“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu

What a good time to review where you are going and reflect. Tacking upwind to deal with the changing the weather patterns to get to your destination. Question is, have you a destination or are you just being blown about by the winds of other people’s thoughts?

So how do we make the changes? Well first of all where are you heading? Let us say that we need to increase business, get more people in; how many and from where?

Once you know how many and who they are, can you see them in your head? This all helps to alert the unconscious to look and see the opportunity that you would have previously missed.  I use this system for teaching music as it connects with the unconscious and bypasses the intellect. The imagination helps to process large amounts of information and for the creative process it helps to mitigate the negative effects of the conscious mind. When we hear the music in our head it will come out of your fingers; see the musicians playing in your head and you can alter the dynamics of the parts that you are playing.

Imagination helps us to find a new direction, once we have the outcome in our minds the unconscious will flag up the opportunities. Ok you have to trust this process it is a bit like learning the guitar, if you keep telling yourself you cannot do this and you are not good enough, talented enough or just that it does not work for you, you will fail. So make a plan, work back from the picture and see what happened before and then before that till you reach what you have to do today; then do it.

So instead of looking back we should look forward and set a challenge for the New Year. May I wish you all the very best for your plans.

 

Vic

 

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Let us look at the clever indoctrination in history and think again.

I learnt that Nelson won the battle of Trafalgar; the Duke of Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo; the Duke of Marlborough won the battle of Blenheim and so on. History is littered with great men (mostly) doing great things. The great men of history were aristocrats, interesting! The truth is they would not have got very far without an army or navy manned by the VERY special ingredient, ORDINARY people.
Ordinary people have been written out of history just in the same way they are being written out of the education plans. Ordinary people have an extraordinary ability overlooked by history and the current education system, they can learn incredible skills WHEN they are motivated and that is my point, where is the motivation in being told consistently that you are not good enough?
We have an education system being pissed around with by a dick from a public school with someone in charge of Ofsted who appears either to have OCD or is a sociopath and everyone has to do what he says. ‘We should be more like the Chinese, Japanese and Indonesians’; apparently they are better than us. I am interested in the deeper meaning of this, of the masses working so hard that many young people in places like Japan under the pressures of expectation commit suicide.
In my opinion we should be like ourselves and to point out how brilliant our ordinary people can be read the Putney debates from the 17^th century when the foot soldiers of the New Model Army discussed how the political system could work. Remember these people were left out of history overshadowed by Oliver Cromwell and King Charles! You realise that these simple people were brilliant thinkers, as are we today. 
The idea that we should be more like the Chinese might be a good idea in some ways however because they rose up and disposed of their leaders, so Mr Gove and Mr Wilshaw beware of what you wish for.
 
Vic
 
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The seen on the unseen

In weaving there is a warp and a weft thread. The warp thread when you weave appears to disappear but of course it does not, it is not lost, it is the unseen that is draped the seen. It is the lesson for every day that the seen is woven on the unseen.  Stephen Jenkinson
 
This is the mystery of music the fact that contained in the music that we listen to is an unseen or unheard structure that holds the music. I often refer to this as the operating system as many of my pupils can understand this dealing as they do with computers every day both are good metaphors for the deep structure of music.
Behind the notes there are chords and rhythm, that in Jenkinson’s words are the warp but I would say there is something behind that, the intention of the artist and this is the power that gives music and art gravitas.
It is the power that makes Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy work, the repeat riff of five notes does not change but just builds in power as it repeats. The two chord vamp in Le Freak that just continues to drive forward and make you want to dance is another good example. Another good example of this deep structure bestowing a hypnotic power are the icaros of the South American Shaman.
In mainstream teaching this is never covered, the whole of the music teaching is in the reading of the dots on the page this is like looking at the tapestry which is great for the onlooker but if you want to make the tapestry you need to know how.
Answer the awkward questions like, why is it that the most brilliant of musicians often could not read music and many were illiterate? For these it was a case of going straight to the deep structure, the ‘unseen’, getting to the magic and weaving it from there.
Vic
 
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Gove, you twat!

The results for the educational tests make the British education system fall down the world ranking in maths, science and literacy. Gove's immediate response is 'It's not me governor it is the other bloke, my changes have not happened yet'. What!

Step back and look at this from a historical perspective and ask a simple question, how did we get to being in a prominent position in the world in the first place? We are a small island race who over a few hundred years went from being eyed with envy by the Romans then by the Saxons then the Vikings and finally by the Normans.

The Saxons had created a stable prosperous nation with effective laws that was the envy of many countries in Europe. We could hold our own and trade with the rest of Europe we were very capable and when the Normans took control after a number of years of turbulence we were then dealing with one of the most powerful countries in Europe France and doing very well.

With the advent of Henry VIII we stopped following the rest of the world and did our own thing (which we had done before, pre Roman and pre Norman). We told the Pope to get lost; in fact we pronounced him as the anti-Christ and struck out on our own and over the next few hundred years. We fought our way with much cunning to the top and like it or not started to throw our weight around.

I am interested in how we did this and in my short conclusion we did it by alliances, trade and clever thought and this thought was unconventional, outside the box, reinventing the wheel.

We did not do this by following the others but by changing the rules by creative thinking.

I do not find anything creative in the way that education is heading, so let the teachers get on with teaching stop trying to follow the Chinese; let’s be ourselves.  

 

Vic

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Trading with the exchange of energy

I live near Lewes in East Sussex and Lewes is a transition town, it has its own currency, the Lewes pound which can be traded just like pound sterling. Now you do not have to create your own currency but trading your skill with someone else without changing money is a good idea.
If we look at who we deal with there are many who have very useful skills and there are others who  would like to learn the guitar but they cannot afford it until you look at what they have to offer and then their skills become something that you trade with. Also you are honouring them either with what they have as a physical object or ability, this I find a very powerful bond between people.
So artists can trade their work, trades people their trade, skilled service people their services. As long as you have money to pay the bills you can expand your income indirectly by tapping into this way of thinking. I find this very important as it develops others self-esteem and what do you need to develop someone’s musical and artistic skills? You need to raise their self-esteem.
Have a look at the types of things that you need and see who you can bring into learning the instrument but trading their skills with you
Try it, it works!

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

The Small School

‘Mainstream education has utterly lost sight of the child. It was hard to maintain any joy in teaching, and the feeling that you could change the world through education was lost to the stress and anxiety of Ofsted inspections and ever growing class sizes’ Louise Hopkinson of ‘The Small School’ 

I have been involved in education as a peripatetic music teacher for over thirty years and I enjoy the work that I do going in schools and teaching music. Not only am I teaching music but I am also, for those interested enough, am teaching creative thinking through music that they can apply to other areas of their life.

There has always been a debate around education to whether it is to train someone to a do a task or for it to broaden the mind, and currently the mainstream of education is to funnel them into a skill so that that they can get a job; unfortunately it is organised (and I use this term very loosely) by the government and therefore I believe this idea to be flawed.

Historically governments have been proven to be unable to organise a piss up in a brewery and the idea that governments can make the decisions about the education of your child is equally fallacious and that goes for either side of the political spectrum.

On the right we have a bunch of misfits that did not go to a state school so they have no idea what they are doing and as for the left the ideology gets in the way. By the time the Brown administration left office there was so much legislation in the pipeline that the skilled artist and teacher would have to have spent hundreds of pounds to license themselves as independent teachers, insane!

Fortunately because of the balls up in the economy the incoming shower saw fit to dump the proposed legislation to save money.

The education system in this country is failing most of the children unless they are so intelligent they learn in spite of the regulations and stress put on teachers in this country.

If we look at the idea that education is about broadening the mind then we can equip the young to think and be creative and this is what we need for the future. Unless the political puppet masters have a crystal ball to tell us what will exist as a job in the future the ONLY thing that we can do is enable our children to think and be creative and to communicate, be that with other humans or by computer code; every other skill may fall by the wayside as obsolete.

When a child finds learning fun, which most children do before they go to school otherwise they would not have learnt to speak, they have an insatiable appetite for learning but once they go to school it can so easily be snuffed out because of the ‘experts’ knowing was is good for them.

So let us foster that love of learning and discovery and stop thinking of education based on the style of the factory. This may have suited the ruling classes in the past but because of connectivity amongst the ordinary people that will not do anymore; it is time to take our learning power back.

Vic

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Advertisers use magic... Now it is your turn

At the moment the people who are using shamanism and magic to shape our culture are advertisers rather than try to wake people up. Their shamanism is used as an opiate to tranquilise people to make people more malleable – Alan Moore



Language is power and the power contained in words is overlooked by us as simple communication but they are the tools of the marketer, the confidence trickster as well as the great orator and the artist.

Words have power because of the associations and memories that we lock into them and the dictators past and present understand that; but we have forgotten.

When teaching song writing I often get people to walk around the room saying words that are uplifting and happy and get others to watch their body language and then to do the same thing with distressing words and the effect is instant and very noticeable. Not only that the people doing the walking and talking will feel very different in the contrasting states.

It is possible to talk yourself into a depression because for you to process these words the brain will create the chemistry to do so, and likewise you make yourself feel euphoric.

Moore’s analogy of magic and the art of the advertiser was to draw ones attention to how far we have gone to allow ourselves to be enchanted by the sellers of objects  and also by the organisers of things such as education, the health ‘service’ or should that say the pharmaceutical companies. My point is that for you to open people up to be creative they need to see what has closed them down in the first place; then in order to take their power back they need to know how and who from. The how is by using language in your work and in your music and from whom? From all of those that have told you that you are not good enough or from those that said you cannot do this or have that because they are the ones who have it and own it.

Now go and listen to the political speeches from the parties left and right and feel out what it does to you. Does it liberate you? I think it is time to write a song and use the great skill and tool of the Bards; satire.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire. Reggie Leach.

One little pastime I have is foraging and various bush craft stuff like lighting fires by friction, for those of you who have not tried this it is bloody hard work.

This is such a great metaphor for the amount of work that you have to put in to do anything meaningful, just having the right material is not enough, essential but not enough, the missing ingredient is your hard work and consistent hard work as well.

In today’s world most people do not have that in them because they have been made lazy and been made to believe that they do not have natural talent. That is rubbish everyone has talent but that is only the basic materials the added ingredient is your sweat.

I have spent many years learning to play and teaching others to play the guitar and I can safely say that you can never learn it all there is too much. This realisation comes after you think that you are the best and you know it all (the teenage years) and then as each year goes by you realise you know less and less; that is wisdom.

To succeed you need to put in the hours and keep going and then keep going some more, till the flames come out of your fingers, smoke is not enough.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Just do it

Quitting my day job and starting my life as a writer was a tremendous risk, it was a fool’s leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in our lives whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship will always start with such a leap and in order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely, purely without fear, without desire, because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take. - Alan Moore
Ah this might be the answer to many things. This is something crops up again and again in the lives of the successful, that they do it because that is what they do, not because they are searching for fame or wealth but because they are doing it, period.
Like the journey in a myth or saga, the hero sets out doing what is needed in the moment and in many cases they do not heed the warnings of the wise, taking them to places that are unique to their development. The use of guile and cunning, and this is particularly important in the Irish myths, often plays a part in their success. You see this in the Tolkien stories of Middle Earth where riddles need to be solved in order to progress or survive.
The aspect of doing something for the love of it not the lust of the result, being purely in the moment; which in itself is what great artists like Lou Reed, Picasso, Hendrix are doing.
The idea of doing something artistic for the doing of it seems rather odd today because some accountant somewhere needs to measure what you do, that seems to be the nature of accountability that we have entranced ourselves with, but maybe we need a dose of Alan Moore’s anarchy to get the creative juices moving.
Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Grief and music

The work now is the willingness to propose grief as a radicle political alertness to life, that is not a drag, is not sad, that the power of grief deepens the capacity of being alive. It is the realisation that it is not going to last. Steven Jenkinson.
 

This guy is one of the most profound speakers that I have ever heard and he is dealing with the idea of grief. He worked with hundreds of people in the last days of their life dealing with their fears and thoughts and I find hear something very powerful.

Music is a way of exploring emotions that we would rather keep at a distance. However keeping emotions unrealised can lead to problems. This is an area that for some of us can be a good way of developing your work; people exploring their own ideas musically with some prospect of self-healing. The idea of music therapy is not new but I think that it is something worth considering even as a stress buster for professional people who would rather not go to a therapist.

I have always found music a potent force for dealing with life’s twists and turns and I know of a number of people who sight playing a musical instrument helping them not having another breakdown (their words not mine). The idea of exploring grief and maybe writing something of an experience and making something artistic and beautiful out of it is a positive way of transforming shadows into something very powerful. Think Leonard Cohen.

Vic

 

 

 

"There’s a plague of sameness that is killing human joy." Zita Cobb

I have been reading Marx recently, as you do, and I have found his ideas deeply interesting. Some aspects are deeply flawed but there are many ideas that we should be thankful for.

He was most definitely someone who lived what he believed and wrote about; spending most of his adult life in totally poverty and because of his writings he was exiled from Germany and France and ended up here.

He and Engels formulated a way of understanding capitalism and  proposed an answer to it which led us in many ways to the national health system, a shorter working day and all of the things that the unions fought for and won in the 60’s and 70’s and he should be applauded for this.

It is easy for commentators to ridicule Marxism but without his ideas many of the great musical ideas would not have happened. He was an important source of inspiration for artists here and America in the 50’s and 60’s and the Americans had to run the gauntlet of the McCarthy witch hunts for their beliefs.

I am always inspired by people who are passionate in what they believe, those who make their beliefs become their lives; something that sadly  the majority do not do anymore.

Marx was not cut from the same cloth as of those around him, he was truly different. The irony was that his ideas through Stalinism made people have to all become the same but that was not Marx’s intention, but the corrupting influence of Stalin and the Bolsheviks.

For us, both in art and the teaching of it, the worst thing is to be like everyone else, it is the kiss of death, you must be different, you must find something that you believe in and then live it. Maybe this is the lesson of someone like Karl Marx; make your life become what you believe. 

Vic

 

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Zen and the art of cheese making

I learn to make cheese the other day. It is like alchemy, you take these ingredients and they become something else; true magic.

I do these things because I am always exploring the nature of creativity; it gives me insights into the magic of music and the human spirit. This I have always believed has given me a different perspective to the other teachers around me and when I watch some of my past pupils play, whether it is with local bands or famous artists I can see that they have found the magic, the holy grail of their creativity.

I cannot however  teach that stuff, they have to find it for themselves but I can help them to find where to look and that is something that all the crazy things that I have done has helped me to understand.

All of the things that we do as humans expresses what we are as beings and the Zen masters understood this hence you can as a spiritual practice sweep the floor, prepare food, do the washing, play a musical instrument or make cheese. 

So let me suggest that the next time that you teach someone to play the guitar you are setting them on a road to liberation. No pressure then.

Vic

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The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money. Karl Marx

Maybe this could be said of musicians because great music and art often comes from those that are hungry, angry and driven by a passionate belief. Very rarely does great art come from one looking to make lots of money.
I have been preparing for a couple of projects that are coming up, one of these is the course making money from music and the other is a gig that I am doing with two good friends and great musicians which is mostly improvised.
In the first of these I am looking to help those musicians to get the balance between the money making and the creating and making the crossover, the twilight zone where both can happen. For me it is all about the attitude that you need to make money, get the attitude right and it functions as a successful business and that puts food on the table, BUT to make great art and music you need to be driven by desire and passion and not by money therefore you also need projects that are not focused on the money but on the creativity. That is not to say that these projects will not eventually lead to financial reward but that is not the driver and I do have a couple of interesting techniques to make things happen (you will need to come along for those).
The second of these is playing with musicians who can read one another and that is pure magic but of course you need to sell tickets to pay everyone. The focus then is on the experience of the crowd, the fact that they will see something very special, people who will take a song and create something different and because the musicians are on the very edge and pushing that edge the members of the audience if they are learning music get the chance to study this and bring that into their own experience of playing. However the players are doing it for the fun of the playing and the danger of it all going wrong and going right!
Vic

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

I often get my pupils to sit and listen to Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters, and as the riff repeats and the crowd get whipped up into a frenzy I ask them one simple question ‘Why does something so simple work like this?’ if they can answer this question they have an insight to what makes music tick.

I think this is one of the truths of art that it is an emotive power and not an intellectual one. Yet we chew the cud over the scales,  chords and structure and all of that stuff, but at the end of the day a piece of music has to comes out and either grab you by the throat, heart or somewhere lower to have you in its power.

Teaching is more like taking people on a journey that enables them to discover this for themselves, when discovered you then realise it has been staring you in the face all of the time and now it seems so obvious but before it eluded you.

So have a listen to the music that really grabs you that is simple and feel why it works then use that information in your playing.

 

Vic

 

 

 

 

Make Money from Music course

On the 20^th October I am running a course about making money from music and it will look at building a business involving playing and teaching and creating streams of income that support one another.
The whole idea of this is an extension to the teaching that I do and that many of my pupils go on to play and teach, and like all things you can fall into the same traps that we all do trying to run a small business.
Many errors that are made are due to the fundamental attitude of running a business. You might not fail because you are a bad musician but you will fail because you are bad at business or bad at communicating.
I think the reason that I have lasted so long is that I am quite good at building a rapport with pupils and this does give me an advantage over a number of other teachers that I know, none of whom are guitarists I hasten to add.
If you are interested in attending contact me on vichyland@msn.com  the cost is only £50 for the day and this will repay itself many times over.
Vic

Discovery using old technology

I like to spend time watching and talking to musicians who play music unfamiliar to me, I find their music inspiring and on many occasions incredible and gives me new ideas about my music and my teaching practices.
Stepping outside ones comfort zone is very important for the process of learning and yet it is the very thing that we are not doing and as a society it is becoming endemic that we are ring fencing what we know. This is happening in a way that you may not spot because it is happening all around you; I will sum up it in two words, Google and Amazon.
As a kid I spent lots of time in the library and one of my favourite books as a child was an encyclopaedia. I had and still do have a fascination for new ‘facts’ and ideas and I have always made a point of looking at things in circles. I looked at circles that touched the circle of what I knew and then moved into a circle that touched that, so as an example I might look up the Roman empire which would take me to the Greeks and then to the myths and then to Hindu myths and then meditation and then to Ayurveda and so on.
Also you would stumble by ‘accident’ on something you really did not know so you might in a library see a book that was put back in the wrong place etc. this does not happen if you follow the rules of Amazon because they suggest books to you based on what you have browsed or have bought so it reinforces what you already think. Now if you throw dice to determine what you did well that would really open up the possibilities of learning!
Google gives you things that are chronological common in your searches so you get the stuff that others are searching, now for someone who is rather weird like me that is not what one wants. I know that raising your profile through traffic on twitter and Facebook makes it possible for you to compete in the traffic online easier (!) but not for discovery in something old which brings me back to the book found in a second hand shop or in the library. Let us face it that was the old World Wide Web maybe it could help you to discover things and be creative in ways that may in the near future be different from the crowd.
Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk one day course in October to make money from music contact for details

Someone is controlling your life and guess what, it isn’t you….. at the moment.

I was preparing for a course that I am running next week which explores creative techniques of playing music and within that I wanted to show how much we are controlled by the outside world.
Richard Bandler says that it is not a case of ‘can I be put into a trance but more a case of what trance am I in?’ We move from one trance state to another and the trick is to be able to choose your trance and it not to be dictated by someone else.
As an experiment I used a technique which I have used before, but speeded up, where my partner managed to make her memory of the colour of the front door of a previous home disappear, in fact the door in her memory vanished so as she thought of the house it had no front door. This took about three minutes to achieve.
Music is such a great way of exploring the unconscious and to be great artists we need to develop that muscle of creativity. One of the first things that we need is to get out of the straight jacket that society has put us in. Start by dreaming what you want and then present it as already happened, this puts it into our unconscious, and then let it fly. Strangely being detached from this emotionally at this point works a bit like buying something online, the emotion is there before the purchase, once you have confirmed the sale forget about it; it is going to be posted anyway.
What the unconscious does is spot opportunity, because you have not 'forgotten the colour of the front door' and therefore you can 'see' opportunity because you are empowered, remember the whole system of society is wrapped up in disempowerment; education, health, wealth creation, getting old, everything.
When you realise the doctors look sicker than you and the teachers who are teaching your children are not the sort of people that you would let plan your life based on their wisdom as many are fresh out of university so why are they the fonts of knowledge for you most precious thing, your child? And why are the politicians who make the decisions such bunch of self-opinionated ego obsessed twits? Because we supposedly are not clever enough to be in control ourselves so we have given it to some asshole from Eton. How did we get there? Well when we build people to be aware of their genius and use all the resources to honour that then we will build great societies of creative people, people who will make decisions about what they are good at not being manipulated into doing science because 'we need more scientists or engineers' who are the 'we' anyway?
Back to the creative musicians, put to one side the stuff that you have programmed that limits you and start with a new belief, not that you need to be saved by a beneficent god or saviour that is all part of the control. Ancient people did not believe this, they believed that they worked in harmony with their gods and in many cases their gods where fallible and had weakness like us in fact we could become gods in their eyes. That to me sounds a great idea and maybe for all of us to become rock gods, goddesses and guitar deities; sounds like a good place to start dreaming.
Vic


 Check out www.bluescampuk.co.uk for three days of being a Rock musician

Which came first the chicken or the egg? Answer, the dinosaur.

Often we get into a state of circular thinking where one situation is linked to another and vice versa, one perpetuating another or even precluding another; you are unable to move on without breaking the circle.
In such situations the answer lies outside of that loop as in the case of the chicken and the egg, whose answer if you go back far enough was the dinosaur but it is also a lateral thinking answer as well.
An example of one of these loops is the belief that someone is not musical and therefore they are not able to develop their abilities because they are not musical. How do you get good at playing a musical instrument if you first do not believe that you are able to become good enough? The fact is that EVERYOONE is musical and when I say musical and do not mean being able to play the guitar like someone else because that is mimicry. We can all speak but we do not all impersonate other people like a Rory Bremner or a John Sessions.
The deeper that one studies thought the stranger it becomes especially when you factor in hypnotic language patterns in the media which are influencing you, as well as the strange effect played by food and drink on your mind; the research into funguses and bacteria really make you wonder who is doing the thinking (I will return to this another time).
Breaking circular thinking requires us to hold an idea outside of the loop which is why lateral thinking can be effective as we are made to stand outside of the circle and look in.
There is a Buddhist quote about thoughts being clouds floating across the sky of the mind. If you take that analogy further clouds are formed by things that are not clouds, sea, wind, thermal currents, water vapour, heat etc. SO, our thoughts might be ‘created’ by forces outside of our own minds? When you change your belief patterning you become open to other influences creating new thermals and weather patterns to create new clouds of consciousness. For us the trick is to nudge these in the direction of travel that we desire.
Pattern breaking is what makes a great artist, Picasso, Hendrix, Miles Davis and Paganini where not great because they copied others they were great because they were different, something not encouraged in education where conformity is the pattern.
Be yourself. Break circular patterns that do not help you and remember that music in one form or another was here before the dinosaurs. Oh very deep.
Vic

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You are only a few steps away….

At Bluescampuk this year we had a number of guests visit and jam with the campers
Chas Hodges came down on the Friday as did a good friend and session bass player Chis Dagger.
Chas played through lots of old rock and roll material with the attendees and also played through some of his hits finishing with London Girls. Chris Dagger came down so he could jam with Chas as he has been a fan of Chas and Dave for years.
Chris is currently working with Lianne La Havas and had just returned from a tour of America before playing at Glastonbury. After Bluescampuk Chris went home and we received a text saying ‘got in and Lianne is on the phone to Prince as he is in town.’
One of the things that we like to get across to the campers is that you are so close to what you believe is impossible you just have to change your beliefs and the world will change. By getting close to others and then making connections we then bring their connections closer, this is the principle of the Six degrees of separation that Milgram proposed back in the 60’s where you are only six connections away from anyone.
Maybe this is due to the choices we make or maybe because we have different filters set up we then see new opportunities to achieve what we now believe is possible just by changing your ideas and then asking and making contacts.
Later in the evening Chris sent another text saying ‘Just borrowed and jacket and shoes from a stranger and managed to get into a private club. Just chillin with Prince.’ So maybe borrowing clothing may be good as well.
Vic

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Making money from teaching and playing

Want to earn money from playing and teaching maybe you want to earn more?

Now is your chance!

 

Making money from teaching and playing

Sunday 20^th October Hadlow in Kent. 10 till 4

Over thirty five years of experience in music and running my own teaching practice. Now I am going to show you how to make money from music.  In that time I have taught thousands of people,  I exam here and abroad, I write books and promote my musical interests. I have learnt many things in that time that are not found in books, the tricks of the trade if you will. They are the communication skills, the marketing ideas the business techniques that make the difference between it being a hobby and making money.

This has been motivated in part by the economic climate because a few of my pupils have asked me so they can make money and I thought it was time that I put this information out.

You might be thinking to yourself ‘ I could go and buy a book about this’, and you could but I does not get to the real facts and points that I cover in the seminar 'making money from teaching and playing' because a book can only go so far. In this seminar I cut to the chase and pack the information for you not only that you will become part of a network so you can share ideas and ask questions.

My other fascination apart from music is that of business and marketing and I have read literally hundreds of books and listened to hours and hours of talks on business and marketing. I have interviewed successful businessman and then written a book on the subject.

For me running a successful business as a musician is down to the business and not the music because you could be the best but if no one knows you or you are a bad communicator you will not succeed.

You may know many great bedroom musicians, you may be one yourself but I want you to go out into the outside world and make money!

Now the economic climate is tough also means paradoxically that you have an opportunity to start or develop your business and because you have to think about pricing and value you will have a stronger business for it.

For those of you already earning money from music this seminar will be able to help you lock your musical skills together to make money. This is a skill that I am good at because I had to be and I learnt the hard way so take the opportunity to learn from the thousands of pounds of my investment and get yourself increasing your income.

We will cover these and many other points…

How to set up as a teaching

What you need

How to get into teaching at schools.

Do I need a teaching diploma?

Book keeping and tax information

How to advertise ... For free

How to increase 'share of wallet'

Lesson Ideas, making them inspiring and original.

Writing reports.

Getting gigs to pay in more ways

How performing and teaching can develop one another and increase your cash flow

How to think as a business person not a hobbyist

How to price your product

Set up courses

Sell online

Teach on the Internet .. And much more

 

I have over the years invested £1000's in training and study and all your investment will be is £50 in something that will generate increased income.

A free copy of 'the art of creativity' on CD

 

Contact me to book your place. 07976405561 or vichyland@msn.com

 

 

 

 

Time for change

Socrates was sitting outside the gates of Athens when a man comes up to him. The man says ‘I am thinking of moving to Athens; what is it like living here?’ Socrates looks up and asks him ‘I would gladly tell you but answer me one question; what is it like where you live now?
The man replied ‘Terrible! The people are back stabbers and thieves, I will be leaving no friends behind me only enemies’ Socrates frowned ‘Well you had best be on your way because you will only find the same thing here in Athens.’
Later a second man approached who was considering moving to Athens. Once again the philosopher asked him of his previous experience of his home town. The man smiled and said ‘Where I come from the people all work together and help each other. Kindness is everywhere and you are always treated with respect. ‘Welcome to Athens’, smiled Socrates, ‘you will find the same thing here.’
How we see the world and the people around us is all to do with our programming and our beliefs. When people come to me to learn music I often reach a point where they meet themselves on the road and that is their biggest obstacle. Their beliefs are the only thing holding them back. What people believe about their abilities and failings are the things that need to be looked at and the more education someone gets the worse they are.
These programmes that run are put in by others, family, teachers, friends and then the outside world think about it they were not even your own thoughts! Maybe it is time to get the programming you deserve; yours.
So start by changing what you believe; if it is negative and you find it ‘truthful’, remember all hypnotic programming seems truthful BECAUSE is it hypnotic; fake it and then give it time and see what happens, trust me things will change.
It is time to take control and let the rock star out.

Vic

check out www.bluecampuk.co.uk

Sorrow and grief are like the compost of change, plant the seed of love in the compost.- Satish Kumar

Be the change you want in the world. - Ghandi

Focus on the change that you want, focus on what you want in the music that you are producing, and remember that all music comes from the fact that there is silence. We have love because there is hate, we see them as different but in fact they are the same thing but just different aspects, different polarities.

Day and night are both parts of the day; this brings us to the ridiculousness of continued economic growth as this is not natural. The politicians need to get to the basics of the nature of things and make sure that we start to flow with the way that is more holistic.

There will be periods of growth and periods of decline and if we are aware of these things then all the better, however the political system is not set up for this, what it is set up for is the few possessing the most with the many possessing the little; this is unsustainable and in time will change.

 Over the last few years there has been a recurring theme of the rich feathering their nests at the expense of the others and this is not going unnoticed with movements like the ‘Occupy Movement’. Again this is not new and there has to be poverty in the world just for the reasons that I have outlined above but there has to be change and balance not stagnation. 

We are entering a new phase of change and it can be the most creative time for the arts, think back to the decades of the 60’s and 70’s and of the way that music developed in those times of unrest.

Best that we work this out in the arts!

Vic 

 

 

The daily grind

I am a shaman, come in guise of a comic, in order to heal perception by using stories and jokes, and always the voice of reason…..

If comedy is an escape from anything it is an escape from illusions. The comic, by using the voice of reason, reminds us of our True Reality, and in that moment of recognition, we laugh, and the reality of the daily grind is shown for what it really is – unreal – a joke. - Bill Hicks

Back in the 1960’s music was a force for change and it was again in the 1970’s with Punk and Two Tone. Today it seems that most people are rather tranced-out and things seem to be going along with no one seeing what is happening. More and more things are being taken away from ordinary people and being placed in the hands of big business and the authorities.

Take schooling for instance; they are now more like businesses than places to learn, with some schools running several others like some form of corporate takeover. This is bloody ridiculous but no one seems to think it is, surely schooling has some aspect of locality to it so how can a school from a different area take over and know the aspects of that school.

It seems that any comment made that would have been fine down the pub in a matter of fact way now being delivered on the internet can result in the authorities moving in, well I am suspicious of them as well. I have NEVER believed in the well-meaning nature of the police or the ruling class and this is from a white guy; I just wonder how I would have felt if I was black and I had lived in Brixton in my early years.

I think that music and humour still has and maybe has even more a role a play to prick the bubble of pomposity of the authorities of this country, the USA and Europe as they are not only manipulating and corrupt but also inept.

So Bill as in all things the true nature of things shows itself in time and the daily grind is still grinding on.

Vic

 

RGT Electric Guitar Exams - Grade 3, Grade 4 & Grade 5

After the next election the taxes will go up whoever gets in, no matter what they say when they are trying to get your vote.

So many of the structures of society such as politics and government, health and the education system is based on an industrial model; this model is outmoded and we need to rethink, however the situation is like the guy who driving his car through Cornwall asks a farmer how to get the Midlands to which the farmer answers, ‘Best not to start from here’.  We have trapped ourselves into a system that is expensive and dysfunctional and part of the problem is that within the political arena, the country is being governed by people that really are out of touch and therefore many of the dictates that are handed down from on high are misjudged and in many cases are divisive. How can the political classes many of whom have had an elitist education understand, maybe because they are experts! Certainly not experts in scratching a living and making ends meet.

No one likes to pay taxes and Benjamin Franklin said that the only fair and successful way to run a taxation system was to run a lottery. But our taxes are being used to prop up the banks and the armed forces in an attempt to carry on punching above our weight on the world stage, maybe it is time to step back and not get so involved, not so interesting to the politician who wants to make their mark in the sands of history. They need to remember they are sands not rocks

Maybe there is a song in this.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  play in a band for three days

 

 

 

 

Change the context, change reality.

Language is not merely a device for communicating ideas about the world, but rather a tool for bringing the world into existence in the first place. Reality is not simply ‘experienced’ or ‘reflected’ in language but is actually produced by language. – Terence McKenna.

Our world is set in a contextual reference and this is a way of not only exploring ‘reality’ it is also a way of trapping us in a hypnotic state within a ‘reality’.

Music expresses this brilliantly where the context of the music will set the parameters of what is possible with the music such as what sounds correct in classical and what then sounds possible in blues and Jazz and so on. What is impossible in one form of music is possible in another by the change of the parameters of the context. In certain forms of music every note is possible whereas in other forms they would sound wrong.

This is true with ‘reality’, change the context then things become acceptable and also not only possible but the norm; war for instance makes death and destruction the norm which they is not in peace.

Listen to the speeches of leaders leading up to war and see how language changes the context that people are living in preparing them for a different reality.

If you think this is not the thing that is consistently happening by the powers that be think again listen very carefully to the news and think about what they are telling you and ask yourself two questions; Why this and why now?

Now I have set the mood now here is how to change this go and listen to the great shape shifters of consciousness in music, Bob Marley and John Lennon. Music has REAL power let us use it.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk 

 

Agents and making money from metal hopefuls.

For me doing a concert is a form of advertising and therefore I am not a wholly dependent upon playing to earn a living. I have always found that the publicity attracted by playing can be far more valuable than the actual amount of money that you will earn from doing them so therefore I tend to do fewer but larger gigs and try to do as much advertising to maximise my time.

I have recently become aware of the amount of money some young players are paying ‘agents’ to get them gigs it seems particularly rife in the Heavy Metal scene. It costs somewhere in the region of £150 a month for the band for gigs in this country and then extra for gigs abroad where these so called tours are costing each member of a band a grand to do the tour of Europe for a week. What a con this is. These high profile gigs at prestigious venues are nothing of the sort; it is the same old story of the A and R men being in the audience, what rubbish!

They could have done this themselves and spent the money on promotional work but it takes years of experience to see through this patter. It is the same old thing; get out there and play, promote yourself get your name about, create a fan base, do not expect someone to do it for you.

It seems that even when people go to college they still fall into this trap, perhaps the courses should cover some of the aspects of what to watch out for.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  learn to play in three days

 

 

Something Missing?

‘To the world that modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential.  It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something.  It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality, and with natural human experience.  It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt that the source of integration and meaning.  It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia.  Man as observer is becoming alienated from himself as a being.  Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimensional of reality.  And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only guy mention, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became.  Today for instance we may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet, it increasingly seems that they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.  The same is true of nature and ourselves.  The more thoroughly all our organs and their functions, their internal structure and the biochemical reactions that take place within them are described, the more we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose and meaning of the system that they create together and that we experience as their unique self’.  Vaclav Havel the first President of the Czech Republic.

 

Reductionist thinking reduces us to a closed mind in any area of endeavour remember the mind is like a parachute it works best when it is open. This seems to be lost on the education system not just here but in most countries; what we need now is diversity and flexibility of thinking.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  Play in a rock band for three days

 

All people are musical it is just the way that music is taught that is the problem.

I was listening to Hugh Laurie on the radio a few days ago on Desert Island discs and he made the statement that he had a number of piano lessons as a kid but gave up having the lessons and carried on learning by himself.
He is a good amateur player and I suppose that now you could say he is a good professional as he has two best-selling albums out but the point that he went on to say was that when his children had lessons the way that music was taught was still as bad.
I see lots of music teaching and because of the way that schools function and I would in this respect point the finger at independent  and grammar schools in particular, the focus on the classical style puts most children off learning an instrument altogether.
For me learning classical music was like doing a Shakespeare play whereas playing contempory music such as rock, blues and jazz was like having a chat and learning to become fluent in the language  and carrying that analogy further most  do not like Shakespeare they would rather have a chat with their mates.
So pick and an instrument and start talking through it.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

three days playing in a rock band

Lightly does it.

There is a lot of talk about bees and the falling numbers of butterflies and general degradation of wild life and many of us wring our hands and say that we support conservation BUT we do nothing about it.
What is needed, and this is not just my opinion, is that people should do nothing! Just leave their gardens uncut and let the wild flowers take over and then the flowers needed for the insect life would return and the biodiversity would rebalance. HOWEVER we would incur the wrath of …. the neighbours.
Where I live, the profusion of wild flowers if left is mind boggling but the people who live in the villages are often fighting a war with the weeds and the insects that although critical to the eco system are not the ones liked by the villagers. Weeds, gnats, wasps, snakes, flies and mice are essential food for the birds bats and other hunters however if they poison everything in sight then we are going to destroy what we want; such is human stupidity.
We are now aware that saving one species requires the saving of many others and in the final analysis if we lose the lower layers of the food chain the top layers will collapse, hello that is us!
For me, my interests in music come from a deeper interest in life in general it is where I get my inspiration and this is what I encourage others to do; to find theirs. Apart from the Bluescampuk courses where people are taught the tricks of the trade so that they can play and write songs I also do more abstract courses in woodlands where we go back to older forms of music and its inspiration; that of nature both in the natural word and the esoteric because for our ancestors nature was divine. For them the trees and plants were sentient beings and along with the animal spirits they could be communicated with and used as allies, and for this they would use music.
This sounds to the modern ear rather crazy but the basic plot of altered realities are the biggest sellers in movie and song so there is still a desire for that way of thinking even if it is just a creative dream.
Many musicians and artists become passionate about conservation but I am suggesting that we can go better than that we can be revisionists’ getting back some of what we have lost but to do this we need to change our minds. I think that we are doing this in many ways and if you look back over the past 100 years many things have got better. I am not suggesting that we need to go back to mud huts but we need to use our humanness and our technology to fit back into nature because there really is no way we can carry on like this and change when it comes will be very fast. We have already seen this with regard to the collapse of the banking sector, it was not a slow thing it was almost overnight.
Again I am giving the general attitude a kicking as I often do, normally it is education but I would also say that we have a mind-set that the experts of got it under control. Well they had experts organising the banks, we have experts in the government and experts in the health sector so I think I will leave with two quotes, one from a sage and one from an Emperor.
Napoleon first; someone was put up for promotion to Marshall because he was such an expert in tactics and leadership. Napoleon was unimpressed by how much of an expert this gentleman was, what he wanted to know was ‘Is he lucky’. So much for logic!
The Taoist sage Lao Tzu said that people should be governed as you would cook a small fish; lightly. This may be true for gardening as well.
Vic
 
 
  www.bluescampuk.co.uk  learn to play ...........

One word of caution

‘My one word of caution is that a cow chewing contentedly in a field, once you have looked over the wall and seen what is out there, chewing the same old grass never seems quite so satisfying again.’ – Nigel Twinn

At one of the schools in which I teach they have introduced a scheme through the pupil premium where the pupils can have music lessons to develop their self-esteem. I am teaching either guitar or singing and there is also a drum teacher.

This seems to be an enlightened idea and I know that if they are able to acquire a skill that means they achieve something, maybe performing or passing a grade they will have something different and positive in their school lives which quite honestly they are not getting at the moment.

Over the years that I have taught I have often heard from past pupils that music has been something very special and it has really changed the way they view the world. For some they realised that the teachers at school who told them that they were spending too long on music and should be working on their science had got it wrong. In one case this was viewed from the stage of the Hollywood bowl and he reflected that the best thing he ever did was to stop doing science.

I have also a number of pupils who would say that music has become a religion or certainly a spiritual experience which informs them about life on a deep level. I spend a lot of time listening to great musicians and I would say that this is something that figures significantly for many deepening their experience and adding something that ordinary life does not give them

So maybe they need to heed the warning that music will change one’s life in ways that you cannot see in this moment making you realise that you are special so special that you are a musician.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

check it out!

 

 

 

 

 

Play like you don’t know. - Miles Davis

This is a story that Santana tells about Miles talking with Eric Clapton, for me it gives us an insight into the workings of the mind of a genius. We have gone so far down the road of the clever clogs where we anal-ise the hell out of everything that we end up with a sterile piece of sound. There is a joke about the similarity between analysing a joke and dissecting a frog to see how it works; the result, you end up with a dead frog.

Miles came to music from a line that said it is not the technique or the knowledge that mattered it is the feeling, as he would of said playing ‘from the heart not the head’. But is that not true of everything, education, medicine, relationships, politics? We have become too clever by half, lots of things can be a lot simpler and far more effective and this is so true for the art of music making.

So sit down and listen to some Muddy Waters and feel what is going on because it sure damn well isn’t in the number of notes or the complexity of the scales and chords.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

Be lazy like a fox’. Linus Torvalds

This is similar in many ways to ‘Do not reinvent the wheel’ the solutions are out there and some have been used over and over again throughout history so look for the answer that is staring you in the face. Sometimes this answer is to be found in someone that you know you just need to ask around.

I have found that many people that I teach have skills that I need, whether that is fixing a computer, sorting out software problems, advice on building websites, finding somewhere to live, advice on gardening or fixing the car, but in all of these cases I would not have known unless I asked and also suggested swapped lessons for their time and knowledge.

I have got the point that I am quite lazy and I always look for the simple ways to deal with problems which are often cheaper, this has led me to looking into recycling and what is now termed upcycling. This is something that can be used for electric guitars, taking knackered instruments and rebuilding them incorporating parts of other guitars or ‘junk’ like old vinyl LPs for scratch plates, or making plectrums from old credit cards.

We need to consider that people in the past were as clever and in many ways cleverer than we are today, some experiments suggest that the Victorians had higher IQ’s than we do so look back to see the solutions that previous generations adopted for solutions as their main resource was ideas.   

Vic

Focus on what you want not on what you do not

Listen to the news, there is always a focus and analysis on what we do not like, want or desire and virtually nothing on want we really value or wish for. We give this negative aspect our added attention and we mull over this and run it over and over until it becomes a habit. The glass becomes half empty in fact you are feeling that someone else is about to steal it or it is full of so many chemicals that it is not safe to drink.

If we turn these things around life can be so much better, we do not focus on the bad we focus on the things that we want, this means that we start to make more interesting choices and when life gives us lemons we make lemonade. For us as teachers we look not at the exam nerves or performance anxiety but we look at the opportunity to play to someone that we have not seen before and enjoy the feeling of making music.

Great art is often forged in visiting dark places but better to do this as an observer; there is a point where we can put some sort of emotional charge into what we focus on and it becomes part of our belief system but if you are the actor then you can distance yourself from the emotional feelings. I have met a number of people who have become rather screwed up by what they do but not every actor that plays an evil character becomes a murderer! However there are some roles in the theatre which are infamous for their negative impact on the psyche of the actor like the role of Lady Macbeth or one of the witches.

By focusing on what you want and not on what you do not want we can make sure that your pupils believe in their ability to learn and develop and that all things are possible and in that way they will achieve great things.

Vic

 

So let us use our limitations to be creative.

‘Then one day in 1965, he came by my house to say goodbye before leaving for Hong Kong where he said he intended to become the biggest star in films. “You remember our talk about limitations?” he asked “well, I'm limited by my size and difficultly in English and the fact that I am Chinese, and there never has been a big Chinese star in America films. But I have spent the last three years studying movies and I think that the time is ripe for a good martial arts film - and I am the best qualified to star in it. My capabilities exceed my limitations”.

This was a small man whose right leg was an inch shorter than his left and was seriously short sighted which for a martial artist was rather a handicap but got over this by wearing contact lenses which in the 1960's where not the most comfortable!

The man in question was Bruce Lee and this story comes from Joe Hyams who wrote a book called ‘Zen in the martial arts’.

Bruce Lee made a point of saying that because he was sort sighted he trained first in close quarter Wu Shu and then when he got contact lenses learnt to fight from a distance. For his short leg he formulated and perfected a stance which led to his powerful kicking technique.

The history of achievement is full of people that started with a disadvantage and because of their determination to be as good as others the skills that they developed from their disability meant they surpassed their rivals.

For me the great example is that of Django Reinhardt probably the greatest jazz guitarist of all time. Django an illiterate gypsy was so brilliant  that after hearing a piece of Bach once could play it back on the guitar; his playing was truly amazing but Django only had two fully functional fingers on his fretboard hand so the licks that he played that seem impossible anyway were played by someone with a crippled hand.

So let us use our limitations to be creative.

 

Vic