Intro
You may be familiar with the song “Song The Air That I Breathe” by Peter Gabriel. It is a classic and very well known song, but you may have trouble remembering lyrics. If you are in that group, your memory is likely to fail you, as most of us tend to repeat songs we’ve heard before.
This guide is designed to help you learn the lyrics and play along with the song.
If you are not familiar with it, here are the lyrics:
I wake up in the morning and I breathe for a minute
And I wait for a minute for the sun to come up
I walk through my life like an old fashioned man
And I don’t care what it takes to get where i want to go
I love the way that life is on this earth today
So I sing this song that i breathe for a minute
Because nothing else matters when i can feel my body relax. (Repeat)
The song that I breathe is the air that I breath
I got a new idea for a podcast.
I am going to call it “The Song That I Breathe”, because I want the show to be about the air that I breathe. It is not about me singing songs; it is about ideas and perspectives and it involves culture, so I’ll call it “culture as song”. For example:
I am going to call this show “The Song That I Breathe”, because I want the show to be about the air that I breathe. It is not about me singing songs; it is about ideas and perspectives and it involves culture, so I’ll call it “culture as song”. For example: I am going to call this show “The Song That I Breathe”, because I want the show to be about the air that I breathe. It is not about me singing songs; it is about ideas and perspectives and it involves culture, so I’ll call it “culture as song”. For example:
How many times do you hear people say ‘That will never sell! If we are selling something then we should tell people what something is! We should talk directly to them! This must be a direct-to-consumer product! We need an app or a website or whatever! Why on earth would anyone buy our product if they can go directly to another website? What on earth would they even need our product for? What business model could we possibly have where we do everything ourselves? This can’t possibly work! Let’s stop right here right now…’ …What if you weren’t afraid of getting stuck with something that no one wants? What if there were no big companies trying to get you off their backs so they could make money on your stuff? Would you still feel uncomfortable? What if your company was just starting out? Would you run scared off into the shadows without knowing any of its customers or even knowing who its customers are? Would you feel wronged or just flat out foolish for having made such a decision in the first place? Why did my old company choose this path when most of what people needed were actually available from companies like Apple ($100 billion+ revenue) and Amazon ($200 billion+ revenue)? What’s wrong with making up your own business plan based on what works in real life instead of some specious theoretical model from some book that no one ever reads anyway? You
A song is a melody
This term is so well-known now, it’s almost a cliché. But it’s worth mentioning because it is so easily misunderstood.
Songwriting isn’t just about writing melodies; it’s about understanding the rules of the melody and then working in those rules as you create your song. There are many types of rules: pitch, rhythm, feel, harmony, melody and form (the way the song is organized into verses). And the rules change from culture to culture and even from one individual to another.
The most important rule that all people have in common is awareness of what they are trying to say when they sing a song:
* The melody must be simple enough for anyone to understand. * Most people sing songs that are meant to be heard with no accompanying instruments — they don’t need words at all because the melody will carry them through on its own. * It must be clear that the singer intends to convey a particular meaning or emotion — nothing more or less. * It must be sung in a way that makes sense (not just sang) — if no one can understand it then there’s no point singing it at all!
Now this doesn’t mean you can only write melodies if you make them simple or you can only write songs if you make them simple if you make them simple. It means that any melody will sound like itself without an accompanying instrument unless someone measures your performance by trying to figure out how you intended to say something using the words alone … which we call singing with words .
Whether lyrics help convey meaning or not depends on how they communicate meaning; whether they are written by an artist or by some random person sitting in their kitchen trying desperately to get their cat out of its cage; whether they are made up as you sing along (or not). What matters here is that as long as someone understands the basic message behind everything you sing, there is nothing stopping musicians from making music based on any number of different structures and there are few limits on what an artist can do with her instrument(s); but there are limits on what she can say through her music alone (unless she has lyrics). The best musicians do such a great job articulating their audience’s thoughts that sometimes listeners even forget what was said when listening to music for years afterwards.
Music is good for health and mind
This is not to say that music is a cure-all for everything. But it can and does lift your mood and help you feel better about yourself and the world.
The key question here is: does it improve the quality of our lives? The answer depends on why we want to listen to music. Some people just like to hear themselves talk; others want to focus on the story behind the songs.
If you’re listening because you’re trying to get better at something, like learning guitar or playing soccer, then it’s probably a good idea. If you want to improve your performance, if your goals are other than selfish, then music might not be much help (though it is good for relaxation too).
But if you are just trying to relax — or forget what happened at work — then there are few things that will do more than listening to music.
Finally, there is a difference of opinion as to whether music used in therapy can actually help patients make better decisions. Some studies have suggested that it can increase cognitive flexibility by improving self-reflection and problem solving skills (though other research has suggested the opposite). Bipolar disorder may be an exception here: many people suffering from this disorder find benefit in listening to upbeat but relaxing music, which may be part of why they are getting better treatment (and also why some of them self-medicate).
Conclusion
Apropos of where we are now, I am going to pull out two articles which were a finalist of the 2012 MacWorld Best of Show award.
I hope you enjoy them.
The first is a blog post on The Economist’s website and the second is an article by Tim O’Reilly on his site. As you can see, these two articles have a similar theme: how startups can make things better. I hope they can help you work through the next steps in your life as a startup founder.
