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How the Dynamite Circle has helped me in business and life

These days my office looks like this some days, thanks in part to the DCI am not a natural participator.

I’m an introvert* and my personality type means I prefer just focusing in and doing something myself rather than collaborating with others… Fortunately I grew up with two older sisters who made sure I didn’t turn out entirely asocial.

Put me in a team for a project and I’ll be comfortable working together. I’ll even happily take the lead—though mostly out of impatience for action to be taken!

When it comes to online communities, I’m not a big contributor.

I don’t post YouTube comments, I barely interact with friends and family on Facebook, and though I’m technically a member of dozens of online communities, there are only two or three which I would say I’m an “active member” of.

Since joining the Dynamite Circle three years ago I have posted over 1,000 replies in the forums and started almost 100 discussions myself. I am not just an active member, but actually help out on a voluntary basis as part of the “leadership team”. This month I travelled internationally to attend one of their in-person events.

And here I am, writing a blog post—my first in years**—simply because I love and value this community and want to do whatever I can to help it continue to grow and maintain its incredibly high quality.

So why has the DC had such an impact on my life, when I’m not a natural participator and all those other sites I’m a “member” of have failed to draw me in?

At the DC event in Barcelona this summer

At the DC event in Barcelona this summer

Before we get into that, I should explain how I came to join the DC in the first place…

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The Little Things

Ever since joining the Accelerator Academy programme, my life has been a bit of a whirlwind.

So while I have a chance, here’s a celebration of the little things.

New Oats Day!

New oats day! Groats and steel-cut, via Amazon Prime.

Groats and steel-cut oats, via Amazon Prime.


When 5kg of steel-cut oats and 5kg of groats arrive in the mail, you know you’re well prepared for the coming winter.

Secret Pianos

A secret piano among the rooftops

A secret piano among the rooftops


Along with the awesome Street Pianos at St. Pancras (which I played each time I passed through this summer) this was an extra special secret keyboard which someone painted among the rooftops at Loughborough Junction.
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Marc Sings For You. Why doesn’t everyone?

I recently wrote something about the future of classical music, and asked whether classical artists like James Rhodes and Thomas Hewitt Jones were leading the way by using social media to break down the stigma which normally goes along with classical music.

This time I want to look at another example of an artist – this time pop rather than classical – who’s trying innovative ways to reach fans and make a career in the modern era of net for nothing and the tunes for free.

Marc Sings

Marc with a C is a modern day pop troubadour, writing songs in a varied but reliably catchy pop vein. That isn’t ‘pop’ in the sense of the Top 20 singles chart, which these days actually tends to mean R&B and dance junk. As listeners of his regular music podcast “The Real Congregation” know, Marc’s a real believer in the tradition, and I guess nobility, of pop music and how great a thing the 3-minute pop song can be.

Though his music tends to be straight up pop (and I mean that in a good way), his lyrics range more widely, often surprising with their content or style. I’m not going say too much more about his music here – because it’s all available to hear for free at Bandcamp and his website.

I also think he’s an artist whose large back catalog will hold different gems for different people. So if you don’t know his stuff, go take a listen. I’ll wait.


(and here’s a selection of free tracks and albums to download)

So aside from being a prolific singer-songwriter and performing regularly in Florida over the last 10 years, Marc is (like any modern self-respecting indie musician) active on Twitter and Facebook. And though he sells his music through his website and Bandcamp, (more…)

Never be afraid to bootstrap your musical education

The startup world loves “bootstrapping”: the idea that you get a business off the ground not by seeking investment and outside funding, but by starting to sell products or services and then gradually growing the business using your own income. It comes from the expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and just means that you’re using whatever resources you have to hand to get yourself going. I’m a bootstrapping fan myself; it’s how I’m running Easy Ear Training so far.

Lately I’ve been thinking about bootstrapping in music learning, and specifically ear training.

There may not be an obvious connection to you, but if you’re a musician you’re probably doing this to some extent already – just without realising it!

There’s a huge wealth of history to music tuition, and no shortage of teachers to tell you “this is how you learn X”, “this is how you practise Y”. And I wouldn’t for a second want to dismiss the value there.

But there’s another way too. This is the attitude of bootstrapping. Of “do whatever works”.

Bootstrapping your music education

If you want to be a concert pianist or reach the top of the profession in your chosen instrument or talent, you need to be careful. You don’t want to learn the wrong fingering for a scale, or develop poor embouchure early on – because the more you practise the wrong method, the more ingrained it becomes, and the harder you have to work later on to fix it. As a saying I recently came across puts it: “Practise makes permanent”.

That suggests that a “do whatever works” mentality is wrong-headed, and will only cause you pain later on.

But I think that attitude is far too motivated by fear. (more…)