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

 

Its a pentatonic scale Jim, but not as we know it.

A few years ago I was at a guitar show in London doing a number of sessions for the RGT about the guitar exams and in one of the breaks I was hanging around the stalls looking at the guitars. The noise at these shows is incredible with hundreds of people playing on the instruments and what you hear is a sort of pentatonic hell where the twiddling fingers of young males are shredding their way to some chaotic frenzy.

I reflected that they were using the same scale as used by Hendrix, Clapton and just about every other rock guitarist yet none of them sounded that good because quite simply just as the meaning of language is more than just the words the meaning of music is more than just the notes.

The great blues players were able to get great music from one chord and a few notes and we miss that in the race to complexity and therefore going back to the roots players for any form of music be it the roots of gospel, soul, reggae, African township or folk will give you an insight into what really works in the musical form.

I have four years of guitar magazines that are unread sitting in the teaching room with loads of technical stuff in them, however  going back to simple songs and solos has given me fresh insights into the things that got me interested in the first place and helped to add something to the music that I do now.

I think it is a very valuable life lesson.

Vic

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In the house of lovers, the music never stops, the walls are made of songs and the floor dances.- Rumi

That is a great house to live in!

We create our immediate world by how we think. This became very clear to me over the years because one’s mind set filters and creates the choices that we make.  If we are full of unhappiness our minds find those things for us as the genie says,’ yes master your wish is my command’ and we conjure something to fulfil our wishes of despair.

I believe it is about choices that we make based on our programming and that is why I think we need to be careful not to just go with the status quo. History proves that the status quo is often seriously lacking in common sense for one thing.

I have lived long enough to have lost a number of significant people in my life and I have realised that when you look back there are many things that were unsaid that should have been and if I had been truly in the moment I would have said how I happy I was to those close to me. Now I make a point of saying it because in my experience people are often taken by surprise and it makes their day better.

One of my joys is playing music with others and I often say how much I enjoy their playing and again they are often surprised because they do not hear that.

The secret of music is that it travels with you in your body and therefore even if you are alone it is your companion, the Greeks were right to say that the Muses brought music to you and that you could call on them to create and share your energy with them as long as you were generous in spirit to others. I do not share the modern idea that music is a set of rules; it is like saying that someone is a good carpenter because he has good tools, the tools help him but they are not the reason that he is a good carpenter. The rules of music help us but what is important is the love you put into it and it is a great way to build a house, with or without a carpenter.

Vic

 

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Music is a language that expresses emotion and transfers that feeling to the listener.

When we listen to language we hear the words and then express those words in ways that we are personally programmed to understand them. This is fraught with problems, when we say something the meaning that we connect to the words can often be lost in translation with the words meaning something else to the listener. Take for instance a word like ‘dog’ this will mean something to a dog lover and something emotionally different to someone with a fear of dogs.

Words take on different meanings with the introduction of tonality and emphasis. Language is unreliable just listen to a politician and notice how they ‘answer’ a question. When we think of the word myth we often interpret that word as lie or fairy tale but myth was something much deeper than that.

Myth contains within the story truths hidden in the text using deep structure and metaphor therefore within the tale there is a truth that connects with the unconscious. It is possible to view many ancient stories in this way bringing new meaning to them such as the Arabian Nights and the stories of the Genie being an instruction manual of the mind and how to reprogram your thoughts. It is the same with language, that much is going on in the deep structure of the communication which the great orators in the past understood.  

Music has the same aspect of carrying emotional messages through the song both in the sound and the lyric much of this is locked into your memories of when you heard that music originally but much of this is about deeper things in the sound.

There seems very little of this being passed on to pupils when they learn, particularly in classical music. Only much later does the idea of the musical energy seem to be introduced, if at all, shame it seems to be what music is all about.

Vic

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