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