As I say in the lesson, it started as a gag...
This spring, I've been putting more time into the channel, trying to tell some deeper stories.
That's meant more time in the studio, with cameras and mics floating around.
Around the same time, my friends Ben and Dan - brothers - have been training jiujitsu with me.
Ben's got a dry irreverence that manifests itself in some amazing Instagram comedy moments, and that was probably top-of-mind when I proposed my "just a lark" idea to his brother Dan:
"What if I start the 'bad whistle solos' YouTube channel?"
...which both brothers shot down, quickly, and repeatedly.
Almost to spite them, I pulled out the phone one afternoon while listening to Spotify.
It was then that I made the realization that kickstarted this whole silly detour in my life:
It's actually way funnier if I try to whistle a good solo.
So it was with tune-after-tune on my playlist.
Then, while listening to an Avishai Cohen (trumpet) solo, I realized how to "next level" things: "I need to start whistling jazz solos."
So began the multi-hour "accelerated learning" odysseys that had me sweating bullets, whistling along with tiny loops of jazz solos so I could get them accurate enough to get a laugh on Instagram.
It was all part of a big joke.
But the entire experiment turned out to be the perfect case study in accelerated learning, and caused me to crack open Dan Coyle's The Talent Code, and revisit the concept of Myelination.
The rest is history.