I hope you end up enjoying the drums as much as I do!

> Rhythm comes built into your body. You have a heart beat and if you close your eyes in a quiet room you can feel and hear the blood pumping in your ears. Your body is designed to be rhythmic.

Complementary reading:

(WARNING: I'm not an expert on anything, this is me trying to push an idea that I like upon which I've done no serious research at all, approach with skepticism and caution!)

I remember reading in The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger (which I don't have anymore and can't go back to) how the synchronicity of our neurons firing played a major role into creating this layer of self-vs-the-world feeling essential in creating a sense of consciousness in the human brain, to the point that a slight delay could have been at the source of some sorts of schizophrenia like feeling totally disconnected with the world or at the opposite of the spectrum a feeling of being only one with our external stimulus. (I found this, but haven't read it yet to ensure of it's content: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4423156/ )

So it's not just the rhythm of our hearts, it's actually the brain connecting everything at the same time (the lights from that apple hitting your eye, the breeze of the wind, you arm moving, your sense of balance - bref, bringing all your senses into one self contained experience) and keeping this sensation as a regular and predictive "tempo" is also essential.

Music plays with and satisfy that sensation. "My arm will take that glass - yep, it did, I have control over it" and "The snare is gonna hit really soon - yep it did, I'm still in contr-- wait what's that sound? This is interesting I didn't predict that! I bet it will be there again... yep there it is!"

Please! Feel free to correct me or add to it, I find this is a fascinating subject.

COMPLEMENTARY READING: "This Is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin, https://www.amazon.ca/This-Your-Brain-Music-Obsession/dp/0452288525

Hey there!
UX Designer/Researcher here. I came from a background in Psychology and Neuroscience research before UX Design. Personally I used the UCSD Extension for a certificate in UX Design. I really appreciated the course work and in conjunction with the Coursera Interaction Design felt like I was given plenty of exposure while also having flexibility to work.
From my experience in the industry, I would look into what area you are interested in. UX careers can involve programming and development, but I use absolutely no coding at my current position (at others I have though). The biggest selling point to an employer is showing an understanding of the process: wireframes, flow charts, user studies, iteration (agile/scrum/waterfall), and design understanding. I have worked on multiple billion dollar webpages and can say the process is nearly identical when scaled down.
If you are interested in some resources to start on your own I would recommend Simon Sinek's Start with Why for understanding how to look at design solutions.
Don Norman has many great books, including The Design of Everyday Things.
Some actual books to look at and learn on your own are A Project Guide to UX Design, Lean UX, and The UX Book. I highly recommend the last one I find it very thorough and digestible and for ~60 bucks is a reasonable textbook.
Lastly, once you have a grasp of UX as a concept I would get familiar with the Adobe Suite, Axure or InVision, and any others from career sites that you might not know about (I really like [Sketch]() as a cheap option ~$99).

Best of luck, feel free to ping me with questions

Starting out is an awesome advantage; not yet set in your ways you can find your own style.

While it is true some complex styles can take a lot of time, pixel art can be super simple and often less is more - like lessmilks's games

Working from something is easier than all at once so keep iterating - i.e. start with your current squares and add just squash and stretch to anticipate motion, or eyes to indicate move direction.

Pedro Medeiros has some great pixel art tutorial gifs

An free browser based sprite editor

Using a dedicated program with layers, pallettes and lighting control makes it much easier - this list of pixel art programs might help (Asesprite is great)

At the other extreme if you need lots of animation use a pixel art shader for blender3D
Or use some of the multitude of Free and Open Source pixel art at OpenGameArt and mod it for your needs.

Submit your stuff to /r/pixelart and request constructive criticism.

The Animator's Survival Kit is a great book (& on youtube)on the art of making drawings come alive as is The illusion of life

Look at spritesheets to see how others break animation down into frames.

Jan Willem of Vlambeer has a great talk on tricks to 'juice up your games'

Note: Obviously this list is incomplete, if anyone has suggestions please add to this. Also this list is not specifically for kevleemur, but for anyone looking to learn about movie stuffs

Online material is nice, but there are many great and more reliable resources that come in these old fashioned book things.

General

Shot by Shot

MasterShots

The Visual Story


Directing

On Screen Directing
(may be hard to find)

On Directing Film by David Manet

Cinematography/ Lighting/ Camera/ On Set Learning

The ASC Manual (some earlier editions come in one volume which is nice)

Creative Control by Michael Hofstein

The Set Lighting Technicians Handbook

Painting With Light (John Alton's book. A little outdated but still a good read).

Reflections

The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video by Tom Schroeppel (very simple, a good start)

The Grip Book

The Camera Assistant's Manual

Cinematography: Theory and Practice



Producing

Creative Producing From A to Z by Myrl A Schreibman

Scheduling and Budgeting Your Film by Paula Landry

Editing

In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch (Sound designer and editor from Apocalypse Now----EXCELLENT)



Screenwriting

Story

Screenplay the Foundations of Screenwriting






ONLINE RESOURCES:


http://www.rondexter.com/

http://cinematography.net/

http://www.rogerdeakins.com/

http://www.arri.com/

http://www.mole.com/

http://www.panavision.com/home

http://www.filmtools.com/

Aside from familiarizing yourself with knowledge and technique the best you can without being involved on set, one of the best things you can do is read up and become as knowledgeable as you can with gear that you will eventually encounter, which is why I listed the last four links. Even if you do plan on going into producing or directing, it is always helpful to understand lighting and camera and why the people working with you need the things they do.


GO LEARN THINGS!

Find a decent teacher. A good teacher will identify your strengths and weaknesses, then gently push you out of your comfortable rut. You might need to ask around locally and try a few different teachers before you find a good fit.

The intermediate to advanced lessons on JustinGuitar.com are worth a look. The jazz and songwriting modules might be of particular interest to you.

Truefire have some fantastic courses on jazz and rock improvisation, all the way up to professional standard. It's not cheap, but the all-access pass is excellent value if you're serious.

If you're serious about mastering the guitar, take a look at Leavitt's "A Modern Method for Guitar". The book goes back to basics with classical notation, scales and harmony. There are no shortcuts and it can feel like a hard slog, but you'll reap the rewards for your work.

The Sodajerker Podcast is full of invaluable ideas on the process of songwriting. They talk to some of the best songwriters in the world about their creative methods.

If you're interested in jazz guitar, check out Jens Larsen, Morten Faerstrand and Jazz Guitar Lessons on Youtube and the lessons and forums at JazzGuitar.be.

Pretty much all vinyl. It's the most fun. But, despite having spun a few parties, it's just a hobby for me, which makes it way easier to justify the format (and a big part of the fun is digging for old house and disco records, and finding gems in the dollar bins).

Ellaskins was pretty helpful when I was starting although I think that just as helpful as his actual videos is his takeaway message, "practice and enjoy" - just gotta stick with it and get the feel for it. Also, I had the book How to DJ Right which helped me visualize some things early on.

As for BPM, I finally got around to putting BPM stickers on my disco collection because the BPMs are so all over the place that I got tired of thinking "oh yeah this track would go great next" and it turns out to be like 20 bpm slower once I start attempting to mix it. I haven't bothered with my house collection because it's all in a similar range and I just have a good idea of which records are "slower" (like 115-120bpm) "medium" or "fast" (closer to 135), and so as long as you are not grabbing an outlier, with practice, you should be able to figure out about how much quicker or slower the new record you're trying to mix in is, and you just get a feel for pitch slider position. I also generally try not to go over/under about 4% on the pitch slider especially if the track has vocals (for something more like, say, techno, I think this matters less). I'm sure lots of people have different opinions on that, just giving you mine.

Second the recommendation of scales and arpeggios, in all keys, major and minor. You can start off with just a few, the easiest ones (go in order of the circle of fifths if you want), and continue to add on. Start slowly and, most importantly, EVENLY, building a good foundation for speeding it up later and applying it to technical passages. But there's no real recommendation anyone can give you for "X amount of times," because scales and arpeggios are things you'll continuously practice no matter how high of a level you get to. At a higher level once you've mastered them, you may not have to do the entire set every day, but you can then apply them to pieces by choosing from your arsenal certain exercises that practice the techniques needed in a tricky section of Rach or such.

A good resource for other technique exercises is the book of Hanon exercises. It's been used for many decades, and includes lots of scale/arpeggio-type exercises, and you can work your way through them. Be aware, though, that they're VERY tedious (literally just pattern building through each key), but it sounds like you have the ability to self-motivate yourself. Be careful not to treat these just as exercises, though, and go through them robotically and monotonously, because it's very easy to see them as such. They're just tools developed to help finger agility, speed, and recognition of patterns so you can apply them to full-blown pieces. It's like a tennis player who practices a certain type of grip for 50 serves a day. Great if she can do it through the exercise, but if she reverts to her old grip when she starts playing a game (putting it into action), the grip practice was wasted. Application of theory into pieces is sometimes the hardest thing to do.

I know this has been a giant essay, but lastly, none of us can really give you an individual recommendation. It seems like you've got the self-motivation to learn yourself, but if you are interested in really getting a structured routine, get a private teacher, if only for a few lessons, to help you develop what kinds of things you need to work on.

For fantasy artists, take a look at some of the artists, and advice, on Muddy Colors: http://www.muddycolors.com/

Also, I write a blog called Lines and Colors on which I profile numerous artists. You might find some interesting artists in the "Sci-fi and Fantasy" category:

http://linesandcolors.com/category/science-fiction-and-fantasy-illustration/

​

For learning figure construction and proportions, are you aware of Andrew Loomis?

https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986

​

What I'm trying to get across about being critical of your level of ability vs. being on a path is to avoid the "I'm not good enough" mindset (which will hold you back) and replace it with "I'm making progress" (which will carry you forward).

I think it helps to understand that progress in learning a skill like drawing is not a steady upward graph, but a series of plateaus. You can work hard for a long time and think you're not making progress or even sliding back, but as you go on, there will be a point at which you'll start to draw a bit better, and you'll realize that you've moved up a notch. You'll be on another plateau at that point, but once you realize that's how it progresses, you should be less frustrated with the process.

​

Yes, fundamentals are very important, and you're wise to realize that, but so is enthusiasm. By all means, work on fundamentals, but also take time aside for experimentation and play. Doodling and sketching for fun is not wasted time for an artist, it's where creativity has free reign and sparks happen. Try doing some just-for-fun, no-goals doodling/sketching for 10 minutes as a warm up before starting your figure studies.

Finding inspiration will carry you far. Perseverance plus enthusiasm is an unbeatable combination.

It's not the advice you are looking for, but I can't stress it enough: design is about problem solving, rather than pure aesthetics.

Sure, making things look pretty is important. However, making your design understandable and easy to use is even more important. It's probably what you should focus on.

You are designing something for real human beings. Your design should solve a real problem in the most elegant way. How? That's something I can't explain in a single comment.

This video series explains it really well. It's not about web applications, but that doesn't matter. The message is the same. You prefer reading? This and this book do an extremely good job of explaining how to design things.

Also, this article explains the point I'm trying to make far better than I ever could. Good luck!

Junior UX person here. Not much of a programmer myself, but it's sufficient for my needs, as I am only doing front-end design when I dabble with code. There is a multitude of ways to learn how to code, but generally speaking, I find that practicing in small repetition helps the best to retain and absorb information. When you are doing a small code example, try to rewrite differently and see how it works in each of those ways. I also recommend coming up with a small project that you can work on (design and putting a personal site live, for example), as opposed just doing the practices, that way you are presented with a real world environment that contains restrictions and possibilities.

Do you draw? It might help to learn how to draw well, which will help you illustrate designs and potentially become a fun hobby.

Some beginner level books I recommend:

• Designing Interactions http://amzn.com/0262134748
  
• Universal Principles of Design http://amzn.com/1592535879
  
• Don't Make Me Think http://amzn.com/0321965515
  
• Design of Everyday Things http://amzn.com/0465050654
  
  Also, you might want to sign up for this course track offered by Stanford.
  
  Lastly, learn how to meditate (or just ways to maintain inner peace in general). It will help once you enter the industry.

I'd say your strongest point is your ability to convey action. The leaping on page 16 is particularly well executed. You also actually have a pretty good grasp of perspective drawing with the environments! It could use a little work, but I feel like every artist could do with more practice!!

The main suggestion I could give you is to start drawing from life. I know you are heavily influenced by Japanese comics, but trust me when I say that all professional manga artists are able to draw from life. What I mean is, take a figure drawing class, or at the very least pick up this book, or any other figure drawing book really. It will help you greatly with getting proportions correct, as well as help you with understanding the internal structure of the body. By skipping learning how to draw from life, and learning to draw from looking at Manga, you're really only taking the face value. Like, have you ever used a copy machine to make a copy of a copy? The original page looks crisp and clean, but that first copy has a few spots and scratches, and then the copy of that copy has big black splotches on it, and eventually the text is completely illegible. Not to say that your art is really bad! It's actually pretty decent for your first comics! I just believe that doing some observational studies will help your work greatly!

The next major thing you should work on is the writing. I get that his blindfold is what keeps his demons at bay, but by starting the comic off with the central character punching a guy's body in two, and then ripping another guy's arm off... it makes me not care about the character. I feel like if you would have shown the readers that he was a kind person, by like, helping the elderly, or defending his father or something, then I'd be like, "Why is this sweet kid suddenly a vicious murderer?" But since you didn't I was like, "Is this a violent comic for the sake of drawing a violent comic?" Therefore, when the dad was brought in to be killed, he started talking about how innocent the kid was, which is the exact opposite of my first impression. Also, why did they kill the dad? Why, then, did they let evil demon kid live, only to exile him? Wouldn't killing Kai solve all of their problems?

Anyway, I feel like you have potential, mainly because you were actually able to produce this much work! Do you have any idea how many people say they want to make comics but pale at the sight of how much work it is? You are a hard worker, and I know that you will be able to persevere and evolve into something so much better than you already are! On that note, buy Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It will change your life. I'm being 100% serious here. McCloud is not only the go-to comics theorist, but he was also one of the first professional Americans to see the potential of drawing comics influenced by the Japanese! Once you have devoured this book, because you will want more, buy Making Comics, also by Scott McCloud. While Understanding dissects the medium and explains things you never would have thought about before, Making Comics applies those thoughts into a school-like setting.

tl;dr: It's good, but could be much better. Worship Scott McCloud.

I am currently using this. It has been very good for me so far, but I don't know if you will learn "tough" sheet music in a month. I have played the piano for nearly 20 years, so I definitely understand standard music notation. This book doesn't go on and on about notation, it just gives a brief explanation and makes you go at it. Since Christmas, I feel pretty comfortable sight reading individual note lines, somewhat comfortable with intervals, and pretty good with the chords that they use most in the first 50 or so pages.

So yeah, my overall opinion is that it's effective. It's not the most exciting music to play and you might have to spend quite a lot of time on it if you hope to read notes from the whole fretboard (after almost 50 pages, I'm still only in the first 5 frets).

Pretty much anything by Stephen Few. His 2nd edition of Information Dashboard Design is a great start. He's also done some great whitepaper type stuff as well. Google can help you find it.

Edward Tufte is pretty famous in the area as well. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is a classic and an amazing book on representing data.

To me, telling a story with data is essential to calling something BI. Otherwise, it's just presenting a bunch of data in a different format than it started. You need to guide users to be able to diagnose issues and make decisions. Wireframing out a dashboard that starts big picture and have different paths users can follow to additional focused dashboards is key.

I just did a presentation on dashboard and visualization best practices at my company's conference for the 2nd time, and both times a lot of people told me how it changed their view of how they view analytics, or that they needed their team or boss to see the presentation because they are thinking about things the wrong way. Most of what I know and practice/preach today is a result of the above two gentlemen, plus things learned on the job along the way.

Visualize the data with the best chart type for the data. Not because they are pretty. Not because users want to see it a certain way. Pie charts suck, don't ever use them. I use this tweet in my presentation. Along with an example chart of when to use pie charts. Your dashboard might be KPIs and bar charts, and that's ok.

I could go on forever...

TLDR; Check out a couple of guys who are good at what they do. Tell a story with your data! Pie charts suck. Use the right visual. Feel free to PM me questions.

I was in the same boat a couple of moths ago, went to musical school from ages 6-13, stopped when I moved to another country. Haven't touched piano for 6 years. Decided to get back into it, bought a digital piano 2 months ago.

For key signatures, I recommend practicing scales and arpeggios, acquiring this book can certainly help. For music theory, I highly recommend checking out Dave Conservatoire. He has made a bunch of videos about general music theory.

Sight reading is something you pick up with experience, a good exercise is to sightread absurdly easy pieces (start with grade 1). I was never much into sight reading, but I do have this PDF which might be helpful. There should be plenty of sight reading exercises on the web.

I am not sure what you mean by this, is it training relative pitch or improvising on spot and playing exactly what you have in mind you want? I seem to improve both of these things while transcribing music into a score. I guess composing could work as well. I started out painfully slowly, (took me 5 hours to transcribe first 20 seconds of Come on Eileen). But, just like any skill, you will get better at it with experience. The software I use for ranscribing is called Sybelius, but if you can not afford it (or if you do not support pirating) there are free alternatives.

Arguably, the most important thing is staying interested. Playing scales, learning music theory, listening to the same song 50 times because you can not figure out a chord or timing can be extremely boring at times. So playing a piece that truly challenges your hands will reward you much more than practicing tedious scales.

>I was coming here to say the same damn thing.

​So was I, but I'll actually do it.

Animation degree here. (Really dont need a degree. My professors who worked in the industry said many dont have degrees still to this day, its all about passion and skill... and being willing to work 16 hour days)


Seriously fantastic animation. All 12 principles of animation are represented.

Your bro just needs to keep uploading and making animation. Its essentially a portfolio.

Animation companies dont care if you have a degee. They want a stacked portfolio. With solid animation.

When your bro starts applying for animation jobs. Make sure he has a solid demo reel. A demo reel is only the best animation hes made compiled in one vid. Its the resume for these places. Its all about skill.

Fyi the #1 and #2 books (no particular order) for learning animation and developing it are priceless. My professors stressed these books every year. They were used in 90% of my animation classes.

This book...

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators https://www.amazon.com/dp/086547897X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5JSgDb5GHT9WJ


And this book....

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786860707/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OKSgDbZMMJBVE


This would make an fantastic gift as well for any animator


Tell your bro not to be down about it. The companies dont care about schooling. Skill and passion are all that matters.


Edit: forgot our schools favorite websites!

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/

Cartoon brew keeps animators updated on general cartoons and animation


http://www.11secondclub.com/


We got extra credit for doing the 11 second club. You got an A for that semester in one class if you could break the top animations that month. Few students did that.

The only advice you need right now is to improve your draftsmanship. You need to understand anatomy to be able to draw people, no matter what level of detail/realism you wish to achieve. Animators and cartoonists who who draw all varieties of cartoon characters are always masters of drawing the human form. Even drawing characters like Fred Flinstone requires you to understand anatomy, such as the way joints bend, or hands and fingers function. Having a grasp on anatomy will help your story telling, no matter how you choose to exercise (or disregard) the knowledge. The best place to start learning is a very well known book authored by Andrew Loomis: Figure Drawing for What its Worth (this is one of the most well known peices of instructional drawing literature) Buy this book and study. You already have ideas that you want to draw, and thats great, and improving your draftsmanship will help you be able to get your ideas out. In addition to anatomy, You will also need to learn some basics of perspective, to be able to convincingly draw your stage for example, or how to set up characters around the stage and make them appear to all be on the same plane. Scott Robertson has a great book that teaches fundamentals of perspective, worth looking in to How to Draw Good Luck!

Number one is never using paper that has lines or squares on it.

I'd recommend not drawing over the same lines again and again, make the line in one go. This'll improve overall line quality. You can search for "hairy lines" if you're not sure what I mean.

Then this book is very good, try to study anatomy before drawing a stylized person. This'll give you more control, and you'll have a better understanding of what you can play with.
https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986

Next to that you can try to play with lineweight and adjust untill you've found a comfortable weight. This video explains it pretty well. https://youtu.be/x0zl5NnEAyU
Scott Robertson also had books: https://designstudiopress.com/product/how-to-draw/

You can find more great books on the internet, design studio press has a nice selection.
I'd recommend getting;
How to draw
How to render
Framed ink
Framed perspective
Figure drawing for what it's worth

What really helped me was dropping the pencil, and using a black fineliner. That puts you in the spot that everything you do has a very direct consequence. You'll learn to draw quicker in the beginning, and noodle/work slow in the end when you're doing details.

Good luck!

Design and style are highly subjective. There are elements and rules that make things "look good" (contrast, alignment, proximity, repetition, etc.), but people can come up with many different things that are all good.

Usability is the same way. There are elements and rules that make things "usable" (Flow, Fitts' Law, Kinesthesia, affordance, etc.), but people can create radically different interactions that allow for the same goals.

Our role, is to act as a mediator. As Bill Buxton said, "design is compromise." You take all these grey areas and moving parts, and create a solution that gives the end user the best experience. You'll know its the best, because you can observe and measure it through usability testing.

If you want to make things look prettier, start by reading The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams.

If you want to make things that work better, start by reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

Edit: Grammar

This is such an important (and IMO urgent) question for so many.

Sadly, the vast majority of guitar instructional material is either a) written for the unserious learner or b) written to not scare away the up-until-now-unserious learner.

That's why you see so many books and blogs on understanding theory (or playing jazz) that are full of TABs––in order to get the now-serious student to buy the book (or sign up for the course, etc) you first have to reassure them that everything is tabbed out and they won't have to read music, as if TAB and theory weren't at odds with each other.

Kudos to /u/igotthejack for this:

> While doing this focus on the note names while you play so by the time you're done you've also memorised all the notes on the fretboard.

And Ben Levin's youtube series is one of the few instructional pieces that doesn't make me want to stab myself in the face with one of the many pointy ends on a shredder's guitar.

Other quality standouts include:

First, Learn To Practice by Tom Heany

Music Reading For Guitar By David Oakes

Modern Method For Guitar Vols 1, 2, & 3 by William Leavitt

The Real Easy Ear Training Book by Roberta Radley


But there's good news in this too:

Because the vast majority of talented guitarists are so busy chasing their tails trying to figure out how to sweep pick faster or two-handed tap in the LandoCalrissian mode, even reasonably talented players with mediocre reading skills and a halfway decent knowledge of practical music theory get hired to play really great gigs.

That's my experience anyway. And getting hired for those gigs put me in contact with so many world-class players, which a) did as much as anything else to make me a "real" player, and b) helped me realize how so many of the things in the guitar-teacher-circle-jerk-echo-chamber are unimportant.

I think if you can get your practicing organized, fall in love with the metronome, record yourself (and listen back) often, and train your ear, you will be one badass player in a reasonably short time.

And if you learn the instrument in a way that lets you communicate with other non-guitarist musicians, you set yourself up to get actual paying work (and music theory gets waaaaaay easier).

My suggested order is:

1. Names of notes (to the point you prefer them to TAB coordinates: that's not the 8th fret of the 3rd string, it's Eb)
   
2. What notes go together in keys (ie know the Circle of Fifths so well you're never in doubt as to whether it should be called D# or Eb)
   
3. Understand how chords are built (so you're unfazed by something like | Fm7b5 Bb7b9 | Ebm9 | even if you've never played it before).
   
4. Understand how chords get built into progressions. (so when you glance that last example, you immediately think "oh, ii-V-i. Eb harmonic minor.)
   
5. Rhythmic notation (I'd say at least 80% of the guitar charts put in front of me on a paying gig are chords with rhythmic hits and no further melodic notation to read.)
   
6. Chart reading (knowing what "DS al Coda" and "second system" and "tag" and "ritard" mean, and what musician slang like "football" and "trashcan" and "railroad tracks" and "split the difference" mean.)
   
   Shameless plug, but I built a system that teaches these in a tiny daily lesson delivered by email. 1-4 are done, 5 & 6 are on their way soon. Free for now, just sign up for the first one (Note Names) and it'll walk you through all 6 in order (I'll be done with 5 & 6 by the time you finish 4).
   
   After that, read through the David Oakes & William Leavitt books mentioned above and you'll be 80% of the way to professional musicianship. A dedicated student (who already has a fair amount of technical proficiency) could pull that off in 6 months.
   
   TL:DR - The fact that you are even asking a question like this leads me to believe that you'll do just fine. Good luck!
   

I do! Don't have a lot of beats so far but I'm working on it haha. You can check them out here if you want.

Also if you really want to learn music theory I recommend the book "Music Theory for Computer Musicians" by Michael Hewitt, you can also "borrow" it online if you catch my drift. It's a series of 3 books if I'm not mistaken (second covering harmony and third one composition). Then maybe you'd want a piano scales book (like this). Knowing your scales is pretty important if you want to compose music, you'll have to practice those and the book is really helpful for that. You can also find free versions online of similar books (I think r/piano has a link for one in their beginner's guide).

But again, really not that necessary for lofi hiphop unless you want to go deep. Music theory however is not wasted knowledge, so go for it if you're really motivated.

https://www.amazon.ca/Sick-Little-Monkeys-Unauthorized-Stimpy/dp/1593932340

here's a book about the making of ren and stimpy. it's mostly about ren and stimpy. but it touches on some things... including sending work overseas to be animated in korea and sending people over to Rough Draft, the company that animates the simpsons (i think still?) and many other shows. the ren and stimpy crew sent people over there because there's a language barrier, and it's Very difficult to get the Performance out of someone who doesn't speak the language. you can't tell when and where to accent words with, say, an eyebrow raise... so you have to have Everything timed out in advance and it allows for very little improvisation from the creative team.

there's a ton of information about animation history out there but not so many documentaries... a lot of sucking off of Frank and Ollie and the disney "9 old men" for having "figured out" animation rules back in the day (as if they were the only ones doing it). -- they released a book called the illusion of life https://www.amazon.ca/Illusion-Life-Disney-Animation/dp/0786860707 that talked about the early days of disney film.

animation used to be this wildly experimental thing. they first were funny rubber hose things, then people started trying to tell better stories and then the disney crew tried to make you REALLY sympathize for the characters by really focussing on "pathos." to this day, every fucking Cal-Arts student has pathos drilled into their fucking head like it's the only way to tie your shoes.

meanwhile, the wb team kept it loose, they were doing animations to show before movies, set to some of the jovial tunes in their music library. they called them looney tunes. and after 15 years of making them, they Also started to get quite good. John Kricfalusi (the ren and stimpy creator) wrote a ton about Bob Clampett and Chuck Jones (but mostly clampett) on his highly educational blog here http://johnkstuff.blogspot.ca/

hanna barbera discovered it was way cheaper to just make a well drawn design that's highly graphic so that the appeal wasn't in the movement but in the image. then you could just animate the mouth or the legs, limiting how much drawing you really needed. with this method, animators were able to produce Much more footage.

other studios started up to try and milk the surge of this new artform, and sell toys and cereal with it. there were TONS of Really Shitty cartoons. i mean, look at this shit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXd-2gVOZFk

anyway... in the early 90s, disney experienced "a renaissance" with their films. there IS a documentary about that... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyeoyRjEiUU it might be on netflix...

disney cartoons became enormously profitable again and animation production kicked into high gear. disney put a ton of money into their tv division and nickelodeon, a rather new company at the time, did the same. but while disney's focus was on their IPs, spinning off pre-existing characters into shows, Nickelodeon needed new material, so they put a HUGE focus on the creators. this of course, attracted creators. Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life... etc... it was a huge wave of highly entertaining new material, and it did well.

of course, in the late 90s, animation had sort of ballooned a little too much and films were kinda missing targets despite Enormous budgets, and 3d was this hot new thing people were curious about...

here we are 20 years later and animation is SO FUCKING PROMINENT... tv, films, streams, games, not to mention medical instruction videos, architectural project development, chinese news lol...

rick and morty is animated in canada though. not korea. so there's that.

I'm not aware of any specific study that directly addresses your question, but based on existing, similar research, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a correlation.

The Mozart Effect has long held that listening to classical music potentially increases spatial-temporal reasoning, a skill highly core to success in mathematics. As classical music is obviously purely instrumental, perhaps there is an inverse link in which mathematically-minded people tend to be more attentive or appreciative of patterns rather than lyrics.

If you're interested in a more in-depth read about how our brains interpret music, and what makes us like the music we like, I'd highly recommend reading This Is Your Brain On Music. Again, I don't recall the book addressing any studies that directly answer your question, but there's a lot of intriguing information to gain if it's a topic of interest to you.

And since everyone else is, I may as well add in that I too am mathematically-minded and tend to focus on pattern more than lyrics.

The D3300 is a great starter camera. In Ken Rockwell.com's review he describes it as:
>
> The D3300 is for people who want great pictures. More expensive cameras are for people who want fancier cameras.

Obviously it's meant to be tongue in cheek but it's a great camera. I bought mine 3 years ago and still shoot with it. I constantly evaluate upgrading but with what I do there's just no reason to shell out the dough for a new body over some sweet sweet glass.

Check out my Flickr for work exclusively shot on a D3300. It's all about prioritizing investment in lens at this point.

Also if you aren't shooting in manual definitely invest in some material to get you there. I started with Understanding Exposure and I really enjoyed reading through it. You'll learn the most by actually getting out there and shooting though as cliche as it sounds. Also I really enjoy Mango Street Labs for video tutorials; they're short and to the point and quite pleasing from a style standpoint.

Also look to invest in some post processing software. Right off the camera pictures are often pretty flat and while you don't want to completely pervert them in post some small touches can really make a huge difference.

Most of all though just get out there and shoot what you want and how you want. Don't let the hipsters on instagram dictate what you like and don't like.

Of course! :)

Here are a few of my favorite youtube channels that cover our universe.

These guys do a good job of giving excellent and creditable facts while keeping the video short and sweet.

https://www.youtube.com/user/scishowspace

This channel covers more than just space, but again they give good facts while still keeping the videos not too lengthy.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt

And of course, nothing gets more credibility than the big guys themselves, NASA. These videos are a bit long, but are just loaded with a ton of real world space Q&A's.

https://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision/videos

The few magazines I have lying around my house right now are all related to space, and they are a great read for any of my guests! Heres a link for the planetary society (main source of my reading material)
http://planetary.org/

and here are a few books that every curious mind should take a good long glance at when it comes to our universe.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pale-blue-dot-carl-sagan/1103141155

https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

(this one is a MUST READ!)---> https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378

The main podcast I listen to is Star Talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He has a plethora of different guests on at all times talking about new and fascinating topics. Here's a link for his show

https://www.startalkradio.net/

And when it comes to articles, most of them come from Reddit! I am subscribed to a ton of different space related subreddits which post countless numbers of interesting articles all the time. Here is a small list just to name a few

r/space r/astronomy r/astrophysics r/astrophotography r/science r/spaceporn

I hope this helps!

There are a lot of areas that need work here... (Obviously because it's your first mix)

There's nothing wrong with varied genres, but you have to connect songs together with something. It could be a vocal line, complementary melodies, or a matching vibe. Mixing in a song that is the complete opposite mood to the previous track can also sometimes work as a surprise. Songs have to relate! Learning to beatmatch helps you find these connections because as you cue your next track and mix it in you start to hear what works and what doesn't. Your song choices have absolutely no flow. They're not beatmatched or in key and the filter use throughout them is irritating...

The two Toro Y Moi songs and "Get Lucky" share a similar vibe. You could mix those, then move to a darker tone with "Addiction" followed by the Metronomy song. That may or may not work but it's worth a shot... Since you are using Ableton you have the luxury of pre arranging your mix ahead of time, so you should make sure it works perfectly.

As a beginner I highly recommend this book: How To DJ Right It's definitely not Ableton specific (it was written in the era of turntables) but it will help you through your initial stages.


And you should watch this video for some basic mixing techniques: 5 Basic Mix Techniques

I thinks you've got a good start with your taste in music but take the time to practice the fundamentals!

Ha, time to shine, Swiss guy over here. Try to think of grids merely as a help to keep your proportions in order – a good grid should provide a stable structure for your layout without constricting you too much (of course there's always a little constriction using a grid but thats part of the fun). I always use grids, mostly 9x9 or 12x12. You can easily set those up in Indesign under Layout > Create Guides > then just type in whatever proportions you desire. You can also add gutter if you want to but it's not always necessary. There's no right or wrong when it comes to grids – if you're a beginner though, you might consider classical grids like those Joseph Müller-Brockmann (here's a very good book) introduced before moving on to create your own ones. I really love grids, they can be a fantastic help – the whole layout just feels right because every element corresponds with the proportions of the page. I always like when you "feel" the grid but don't actually see it.

It's an interesting book.

R's powerful
ggplot2 graphics system has a default output
style which follows many of these principles, and it looks good.

But it's not my favourite book in this area.
My favourite would be (both)
Bill Cleveland's books

• The Elements of Graphing Data (1ed 1985, 2ed 1994)
  
  
• Visualizing Data (1993)
  
  After seeing references to Cleveland in the
  R documentation
  (for example, the
  loess
  and
  lattice
  packages),
  I read both the Cleveland books, and found them extremely interesting.
  
  There's a classic paper by Cleveland and McGill,
  "Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods"
  (you can download a PDF)
  which is also interesting. (And if you find that interesting, you would
  most likely enjoy the books mentioned above.)
  
  The Cleveland books are not widely famous like
  The Visual Display of Quantitative Information,
  but I found them more appealing in a way that's kind of
  hard to describe. But, very roughly
  
  
• Cleveland feels more like a statistician trying to create
  visualisations which are efficiently and accurately perceived.
  
  
• Tufte feels a little like a designer trying to create beautiful
  visualisations based on a kind of minimalist aesthetic. Or
  maybe like a philosopher trying to find the essence of a
  visualisation.
  
  The conclusions of the two approaches are not necessarily
  incompatible. They would certainly agree on the
  undesirability of most of the ridiculous
  stuff
  in the MS Excel plot menu. (So if Tufte stops people doing that, then the more people who read him, the better).
  
  But when there's tension between the two approaches then I'd
  choose the first (Cleveland).
  
  For example, the
  Tufte (minimalist) boxplots
  manage to represent the same information as a box plot, but with less ink.
  But they feel like they might not be as easy to read.
  (See also "W. A. Stock and J. T. Behrens. Box, line, and midgap plots: Effects of display characteristics on the accuracy and bias of estimates of whisker length. Journal of Educational Statistics, 16(1): 1–20, 1991"
  (abstract) )
  
  

Drawing with the right side of your Brain by Betty Edwards is a great book. She took the time to do studies and research to figure out how the drawing process works and it will help beginners get into the mode of the drawing that you need. After that you can branch off to drawing techniques like lines, perspective, shadows and light logic, texturing, then color.

I know you say free but I started using a copy from my local library. If you do not like that resource or are lazy... then look to the right under the "subscribe" button and there are 3 links with resources there.

Note: You do not need a lot of materials that she asks you to get! I am not sure if she recommends a grid but I personally hate grids so I never use them... But I do recommend in getting a GOOD ERASER! A white one and a knead eraser! Especially the knead... I love mine to the fullest! After you have a good eraser then look towards getting 2-4 good pencils where the range is quite large. So a nice 2H pencil, maybe a 2B, 4B, and 8B or something. Doesn't matter when you start out.

And a tip! DARK LINES! Do not scared to make things nice and dark.

>And I saw the A7III with it’s kit lens 28-70 and I loved the picture quality you can get with it.

Just me, but before buying one, maybe rent one and see the pictures you can get with it. The fact that the pictures you see as examples of what an A7iii can do may have been taken by a very talented, experienced photographer who was willing to drop all that cash on the body+glass and may also be extreme skilled at post-processing sometimes doesn't occur to a newb. :D Composition, timing, subject matter, processing: those are still up to you.

Higher resolution, better tonal smoothness, wider dynamic range, better high ISO performance those are all very nice, but they don't always equate to "more beautiful," especially in unskilled hands. A full-frame camera doesn't turn you into a great photographer any more than buying a guitar turns you into a great musician.

>Should I leave the RX100 M7 and get that A7III and learn or what?

I'd vote for learn with the RX100.

Are you sure you've exhausted what your RX100 can do? Do you shoot with it in M mode? Do you post-process its RAW files? Have you used it on a tripod? Have you tried off-camera flash? (Dumb optical slaving can still work with its built-in flash). Have you taken a class or read a book on basic composition or exposure control? I'd say try those things (and price out the cost of those Sony FE lenses for an A7iii) first before sinking into the money pit that is interchangeable lens camera systems. It may turn out that an α6000 (or a Fuji X or Panasonic/Olympus micro four-thirds body) is a better starting point for getting into interchangeable lens cameras.

Don't make the mistake I did and just start buying gear. Sure, having all this fancy stuff is wonderful, but having just the stuff you need, and knowing how to use it is way better.

I cut my teeth working local amateur-professional theatre. It was a wonderful way to start and while I don't work with that theatre anymore, I will occasionally drop by and lend a hand on shows, etc.

The other thing you could do is fire off some emails to rental companies asking for work experience. A spare pair of hands around the shop is always useful and you can learn a lot.

Alternatively, if you have a vague understanding of audio already is reading this book. It's a bit wordy, but it explains very well all the concepts you'll need to understand. I'd advise reading it cover-to-cover, you'll probably have to set aside some afternoons.

Whatever you do, good luck! This is an awesome industry to be in, and your enthusiasm will take you far.

I would say get some DVD's and watch the special features.
If you're still interested, get some books about filmmaking, filmmakers, and story telling.

Read "In the Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch. As a film maker it's one of the best books I've read. It's based in editing, as Walter Murch is an editor, but it really covers the basics of how to make something "work" on the screen. Check it out for sure!

Then get yourself a camera, heck, it can even be the camera on your iPhone or whatever you may have. Shoot some film (not literally, you're using your phone), use the stock editor that comes with your computer (iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, whatever you may have) and cut something together, even if it's just a minute or two long.

If you're still enamored with film like the rest of us are, then start working on bigger projects, and try to find work on a film set (or if your strengths are in the office, you could be an Office PA - better hours, but less exciting than being on set). Working on a film set could be dictated by where you live (in the event you don't live in a "film friendly" city, there will be less opportunity of course).

The advice of jeanfr elsewhere in this thread is also top rate.

Good luck to you!

Lynda.com has a lot of good stuff. I believe it is subscription based, but it is a good service. Now while it is important to know how to use software, editing theory is an even bigger deal. Start watching movies praised for editing. Last years, "Whiplash" won best editing at the Oscars, and it was well deserving. Also reach "In the Blink of an Eye" by, Walter Murch.

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Eye-Revised-2nd-Edition/dp/1879505622

It's a really great lesson on theory in editing, and I highly reccomended it to anybody wanting to learn editing.

This is very much from a graphic design background rather than as a developer but here are a few of the best resources I've used.

The Elements of Typographic Design by Robert Bringhurst

This is specifically for typography rather than design as a whole but its the best book I've ever read on the subject. Graphic designers (at least the ones I know) use it all of the time as a reference. PDF


Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Muller-Brockmann

Josef Muller Brockmann was a genius with grids and this is his book teaching other's his use of them. PDF


The Kerning Game

Super simple little game but it'll teach you the basics of kerning.


More so then these resources though I just advise you to look at history, look at famous designers (Paul Rand, Paula Scher, Mark Farrow, Wim Crouwel) and their work then try to think critically about what makes them successful, what are their short comings, why they chose those colours and then try to develop your own style using multiple designers that have come before you as a reference. If you have a graphic designer friend you can bounce ideas off of and get feedback from all the better.

I don't think they would expect a lot of practical experience regarding animation from you, because they will teach you that, right? I got a illustration test at the animation college I attended, to create a comic.

However, if you want to start practising, a good one to start with is a bouncing ball. This will probably be one of the first examples you will get at that college. And if you want to have theoretical information, as well as examples, I can recommend the animators survival kit to you. It is the de facto book on animation, written by master animator Richard Williams, animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The Illusion of Life is also a great animation book to start with. It is written bij Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's best animators.

In terms of working in the animation industry, it can be difficult to get a steady job animating, but if it is your passion, it is very rewarding and great to do! Good luck!

Thanks for all your feedback, I really appreciate it!

As an aside, and as one comic-creator-doing-it-for-the-love-of-it to another, if you're looking to improve your artistic skills, I've recently picked up a few Andrew Loomis books to read, including Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. I'm not sure if you're looking to improve in a specific area, or just overall, but that book seems to be pretty good for figure drawing pointers. And furthermore, in the same vein, I highly recommend studying anatomy--knowing exactly what's underneath the skin and how it moves does absolute wonders for improving the look of figures on the page.

Also, you don't have to be ridiculously proficient at drawing or anything to make successful comics. If you look at a book like Persepolis, the drawings are very simplistic, yet distinct. Nothing is highly rendered or incredibly detailed, but that in no way makes it any less successful than, say, an Alex Ross-illustrated book. It's all in what you're trying to do with the story you want to tell.

Are you sketching from reference or your imagination?
Understanding human anatomy is a long process but can have great payout if you put in the time.
I recommend going back to the very basics which involves retraining your brain.
You have to get rid of what you think a face should look like and replace it with the actual structure of the body.
You may think you know but you don't. Learn the skull, skin, lighting, then coloring in that order.
Check out these resources. I can't find the good stuff but the best will be in a book

A good simple starting point - How to draw face basic proportions
If you're serious this is the greatest database of free human photo references

I wouldn't necessarily call myself a designer and none of my sites have that Web 2.0 flair, but I don't think I'm terrible at design. Unfortunately, like most things, you'll just have to practice. One way I learned was just taking some sites that I like the looks of and re-implement them.

Of course it depends what you're going after. Like I said, my sites aren't very Web 2.0. One site that I personally think looks pretty nice (in a forum/blog kind of way) is pouet.net. A site that I worked on (but never actually finished) mimicked their style. I like how everything is compact. If/when I implement a forum/comment feature to my CMS, I'll probably use pouet as an example.

If you're going for something like this, either get ready for a lot of work or just hire a designer. Although gradients and some curves go a long way to making a web site "Web 2.0" compliant. :)

I was directed to this book: Non-Designer's Design Book. Although I haven't gotten it yet or read it so I can't say whether it's a good book or not.

I think the best place to start would be learning some traditional animation skills. Two really great resources are the Animators Survival Kit and The Illusion of Life. I would read the reviews to see what you think might be best. The Illusion of Life goes into a lot of Disney history and the history of animation itself. Once you get a feel for that, I'd check out Ross Plaskow's Youtube Channel. A lot of people say he has one of the best character animation tutorials. There's lots of different ways to animate characters (frame by frame, rigging with the puppet pins in after effects, rigging with duik in after effects, or rubber hose in after effects (a really easy to use way to create rubber hose style animation and my personal favorite), and adobe character animator - just to name a few. Just an FYI, I suck at character animation, I just really enjoy compiling educational resources. Anyways, I would suggest if you aren't feeling too confident, once you get the principles under your belt to invest in rubber hose if you can afford it. It's really simple to use which gets you making things faster, and I think that's one of the most important parts of learning (just having fun messing around and making stuff). School of Motion did a review on it if you wanna check that out, and Ross also shows how to use it for character animation on his channel. But just remember it's not about becoming dependant on the plugin, I just think it's a great way to get making things quickly.

For a broad and comprehensive overview with less technical information, go for Screenwriting 101 by Film Crit Hulk, along with any of his wonderful articles.

For the technical specifics of modern screenwriting, The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley is solid, though it's really not that complicated and I wouldn't worry too much. Just use a program like Celtx to do your formatting and you're sweet.

If you want to blow your mind with dogmatic but largely correct info on the structuring of effective stories in general go for The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, written about playwriting but incredibly relevant.

I also recommend you learn the basics of filmmaking. I personally believe it's vital to properly writing screenplays (rather than generic writing dressed in screenplay clothes). The stuff's got to be shootable, designed for a reasonable budget, and more importantly, suited to the film medium itself.

A great book for that is On Film-Making by Alexander Mackendrick.

I also highly recommend In the Blink of an Eye by Walter Murch, written about editing and invaluable. Editing is the essence of film as we know it, so it's in your interests to know it intimately.

Well, it looks like the Link on the mug is also in the style of Wind Waker's Link, so I still vote for that if it came down to these two options :)

You could get her an ocarina. Or you could pre-order Hyrule Historia. It won't come out until January, but it should be a great gift for any fan--it's a book with art and trivia about Zelda. Or perhaps a Zelda T-shirt. There's also this shirt with hearts. I personally love this shirt as well.

Or you could get Zelda-themed jewelry or a tote bag. Here's one bag, and here are some Triforce earrings.

Hope that helps!

If you are looking to do sound I would definitely pick up a copy of Yamaha's Sound Reinforcement Handbook. It is a super helpful book for giving you a basic knowledge of systems, how they work and how to make them work for you. It is somewhat out of date but is still super useful. The Audio Dictionary is also a very helpful resource.

Also make sure to get a very good knowledge of power and electrical theory. I'm always amazed at how lost a lot of audio engineers/sound designers seem to be when it comes to power. It is an extremely important part of what we have to do.

Alright, after reading part of The Science of Interstellar apparently it's because the fifth dimension is very much compressed compared to the lower dimensions.

I'm going to type this all up, a summary of the chapter about bulk space. Gimme a few minutes.

Explanation

So, first, gravity. Gravity in our regular universe decreases by the inverse square law, and you can visualize this by drawing lines out (see diagram on the left) outwards from any body with gravity, let's say the sun.

Now, if I am at distance r, the number of tendex lines over a certain area at that distance will give me the strength of gravity. This means in three dimensions, it correlates to the increase in surface area of a sphere. So, let's say at 1 meter from an object the gravity is 4πr (r in this case is 1) m/s^2. At 2 meters, it would be 4π4, or 16π, since 2^2 = r^2.

Now, since gravity can transcend dimensions, this means that gravity would also propagate in higher dimensional space. This means instead of the surface area, the strength of gravity will fade based on the change in volume of the sphere. (Integrating surface area) which would be 4/3πr^3. This means gravity would run by an inverse cube law, which means it would be incredibly weak and the planets would fly off.

So how in interstellar can people traverse meaningful distances in the 4th dimension, but not fuck up the rest of physics? Well that results in the ante-de-sitter warp of the bulk. So let's assume we go back to Romilly's paper universe, where our universe is two dimensions (paper thin) and the "bulk" or hyperspace is three dimensional. We can't have gravity escape away from the paper, so we instead only allow it to escape an infinitesimally small amount by having the amount of traversable space in the bulk decrease with its distance from our universe.

Here is a diagram of how this works. The lines are tendex lines of gravity, and the out-back direction is the direction of hyperspace. Our universe (or "brane") is the orange plane. This basically prevents the volume of the sphere being significant and prevents it from dispersing gravity.

This also presents another possibility - that the space in the bulk between Gargantua and Earth is much smaller than the distance in real space, although this is technically not a wormhole.

The distance would shrink by a factor of a few trillion, changing the distance between Coop and Earth from billions of light years to only tens of millions of miles (1 AU)

The "confining branes" 1.5cm from our universe are at the distance necessary to allow for gravity to not screw up, but allows for space to accomplish meaningful actions outside of our brane. (This is where the tesseract was located)

Therefore once the tesseract collapsed, Coop had already travelled the distance back to earth due to the excessive time dilation he had already experienced around the black hole. As a fun thought experiment, ante-de-sitter warping is actually one of the theories used to unify string theory and it's 11 dimensions and the escape of gravity as a way to account for dark energy repulsing the universe. (Gravity forces could be leaking into our universe from the bulk, and it's only noticeable on very large scales such as galaxy clusters)

tl;dr Space inside the tesseract was smaller than regular space because physics, and this with the time dilation meant Cooper was already home by the time the tesseract collapsed. Hyperbeings just needed to push him in the right direction.

Also the pictures are from a later chapter of the book that my sister got me for Christmas. Thanks Karen!

Aw, I'm sorry you're feeling sick and bummed out. I'm in the same exact boat! I'm got super sick yesterday, and today I'm feeling no better. And this week is my Spring Break! I had plans to be outside and stuff. Sigh. I guess it's better that I got sick when I didn't have school though. =/

I saw this video last night and I couldn't help but smile! It's silly, but I like Taking Back Sunday a lot, and I thought it was really cool of them to do this. Plus, the chorus is like...genuinely awesome, haha! And they showed bunny and chinchilla puppets (I have a bunny, and I had a chinchilla that passed away two years ago).

If that doesn't put a little grin on your face, then this ought to do the trick! =D

Oh, and here's my item: piano practice book.

Please feel better and thank you so much for hosting this contest!

My favorites:

The Visual Story


In the Blink of an Eye

How to Read a Film (personally bored by it but a lot of film classes I took in uni versity used it)

The Filmmaker's Eye (huge fan of this book)

The rest of this post is just general advice on how to gain a deeper knowledge of film.

If you want to learn the grammar of film, read about film history (it will help introduce you to editing/camera movement/directing techniques and the filmmakers/films that influenced your favorite directors).

Read criticism from Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, David Bordwell (his blog is a fantastic resource), Jonathan Rosenbaum, and older critics such as Bazin/Eisenstein. There are more out there, but this is a good start.

Read reviews after you watch a film instead of beforehand--those reviews will hopefully give you a deeper view of the film. That being said, you really have to look around to figure out who you like, stylistically speaking. There are a lot of critics that have no idea what they're talking about from a technical standpoint. If you're bored with short reviews without substance you might like FILMCRITHULK.

Watch YouTube tutorials and video essays on filmmaking. Video essays are particularly helpful at illustrating and pointing out things that you might not have noticed otherwise. It's also a hell of a lot more entertaining than reading criticism that was written in 1962 in another language.

From a practical standpoint, pick up a camera and shoot something. Edit it. Read books on composition--I've found that photography composition books are pretty helpful. Read scripts from films you love and films you haven't seen to get an idea of how a film exists before the first day of shooting takes place.

Keep watching films, and watch them actively. Don't text during films, and try to watch them in one sitting. The goal is to immerse yourself in the image and analyze the shots/cuts/etc. as they happen. Watch films with commentaries, watch them with the sound off, and branch out into different genres and time periods so that you can attain a more concise view of film.

Above all else, watch as many films as you can. You'll find that the watchlist keeps growing, no matter how many films you see.

It would be truly «Swiss Style» if you did the following things:

• Use a proper Grid system, align everything to it. Like /u/ponypebble said, this is a good starting point, for further info you could buy Grid Systems by the legendary Josef Muller-Brockmann.
  
• Don't use lines to divide the content, it should be clear what belongs together from the placement of the text blocks (you can keep the line of the Logo as it comes from that)
  
• Don't use as many font styles and font colors. Regular(or light) and Bold in white should suffice. Also keep the kerning consistent. Also you could change from a geometric to a more Grotesque Typeface (Like Akzidenz Grotesk, Neue Haas Unica, Helvetica, Univers, Akkurat usw)
  
• Remove the transparent type in the background
  
  
  Don't get me wrong it looks really good and I like it as it is right now, that would simply make it more «Swiss Style» as the old Swiss Masters around that time used more or less the following principles:
  
  
• Absolute Minimalism, only show whats necessary
  
• Strong use of Typography, often experimental Typography
  
• Strong, even rigid use of Grids, construction of complex Grid Systems. (For Example this Poster by Josef Muller-Brockmann)
  
• Use of mainly Grotesque fonts
  
  I also just love the old Swiss Masters and geeked out a little, sorry. :)
  
  

You should get a piano bench that is adjustable. I started with the one linked below, although I'd shop around as the price may have jumped up. I don't remember spending 50 dollars, but considering it's lasted 6 years I guess it was worth it. It's not 100% adjustable since it has "levels" and you might end up needing a height between levels. The acoustic piano benches that are fully adjustable cost $200+ though. A bench at the proper height will help avoid back pain after playing for a little while.

Scales are good to learn, you can do this as a warm up. I just listed two that seem to come up often and only had a single black key in them. I wouldn't recommend learning only scales as that would get boring. My teacher would have me do one scale as a warm up and when I could play it two-octave, hands together, including the 3 primary chords and inversions, and the arpeggio (the book we used had all of these on one page) then we'd move to a new one.

Now I'm going back and playing the scales of any pieces I'm working on at the time during warm-up. I do 4 octaves contrary motion. So it starts out normal then half way left hand starts going back down and right hand keeps going up. When right hand hits the 4th octave it starts going down and left hand starts going up again. Makes them feel fresh. I can learn scales faster than pieces so soon I'll have to start rotating scales in that aren't tied to pieces.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GUR8V8/ref=s9_acsd_top_hd_bw_boCu1_c_x_3_w?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-2&pf_rd_r=ZWXDVWB0S7AT05JJVCKX&pf_rd_r=ZWXDVWB0S7AT05JJVCKX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=ab2b2dba-42b7-45ce-8379-d10e65c92e8d&pf_rd_p=ab2b2dba-42b7-45ce-8379-d10e65c92e8d&pf_rd_i=11966001

Edit - this is the new book I use for scales. The old one was fine but this had a little more info in it. There were some sections at the beginning that explained how scales were formed before getting into the usual big list of all of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682

Awesome! I kind of fell into the job. I was initially hired as a web developer, and didn't even know what BI was, and then got recruited by one of the BI managers and fell in love. To me, it is one of the few places in IT where what you create will directly impact the choices a business will make.

Most of what I do is ETL work (taking data from multiple systems, and loading them into a single warehouse), with a few cubes (multidimensional data analaysis) and SSRS report models (logical data model built on top of a relational data store used for ad hoc report creation). I also do a bit of report design, and lots of InfoPath 2010 + SharePoint 2010 custom development.

We use the entire Microsoft BI stack here, so SQL Server Integration (SSIS), Analysis (SSAS), and Reporting Services (SSRS). Microsoft is definitely up and coming in the BI world, but you might want to try to familiarize yourself with Oracle BI, Business Objects, or Cognos. Unfortunately, most of these tools are very expensive and not easy to get up and running. I would suggest you familiarize yourself with the concepts, and then you will be able to use any tool to apply them.

For data warehousing, check out the Kimball books:

Here and here and here

For reporting, get good with data visualizations, anything by Few or Tufte, like:

Here and here

For integration, check these out:

Here and here

Also, if you're interested in Microsoft BI (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS) check out this site. It has some awesome videos around SSAS that are easy to follow along with.

Also, check out the MSDN BI Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bi/

Currently at work, but if you have more questions, feel free to shoot me a message!

I'm not saying it was Arts, but it was Arts.

The secret is that drawing is just like learning any other skill. Amazing progress can be made from practicing or learning a little each day. I'm trying to find it, but there's a thread online where, over a few years, this guy goes from barely drawing cubes to lovely oil paintings.

If you want something more concrete, I highly recommend Betty Edward's fantastic book. She will take you from stick figures to professional-looking portraits.

I've been a drummer since I was 8. Quite rusty right now as a lot of things have kept me from practicing (moving to apartments for years, etc.). Honestly, it's never too late to start. Are you going to be playing Carnegie Hall in a year? Wildly unlikely. But as long as your expectations are grounded in reality, that learning anything takes time and practice, you should be good.

As for practice and sense of tempo/timing: it is imperative that you buy a good metronome and practice with it regularly. You don't necessarily need a Dr. Beat, though I have one, and it is useful at times. But you do need some kind of click to play off of.

Can you read music? If so, there are some really good technique books out there that I'd recommend that are classics. Most people hate grinding technique, but I find it oddly relaxing. Here's some good books:

• Stick Control
  
• Syncopation
  
• Master Studies - (Do wait on this one a bit and start slow. It is possible to injure yourself if you get too carried away. Stone Killer exercises are no joke)
  
• New Breed - This one's actually a full drum set book. Quite challenging. May want to wait on this one a bit or try to just play one or two of the lines together (eg. right and and right foot).
  
  The first two books are probably where you should start. With all of these, start the metronome at molasses level slow - like 60 bpm or maybe even slower if you're not accurate at that speed. Get comfortable with that speed - maybe 15-30 mins at that speed without any mistakes. Then bump the timing up slightly 2-4 bpm and repeat. At no point should you be tensing up. If you are, you need to stop immediately, shake out your arms, and back down the tempo a bit.
  
  Make sure that you're making more use of your fingers than your wrists. Wrists can be good to start the stroke, but your fingers should be doing a lot of the work.
  
  There's a lot of other technique stuff that you can do, but the above alone could take you 5-10 years of solid daily practice if you're being thorough.
  
  Good luck!

My advice is to buy some books. There's a lot of info on the internet, but it's all spread out and often chopped up into pieces, which can make it a bitch to make sense of. If you're going to go the internet route, though, check out guitarlessons365.com (not affiliated in any way). The vast majority of the lessons are free and the music theory section is completely free, not to mention very good.

http://www.guitarlessons365.com/lessons-archive/music-theory-lessons-archive/

Regarding books, this is a great, easy to read book on music theory that won't hurt your head. I'd start either here or with guitarlessons365.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Music-Theory-Book-understanding/dp/1440511829

For guitar books, Fretboard Logic is a must read. Definitely buy this. It focuses on the 5 position system (CAGED). If you're interested in learning the 7 position system for the major scales and other 7 note scales, check out guitarlessons365.

http://www.amazon.com/Fretboard-Logic-SE-Reasoning-Arpeggios/dp/0962477060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348759781&sr=8-1&keywords=fretboard+logic

After that, I'd check out this as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Guitarists-Everything-Wanted/dp/063406651X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348759708&sr=1-1&keywords=guitar+theory

Worth checking this out as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Fretboard-Workbook-Barrett-Tagliarino/dp/0634049011/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348759937&sr=1-3&keywords=guitar+theory

Here's another important book. I'd probably buy this last, though.

http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348760257&sr=1-1&keywords=jazz+theory+book+by+mark+levine

"An elegant universe" by Brian Greene is a good read. It leans more towards string/superstring theory. "The science of interstellar" also touches on some concepts related to quantum mechanics.

I know that you asked for books but "PBS Spacetime" is a YouTube channel that does a great job explaining quantum mechanics. "Veritasium" is another great channel with a few videos explaining phenomena as well. I posted links below. Physics is dope. Happy hunting!

An elegant universe:
https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X

The science of interstellar:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393351378/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502885214&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=the+physics+of+interstellar&dpPl=1&dpID=41Ii8OmMy0L&ref=plSrch

PBS Spacetime:
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g

Veritasium:
https://m.youtube.com/user/1veritasium

Start playing around, learn what you can do with your new hardware! Don't worry about technical skill yet, just learn some verbs.

Load up a track you like and play with it. What can you do with it, and how do you do it on that controller? Speed it up? Slow it down? Play it backwards? Set it so it plays from a certain point in the track when ever you want it to? Loop a section of the track?

How about another track? Maybe you can get them to play at the same time? See if you can get the timings matched up? Try playing one track, then playing another before it's done and see if you can transition smoothly with the crossfader. Take a dance track with lots of drums on the intro and outro and see if you can transition from its ending into its beginning.

Once you're comfortable with that a bit, I'd say start soaking up tutorials and learning from others. This book really helped me: How to DJ Right. If you have any friends who can teach you how they do it, they will be your most valuable asset.

This is all general advice, I've never played with an S4 before, but I can't imagine it'd be different than learning any other cool new music thing. Best of luck!

You say you play an instrument so I'll work under the assumption you have a basic understanding of chords/chord professions.

There are many different types of "jazz" music and ensembles- big band, Dixieland, Latin fusion, etc. but based on your question I'm guessing you're asking more about small combo-improv-heavy Jazz.

The basic idea is that you have a chord progression and typically a melody is played once or twice, then followed by improv solos. These solos work within and around that same chord progression.

A good way to get started is to pick a song you like, find the chord progression, and start practicing the notes on repeat. Don't try to play in tempo, just go through each chord and play the scale. Then start over and do the same thing but do scale in thirds instead. Then do arpeggios. Then start to embellish a little. Another great learning technique is to listen to pros solo on a song you like, then try to mimic their licks.

If you're looking for a good place to find chord progressions for pretty much every jazz standard, get yourself a [Real Book](The Real Book: Sixth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0634060384/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_sI1oxbFVNBDBW)

Fair warning: improv has a VERY long learning curve. You'll probably suck at first. That's okay.

Animation degree here. (Really dont need a degree. My professors who worked in the industry said many dont have degrees still to this day, its all about passion and skill... and being willing to work 16 hour days)


Seriously fantastic animation. All 12 principles of animation are represented.

Your bro just needs to keep uploading and making animation. Its essentially a portfolio.

Animation companies dont care if you have a degee. They want a stacked portfolio. With solid animation.

When your bro starts applying for animation jobs. Make sure he has a solid demo reel. A demo reel is only the best animation hes made compiled in on vid. Its the resume for these places. Its all about skill.

Fyi the #1 and #2 books (no particular order) for learning animation and developing it are priceless. My professors stressed these books every year. They were used in 90% of my animation classes.

This book...

The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators https://www.amazon.com/dp/086547897X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_5JSgDb5GHT9WJ


And this book....

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786860707/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OKSgDbZMMJBVE


This would make a fantastic gift for any animator


Tell your bro not to be down about it. The companies dont care about schooling. Skill and passion are all that matters.


Edit: forgot our schools favorite websites!

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/

Cartoon brew keeps animators updated on general cartoons and animation


http://www.11secondclub.com/


We got extra credit for doing the 11 second club. You got an A for that semester in one class if you could break the top animations that month. Few students did that.


Edit: thanks for gold! insert keyframe of me jumping in 80s pose

Your skills to 'show, not tell' will become more essential. As the previous comment said, you are going to lose most of the 1st person POV prose accommodates (and even if some of it is retained....compare something like Fight Club the novel, to Fight Club the movie or Fight Club 2 the graphic novel....still considerable differences once visuals come into play.). Even dialogue can be a bit of a sticking point - it depends on the genre you're writing for as how much room you have before audiences start to get bored.

If you're writing for film/animation - consider learning about basic camera movements and shot framing (ie ECU, CU, WS, rules like the 180 degree rule). Watch videos on film analysis, one of my favorites is the Every Frame a Painting channel on YT, but there are other series/videos out there that aren't completely boring (and some that go very extensively into worldwide film history, such as A Story of Film: An Odyssey which is streaming on Hulu at the moment, used to be on Netflix)

Animation is a little trickier as a lot of writing is actually done in the storyboard phase (so is more art oriented), but a classic there is Disney's The Illusion of Life book as a starting point even for non-artists.

If you're writing for graphic novels: My favorite beginner reference is the DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, with Will Eisner being another classic author on the genre. Brian Michael Bendis did a book that's pretty good too.

Likewise, stage plays, radio plays, have their own sets of tips and industry tricks, but I'm not as knowledgeable on those topics to offer suggestions. Good luck and have fun!

I honestly think that learning some music theory will help. It gives you a deeper understanding of why things sound good when they do, and what things are likely to sound good together. To me, learning theory isn't really learning "someone else's music." Think of music like a language. Learning grammar and syntax won't stop you from making unique and beautiful sentences.
Also, I recommend reading This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levintin. Good luck! :)

music theory on youtube

https://youtu.be/Ud9CpGOG1GE

see if you can hook up your instrument to a computer or get a modest priced/used one that can and get synthesia

https://synthesiagame.com

pickup this book; you can take the cdrom that comes with the book and load those midi files into synthesia. This will allow you to ensure you are doing the exercises in the book correctly

https://www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Group-Piano-Adults-Book/dp/B0071F9BIY/ref=sr_1_26?keywords=Alfred+piano+book&qid=1572991464&sr=8-26

Learn the landmark system (instead of the typical Every Good Boy Deserves Chocolate and FACE methods of learning the Treble Clef

https://youtu.be/jSOU-J9KHbg

I also recently had this book recommended to me but it has not arrived yet

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences/dp/0739003682/ref=sr_1_6?keywords=chord+book&qid=1572991814&sr=8-6

I just started using this app to train my ear to identify notes

https://mdecks.com/politonus.phtml

My method so far about 8 months into learning. My best friend is a professional musician (lives far so can't help me practically) and unlike some opinions floating around he was very encouraging of using Synthesia as long as I continued to pursue actual music reading in parallel. There is a button on Synthesia to show the sheet music so you can do both. That said sitting with just the book or a piece of music that is familiar in front of you and forcing yourself to spend some time with it alone is very fulfilling and will come slowly as you work with all of these materials. Good Luck!

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's a solid lens for your camera at a very affordable price. There are a few other options like random and sigma but he 55-250 optically surpasses them.

You really can't find a better lens anywhere near that price for that camera. Make sure you shop around for a good deal. Check Adorama. BH photo. Amazon. Ebay.

It's not a very long lens but like I said you have a camera with which you can crop and still get usable images. Take a look at the canon 55-250 on pixel peeper or the flickr pool for it.

That's a couple hundred thousand photos to show you the quality you can achieve.

Remember photography is not about gear as much as skill. This is a great starter lens and if you're unhappy with photos you're making there are plenty of good books to read to improve your skills.

I usually recommend these three to start

Understanding exposure
Learning to see creatively
National Geographic ultimate guide to field photography

As for settings, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ1-lTg6AoQ

For shooting action shots (like a sporting event), you'll want 1) Focus area: wide 2) Drive mode: continuous shooting fast 3) Focus mode: Continuous AF 4) Lock-on AF: On (that setting is in the menu under the camera icon in section 5

For general photography, it's extremely useful to have the a6000 set up to do back-button focus. To set that up set 1) Pre-AF: Off 2) AF w/ shutter: Off 3) Under custom key settings set the AEL Button to: AF on 4) Focus mode: AF-C, I also like to 5) make the focus area: Center -- this allows you to use the focus and recompose method of taking photos

With back button focus set up, you hold down the AEL button when you want to focus (perhaps using the focus and recompose method to focus), release the AEL button once you've set up your focusing, compose your shot, and you can then take as many photos as you want without your focus changing. THEN, if something starts moving, hold down the AEL button again and keep taking continuous photos and track the subject in the center of your camera (or use Lock-On AF to keep track of the moving subject) -- it'll make more sense once you start taking photos, but back button focus allows you to essentially use AF-S and AF-C at the same time and it saves you valuable time when taking photos

Intelligent auto (the green icon) is a good setting if you're just starting out and need to shoot an event but don't know what you're doing. It chooses everything for you and can get some good shots. But it limits your creative control and the camera's choices aren't always the best choices. I use aperture priority most often, it's a good way to start learning about exposure -- I recommend this book if you're a beginner and don't yet understand the interaction between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-Fourth-Photographs-Camera/dp/1607748509/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483816559&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=composure+photography+book

Here's my list of the classics:

General Computing

• But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone
  
  
• The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
  
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  
  Computer Science
  
  
• The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science
  
  
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, 2nd Edition (aka The Dragon Book)
  
  
• The Art of Computer Programming
  
  
• Algorithms, 4th Edition
  
  
• Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (aka CLRS)
  
  
• Essential Algorithms: A Practical Approach to Computer Algorithms Using Python and C#, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Grokking Algorithms: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (aka SICP, available for free on the MIT website)
  
  
• Discrete Mathematics with Applications, 4th Edition
  
  Software Development
  
  
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann
  
  
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (aka The Gang of Four)
  
  
• Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer: your journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  
  
• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
  
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  
  
• Programming Pearls, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual
  
  
• Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams
  
  
• Hacker's Delight, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 3rd Edition
  
  Case Studies
  
  
• The Soul of a New Machine
  
  
• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
  
  
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
  
  
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
  
  
• Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd Edition
  
  Employment
  
  
• Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions, 6th Edition
  
  
• The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide: How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
  
  
• The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally
  
  
• The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
  
  Language-Specific
  
  C
  
  
• The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition
  
  Python
  
  
• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
  
  
• Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python
  
  C#
  
  
• The C# Player's Guide, 3rd Edition
  
  C++
  
  
• The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with C++: from Control Structures to Objects, 9th Edition
  
  Java
  
  
• Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures: Comprehensive Version, 11th Edition
  
  
• [Java: A Beginner's Guide](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Beginners-Seventh-Herbert-Schildt/dp/1259589315/, 7th Edition)
  
  
• Java: The Complete Reference, 11th Edition
  
  
• Core Java Volume I - Fundamentals, 11th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6th Edition
  
  
• Effective Java, 3rd Edition
  
  Linux Shell Scripts
  
  
• The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Wicked Cool Shell Scripts: 101 Scripts for Linux, OS X, and UNIX Systems, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible
  
  
• Mastering Linux Shell Scripting
  
  Web Development
  
  
• Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics, 5th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming, 3rd Edition (also available for free on the author's website)
  
  
• JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development
  
  
• HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
  
  
• You Don't Know JS: Up & Going
  
  Ruby and Rails
  
  
• Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails, 4th Edition (Note: this book is somewhat out of date compared to the live version on the author's website.)
  
  
• The Well Grounded Rubyist, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer
  
  
• Agile Web Development with Rails 5.1
  
  
• Programming Ruby 1.9 & 2.0: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, 4th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent Ruby
  
  Assembly
  
  
• Assembly Language for x86 Processors, 8th Edition

Scales would be the obvious place to start. Work on one scale every week for the whole week. Find a resource online for proper fingering or pick up a cheap resource like this. Hands slowly separately. Then hands slowly together. Work with a metronome.

Try to find a teacher as soon as you can. Even a few formative lessons (1 to 3 months) will do wonders for your playing down the road and give you the best possible chance to develop good technique.

Music flashcards are good. Back in my day they were actually on paper, but nowadays there are apps which do a better job. Make it a priority to be comfortable reading music.

Now that you have your keyboard, I strongly urge you to examine your chair height. Most people sit too low and this starts causing extra wrist tension. Look for the forearms to be level or sloping slightly downward toward the keyboard.

Good luck! Take it slow, don't expect anything to come quickly. Be patient. Have fun!

OK, I get asked this type of question a lot so I have some pre-fab answers for you:

>Someone asked me about teaching yourself art (which is the way I learned) I thought I would share my replay in case It might be helpful to some of you.

>Fundamentals (walk before you run):

>How to draw http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933492732/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $30
Figure drawing for all its worth http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401411454&sr=1-1&keywords=figure+drawing+for+all+it%27s+worth $25
Color and Light (this book blew my mind) http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401411299&sr=1-1&keywords=color+and+light $15
Imaginative Realism http://www.amazon.com/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y $15

>Digital Painting:

>Digital Painting Techniques 1 – 6 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=digital+painting+techniques+&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Adigital+painting+techniques+ About $35 each = $210 total

>Also pick up some art books for games like Halo or Assassin’s Creed. There’s lots of great concept work in there to give you an idea of what to pros do.

>Visual design:

>Picture This (a very simple explanation on how all the components of a scene can tell a story) http://www.amazon.com/Picture-This-How-Pictures-Work/dp/1587170302/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401412344&sr=1-1&keywords=picture+this $15
Essentials of Visual Communication (A detailed breakdown on how the human brain consumes an image and how you can use this knowledge to best communicate your ideas) http://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Visual-Communication-Bo-Bergström/dp/1856695778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401412394&sr=1-1&keywords=Essentials+of+Visual+Communication $30

>Structured Education:

>Digital Tutors (Perfect for learning a program) http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/index.php $50 a month or $515 a year
Ctrl+Paint http://www.ctrlpaint.com/ Free
CGMaster Academy https://www.youtube.com/user/CGMWORKSHOPS/videos?view=0&flow=grid

>Also I wrote on my blog “Become a better Artist Overnight” http://garretaj.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-to-become-better-artist-overnight.html where I take you through tried and true techniques on how to do focused learning revolving your sleep pattern. This is the way I did it (and still do it)

>Communities a must for getting feedback and ideas:

>http://conceptartworld.com/
>http://www.artstation.com/

>https://www.facebook.com/groups/400586640025350/
>https://www.facebook.com/groups/221278101324638/
>https://www.facebook.com/groups/awesomehorse/

>The final thing is you. You have to really want this, it’s not easy. Don’t buy this stuff or go to an expensive art school because you think it’s some kind of shortcut. The focus here is not becoming a good artist, but becoming a good student. Learn how to learn effectively, learn how to love learning, bust your ass, and always work on improving yourself.

>Do that and nothing can stop you. Or don’t.

Hope this helps

For engineering concepts, and a great general reference on sound systems and how they work, the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook

For sound system design, the best reference is Bob McCarthy's Sound Systems: Design and Optimization

For another great book that discusses both system design as well as artistic sound design, John Leondard's Theatre Sound is top notch.

Shannon Slaton's Mixing a Musical: Broadway Theatrical Sound Techniques is a great picture of how the "big shows" are run.

For a beginner's guide to sound, the [http://www.soundcraft.com/support/gtm_booklet.aspx](Soundcraft Guide to Mixing) is a good primer: not as technically dense as the Yamaha book.

There are others out there, these are my favorite.

This is your brain on music. The idea that when something musical surprises us, you know you might let out a little snicker and think "wow that's really good" or "interesting I wouldn't have done that but I like it" is like an inside joke we can appreciate. I can't help but think of that all the time now. Also the fact that we are programmed from a very early age to interpret and appreciate music. Just a great book in my opinion.

I am currently working in a data warehousing and business intelligence role at a bank. Aside from the basics of ETL, SQL and OLAP, I would recommend having at least a basic understanding of financial accounting. I have also found it useful to read The Data Warehousing Toolkit as well as some other Kimball books.

For entry-level work, there are two recommendations of related skill that have served me quite well to get my foot in the door and show added value: Excel and reporting.

Every institution needs reports developed and it amazes me how rare it is to find well-built reports that clearly communicate their intended information. Being able to follow a few simple guidelines for effective layout and design go a long way. Edward Tufte wrote the definitive work regarding this, but I use Stephen Few's work for more up-to-date examples.

Excel has proven itself very useful for quick ad-hoc analysis and manipulations. Also, it is a mainstay application for most financial services companies and being fluent in functions, pivot charts and VBA is quite useful.

Firstly, it's fantastic seeing people with an interest in editing. Editing is one of those rare things where it's both an incredible art form and a well paying job (when you get the work).

Like others have said, the three big tools you'll need to know now and going into the future are Adobe Premiere, Avid, and Final Cut Pro X (perhaps in that order). All of these tools have their own strengths and weaknesses and it's important to know all three. With that being said, editing is all about, well, editing, and not the tools you use. So I'd recommend picking up some books on editing theory. Walter Murch's In the Blink of an Eye is a nice, light read which is quite thought provoking.

But back to the software itself! Like others have said, learning Adobe Premiere first is probably wise, as you'll find it less difficult to learn since you have experience with Sony Vegas. Likewise, Premiere is becoming a real powerhouse in the industry, which is crazy because 5 years ago it was considered a bit of a joke.

The only recommendation I have is to, while you're still a student, pick up an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. As a student, you should be able to get a crazy deal.

Good luck with everything!

I've been drawing for years, and the best book I've ever read on drawing is called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Basically, it's a book on how to draw for people who aren't predisposed to drawing. It's full of good exercises and information to help you learn.
Otherwise, I'd say the best way to get better at drawing is to draw. Every day. Everything you see, any time you have a moment. Also, keep a sketchbook specifically for drawing your own hand over and over and over - and never throw any of them away. When the book is full, you can look back to the beginning and you will see improvement. Don't get discouraged if they're ugly or you mess up - those drawings are just to get better at drawing, you never have to show them to anybody. Good luck!

I haven't seen a (free) scale and arpeggio manual online, but a complete training book is available for $5 at amazon. You may as well buy one because it will last a lifetime and it will give you a rock solid foundation to build your repertoire upon.

For free sheet music the best place I have found is the Petrucci Music Library at imslp.org. Best of luck on your piano journey.

Read the Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook

The Sound Reinforcement Handbook
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881889008/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_NBtDDbV6TBG8X

It has all the fundamentals you need to work with live sound.

You’ll do well to find someone who already knows how things work and shadow them on some gigs, preferably in different venues, indoor and out. Church sound can be a good place to start, but remember that any installed system has already been set up and configured so things go pretty easy.

If you play an instrument, get out there and play as much as you can, so you understand how it feels on stage and can relate to the musicians you’re running sound for.

Good luck!

• Learn how to NOT RUSH. It is a tendency of every beginner musician I've ever known. The easiest way to force yourself to stay slow is to subdivide in your head (Subdivide AS MANY TIMES as you need to stay slow. You may be physically playing notes slowly, but if you're thinking at the fastest rhythm possible, It will be next to impossible to rush). Use a metronome/click track on the slowest possible setting and play songs you're comfortable with until you can keep a steady beat.
  
  
• Learn about rudiments. These are the building blocks for a lot of different rhythms. I'd highly recommend picking up a good book on rudimental drumming and practice the examples forwards, backwards, and sideways! This book is my number one recommendation for ANYONE serious about learning rhythm.
  
  
• As several people have said, dynamics are incredibly important for percussion. As a quick example, take any rhythmic passage, then practice accenting the downbeats, the upbeats, then alternate, then accent TWO downbeats, two upbeats, three downbeats, three upbeats, etc. Immediately you will get a feel for the importance of dynamics.

Senior Level Software Engineer Reading List

Read This First

1. Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment
   
   

   Fundamentals
   

   
   

2. Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
   
3. Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions
   
4. Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML
   
5. Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail
   
6. Rework
   
7. Writing Secure Code
   
8. Framework Design Guidelines: Conventions, Idioms, and Patterns for Reusable .NET Libraries
   
   

   Development Theory
   

   
   

9. Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests
   
10. Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications
    
11. Introduction to Functional Programming
    
12. Design Concepts in Programming Languages
    
13. Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
    
14. Modern Operating Systems
    
15. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
16. The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
    
17. Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
    
    

    Philosophy of Programming
    

    
    

18. Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It
    
19. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think
    
20. The Elements of Programming Style
    
21. A Discipline of Programming
    
22. The Practice of Programming
    
23. Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective
    
24. Object Thinking
    
25. How to Solve It by Computer
    
26. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

27. Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
    
28. The Intentional Stance
    
29. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes In The Age Of The Machine
    
30. The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures
    
31. The Timeless Way of Building
    
32. The Soul Of A New Machine
    
33. WIZARDRY COMPILED
    
34. YOUTH
    
35. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

36. Software Tools
    
37. UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language
    
38. Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development
    
39. Practical Parallel Programming
    
40. Past, Present, Parallel: A Survey of Available Parallel Computer Systems
    
41. Mastering Regular Expressions
    
42. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools
    
43. Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice in C
    
44. Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book
    
45. The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security
    
46. SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
    
47. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
    
48. Data Crunching: Solve Everyday Problems Using Java, Python, and more.
    
    

    Design
    

    
    

49. The Psychology Of Everyday Things
    
50. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
    
51. Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty
    
52. The Non-Designer's Design Book
    
    

    History
    

    
    

53. Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality
    
54. Death March
    
55. Showstopper! the Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft
    
56. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
    
57. The Business of Software: What Every Manager, Programmer, and Entrepreneur Must Know to Thrive and Survive in Good Times and Bad
    
58. In the Beginning...was the Command Line
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    

59. The Art of UNIX Programming
    
60. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
    
61. Programming Windows
    
62. Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X
    
63. Starting Forth: An Introduction to the Forth Language and Operating System for Beginners and Professionals
    
64. lex & yacc
    
65. The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
    
66. C Programming Language
    
67. No Bugs!: Delivering Error Free Code in C and C++
    
68. Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied
    
69. Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#
    
70. Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit
    
    

    DevOps Reading List
    

    
    

71. Time Management for System Administrators: Stop Working Late and Start Working Smart
    
72. The Practice of Cloud System Administration: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services
    
73. The Practice of System and Network Administration: DevOps and other Best Practices for Enterprise IT
    
74. Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
    
75. DevOps: A Software Architect's Perspective
    
76. The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations
    
77. Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
    
78. Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry
    
79. Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation
    
80. Migrating Large-Scale Services to the Cloud

Design is really an emotional process. A lot of what makes good design good is because it feels right, without logic. Sometimes it's instant, sometimes it takes ages. I would recommend collaborating with a designer and work through design problems together. If you can't do that, then you gotta start with the basics.

Imitate what you like. Most things you interact with in the form of media, such as websites, books, films, all have a designed element to them. Someone, at some point, though of everything that you're seeing with such excruciating detail that most of the time (just like good special effects/compositing in film) it's invisible.

Some excellent books:
The Elements of Typographic Style by Bringhurst
Envisioning Information by Tufte
Made You Look by Sagmeister
Grid Systems by Josef Muller-Brockmann (might hard to find for cheap unless it's used)


From those, branch out and find sources that YOU like, and keep adding to your library. And copy it mercilessly until you hone your craft. Be inspired! Good luck.

[Music, Culture, Aboriginal Voices] Episode 74 ~ Don n' Mack Attack, Gyroscopic Juggler Appears + Interviewer Becomes Interviewee

NSFW

iTunes // Soundcloud // Google Play Music

By the end of the show five guests had rolled thru the studio to share their stories, or at least their unique perspectives. Not going to lie, there may have been alcohol involved. But, I think you'll agree, we tapped into some pretty raw honesty.

5:13 - "Softball report" > More of a beer league commentary than anything, let's be honest. #sports

19:00 - Rafa, from Montreal, steps up to the mic reminds us how beautiful the weather's been in paradise. Turns out he's got some legit hippie knowledge bombs for our listeners:

"The universe pays you off differently than a paycheck."

49:25 - I read a passage from "How to DJ Right" www.amazon.ca/How-DJ-Right-Scien…ying/dp/0802139957

1:19:35 - I thought "devil sticks" died out in the 90s. But no, turns out they still bring meditational minds like Juan into the flow state in the 2000s eh? Actually, we just saw this dude straight-up gyroscopic juggling legit right outside the studio and bid him come in. So glad he did, because it brought a deep sense of chill to a situation that might have otherwise spun out of control, u know?

1:40:40 - Rafa decides to turn the tables and begins asking me questions. He felt my listeners deserved to know a bit about what brought me to Tuff City Radio. I hope you enjoy the details he managed to extract.

The Frequency Horizon is a West Coast podcast based in Canada's surf corridor of Tofino-Ucluelet, B.C., blending the freshest oceanic sounds with enlightening interviews and unique mini-doc segments.

Twitter // Facebook // Web

Woah! That’s a terrible experience, you should definitely get a refund!

Some online resources which may help you:
Coursera has a very good Introductory course on UI and UX design, with topics ranging from prototyping, wireframing & user studies. Attended the course a couple years ago, and it’s been incredibly useful!
https://www.coursera.org/specializations/interaction-design

Butterick’s practical typography website is a great resource for Typography studies
https://practicaltypography.com/

Nielsen Norman Group’s articles often have great insights on interface design:
https://www.nngroup.com/

If you’re designing for a specific platform, you could read their human interface guidelines, which provide a lot of practical help.
https://developer.apple.com/design/
(Make sure to watch their WWDC sessions, which often talk about basic principles in UI Designs)

If you haven’t already, check out the Design of everyday things by Don Norman. It’s definitely worth reading to get a hang of basic design principles.
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540074486&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=design+of+everyday+things&dpPl=1&dpID=410RTQezHYL&ref=plSrch

You want to learn to play them comfortably in any key, and you want to make the feeling of playing them very natural. At first you'll have to play very slowly and that's completely okay and it's even the right thing to do. Play as slowly as you possibly need to so that you get the movements just right. Your teacher may ask you to play them for him/her during the first year (or maybe not that long) to ensure that a) you're during them and b) that you're doing them with correct technique.

A good book to get is The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences. It has all of the scales in each key as well some arpeggios and chords which you can start to play with too. It also has a very small blurb on what to do for scale practice. Personally I do them each day before I practice other things.

Awesome advise from everyone and they are right on. Find a place to hang out, get to know folks and network, work hard and listen. I would add that you might grab a good reference source. Online is obviously a fantastic resource but it can be a pain to learn something when you don't know what to look for or ask yet. I would suggest the rather outdated but still totally relevant Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook It doesn't keep up with our digital world, but has the absolute fundamentals of acoustics, how a system is put together and basics of how things work. It'll be a great primer and stepping stone to know what questions to ask online/mentor, and is advanced enough that you'll probably reference it from time to time throughout your career. Also, since a lot of the digital workflow stems from the analogue world, referencing this book can help make sense of why we do some of the things that we do. Anyway it's on Amazon for like $25. Easy Christmas present. :)

The Sound Reinforcement Handbook https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881889008/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_PPNywbKYBB7BP

Get your hands on some improvisation books. Doesn't necessarily mean they all have to be just guitar books...jazz theory books will come in handy for any musician. Get your hands on a Real Book Listen to great performers - I'll suggest Pat Metheny, John Scofield, and Herb Ellis for starters. Become really familiar with their music and the way they improvise... when you hear little bits and pieces of things they do and you like them, write them out - transcribe. Hearing and practicing these will enable you to incorporate them into your improvisation, and the more you study and 'shed your heart out, the more you will pick up on how great improvisors do their thing.

Also, practice all your scales... slowly. When you are transcribing, you'll be surprised how much easier it is when you have a good understanding of every type of scale and how they are used (theory books will explain).

Hope this helps. Cheers.

The best way (I've found) is to start big then work your way down to the minutiae.

Proportions and gesture are the two most important fundamentals of figure drawing. Start with those. Even if you don't want to draw realistic people, say if you prefer cartoons or comics, learning proportions will still help you to exaggerate features in an appealing way. When you've gotten a good feel for creating dynamic poses with gesture and figures with proper proportions, then you can move to anatomy to learn how the muscles interact; where they lock and fold into each other. Although anatomy is a very complex science, once you have it - you have it. Everyone have the same muscle structure.

The head and hands are something completely different. I've found that the head and facial features are as hard and as valuable to get right as the figure is. In some cases it's even harder. Don't worry about the head at the beginning, get the figure right first. The face should be it's own study.

I wouldn't suggest mastering each body part individually. If you learn to draw all the body parts one at a time then piece them together, you won't get a feel for how they all play and work with each other.

Things like rendering, color, composition; they are all different fundamentals completely. Should you learn them separately? Maybe. Or maybe not. It depends on you. I'd say to slowly start adding more and more fundamentals to your figure drawings as you improve. Add a bit of shading to the muscles, play with some colors in the skin, see how the pose will affect the composition of an art piece. Just don't lose sight of what it is that you want to improve on and don't fall back to your comfort zone when things are getting difficult.

If you want an in-depth, comprehensive look, I recommend both "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth" and "Drawing the Head and Hands" by Andrew Loomis. Those are the books that helped me. They really go in depth on not just proportions, but rendering and clothing as well. Here they are if your interested:

https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UIR07P1BNGJT&keywords=figure+drawing+for+all+its+worth&qid=1567575739&s=gateway&sprefix=figure+dra%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Head-Hands-Andrew-Loomis/dp/0857680978/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3UIR07P1BNGJT&keywords=figure+drawing+for+all+its+worth&qid=1567575739&s=gateway&sprefix=figure+dra%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-2

tl;dr

Gesture -> proportions -> bone structure (manikin) -> anatomy -> face & hands

> I've seen a number of videos about pitch-riding and beatmatching basics, but everything I've seen thus far has made it look wayyy easy

This is because the people teaching can do it almost flawlessly. Believe me it is fucking difficult to learn. Practice makes perfect, but aside from videos, I would recommend this book. Fantastic resource and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well it's visuals do at teaching you beat & phrase matching.

Also, what genre are you trying to mix?

Playing evenly requires strengthening your finger muscles. Like the other comment mentioned, each finger has different strength depending on your usage. Hanon books are usually very good for practice. Another very good book is the Hal Leonard Schirmer's Library "Scales & Finger Exercises". Each exercise tells you which fingers it's focusing on. I honestly don't believe in the tapping on table method.

I think it's pointless to keep tapping one finger to strengthen it over and over again. You need to move that finger in a context with the OTHER fingers as well because usually it's 'alternating' between fingers that demands the most control. You can develop the muscle memory for a particular finger but when you alternate/change it become even more challenging. Hanon and the book I mentioned have the same idea. They focus on strengthening your weaker fingers alongside neighboring ones.

Link to the book:

https://www.amazon.com/Scales-Finger-Exercises-Schirmer-Schirmers/dp/149500547X/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=Scales+and+Finger+Exercises%3A+Schirmer+Library+of+Classic+Volume+2107+%28Schirmer%27s+Library+of+Musical+Classics%29&qid=1557982300&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmrnull

​

https://www.amazon.com/Hanon-Virtuoso-Exercises-Complete-Schirmers/dp/0793525446/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=Scales+and+Finger+Exercises%3A+Schirmer+Library+of+Classic+Volume+2107+%28Schirmer%27s+Library+of+Musical+Classics%29&qid=1557982300&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr0

​

Bach pieces or Handel are usually also very good exercises :)

Goodluck!

That's good that you recognized it. It's always tempting to rush past tough fingerings, but you get the most out of practice when you can isolate a technique, break it down, and focus on it.

Check this video out: http://youtu.be/AoLvhHjacMw?t=56m14s
It's Valentina Lisitsa working on a brand new piece (to her).
Here she repeats a single section repeatedly until it's almost 100% before moving on. Even the top pianists have to replay sections until it's in their fingers. Hold yourself to a similar high standard when you practice. Really try to get at least get one solid pass without mistakes, even if it's at a much slower tempo. Here's a story about Rachmaninoff practicing a Chopin etude so slow it was unrecognizable: http://www.practisingthepiano.com/enjoying-ultra-slow-practice/

Also, I recommend you get Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist in Sixty Exercises. Lots of good exercises. Even Rachmaninoff recommended them. Good luck.

Sorry, but that image really hits a nerve. Don't take it personally, it might very well be a great idea, but the execution is jarring for us data-as-art people.

1. You should almost never use circles to represent data unless you have a very, very good reason to. It's harder to visually compare angles in a circle as opposed to height in a bar chart. And if you put the percentage points next to the area, you might as well just show the data in table format.
   
   
2. Neither the Z or the... theta(?) axes make any sense. Is time going outward from the center of the cup? Is it going inward to the end of the day? Is it over the course of a 3 month period? Do all the different categories share the same Z axis? Is the "Time spent on Spacebook" in minutes, hours, or fortnights?
   
   
3. You should almost never use 3D effects unless you have to. Don't feel too bad for this one since it's commonly ignored, but in this case it's very relevant. You could put a series of circles parallel to the coffee cup saying "time" and it would help clear up whether time was increasing outward or inward, but there's no way to fix the Z axis. If you had a series of circles going upwards in a cylinder, it would still be impossible to match any line with any amount.
   
   The picture you have behind the data is a really nice picture, and I could see how you wanted to use it to tell a story about your day. However, the way you're forcing the data into the picture is completely visually destroying that it.
   
   Further reading: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. It's a thick book but it's mostly pictures :)
   
   Again, don't take it too personally, but I figured a harsh answer was better than no answer.

I can only give you my experience, as I was taught classically but self-taught how to improv.

My background in drilling scales, arpeggios, cadences has definitely helped me in my improv as I have insight and muscle memory of certain runs and chord progressions that sound pleasing which I can call up instantly, but is the result of years of drilling that is honestly very dull until it is put into practice.

I do believe practicing scales until recognizing appropriate notes is very helpful, so I'd start by practicing in keys that you run into very often.

After that, I'd practice harmonious chords for the key with their inversions to build muscle memory of certain chords.

Perhaps more practical would be cadences. I-V-I, I-V7-I, ii-V7-I, I-IV-I-vi-IV-V7-I, etc and their inversions helped me more than I'd like to admit, being able to close songs on the fly is very handy skill.

All this is pretty boring to do in isolation, but it lays a foundation you can base your improv off of. I used this book for years and is what I would recommend only if you're willing to put in the practice.

Ignore Carmack (on this one, very specific issue). His conceptual model of what a UI is, can be, and should be, are extremely one directional, vision-centric, and rooted in ancient PARC UIs made for a completely different medium under totally different constraints. VR is a spatial medium by nature, and it simulates the real physical world. In VR, the world IS the interface. You don't need to conceptualize the UI as a separate thing at all. There are only interaction mechanics. You are designing for a mind, not for a rectangle.

To really hammer this home, I recommend studying the following titles:

• Job Simulator
  
  
• Rick and Morty VR
  
  
• Vacation Simulator
  
  And reading the following books:
  
  
• The design of everyday Things by Don Norman
  
  
• The body Has a Mind of its own
  
  
• 3D User Interfaces, Theory and Practice
  
  Be a bit critical of that last one - it's is all very old research. it's good for foundation but do not just copy what they've made, use it to synthesize new ideas.
  
  Leap Motion's blog is also an invaluable source of 3d human computer interaction design wisdom. They recently did a series of interaction design sprints that explore 3d physical interactions
  
  I've also gone through their blog and pulled out a bunch of articles that I found the most interesting and useful in my work:
  
  General design:
  http://blog.leapmotion.com/designing-intuitive-applications/
  
  Fictional UI:
  http://blog.leapmotion.com/fictional-uis-influence-todays-motion-controls/
  
  Vlog FUI pt 1:https://vimeo.com/103174872
  
  https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/sci-fi-interaction-designers-gestural-interfaces/
  
  3d OS:
  http://blog.leapmotion.com/truly-3d-operating-system-look-like/
  
  Sound in VR: http://blog.leapmotion.com/4-ways-unleash-power-sound-vr/
  
  http://blog.leapmotion.com/explorations-vr-design/
  
  If you get the chance you should play their Blocks demo to see the kind of UX that can teach a completely un-initiated VR user how to interact with a virtual world in an exceptional way. If you really care about HCI, you owe it to yourself to grab one of their devices and go all in on it. It really is an incredible new area to explore and will eventually reveal 2D-only interaction models to be the ancient dinosaurs they are.

I'd probably suggest this one, or maybe this one

In terms of walking bass, the only to get better at it is unfortunately just to keep working at it. Start on a not-too-complicated tune such as Satin Doll, or something else with lots of II-V-I progressions in it, or a 12-bar blues, and work up to more complicated charts.

Here's a "quick and dirty" method to work out some walking bass lines. It's a bit simplistic perhaps, but it will at least get you started, and it does work. Assuming a 4/4 time sig:

ON BARS WHERE THERE ARE TWO CHORDS PER BAR:

Beats 1 & 3: On the beats where the chords fall (1 & 3) play the root (at least at first).
Beats 2 & 4: On the other beats (2 & 4) play an approach note that gets you to the root of the next chord, so a note either a half-step or whole step above the note you want to get to. Use your ear to judge which is best. So if the chord on beat 3 is G7, on beat 2 you could play either A, Ab, F# or F.

ON BARS WHERE THERE IS ONLY ONE CHORD PER BAR:

Beat 1: Play the root (again, at first)
Beat 4: Play an approach note as above, so either a half or whole step above or below, whichever sounds best.
Beats 2 & 3: You have a few options:

a. outline the chord notes. For example root, 3, 5 then, or root, 3, 5 then to your approach note.

b. move by step (don't be afraid of chromatic notes, you'd be surprised how often they work). So going from Dmi7 to G7 you could move up be step playing D, E, F, F#.

c. Try going from the root on the first beat up or down to the 5th on the second beat, then keep going in the same direction to the root an octave above or below on the third, before hitting your approach notes.

d. Do something else entirely.

So a sample bassline for the first 8 bars of Satin Doll might look something like this. Note that in the last bar it moves completely by step while in the three bars before that it uses that root-fifth-root pattern. Obviously that's just one way to do it. When you're new to walking bass and learning a tune don't try and go right through straight away. Get from bar 1 to bar 2, then from 1 to 4, and so on. Build it up in stages, and try different ways to get there. If you can figure out how to get up by step to the next chord, then try moving down by step the next time.

Now, before anyone tells me that I am the awful spawn of satan and I have killed Jazz by explaining things this way and thus downvoting me to the diminished 7th circle of Hell, I know it's a very simple way of explaining it, I also know that walking bass can be a wonderfully nuanced thing with infinite variety. But we've got to start somewhere and the above will work. As with everything, the ear has to be the final judge.

Animation is an art and good animation requires a strong understanding on how things move. A good resource for making both convincing and interesting animation is the Disney Bible: https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Life-Disney-Animation/dp/0786860707/ and another: https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/086547897X/. But realistically it takes years to understand and make good animation. That's outside of the learning required with tools (such as Maya).

If he doesn't know the principles of animation he should learn them and then your critiques should be focused around 1) does the animation meet the intention -- ie is it usable and 2) how can the animation be improved to make it more interesting and believable.

I can't recommend this book enough: http://www.amazon.com/Blink-Eye-Revised-2nd/dp/1879505622

That won't help you with the technical aspects, but it will give you a really good foundation in theory.

The best thing you can do is just start making stuff. Get a crappy camera, use your phone if you have to. As an editor you need to have a solid understanding of story mechanics and the quality of footage won't have too much of an effect on your learning.

Shoot really dumb 2 minute films, anything that allows you to play around with time and atmosphere.

I saw friends in film school using Windows Movie Maker and their webcams who were making better films than the people who could afford nice equipment. It's all about creativity and having a clear view of what you're trying to accomplish.

Ok, now take note of what went wrong with your drawing and try again, and again, and again. Then after a few weeks go back and compare your latest drawings to this one.

The master has failed more times then the novice has tried.

If you want some resources, here are some youtube channels:

• Sycra
  
  
• Sinix Design
  
  
• Kienan Lafferty
  
  
• Jake Parker (Not many tutorials, but interesting videos on art philosophy and business with real-time inking/drawing in the background.)
  
  
• Mark Crilley
  
  
• Mattias Pilhede (Not tutorials, but some very motivational videos from an artest who started late in life.)
  
  
• Proko
  
  And also some books:
  
  
• Figure Drawing for All It's Worth - Andrew Loomis (Free PDF with his other books too. Althogh if you can aford it I think having the real book is more useful.)
  
  
• Masters of Anatomy
  
  
• Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter - James Gurney (Great for non-realist painters too. Written by the Dinotopia guy.)
  
  
• Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers - Marcos Mateu-Mestre
  
  
• The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators - Richard Williams (Useful even if you have no interest in animating. Writen by the Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Thief and the Cobbler guy.)
  
  
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud (One of the best books ever written. Great even if you're not interested in comics)
  
  You should also check out http://drawabox.com/ and https://www.ctrlpaint.com/.
  
  Edit: Labeled the links.
  
  Edit 2: Just in case anyone saved this post, here's a couple of youtube channels I started watching recently:
  
  
• Brookes Eggleston
  
  
• Marco Bucci
  
  I hope things are going well for you. And remember, as long as you keep moving forward you'll get to where you want to go eventually, even if your steps aren't as big as you'd like.

I like books, so maybe we should have a book section? We can include:

• How to DJ Right: The Art and Science of Playing Records for technique.
  
• Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey. Not necessary but probably interesting for DJs.
  
  We should probably include things about turntablism too. Here's a tutorial video series for that. And links to documentaries? I found Scratch to be pretty entertaining. Or would this stuff be more suited for the turntablists subreddit? r/DJs has more subscribers...
  
  Harmonic mixing seems like it would be a good thing to throw in there.
  

I recommend this book hands down. I've used it as a text book for introduction to design classes that I used to teach. Its not long, nor complex. It's not about web design, but it covers the basic design concepts that apply to everything. She has web design books to, but they assume you know the basic concepts.

GET THAT BOOK.

Tuts+ is great. I have a premium account there.
I keep an eye on smashingmagazine.com , noupe.com and speckyboy.com, as well as deriving a lot of inspiration from creattica.com, csselite.com, and cssdrive.com.

There's all my secrets! Learn to break down what you're looking at. The book will aide in that. When you know what you are looking at, and how different people can manipulate similar elements, you can then build in your own unique approaches. Good luck.

ok that is a good thing to know lol

so I will pick 80$ and you pick 20$ :D

3DS Game

Book

Card game

that should be about 80$

Thank you for the super gift chance! :D you are the best!

My biggest tip: take a figure drawing class, if you have the time and money. There's no substitute for a good teacher, and as a bonus you'll get the chance to draw from life (which can be very helpful). Don't be afraid to ask stupid questions!

If you're looking for theory, the best books I've seen are Jack Hamm and Andrew Loomis, both of whom offer intelligent simplifications of the figure along with breakdowns of specific anatomy if you want it.
This basic figure frame from Loomis is one of the best things you can learn (though don't place too much emphasis on meeting those measurements-- after all, they don't help for crap once you have to foreshorten).

Try this study tool. Set it to 30 second or 1 minute intervals with nude models and fill up the page with Loomis-style mannequin figures. Don't worry about getting each one perfect; move on once your time is up. Get a bunch of paper and do it for 20 minutes straight.

Think, especially about the shape of the ribcage, spine, and hips. Notice how the ribcage is kind of egg-shaped, how the spine curves, and how the hips are shaped like a wide V.

Great work. As others mentioned, the next step is getting her some anatomy art books Andrew Loomis' Drawing the Head and Hands and Figure Drawing for All It's Worth are great ones I've used myself and found very valuable. The best thing a budding comics illustrator can do is draw from life and not just from other comics/cartoons, that way their own style develops organically. Thanks for sharing!

I feel like there are too many different fonts at first glance. The site seems more cohesive as you scroll down.

Try to keep the font styles down to three.

Right now I see:

1. Your logo (Marketing Script w/ color 1)
   
2. The first 'Simple. Honest. Smart.' slogan (Josefin Slab, black)
   
3. Menu/Paragraph text (Open Sans, black)
   
4. Book Now (Open Sans, bold white on purple)
   
5. Satisfaction Guaranteed seal
   
6. 'Twice as Nice Guarantee' and other subheaders (Coustard, color 1)
   
7. Powered by STRIPE logo/button
   
   I like the Coustard + color, keep the open sans for content readability. Maybe experiment with bringing the buttons closer to your main design while still having them pop.
   
   Also the images.... what's the boat all about? Why are there abstract figures next to 'Easy'? You should be able to find stock photos of happy actual people, and beautiful clean rooms.
   
   The pyramid structure for news also applies to websites. I like that you introduce your three core features in the first paragraph, but then I would bring up the expansions you have buried at the bottom.
   
   Next I would do [booking is] Easy, then Safe, then Guaranteed.
   
   
   *disclaimer - I'm more of a programmer than a designer, but I have to do a lot of design. The Non-Designer's Design Book has helped me immensely.

thanks for posting. I think you have a great attitude, and honestly, attitude counts for more than you think.

I'll not critique the website, but, knowing you're new to the fundamentals, try to share some more general thoughts.

1. do more. I think you're starting this already with some of your sketches for mini cooper. but always, always, do more. 50 iterations, 100 iterations. Keep pushing beyond the obvious, and use sketching as the tool to do that. I read an old design book, from the 70s, that said "only one solution is the symptom of an inflexible and untrained mind." /r/52weeksofdesign
   
   
2. Time to get up on the basics. That means the basics of drawing (if you so please). It's not a requirement as a designer (I'm a piss poor artist), but it definitely helps sometimes. http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419898682&sr=8-1&keywords=right+hand+drawing
   
   What sketching is important for is flexing ideas and testing compositions before going to the computer.
   
   
3. Learn the basics of typography:
   http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Graphic-Design-Communication-Courses/dp/0321934288/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898490&sr=1-1&keywords=stop+stealing+sheep
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898879&sr=1-1&keywords=robert+bringhurst
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898800&sr=1-2&keywords=typography
   
   
4. Grids
   http://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Principles-Organizing-Design/dp/1568984650/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419898762&sr=1-1&keywords=kimberly+elan
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Graphic-Systeme-Visuele-Gestaltung/dp/3721201450/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419898837&sr=8-1&keywords=grid+systems
   
   
5. Photography (if you like)
   http://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Photography-Manual-Revised/dp/0316373052/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1419898921&sr=8-2&keywords=black+and+white+photography
   
   and
   
   
6. remember that this is detail work. So things like spelling errors in this post, and on your website, should be resolved.
   
   Above and beyond the basics, I see your passion is impacting the world through design. So the question becomes HOW can graphic design impact the world, and does it at all? and what can you make or do directly? I think above all, a designer is an entrepreneur these days. Especially with that main driving passion.
   

This is due to the [overtone series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music). Basically there are resonant frequencies when you play a pitch. You'll notice in the examples on the Wikipedia page that the first couple overtones are the octave, the fifth, and the fourth. So those intervals tend to share overtones, making them sound better together to our ears.

For example, the first couple of overtones where C4 is our fundamental are C5, G5, and then C6. For G4, the overtones would be G5, D5, and G6. That's an interval of a fifth.

A lot of this is related to the Western tuning system. Most Western music is equally tempered. Basically, when a piano is tuned, you're making a bunch of compromises so that everything sounds good together, even if it's not perfectly in tune. You could tune certain intervals perfectly, but then others would sound really bad, so we compromise.

Another thing about Western music is that we're all about building tension and then relieving it ^justlikesex and you can see this in a lot of common chord progressions. Take your standard cadence, G7 to C, for example. G7 is a fairly unstable chord and it's built so that the third and seventh, B and F, collapse really naturally into C and E, giving us a nice, stable C triad.

Music also operates similarly to comedy in that it's all about delaying and overturning expectations. Like three men walk into a bar. You've heard that before and have some idea of what will follow. But then someone says "the third one ducks" and that's a new one and that's funny, so you laugh. Music works the same one. Let's say we set up the classic I-V-vi-IV chord progression but instead of IV we do something else. That's new, that's interesting, and we like it.

Disclaimer: I'm really sorry if I screwed up some of the overtone series stuff, I have only a vague idea of how it works.

You can read an entire book on why we like the music we do -- check out This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin -- it's a great read!

u/Hyper_Intake123 - here are the best books on filmmaking, in my view:

Filmmaking - General

• Sculpting in Time - Andrey Tarkovsky
  
• The Reel Truth: Everything You Didn't Know You Need to Know About Making an Independent Film - Reed Martin
  
• The Total Film Maker - Jerry Lewis (You can get it free here)
  
  Editing
  
  
• In the Blink of an Eye - Walter Murch
  
  Screenwriting
  
  
• Save the Cat! - Blake Snyder
  
  Limited Resources
  
  
• Rebel Without a Crew - Robert Rodriguez
  
• Filmmaking: Direct Your Movie from Script to Screen Using Proven Hollywood Techniques (This book was written by Jason Tomaric, who made Time and Again for less than $2000 and is now an Emmy winning Hollywood director)
  
• If you can find it, I also recommend Tomaric's The Power Filmmaking Kit: Make Your Professional Movie on a Next-to-Nothing Budget. This book is out of print, but is more of a practical "workbook" for movie production than Jason's other book.
  
• If you're on a budget and can't afford any of the other suggestions, I recommend 11 Simple Steps to turn a Screenplay into a Marketable Movie: or, How I got a $10k movie to gross $1 Million through Warner Bros - which is $0.99 for Kindle - by Vince Rocca, I have read this book - and it is worth a lot more than I paid for it.
  
  Hope this is helpful and good luck on your filmmaking journey!

Only 5~ months ago did I decide to get serious about improving my art in my free time. For most of my life I only doodled occasionally. So I thought I would describe my plan of action with books and resources that I will likely be using. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My process will be basics of construction-> perspective -> figure drawing -> digital art and rendering. Approximately 45% will be improving, 45% will be doing what I want for fun and 10% will be a daily sketch(this subreddit) that takes anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour to complete. for fun I will be doing anything from digital to water color.

Construction and perspective: First I am starting my art journey by completing draw a box . Next I will go through Marshall Vandruff's Linear Perspective Videos and Perspective Made Easy simultaneously while referencing with how to draw by Scott Robertson. Briefly I will gloss at Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain or keys to drawing pulling ideas of where I might find weakness.

Figure drawing: Once those are finished, I will begin my figure drawing phase. I will move onto free proko subsided with loomis books such as this, other photo references sites like http://reference.sketchdaily.net/en and Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. I will also reference Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist and maybe more depending on my budget.

digital art and rendering: For the final stage of my journey, I will venture into ctrlpaint. Simultaneously I will be reading How to Render, Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

After that.... I don't know. We will see were I am in a year.

I watched what DJs were doing a lot, I googled a lot, I read shit tons of forum posts and I wasn't afraid to ask questions. I know people who swear by this book.

Feel free to ask me about junk.

As for actually improving as a DJ rather than tech stuff, here's a few tips.

• Listen to mixes, preferably ones with video, and try and work out what the DJ is doing
  
  
• Try and experiment with different ideas, timings and techniques
  
  
• Record your mixes and listen to them the next day. Work out what sounded good and what didn't. Often you'll be surprised!
  
  
• Practice! Don't get bogged down, thinking about gear or promotion. Actually DJing is how you improve, not by making midi mappings or picking the next mixer to buy.
  
  
• Keep it fun. Mixing should be fun and you should be doing it for your pleasure first and foremost. :)

Read rhythms everyday, it doesn't matter what they are or what book they're from, just read them. Take it slow and sync up with a metronome so you can learn what notes line up and what don't. This a great book by Ted Reed called 'Syncopation' (jazz drummers will know what I'm talking about). There's a section near the back that is considered the bible for learning coordination, but I think it will also help your situation. I think it starts on page thirty-eight or forty and it goes through lessons one until eight. Put a metronome on and shed that stuff everyday and you'll develop some great rhythmic vocabulary as well as better yourself at reading and performing more complex rhythms. Check out this [link]http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Steps-Syncopation-Modern-Drummer/dp/0882847953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410966323&sr=8-1&keywords=Ted+Reed%27s+syncopation) for the book!

Happy shedding!

Edit: Well... the link thing didn't work out, but you get what I mean.

Sounds like you're at a good place to learn a little music theory to help with composition.

I've been doing roughly the same thing having had (and still having) the same experience as you. I can play technically difficult music, but cannot create something more than a short passage, or add a chorus/bridge/verse to whatever I've created.

I picked up the Modern Method for Guitar by Leavitt:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Method-Guitar-Volumes-Complete/dp/0876390114/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374083268&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+method+for+guitar+william+levitt

And this started pushing me to the limits of my playing. I realized I couldn't sight-read, couldn't read music, and it was keeping me from improving in a totally different direction that I was used to. So I started learning how to read, and started picking up on some music theory.

So I'm still working on music theory, and sight reading, and technical challenges, and in the meantime I've noticed my ability to create has improved. It's not a huge improvement, but very noticeable to me.

I've been stuck in a rut for over 10 years because I've never sought to expand my horizons musically and try new things. I wasn't going to learn a chord if it wouldn't be useful in some riff I was trying to learn, and I certainly wasn't going to learn to sight read when I could teach myself with tab.

Anyway, my suggestion is to push yourself and learn new things. Learn some weird chords, learn how to put them together with some theory, record yourself playing some chords and then play the notes in those chords over top of them as a lead. The more knowledge you have of music and the guitar, the larger a pool you have to pull from.

Folks who are linking to the 'Save Loomis' sites: the Loomis books aren't in the public domain.

Now, at one time, they were extremely difficult to find in print - Disney Studios in California had a standing order with every bookstore on the west coast for any Loomis books that came in - and when you could find them they cost an arm and a leg. For many years, too, the Loomis family withheld reprinting rights to the books, so there was no prospect for a very, very long time of ever seeing new editions. So at that time, "Save Loomis" websites at least had a moral ground to stand on.

Titan Books has, for several years now, been releasing the Loomis books in really lovely, affordable hardbacks. There's no reason to save Loomis any longer; he's been saved. We really ought to be pointing folks to where they can buy the books legally, now, and not to download sites.

For what it's worth, I think his best is Figure Drawing For All It's Worth. If there was only one I could recommend to someone who's new to drawing, though, rather than one I'd keep for myself, it's Fun With a Pencil. Figure Drawing is the gold standard of proportions and anatomy, as far as I'm concerned, but the material in it has been covered similarly by lots of different folks. Fun With A Pencil is geared more towards folks who've never drawn before and is a great book for absolute beginners.

Here's some links of books I put on my wish list. Its a lot of stuff about grids, which is something you should learn.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design

Universal Principles of Design

The Grid: A Modular System for the Design and Production of Newpapers, Magazines, and Books

The Elements of Typographic Style (A dry read, but very valuable knowledge)

Thinking with Type

I learned most of my composition skills from Drawing and Painting classes. I've heard photography is a great way to learn composition too.

Aside from that use Lynda.com and learn your color theory. You should also learn stuff like using CMYK vs RGB. Common sizes for print material in your country.

If you go Freelance, use this book: Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines

If you haven't discovered this site and you're feeling frustrated, just remember it could be worse: Clients From Hell

And just for fun: How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell, Why You Don't Like Changes to Your Design

In no particular order but all of the following are great.

• Skunk Works by Ben Rich - I reviewed it here
  
• Ignition! - It's an informal history of liquid rocket propellant and I did a more in depth review of it here
  
• The Design of Everyday Things - A book about how objects are designed. It changed how I look at the world and approach design. It took me few tries to get into it the first time.
  
• Introduction to Astrodynamics by Battin - A great textbook on the basics of astrodynamics that is both easy enough for undergrads to start, and rigorous enough to keep you interested as your math skills improve in grad school and later.

Here are two books that helped me exponentially:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0634049011?pc_redir=1413778480&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/063406651X?pc_redir=1413771056&robot_redir=1

The first book helped me visualize the fretboard a lot faster, and also taught me how to form really complex chords using interval knowledge. The second book gets into some really advanced stuff like modal interchange, chord substitution, and playing with modes over extended and altered chords. I'd suggest you start with the first book as the second book ramps up really quickly and it's easy to get lost if you haven't figured out the basics yet. Oh, and there are tips on how to use the harmonic and melodic minor scales as well, which is super helpful if you want to get into jazz.

At the same time, I still use a lot of lessons from justinguitar.com because that guy is amazing at relating complex concepts to others in a simple and coherent manner.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/Hanon-Virtuoso-Exercises-Complete-Schirmers/dp/0793525446&ved=0ahUKEwiKosmdlMzNAhWLOSYKHU0YDTUQFghxMAk&usg=AFQjCNFdItV_cTSzTFwtY_uszIdXP2pM5w

That's an exercise book by Hanon. As far as I know, it's pretty well known. The begining exercises are super easy, but towards the middle and end, they are good at making your fingers do paterns and things they don't commonly do. I'll pick one out and do it as a warm up kind of thing regularly. They are good for flexibility and dexterity. I would recommend, especially if you don't have a piano teacher making you do runs, arpeggios and everything else.

Thank you! Here's a quick list of the ones I can recall. :)

Figure drawing - Michael Hampton

alla prima - Richard Schmid

figure drawing for all it's worth - Andrew Loomis

drawing from life - George Bridgman

Color and light - James Gurney

As for videos, a whole lot of youtube ones, specifically from these channels;

Bugmeyer

Feng Zhu

Stylusmonkey

and a few workshop videos by Whit Brachna, Brad Rigney and Donato Giancola.

hope it helps some. thanks for the interest! :)

On the subject of books, Walter Murch's 'In the Blink of an Eye' is a great insight into filmmaking and film editing, and how the idea of cutting (which is mainly what separates a finished film from its component shots) relates to the real world and human perception. When, and when not, to cut.

Don't treat the man's words as gospel, but they'll certainly make you think.

And as others have said, don't just aim to be a director and isolate yourself in that. The best directors have at least some experience of every position they're asking others to do - you're never able to fully appreciate what you're asking of people unless you've done their job at least once. This will at least make sure you're asking the right questions, and people are much more likely to want to help you/work for you if you seem to understand where they're coming from.

SPOILERS, DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET, also go see it now.

Reality can be stranger than fiction, sure it looks far fetched, but in a 5 dimensional reality, they were really testing the viewer, to see if you'd just brush it off as stupid, or would embrace it. People tend to just disregard or call out 'bullsh*t' when they don't understand it.

Here's a potential explainer:

"Picture a timeline as an expression of one set of possibilities spawning from any singular moment — a graspable example: start with your moment of birth, and track your life as a collection of moments (faces on that never-ending “you” as observed from the Fourth Dimension) all strewn together. Now, turn once more. Imagine this line as itself one face on an object made up of lines of the like — all of the possible lines of moments/faces that might spring from that initial point. Every conceivable thing that could happen after Point A (your birth) gets its own line, and each of these lines is a face on the Fifth Dimension’s view of “you.”

That, in effect, is what McConaughey sees from his daughter’s bookcase… though his focus on a singular timeline as opposed to all possibilities, and his manipulation thereof, call into question transition into the Sixth and Seventh Dimensions, which are tough eggs to crack (more so, even, than Eight, Nine, and Ten). But luckily, Nolan doesn’t dive too deep beyond a brief hiccup in theoretical consistency here and there. So we can rest our studies here and not worry about anything beyond No. 5… until the sequel, that is."
http://www.bustle.com/articles/47537-what-is-the-fifth-dimension-in-interstellar-how-to-understand-the-films-complicated-physics

This was a very risky move, but definitely a win for me, transformed this movie from a good adventure movie into a spiritual human experience. It would be amazing if our civilisation managed to survive long enough to understand, and actually control five dimensions, our body would need upgrades of course, but we'll be able to do that in the future. Let's just try to survive the next century without killing ourselves, or overpopulating.

There is also a book, released yesterday by Kip Thorne, who was the scientific advisor for the movie, and set the scientific rules for Nolan.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378

First things first. It's good to be critical of your own tastes and wanting to be able to talk about it is great.

The thing is; to talk about movies you talk about intentions (intentions of the director, but also the cameraman, the lighting, the actor, etc). Although there is a common goal, these disciplines approach it in very different manners. If everything works; it's all conveying the right intentions at the right time. To get why some movies work and some don't you need to learn the "languages" of at least a couple of the disciplines. You should notice the way the camera frames the person and why at that moment in the narrative they chose to do that in this specific manner. You should notice the way the scene is lighted; is it dark, is it red, etc. All these things get you on the track of what the overall intention is. Things like this can be picked up from books like ["In the blink of an eye"] (https://www.amazon.com/Blink-Eye-Perspective-Film-Editing/dp/1879505622). Which is a great book about editing.

Now if you talk about the cultural remark a movie makes. What it says about something in the real-world; In real life. Your entering the domain of sociology, psychology, anthropology and/or philosophy. This again is a whole other beast. It's taking all the intentions of the movie and trying to see what it "means". The Why. This is also very personal. If you like dystopian settings. That can be connected with nihilism. So you read up about nihilism in Friedrich Nietzsche (although not technically a nihilist) or Albert Camus. I can go on and on.

The point I think I want to make is that it's a total package. It's not one book that can teach you how to think about movies. There is no one book that can tell you how to take them in and to express your feelings about them. I must add that I did not study film criticism so I don't know the material they teach there and I'm sure there are books that give you a glimpse or an overall view how to approach this topic. But in the end there is no book that can show you your own way of conveying your feelings. Discussing the marks a movie left on you with others.

The only way to do that is like learning a language. You have to read it but also speak it and "live in the country" to really master it. So find a friend/forum/teacher/parent/dog/cat you can talk with about movies you both saw.

I would highly recommend you get a copy of the book Understanding Exposure: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Exposure-Fourth-Photographs-Camera/dp/1607748509

I have a Nikon D3400 and got a copy of this book to help push me out of auto mode. The book is very well written and explains how to capture the best images. It'd probably be better to have a foundational understanding of how a picture is taken and processed than to try making up for the lack of experience with different lenses and filters.

Is there anywhere you post your images so some of us can check them out?

Good luck and have fun!

My advice:

Buy this book to learn your scales.

Buy this book to strengthen your fingers.

Google how to read sheet music. You can learn the basics from many sources.

I recommend the PianoWorld Adult Beginner's Forum to hang out at.

Search the google, search that forum, and browse the index of quarterly recitals on the forum to find beginner level music that you enjoy listening to.

Find the sheet music for the pieces you'd like to learn on IMSLP. It is best as a beginner to find version with suggested fingerings (small numbers near the notes).

And get to work learning what you want to learn. Print the sheets, study them, take a pencil to them, write the notes in English to help you learn to read.

You'll undoubtedly come across symbols you won't recognize from your basic google search. When that happens, look the symbol up here.

Many people recommend the Alfred books and such, and though I'll admit I've never tried them, I have seen many people lose steam because the music in the Alfred books isn't appealing to them.

It won't happen overnight, but if you truly are interested you will stick with it. The method I have outlined is what I did. I took two lessons and didn't like them. It's been nearly five years but I am at the point where I can learn to play Chopin preludes and nocturnes, and sound half-decent. I don't claim to be an expert, but you can learn to play piano as a hobby with minimal resources.

You definitely want to do different things; all kinds of different things. Read, draw, exercise, write; try to pick up new skills; buy a book of different sorts of puzzles (spatial, math, crosswords, whatever) and do a couple puzzles as part of your morning routine; work on things you're not good at and things you are good at.

A few days ago (or thereabouts) a Redditor recommended this book to me because I mentioned that I was having difficulty getting back into drawing - I used to be an art student (high school), and a few bad experiences at school shot my motivation. It's set up to help with things like boosting creativity and problem solving through drawing. Drawing is often seen as something innate, or a rare skill, but the book takes the approach that everyone is able to draw well, it's just a matter of learning how to see things properly. This "new seeing" is really just a different way of understanding the spatial relationships things have with each other via artistic qualities (line, value, colour, etc). Such a process can definitely help with becoming a better thinker because it allows you to understand problems in different ways.

(I spent a little extra time on the book, both because I'm really enjoying it so far, and also because drawing is something that I've found most people disregard because they "can't do it" - I call shenanigans.)

Depends on what you like. I was big into metal and hard rock when I was starting out. Black Sabbath is easy enough that you could be playing songs within the first couple months, if not just weeks.

If you're interested in actually learning guitar and not just memorizing songs I'd recommend working through these as well:

• Fretboard Theory
  
• A Modern Method for Guitar
  
  You'll want to take the Berklee book someplace to get it spiral bound. Also note that it's not a tab book. You'll have to read standard notation. It starts off super easy and gets progressively harder, page by page. A looper pedal for the duets will be helpful.

I wouldn’t say microscopic, but significantly smaller than a small black hole. Surprisingly, and please Reddit, don’t hang me for citing a Hollywood movie in a discussion about astrophysics, the movie Interstellar is a fantastic example of what happens when you’re close to a SMBH. Kip Thorne was the science/physics advisor for the film and does a great job keeping the physics true to science. If you’re able, read The Science of Interstellar. It’s amazingly written and Thorne is so so so good at explaining complex ideas in simple language. Also pictures.

I had really good luck learning to draw at age 25 after no real effort, interest, or talent beforehand by reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I try to plug the book on every thread like this in the hope that someone will stumble across it just like I did years ago.

Here is my before and after (having read the book) drawings:

• Before
  
• After
  
  tl;dr: I drew like this, stumbled across this book on slashdot one day, now I draw like this and you can too.

Your questions are pretty broad theory questions and the FAQ should cover most of them or at least help point you in the right direction. If you've been playing for 15 years but don't know what a Cmaj7 is, you have a hill to climb, but not an impossible one.

It seems like your questions are theory based, you already know basic chords, so start with learning basic music theory. What notes make a scale?, Do you know your notes on the fretboard?, What notes of a scale do I use to make a chord? What are intervals? You don't have to be an expert in theory to be a great guitarist , but you have to know the basics, and should be able to answer these questions. This book is a great resource.

Live sound is such a hands on industry, I imagine it would be near impossible to base an entire degree around it. SAE Sydney do an intensive 7 week course based almost entirely around live sound. This is as good as you're going to get in actual live sound.


In my opinion the only real way to gain knowledge in this field is to get out there and do it. If after 15 years you still don't have the knowledge you need to teach, perhaps you need to figure out what you're lacking and seek it out yourself.... If it's the actual physics part, you can study acoustics at Sydney or NSW uni's . If it's the electrical side of things you can do an electrical engineering at any branch of NSW Tafe.

Otherwise just fill in the gaps yourself by reading books such as the Yamaha Live Sound Reinforcement Handbook.

As I've already stated though, it's not really a skill that can be taught in a classroom... You have to get out there and train your ears as to what sounds good in a particular environment, how to problem solve fast and efficiently under pressure, how to pick a particular frequency if it is feeding back, how all varieties of mixing console work, what the difference between a group and a VCA is, proper gain structure, how to set compression and gates effectively, how to deal with band and management politics, how to keep your cables from getting wrecked, how to repair things on the job, how to tune a PA... The list goes on and on, and honestly these are things that you can be shown, but can only truly start to master by getting out there and figuring it out for yourself.


Good luck.

I'm telling you... you do not have to wait to become a web designer especially if you have any CS chops. It sounds like you need some kind of validation lol? In design you have to be an entrepreneur, design your own experience, find out some people who are doing design x software email them... surprise them, designers love surprises and something different... make your own luck.

As far as Amazon good books, you really want to aim for a whole view of design at this point. Think of it like you wouldn't learn run before you can walk, there is A LOT out there.

• https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034268&sr=8-1&keywords=thinking+in+systems
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp/0672326140/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034307&sr=8-3&keywords=alan+cooper
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Extensions-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0262631598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034386&sr=8-1&keywords=marshall+mcluhan+understanding+media
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034432&sr=8-1&keywords=don+norman

I think this is pretty well written, it's stickied in the BHO Theory subforum and covers the essentials well: common chord progressions and scales that go well in the context of the particular chord in the progression (and somebody also asks about what keys songs are in) http://www.banjohangout.org/topic/71709.

That theory subforum doesn't get a lot of threads but there is a lot of good explanations in older threads

What book/s are you using with your teacher? Most of them cover chords and scales in the context of soloing and playing backup rolls or vamping. You could look at the books by Ned Luberecki and Janet Davis and Trischka's Complete 5 string wehre they gradually introduce basic bluegrass chord progressions, pentatonic, blues and diatonic (8 notes/octave) scales.

Also if you play guitar i remember Kolb's book being good: https://www.amazon.com/Music-Theory-Guitarists-Everything-Wanted/dp/063406651X