For a comedian to get on the Tonight Show in 1980 was a triumph. How to get there? A series of steps… open mike nights, sleeping in vans, gigging, polishing, working up the ladder until the booker both saw you and liked you.

Same thing goes for the CEO job, the TED talk on the main stage, the line outside the restaurant after a great review in the local paper.

Repeating easy tasks again and again gets you not very far. Attacking only steep cliffs where no progress is made isn’t particularly effective either. No, the best path is an endless series of difficult (but achievable) hills. [read]

The inspiration for this blog post stems from a recent conversation with a colleague. He confided that he had a dilemma in which his best employees were doing a lot extra work (which was good), but their efforts didn’t align with the business goals. He said to me in frustration, “If they have extra time, why can’t they just do more on their projects and assignments?”

After talking a while, it became clear he had a team of driven, ambitious employees, but there was something missing — a framework encouraging such overachievers to produce work rewarding themselves and the company. I suffered, too, from not having such a framework early in my career. [read]

Introduced as the bass version of Gibson’s popular ES-335 guitar the EB-2 has a narrow neck with a 38mm nut and substantial depth. Although semi-hollow the body construction features a large central core that makes it heavier than it looks and gives it a neat combination of solid and acoustic bass sounding elements.

The baritone switch appeared about 1959 and was originally a push button but soon became a regular switch. The banjo tuners disappeared during 1960 to be replaced with the more common sideways ‘elephant ears’ open gear design. The rather basic bridge/tailpiece offered little adjustment values and originally the strings were anchored over a foam strip to offer damping. Like all early basses they were supplied with tapewound strings so the bass had a plummy but substantial thud of a sound. [read]

Shure SM7B

I knew the SM7 was popular in broadcast applications, but didn’t know it was so popular in recording studios as well (e.g., Bruce Swedien used an SM7 for most of Michael Jackson’s vocals on “Thriller”). It’s just a great-sounding mic, another Shure classic. Listening to both the SM5 and SM7b gives me the feeling of listening to a microphone with the smoothness of a ribbon, the clarity of a condenser and the punch of a very good dynamic. I’m very happy to have once again found that sound. I hope to be adding an SM7b to my mic locker soon. [read]

At the start of any new endeavor most of us look forward to every single day with a child like excitement. We see infinite possibilities and the future appears bright. It seems as though there is absolutely nothing that can get in our way. We feel almost invincible and the possibility of failure doesn’t even occur to us. We blow through every obstacle with a sense that we’re invincible. [read]

Facebook has been rolling out Timeline slowly since December, after first introducing it at its F8 developer conference in September. The project is one of Facebook’s most ambitious and significant redesigns to date, as it seeks to become your digital scrapbook with the capability to document your life from birth to present day, and revisit old posts more easily.

While not everyone is on board with Timeline, the switch is inevitable. Here’s our complete guide to Facebook Timeline, from making the switch to adjusting your privacy settings, in order to make the transition easier. [read]

Photo: Marsha Vdovin for CDM.

Remember when electronic sound gear hid in hulking, rack-sized cases? Korg’s Kaossilator series had already begun shrinking the desktop KAOSS Pad gear, but even the first-generation Kaossilator wouldn’t fit in your pocket, given its square shape and corners. (Well, unless you were wearing overalls.) The Kaossilator 2 and Mini Kaoss Pad 2, on the other hand, are scaled perfectly to your hand and would tuck neatly into a pocket in your pants or bag. And while I know some readers were hoping for a new Pro addition to the KAOSS line, these little bundles of joy have added some functionality that could make them musically useful. Being dedicated hardware, they also won’t suffer from a battery sapped by phone calls or the interruption of a Facebook message – and that input jack is built in.

We saw the new models at the NAMM show this month. The highlights:

The Kaossilator 2 is a PCM-based phrase synth, inspired by the original Kaosillator, for improvising melodic lines. What’s new is some handy recording functionality:

• Scale Key and Note Range so every note is “right,” effectively, as on the original
• Drum sounds
• Gate Arpeggiator with adjustable gate time and swing settings
• Loop recording to layer phrases and add as many overdubs as you like
• “Dual Loop Recording banks allow DJ-Style mutes and cross-fades”
• Record using the built-in mic; or use the mic input for recording of external input
• microSD/SDHC, so you can cheaply add up to 32G of removable storage

That crossfader, of course, is entirely new, and Korg does mention “dance music” in the sounds and focus. It’s easy, then, to imagine this as a pocket-able instrument for jamming or something you’d use to make musical ideas on the go, and it does look like a lot of fun. [read]

Do you flee? Or, do you get flexible and learn to interact?

When we encounter these extreme personalities it can feel like they are trying to make our life miserable, but more often than not, it’s simply learning about these peoples’ tendencies and how to interact in a more tactful way. Some conflicts are unavoidable and shouldn’t be smoothed over or suppressed, though it’s learning to deal with our differences, and how to understand, resolve, and learn from these interactions that’s important. [read]

AT&T also reported a $6.3 billion charge for its benefit plan costs and $2.9 billion for asset impairments during the quarter. The company had revenue of $32.5 billion for the quarter, up from $31.4 billion for the fourth quarter of 2010.

AT&T announced in December it would charge a $4 billion merger breakup fee during the quarter, after it withdrew its offer to purchase T-Mobile. [read]