Small, daily actions can lead to big results over time: Strumstick example
At Christmas a couple of years ago I treated myself to a Strumstick. It looks and sounds like a guitar but it’s easier to play.
I had almost zero musical experience or skill at the time. I committed to playing a minimum of 3 minutes every day.
Why 3 minutes?
Because no matter how tired or unmotivated I may be to practise, I can always do 3 minutes.
Sometimes I did more than 3 minutes.
A few days I did 15 minutes of practice.
But no matter how long I practised on any one day, I always did my 3 minutes the next day.
Here’s a video showing how far I got with one track after 30 days of practice…
I can now play about 20 songs. Here’s another: When The Saints Go Marching In…
What can you commit to doing for 3 or more minutes a day to achieve big results over time? Let me know! 🙂
Here’s how I created the first video.
Secret 1…
I used 2 camcorders for extra interest. One is a $1,000 semi-pro Canon camcorder and the other was my iPhone (before I upgraded to my current iPhone 7 Plus). This creates extra interest in the video as there are 2 angles on my face / hands / Strumstick.
Secret 2…
I worked with a very talented video guy called Allan from Sapphire14Media (see his YouTube channel too) who lives in London. He held my semi-pro camcorder and panned along the Strumstick as I played to give a natural feel to the video, rather than have the camcorder screwed to the top of a tripod.
Secret 3…
The semi-pro Canon camcorder had a Rode VideoMic Pro shotgun microphone attached to the hot shoe on top of it. This captures a much cleaner sound than I would get if I relied on the mike built into the iPhone.
Secret 4…
I edited the video using Final Cut Pro on the Mac: I was able to import the video footage from the 2 camcorders, and FCP synchronised them together which made the multicam editing so much easier – instead of me having to sync the 2 elements manually.
Secret 5…
I used 3 soft boxes: 2 shining on my face and 1 on the back wall of my spare bedroom: these cost about $150 a pair.
Photos…
The iPhone using the FilmicPro app…
Allan Duah setting up the iPhone…
Allan with my semi-pro Canon camcorder and Rode shotgun mike on top…
The setup for the soft boxes…
If you have any questions about the making of this video, let me know via the Contact Me page. Go here for more information about the Strumstick.
