A Game of Badminton Jane Eyre: An Autobiography, is an 1847 novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. The book is considered a literary classic, as it’s filled with a dark mystery and the harrowing experience of a young woman. The 2011 film adaptation, directed […]

Brand New Day ‘Dear Child’ is a German thriller series on Netflix. The plot revolves around a mysterious woman’s escape from her harrowing captivity — which points investigators towards the dark truth behind her unsolved disappearance 13 years earlier. The series has an astonishing 100% […]

Dreamscapes Dreamscapes is sparse fingerstyle guitar piece by multi-instrumentalist composer, Gustavo Santaolalla. This motif is from the soundtrack of Dear Child (Liebes Kind) a German thriller series on Netflix. The limited series is about a 13 year-old missing persons case being reopened when a woman […]

Elevator Beat Elevator Beat is beautiful fingerstyle guitar piece from Nancy Wilson (Heart). She wrote this for 2001’s Vanilla Sky. At the time, she was married to film’s director, Cameron Crowe. Nancy Wilson is one of the all time greats. I’ve always been a fan […]

Wild Life When the Surf Comes Up is a motif by composer Gustavo Santaolalla. The piece is from, Wild Life, a documentary directed and produced by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo). The film follows conservationists Kris Tompkins (CEO Patagonia) and her husband […]

Zlatan y Guillermo “Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” ― Milan […]

All Life Has Meaning Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was an excellent send off for the Guardians crew. The movie was actually pretty violent, both graphically and thematically. My son is 8 at the time of this writing, and Guardians 3 pressed his (and […]

Laurie and Jo on the Hill I’m always on the hunt for good content. More than a few of my guitar students recommended the film, Little Women. I was really exited to see that Alexandre Desplat was the film’s composer. The piece, Laurie and Jo […]

Wake Me Up When September Ends (Jonathan’s Version) I couldn’t stand Green Day. I respected the band as musicians and songwriters, but as a guitar teacher, they’ve been the bane of my existence for 30 years. A constant deluge of ever changing power chord riffs […]

The Last of Us (HBO) HBO’s The Last of Us is being heralded as “the greatest video game adaptation ever”. No surprise as Craig Mazen is the executive producer and showrunner. Mazen’s Chernobyl mini-series (on HBO) was one of the greatest shows I have ever […]

The Pale Blue Eye I was REALLY excited to see The Pale Blue Eye – as the whole thing was shot around my hometown of Pittsburgh. Western PA is filled with well-preserved colonial sites that are located within state parks. Specifically, I spend a lot […]

Silent Night I really love this understated arrangement of Silent Night. Everything is in the right place. Guitar doesn’t have to be complicated to be beautiful. In fact, I would argue that simplicity in music is virtuous, and we should all be striving to play […]