The miracle is not to fly in the air or walk on water, but to walk on earth.

When working through ideas for music we often become drawn to the amazing and fantastical and maybe this is something that we tend to do in life generally. But looking deeper into the world of music we actually respond to those who connect with us in an emotional and not a cerebral way.

The great blues players, the great reggae musicians, the flamenco players and the world musicians know this deeply and when I say ‘know this’ I mean ‘know’ on an intuitive level. Because of our education system we are trained that everything should be in your ‘head’ and you have to be thinking, thinking and then thinking which stops us using the greatest gift that we have, the unconscious, and this operates at its best when we are in the flow or in the zone and strangely this happens when we are grounded.
I heard a quote once from a saxophone teacher from the US that said when you are improvising you should ‘think about the soles of your feet’ in other words stop the chatter in your head of which notes to play and focus your thoughts somewhere else.
What better way to put it that getting to the basics of being human may hold the answer to the questions of life which philosophers have pondered for ages but ironically the answer maybe not to think about it but feel it through your feet.
Vic

Learn about yourself - join a band

Music and the arts open up the mind to new ways of exploring the world, whether that is spirituality, personal relationships, sports or business,  in fact anything that we can term the human experience because through music and the arts we are dealing with various areas of consciousness and within that, creative thinking, and then its outward expression.

In a way it is possible for anything one does to do that but I believe that music, because of its potentially abstract nature, can get to the depths of what makes us tick as humans and in contrast by its structural nature we can see how we operate as ‘organised’ beings.

My interest in music started as a young teenager picking up the guitar for the first time and playing my first chords and then learning how to play a blues, that was it, I was hooked! Is that what we need to achieve as a response from customers, to get them hooked?  Is that not what we need for ourselves to really become masters of any skill, to be hooked? Music can teach us how this can happen.

Over the years I have taught many people to play guitar and to sing and many have carried on playing years after, some becoming professional players and some working with very famous musicians. In that time I have watched and learnt as I taught and with my interest in psychology I have unpicked the way the mind sorts, files and then uploads skills. Some of these elements are conscious but many are unconscious.

It has often been said that the greatest fear for people is the fear of public speaking, even ranking higher than the fear of death in some polls. The idea of standing up in public and giving a performance will fill many with panic but as a musician it is your ‘stock in trade’ to perform especially as a front man for a band;  not only do you have to sing but also to talk to the audience and get them to clap and sing along. The art of fronting a band and dealing with performance nerves is one lesson that anyone in business would find useful and the skills are simple to learn, just play in a band. 

So there we are, play an instrument and learn about yourself and the world around you.

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

  

 

 

A cautionary tale for the discourteous

A cautionary tale for the discourteous
As a DIY artist, you have to make and maintain contact with lots of folks: bookers, agents, recording engineers, managers, bands, DJs, program directors, journalists, bloggers, designers, producers, fans, and many more.
And even when you don’t get the desired result, it’s important to remember something you probably learned when you were two years old: BE POLITE!
What happens if you’re rude? You don’t get hired back, or worse — your band gets black-listed from clubs in LA, and is written about in SPIN Magazine for all the wrong reasons........
go to ...
http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/2013/03/be-polite/

Chris Robley

The Way of music

Concerning the Way - Confucianists, Buddhists, tea masters, masters of ceremonial practices, Noh dramatists and such – none of these are within the Way of the Warrior. Even though their Ways are not ours, if you know the Way broadly, not one of them will be misunderstood. It is essential that each person polish his own Way well – Miyamoto Musashi

 

One thing about music that I love is that by learning its Way you learn so much about yourself and the world around you. I teach this dealing directly with the functioning of our mind and that to learn efficiently you will need to know how the brain works, and then you will become able to learn the technique of playing with great ease.

Due to my interest and maybe my addiction to music I have begun to understand how music changes the state of consciousness of the listener and the player and how our ancient forebears used it for ceremonial use. This really came home to me when I was in South America listening to the icaros of the shaman and how it ramped up their work; this introduced me to the notion that great musicians particularly from roots styles of music have that ability to change states of mind.

I was playing through some old blues numbers by Muddy Waters and you can see that this man who Eric Clapton called ‘Buddha’ could play one riff for several minutes and sing a song that would drive an audience into a frenzy (Mannish Boy) or sing a song about the magical charms that he had and how he was destined to be a great man (Hoochie Coochie Man). This is easily found in all other musical forms, Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer in Reggae, Jimi Hendrix in rock music, Elvis Presley in Rock and Roll and John Lennon in Pop music, where the musician would take you on a journey to a different place which you could say was ‘spiritual’.

What is interesting for me is that when you see what really works on a deep level in one sort of music you will recognise it in other forms of music and then in other places, such as sport, business human relationships because music is a reflection of human consciousness.

As Musashi says if you polish your Way, you will understand all others; not one of them will be misunderstood.

 

Vic

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Good Time to Plan

It is nice to see the sun back this week and although we need the rain, snow and the icy wind it is still lovely to see the beginnings of spring.

It has been rather a long winter and I think the birds have found it difficult as well with a limited supply of berries from last year due to the weather.

When the weather gets better I tend to forget how bad the travelling is and I settle back into the groove of work whereas I was planning on lots of things when I was struggling with the early starts.

A couple of my friends who teach at schools as classroom teachers are leaving the profession because of the ridiculous pressure that they feel and coupled with that the ‘tick box’ mentality that has now resulted from an overbearing ofsted.

In their cases the weather does not play a part in the decisions because the pressure is on all of the time. Thankfully I really enjoy what I do but the continuous travelling is getting to me.

When continuous pressure is part of the scene we know that it creates extreme stress in people because they feel that they have no control. So I would suggest that ofsted will eventual destroy the fabric of teaching because simply the best teachers would have left the profession because the pressure for accountability has become more important than teaching.

Let me suggest an idea; think of something that you learnt at school that was for you a life changing lesson and I would guess that it was in a moment, something that really impacted you and more importantly something that was not scripted, planned or dare I say it evaluated, it was inspired in the moment, and for you it was life changing.

My point here is that lots of what we put up with in modern education is bullshit and is only something put together to satisfy the mentality of accountability. 

Now is now a good time to plan whist enjoying the better weather, we are here to live not to be a statistic of GDP.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted?

Wouldn't it be great to be gifted? In fact...

It turns out that choices lead to habits.

Habits become talents.

Talents are labelled gifts.

You're not born this way, you get this way. – Seth Godin

 

As musicians we know this already although sometimes we act as if we have forgotten but the simple fact is the time you put in builds into habits and then we see these habits become ‘natural talent’.

I have always thought of the phrase ‘they are talented’ as a sort of get out, which overlooks the amount of sweat and commitment that someone has put in; when I see someone play I see the number of hours displayed in the performance.

For those who are outside of anything that requires continued practice and dedication the achievers are often thought of as ‘naturally gifted’ but as cellist Mstislav Rostropovich put it when asked about his genius he said it was one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.

The by-product of the layperson’s attitude is the number of new pupils who turn up who do not realise the amount of practice time required to achieve the level that they aspire and for some it comes as a shock!

 

Vic