Hi All!
By: Oli Steadman
Tags: Five Bullet Fridays, Hiking, Folksong Friday, Airtable, True Detective

Here is your weekly dose of “5-Bullet Friday,” a list of what I’m enjoying or pondering… why not put on my monthly Spotify playlist in the background whilst you peruse?

hike I’m hoping to do someday —

“Pendle witches walk” from Barrowford to Lancashire. 51mi of the same lush greenery that in 2020 brought such relief from what’d otherwise been a year under lockdown. Lancaster castle (the route’s end) is expected to be decommissioned as Crown Court within a few years and opened up to visitors; looking forward to planning the trip once that’s happened (most likely with Mickledor, a fantastic local hiking guide/booking tour company).

album I’m revisiting —

“A Folk Song A Day” by Jon Boden. See my recent article contemplating the significance of listening to this ten years after its release; and set yourself a reminder check back in a year’s time to see whether I’ve kept up the habit of listening to one new song per day, exploring characters like the January Man and Peggy Bann.

specific tech trick I’m finding helpful —

“Gallery View” in Airtable. Long neglected due to the fact most of my Airtable bases focus on text-based & numeric data (not many images)… now I’m using it to display my daily poetry creations and, alongside some arbitrary but inspirational artwork, each song I’ve got under construction.

live performance I’m admiring —

“Old Rockin’ Chair” by Louis & Jack. Timeless, exquisite. Best buds. Some of the comments under this recording on YouTube… are quite an insight into the joy this song has brought so many folks over the years. Written in 1929 (lyrics and music composed by Hoagy Carmichael) and recorded by some of the very greatest voices including Paul Robeson.

analogy I’m drawing —

“Music production is just DevOps” for audio. Musings on this to appear soon as a dedicated Medium post. I’ve been giving it lots of thought whilst deep in the rabbit warren of old demos I’ve had kicking around for a decade, some of which I’ve been excitedly working up into readable material. I’m convinced a cornerstone of any writer’s toolkit is automation and repeatable process, to at least some extent, and one example of this is my (thank goodness!) having done everything as MIDI so I can easily transpose and cut up sections of old songs to reinvigorate them with different perspectives. So many casualty demos have had to be left behind over the years as I’ve been “learning the hard way” and I hope the article is one that helps writers & producers avoid having to do the same.

app that’s helping vlog production —

“True Visage” free download. If you need to use iPhone as video input for video editing software (eg your mobile camera is better than your computer’s webcam) this app takes away the border of camera (eg the slider allowing selection of “pano” vs “video” vs “slowmo”).

slice of tv I’m treasuring —

“That six minute shot” in true detective s1e4. I’d had no idea that was coming; what a shocker. Having watched 1917 just a few days prior, you’d have thought me readied to some extent. But I doubt anything can prepare anybody not to be left with their jaw on the floor after those frantic pans tracking Cohle’s escape and block shift in character.

And, as always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Let me know! Just send a tweet to @olisteadman and put #5BulletFriday at the end so I can find it.