We are much greater than we think that we are. Consciousness sees. Nicholas Mann

Let me ponder this week on the above phrase and play a little with it. Have you noticed that great artists, musicians and inventers often do their best work when they are young? This seems rather odd as we could all look at the development through experience would mean that our best work would happen AS WE GOT OLDER.

I have watched young children learning the guitar and noticed that when they are younger they will take on pieces that are too complicated for them but because that like them and they want to play the piece they can achieve amazing things. I think it is because they can fantasise themselves playing the music and this works on the deeper structure of the above quote.

We are limited by what we believe whatever that belief is so when you are young you have very little beliefs about yourself and therefore are not restricted but what you KNOW.

What we believe is very important because we limit ourselves to that, so if you believe that you are the best blues guitarist ever you will never be good at playing jazz and if you are the best Jazz guitarist ever you will never make any money as a rock musician and let’s face it you may not make any money as a jazz guitarist either, sorry it is an old joke.

My take on this is that we can make our own world by what we believe because believing creates the template for the mind and it will see what it believes. Therefore if you ARE a great musician great things will occur to you because they will not be screen out by the unconscious as being incompatible to you. Also if you believe that all things pass through you as if you are a conduit (which is a common theme with great artists) then you will open your mind to new things that seem not to come from you. I have seen this happen under hypnosis and it is quite something.

There was a story that I have quoted before about someone asking Richard Branson for a business idea to which Branson looked around and said ‘look at that outside heater. Find out who is making them and start selling them yourself’. This was a couple of years before the boom in patio heaters that swept the country; it wasn’t because they were not there it was only him who saw it and not the journalist.

 Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

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

“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen

I was listening to Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and someone pointed out to me that the bass player’s E string was out of tune, I had not noticed this before and I then thought of the squeaking bass drum pedal on John Bonham’s kit which you can clearly hear on Since I’ve Been Loving You. I could add the out of tune guitar of Ike Turner at the beginning of Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin and many more and what that seems to say to me is that these imperfections do not impair the greatness of the music if anything they add to it, like some form of magic dust or charisma to the sound that makes it real unlike the highly polished computer processed recordings that we have today.

Billy Childish commented that primitiveness is important in art and that technique can get in the way of the work and I believe that this can most definitely be an important aspect to our playing and teaching for people to connect to the real emotion of music. Maybe there is too much emphasis on the perfection of the playing and not the emotional performance in exams. If this were not the case in music generally that emotion was the real power of music the old blues players, punk and grunge musicians would not have sold any records in the past and the listening public would have all been listening to the beautiful technical classical recordings.

So just like the broken Japanese pottery that is put back together with gold in the cracks to show that a broken bowl is more valuable than one that has no experience of being broken maybe we should look for the cracks and breaks in our own playing because that is where you are.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk - have a look

 

 

Pantheon of music and icons.

The inner sky of the mind fills with images, ideas and concepts on a continuous basis. Some of these ideas seem so real and so powerful they become apparently autonomous.

Yet the Gods and Goddesses are creations of our own minds. They stud the starry universe that wheels within and only within our eyes. They provide a way for consciousness to think about the whole with all its ambivalent and changing parts. They provide a functional cosmology based upon real observable polarity of male and female, which tells the whole story of creation. Consciousness flourishes in the mythic cycle that includes every aspect and symbol of the divine. - Nicholas Mann

The rich and open canvas of the mind is the powerhouse of our consciousness it is our best ally and also our greatest enemy and to understand it is to be able to use that tool that is also fundamental to what makes us who we are.

I have always been interested in meeting new people, especially creative people; I am very interested to learn from them. Often these people become friends and one such person was Stuart Wilde.

Stuart was an incredible writer and thinker; he was a writer for music projects such as ‘Heartland’ and ‘Greenwood’ and his own metaphysical books and recordings. He was a lecturer on the occult and mystical and he was a natural comedian and bon viveur.

Some of Stuart’s ideas were so left field, but as you got to know him you could really grasp what he was getting and he had an amazing line of prediction which included the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, the World Financial Crash (which no one else seemed to see coming) and the child abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church.

But what I liked about him was his generous spirit and how he wore his heart on his sleeve and his ability to move his mind into areas like music that even in his own opinion had no obvious skill. We did a recording a few years back and when I said he should sing on it he said he had a voice like ‘a frog in a bag’, I thought he could do a Lee Marvin but I could not sway him on this.

For people like Stuart opening the mind and ‘seeing’ the inner world and then creating from it was the magic that we as artists need to engage with. Too much of musical teaching is wrapped up in the theory and not in the expansiveness of the unconscious and we can benefit greatly from the pantheon of mind’s symbology and iconography so imagine what you want and start to manifest it through your work.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

‘Life is about the journey not the destination.’ Diana Dyad

We spend most of our lives doing instead of being, we are constantly striving for a goal and doing what we think we need to reach the target and in that process we forget the steps that we are taking, where we are and when we take those steps. What is under our feet? What landscape is there? It is the journey we need to savour.

In music it is the spaces between the notes that contain the music not the notes themselves and not the attainment of the last bar. I have realised this in the act of practising the guitar over the years, that if we spend all of our time practicing scales do we want our music to sound like a bunch of scales or do we want it to sound like we are saying something of ourselves through the notes? If we are more attentive on the process the journey of the learning we will be more aware of the ideas that we are programming into our fingers.

To have a successful journey we need a destination like doing an examination for the guitar we need the exam date, we need to turn up and participate but the true benefit is in the preparation for the examination not the exam itself.

For those of you who regularly read these ramblings you will know that I believe that music is a reflection of life and we can learn much about life through music and as with any truth it works the other way as well so we can learn much about music through the lessons of life. This is why musicians become better as they get older not because of technique but because of experience. Hence the reason that I write about these things under the heading of making money from music is because the deeper you are playing and teaching the more it resonates with the people who come in contact with you.

So feel the steps that you take and be aware of every note that you play through your body and remember to delay the ending of your journey. You have much to give and much to receive before you play your last note.

Vic

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