Smell the Music

Playing on a Saturday night in a small bar in Chelmsford in Essex, no rehearsal just a bunch of numbers on a sheet, great stuff!  Some of these songs I have not played for thirty years and what is amazing is how easily they come back.

Memory is incredible; you just need to hit the right buttons and then out it comes. There are certain triggers that work amazingly well for creating memory recall, one of these is smell. Have you ever had a time that you smelt something and it took you to a memory that was so real that it felt like time travel?  I have, it was the smell of Bunsen burners and it took me back to the chemistry room at school to the point that I was standing in the school science room, quite extraordinary.

When learning music the more that you layer memory with sensory information the better, this may explain why the great players always look like they are totally involved  in the music; maybe that is their secret .

When learning or teaching have an internal film of the song that locks to the music and make it so real that you are standing in it and you can feel the atmosphere and the smells of the landscape make it more than real, this will help with the dynamics and deals with performance nerves. Just think of what the music makes you visualise and then use the pictures to relate to the music.

One of the problems that people often experience in playing is that they never play out as well as they do at home a bit like public speaking, we speak all the time but for some reason when we get up to speak in public we find it difficult, why? because we think about it and then all our programming goes out the window, but picturing and adding other senses to the music takes you to the same place wherever you are.

 

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk   play like a pro in three days..............

 

 

 

‘Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I'll meet you there.’ Rumi

Rumi’s quote is the idea of being in a neutral space, a disassociated state which is a powerful place to create.

Every neutral space leads us to opportunity some good, some bad and even within that space there is a neutral space like a dream within a dream. The interesting aspect is that as soon as we ‘think’ we can polarise that space.

Rumi the great poet and the mystic was one of the minds able to transcend time and humanness to reach the depth of consciousness and paradoxically the heights of expression open to all but only found by a few. He was able to express in a few words deep meaning in the areas of thought and reality of mind.

Exploring this in teaching and music we need to look at what we think of as right or wrong and suspend judgement. If someone comes to you with dyslexia realise that this is an advantage to them becoming a great musician, also expressing that to them and their parents if they are children will create a positive vibe which will aide their learning. I have often found guitarists with dyslexia are great improvisers.

If someone comes to you as a bright intellectual person suspend judgement and it will help you to discover the things that hold them back from learning how to express themselves. This is the problem for many adults.

True learning is so deep that it often does not make sense on the surface just as the surface of the sea creates an illusion hiding the life forms living beneath it.

Vic

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www.bluescampuk.co.uk learn to play in a rock band 

‘Let us not look back in anger, not forward in fear, but around in awareness.’ James Thurber.

This quote could have easily been written by the great samurai warrior Musashi whose teaching was that the mind and the eyes should always stay the same; eyes open to all things and the mind relaxed but alert even in the heat of a battle.

For us many have never had to deal with life threatening situations but we are still wired up in the same way as our ancestors and therefore when small events happen we tend to over compensate for them.

The levels of stress that people experience not only cause problems with their health but also on a social front. In the past we would have experienced something very physical such as fight or flight that would have dissipated that stress, now we have to put up with Ofsted and other small problems without the ability to burn off the stress. (Maybe there is a business idea here of the ‘Ofsted inspector punch bag’ that could be a good seller).

I have looked at using aspects of human emotional energy in performance techniques such as using memories of sadness, anger and happiness and it is very powerful; it is often the missing ingredient that makes a reasonable performance outstanding. However to be the master of this one needs to be aware of what you are doing and although to take people into a trance one needs to go there first you need also to be aware and in control of that power by being disassociated from it rather like an actor.

Anger is like fire and it will burn out of control if not dealt with fully and fear stops all forward movement in life. So if you feared standing up in public maybe you should get out and visit an open mic event and step up to the microphone.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk for three days of playing in a band and learning rock tricks.